Ivanplats IPO Expected to Fetch Hundreds of Millions

Ivanplats Ltd, which holds huge mineral deposits in the DRC and South Africa, has launched what could be the largest IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange this year — eclipsing even the $575 million Sunshine Oilsands offering made in Hong Kong earlier this year.

According to The Financial Post, sources say the Ivanplats IPO, led by legendary mining fiancier Robert Friedland, is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, though that is still a far cry from the $1 billion Friedland had hoped to raise from the offering.

Friedland, whose net worth is pegged at $2.8 billion according to Forbes magazine, is the founder of Ivanhoe Mines. Ivanhoe is famously developing the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold complex in Mongolia and was recently renamed Turquoise Hill Resources (TSX:TRQ,NYSE:TRQ) after Rio Tinto (LSE:RIO) took majority control of the project and the company.

Ivanplats, a private company founded in 1994, has three principal properties: the Platreef platinum project in South Africa, and the Kamoa copper and Kipushi zinc deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A preliminary prospectus on Kamoa, Ivanplats’ flagship mine, shows 9.2 million tonnes of copper in the measured and indicated category, and 12. 5 million tonnes of inferred resources.

Ivanplats needs to go public in order to raise the capital to keep all three projects moving forward, states The Financial Post, with feasibility studies needed to be done on Kamoa and Kipushi. It currently has nearly US$85 million in cash and cash equivalents according to the prospectus.