Ajax Resources (AQSE:AJAX) has increased its stake in Reveille Resources, buying 2m shares and 2m warrants from Santa Devota, a vehicle wholly owned by Reveille's former non-executive director Antonio Barani, for total consideration of £102,500.
The purchase takes Ajax's holding to 14m Reveille shares, equivalent to 17.52% of Reveille's issued share capital, cementing its position as Reveille's second-largest shareholder.
Reveille is a UK uranium exploration and development company focused on Italy's largest uranium deposits, the Novazza and Val Vedello projects in Lombardy, both progressing through Italy's environmental impact assessment process; its shares were admitted to the Aquis Growth Market on 7 July.
Ajax first moved on the Lombardy projects in April, agreeing to invest £200,000 for a majority stake in Reveille in two tranches alongside a parallel £200,000 subscription from Zenith Energy, with the funding earmarked for Aquis admission and a restart of modern evaluation work, including a planned programme of more than 30,000 metres of underground drilling to test historical estimates of roughly 1,000 tonnes of metallic uranium at Novazza and about 6,000 tonnes of U3O8 at Val Vedello.
The latest acquisition was funded from Ajax's existing cash resources, and the company has agreed a one-year lock-in over its entire Reveille shareholding, running from Admission.
Ippolito Ingo Cattaneo, chief executive of Ajax and an executive director and shareholder of both companies, recused himself from the Ajax board's deliberations on the deal.
Based on Reveille's closing mid-market price of 7.25p on 5 October, Ajax's 14m shares are valued at about £1.015m, which Cattaneo said is "more than double the approximately £500,000 Ajax has invested in Reveille, without ascribing any value to Ajax's warrants to subscribe for further Reveille Shares."
Beyond its equity stake, Ajax holds 5.87m warrants exercisable at 5p, triggered either by Reveille's share price holding at least 10p for ten consecutive trading days alongside approval of both Lombardy VIA applications, or by Reveille acquiring other assets exceeding the Lombardy projects in enterprise value, plus a further 6m warrants exercisable at 10p within 12 months of Admission, including the 2m acquired in this transaction.
Approval of the environmental impact assessments for Novazza and Val Vedello remains the next catalyst determining when Reveille can begin testing the historical, non-compliant uranium estimates underpinning both projects.