Director dealings: Frontera CEO picks up stock as funds raised for drilling

Zaza Mamulaishvili, president and chief executive officer of European focused oil and gas explorer and producer Frontera Resources, has bought almost £1m worth shares of the AIM-quoted company.

Mamulaishvili, who held just over 840m shares in the group prior to the subscription, picked up the purchased 172.4m new ordinary new shares at a price of 0.58p each to increase his total holdings in Frontera to around 7% of its enlarged issued share capital.

His subscription came alongside a £2.5m fundraising via a fully underwritten offer through PrimaryBid, where a further 431m ordinary shares.

Mamulaishvili said, "The purpose of the fundraising was to raise funds for the company's drilling operations at Taribani complex, namely procuring materials and services in order to sidetrack/drill Dino-2 well and procure materials for T-45 well deepening."

After the successful fundraising, Frontera said in a Wednesday trading note to investors that a drilling permit application had been submitted to the State Agency of Oil and Gas in Georgia and was expected to be approved by the end of October.

In its interim results for the six months ended 30 June, the firm reported widening losses despite greater income as it lost £11.41m in the half but still managed to slash its debt position from £73m to £47.7m

At the time Mamalaishvili said, "The elimination of substantial amount of debt during [the] second quarter of this year allowed us to significantly improve the company's balance sheet by substantial reduction of short-term liabilities and create a better financial standing on which the company will continue to build value for its shareholders.

"The elimination of management debt took place at a significant premium to the then market share price, which demonstrates the company's and its management's strong belief in the company's ability to harvest value for all of the company's shareholders from resources that Frontera's work allowed to identify to date," he added.

As of 1420 BST, Frontera shares had ticked up 4.03% to 0.65p.