Seabridge Gold Inc. May 4 announced that it raised C$19.7 million to fund 2018 exploration at its KSM gold-copper project in northwestern British Columbia.

"This year's exploration program at KSM will follow up on the tremendous success we achieved last year at KSM's Iron Cap deposit where inferred gold resources increased by 302 percent, to 20 million ounces, and inferred copper resources increased by 379 percent, to 8.6 billion pounds," said Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk.

An updated calculation for Iron Cap in February outlines 370 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.43 grams per metric ton (5.1 million oz) gold; 0.23 percent (1.9 billion lb) copper; 4.2 g/t (49.9 million oz) silver; and 48 parts per million (39 million lb) molybdenum. Plus, 1.3 billion tons of inferred resource averaging 0.48 g/t (20 million oz) gold; 0.3 percent (8.6 billion lb) copper; 2.9 g/t (121 million oz) silver; and 34 ppm (34 million lb) molybdenum.

In its annual report, Seabridge said its geological model for Iron Cap suggests this deposit is likely to get much bigger.

"The success of last year's drilling indicates that Iron Cap is approaching parity in size with Mitchell and Kerr, but with zones of considerably higher metal values," Fronk penned in his annual report to shareholders. "We now see the early development of Iron Cap as a high priority for further study due to its grade, location and size."

The company said last year's drilling indicates better grades below and to the west of the 2017 drilling, which will be a likely target of this year's exploration.

The non-brokered flow-through financing to fund this exploration involved the issuance of 1.15 million flow-through shares of Seabridge at C$17.16 per share.

Under a provision of Canada's Income Tax Act, flow-through financings allow exploration companies to transfer exploration expenses to individual investors that purchase the flow-through shares. The flow-through investor, in turn, can apply his portion of the exploration expense to reduce or eliminate his tax liability.

The exploration company must spend the flow-through dollars raised on a qualifying mineral project in Canada within two years of closing the financing.

Seabridge will focus its exploration on expanding the gold resource at KSM in a way that shareholders will own more gold in the ground per share than before the financing, which continues to be a primary goal of the company.

"As in previous years, we are confident that this year's program should add sufficient resource ounces of gold to more than offset the share issuances from this financing. Increasing gold ownership per share remains an important objective for Seabridge," said Fronk.

Seabridge Gold Inc.

–SHANE LASLEY

Editor's Note: The gold contained in the inferred resource category (20 million oz) was corrected on June 5.