The money came from a private share placement of 56.9 million shares at $1.20 each, representing an 8.4% discount to Paladin’s last closing price of $1.31.

However, investors have frowned on Paladin in morning trade, with the share price slashed by 17.5c to a fresh six-year low of $1.135. Some 12.9 million shares had changed hands at 11:42am AEST after Paladin emerged from a trading halt this morning following the announcement.

The placement was made to institutional and accredited investors.

“We believe today’s raising, together with future operational cash flows and proceeds from our current strategy to monetise certain non-producing assets, will provide significant financial flexibility and provide a sound platform for the company to achieve its corporate objectives,” Paladin managing director and chief executive officer John Borshoff said.

At the end of June, Paladin had $117.4 million in the bank.

It recently downgraded its production guidance for this financial year to 7.4 million pounds of uranium oxide from 7.9Mlb, blaming the downgrade on delays with the Stage 3 expansion at its Langer Heinrich uranium mine in Namibia.

Production at Langer Heinrich in the 2011 financial year fell 250,000lb short of its lower guidance limit given in the March quarter on 5.69Mlbs.

The company put this down to unprecedented wet weather from January to April, which resulted in at least a 300,000lb shortfall in volumes, of which 75,000lb occurred in April.

On September 12 Paladin drew down $127.2 million of its $141 million finance facility for the Langer Heinrich expansion. It plans to use the funds to reimburse moneys it had spent from cash reserves to complete the work.

The undrawn $7.8 million of the facility will be used to meet remaining construction expenditure at the site.

Paladin is targeting construction finalisation and commissioning to reach nameplate capacity in the first quarter of next year.

The expansion is set to increase production at Langer Heinrich from 3.7Mlbs of uranium oxide per annum to 5.2Mlbs.

Meanwhile, Paladin said production at the Kayelekera mine in Malawi also fell short of its revised forecast by 150,000lb.

The shortfall was largely due to leach recovery issues associated with the increased treatment of mudstone, which had since been resolved, ore handing difficulties associated with the wet season and downtime due to the fast tracking of plant upgrades.

Kayelekera produced 2.2Mlb of uranium oxide in the past financial year, while Langer Heinrich contributed a further 3.5Mlb.

Paladin shares have rebounded slightly to $1.15 at 11:47am AEST.