Dallas, Texas 10/28/2013 (Financialstrend) – The $277 million market capped KiOR, Inc. (NASDAQ:KIOR) has managed to secure funding to the tune of $100 million from angle investing firms set up by Bill Gates and Khosla. In an announcement that came out on October 21, it was disclosed that Kohsla ventures and Gates ventures have both together pledged $100 million. The bio fuel manufacturer plans to utilize the funds to double production capacity at its bio fuel plant in Columbus. While Khosla led firm has committed $85 million, the Gates venture is pumping in $15 million. The funding from the venture capital firms is contingent to the “alternative fuel manufacturing firm” securing additional funds via a debt offering. The total proceeds are expected to help the firm start construction of its second bio fuel plant in Columbus. In its first pant in Columbus, the company converts wood chips into fuel. The operations of this plant started early this year. On the completion of successful operations over the past few months, KiOR had been looking at new investments to build a second plant with capacity to process 500 tons of wood chips per day.
On the back of this announcement, the stock has gained ¼ of a percentage point during trading last week. Early investors into this stock have seen their earlier investments lose value by close to 47% in the past 12 months. This lack of investor confidence in the stock seems to be slowing down with the stock shedding only 9.6% of its overall value in the past one month. In the past one year the bio fuel producer has posted net loss of $126 million in income.
Investors had been keeping their fingers crossed that the company will soon manage to post a turnaround in their operation profits given the significant improvements in production of bio fuel in the past few months.
