Fisker Reportedly Launching New Financing Round

Fisker Reportedly Launching New Financing Round

Although the company's co-founder and chief executive has said that Fisker Automotive has plenty of cash on hand, apparently there's always room in the vault for more. As Fisker finally launches sales of the range-extended Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid and gears up for production in the U.S. of its next wave of more-affordable plug-ins, Fortune Magazine is reporting that Southern California-based Fisker has launched a new private financing round and is seeking $200 million. If successful, it would put the privately held automaker's market value at about $2.2 billion and would clearly demonstrate that even in this awful economy there's money to be found and investors willing to bet a bundle on a positive future for cars with plugs. A Fisker spokesman declined this morning to comment on the Fortune report, but the company's been no stranger to private financing efforts with three successful rounds in the past eight months bringing in a total of $290 million.

The Fortune article speculates that Fisker is preparing to go public at that this latest private funding effort is being marketed as its "pre –IPO" round, aimed at getting the company's valuation as high as possible so the offering price can be meaty enough to allow big private backers such as venture firm Kleiner Perkins Cauflield & Byers and the emirate of Qatar to profit on their early investments in the company. Now that production and sales of its $96,000 Karma are underway -- actor Leonardo DiCaprio is an early buyer -- Fisker is readying a former General Motors plant in Delaware for production of a line of plug-in hybrid cars, called "project NINA," that will include a sedan, coupe and crossover utility vehicle with pricing expected to start around $48,000. The company also plans a third line of smaller cars after the NINA models.

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