Fallbrook Raises Additional $6M for Innovative Transmission

San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies has raised another $6 million in venture capital, according to an amended IPO registration form the company filed with government regulators Friday. Fallbrook, which is developing an innovative continuously variable transmission (CVT) for a variety of applications, originally filed for an IPO in February and revised its S-1 form previously in May.

In its latest amended filing, which was reported over the weekend by The Wall Street Journal, Fallbrook discloses lower revenues, pushes out plans to expand into some new markets, and outlines a variety of new partnership agreements.

The company, which bills its CVT transmission as a greener and more fuel-efficient technology, plans to introduce one CVT transmission specifically for automotive accessory drives (such as alternators and air conditioners) and another developed for small wind turbines next year. The company says it has pushed out its plans to enter the lawn care market, from 2011 to 2012, and is developing a CVT transmission for use by electric vehicles in 2013.

Fallbrook launched the first version of its NuVinci transmission for bicycles in 2007. In its filing Friday, the company says its total revenue fell by 32 percent in the first six months of this year, as Fallbrook began phasing out its original N171 for an improved second-generation model, the N360. In a press release scheduled for release at the Eurobike trade show, which is set to begin tomorrow in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Fallbrook says its N360 design is lighter and smaller, and now fits within the frame drop-out for the rear wheel.

With its planned expansion into other markets, such as automotive accessory drives, Fallbrook says it has reached a series of partnership agreements with other companies, including a deal with a Chinese bus manufacturer and a Chinese maker of power train auto parts.

With the most recent Series E venture investment, entities associated with Robeco, the investment arm of Rabobank of The Netherlands, have a 24.6 percent stake in Fallbrook. The Santa Barbara, CA, cleantech venture firm NGEN Partners increased its ownership from 23.7 percent to 24.2 percent. Both groups provided $2 million in additional venture funding, as did a third, unidentified venture investor.

The company says it has raised a total of $62 million to develop its core CVT technology and develop products for various markets, and has a combined total of 365 patents and patent filings protecting its technology in the United States and around the world.


Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.