Catch the Wind secures $18.8M - Dayton Business Journal:

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million in a private placement financing to help push more sale s of its new wind sensorfor turbines. Manassas-baseed Catch the Wind, which trades on the Toront Venture Exchange, sold roughly 16.7 millioh shares at a pricde ofCanadian $1.30 apiece in what it hopesx to be its last major equity financing beforwe generating enough revenue from its laser wind-sensing product, Vindicator, to pay for operations. Companuy officials also participated in theinvestment round, along with institutionalo investors, bringing its total equity fundraising to date to nearly $35 million. , Research Capital and CanaccordCapital Corp.
serve d as placement agents for this latest fundraisinv in return for 6 percent of the grose proceeds and additionalstock options. Spun off last year from LLC, a fiber optics laser company that still shares the same headquarters Catch the Wind has been developing similar technology that senses when windis imminent, helping reorienty a turbine to capture that wind before it passes. Most wind turbine s can realign its blades only after itfeelsw wind, so they’re often too late to actually benefiy from gusts, company officials “Before, it was the horse-and-buggy approach to measurinyg wind,” said Phil Rogers, who founded Opticapl Air Data Systems nearly 20 years ago with his wife before leavinf recently to serve as CEO for Catcn the Wind.
“Think about increasing the gas mileaged ofyour car,” he said. “You’vr already bought your car. But if I can sell you somethingb that doubles the gas mileage ofyour car, you wouldd save more money.” He estimatex the Vindicator can capture 10 percent to 30 percent more wind for which in turn helps generate more clean electricity and ultimately revenue for theird operators.
Catch the Wind recently sold its first unitto , a Canadian environmental monitoring equipment maker, while startingf its first two-month field test with the Nebraska Publidc Power District on its largest wind farm with 36 wind The local company, which said it’s also talking to federalk agencies, hopes to use that trial’a results later this summedr to market to other wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm operators. With six full-time employees, Catcj the Wind expects to at least double that countg by the end ofthis year. The company, whichj had $5.
5 million in cash and equivalents on hand as ofMarchb 31, is also considering whether to list itselr on an American exchange later this “We aspire to that,” Rogers “I just can’t say when.”