Technically correct

An exchange today on the Yahoo board highlights a major aspect of the REFR "style" of being in the "right".

A critic complained, in part:

"Calling that monologue a conference call was an insult to shareholders. Announcing it in a press release as a conference call was a lie. There is no such thing as a conference of one."

To which a promoter replied with a dictionary definition of "conference call":

Conference Call
An event in which investors can call into a special phone number and hear the management of their company comment on the financial results of the recently completed quarter.

Technically, the promoter is correct. There is no inherent promise of interactivity in a conference call. All a conference call technically requires is participants in three or more locations, including the central point.

Of course, while focusing on the inaccurate statement, the promoter deftly sidesteps the actual issue, which was that Joe Harary delivering a monologue running nearly an hour does not meet standard investor expectations as to what a corporate conference call is supposed to be. The promoter was right, but he didn't exactly prove the critic wrong, either.

Indeed, the promoter, in extracting his technical definition, chose to overlook the very next paragraph, which says, in part:

"Most publicly held companies hold four conference calls per year."

Clearly, REFR, for whom this was the first such call in two years, is not like"most publicly held companies".