Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Go in peace. SPD no more.

Remember the Church of Pinnacle Hills, the showcase project that was supposed to kick off frenetic demand for SPD in the architectural market?

Well, apparently the fine folk of northwestern Arkansas have given SPD a "get thee behind me" and elected to use electrochromic glass from SAGE Electrochromics instead, as per a recent article on the construction project.

This is not a huge surprise given the revelation that SPD film products had only started in June and even then only in trial amounts. Nevertheless, it must grate long-suffering shareholders to see the feather in the cap go to a rival that not long ago they had dismissed as hopelessly behind them in terms of reaching commercialization.

Meanwhile, back on the message boards, promotional activity has seemingly dwindled to just a very small number of aliases. Furthermore, the ratings from the new "star" system for posts skew dramatically in favor of bearish posts, strongly indicating that the bears hanging out on the board now heavily outnumber the bulls. (Either that, or most of the bulls haven't yet figured out how to enter ratings.) And the one promotional poster that is remaining active is frankly going just a little off the deep end, forecasting, for example, a buyout in excess of one billion dollars for REFR (more than 15 times the current market cap).

Is this a sign that the whole operation is quietly winding down? Stay tuned.