Notes from the Fox Hollow Inn

Long-time message board poster "ed_wesnofske" posted his report today on last Thursday's REFR annual meeting. The full text of his notes can be found here and here.

In addition to John Petraglia's presentation, there was a slide show presentation by Steve Abadi of Innovative Glass. Essentially, this consisted of a visual tour of that company's facilities, as well as two SPD projects it has reportedly completed.

Now, granted, two projects is better than none, but we've seen projects from this company before (viz. the Extreme Makeover link above) which have utterly failed to even show up in REFR's income statements, so we'll remain skeptical of the significance of this one as well, until proven otherwise.

Since Jim Lang of Inspectech apparently couldn't make it, it fell to Joe Harary to deliver the report on the aerospace market. Apparently the reason shades are only available on King Air is because SPD is not certified for any other models at present.

Harary's "speculation" on the royalty rates for different applications is of interest. Apparently the outsized expenses in developing an aircraft window would translate into outsized royalties for REFR. This is a double-edged sword, of course: it makes the aerospace market quite potentially lucrative should it catch on, but at the same time, the huge royalty upcharge will hamper that market's viability.

On to the questions from the shareholders. First, someone wants to see another SPD Industry Conference. Given that the last one was hastily put together in order to start things from square one in the wake of the collapse of SPD Inc., I'm not sure why.

The second one inquired about the architectural market. The posted Ed posted doesn't seem to actually answer the question, but whether that's a transcription glitch or a company evasion can't really be determined.

The last one invoked accountability for last year's projections, and was met with the predictable "it's not our fault" response. And with the the formal portion of the meeting concluded.

The trailing (informal) notes were of passing interest. Hitachi's samples have been used for testing; nothing new there. Isoclima currently plans to get back in the game later this year -- what, exactly, have they been waiting for? And Dainippon is using "toll coaters", a fancy way of saying they're outsourcing all SPD production work. To whom, exactly, wasn't specified.

Now, granted, this is a rather cynical summary of Ed's postings, but experience has shown the cynical view to be an excellent starting point in parsing the comments made by this company's management. That said, the stock market has taken a decidedly non-cynical view since the meeting, but that is what it is.