Hitachi on the hook, stock price off the hook

REFR actually managed to come out with some moderately surprising news this morning, announcing that they had, effectively, sold a subscription to Hitachi Chemical for two years' worth of upgrades to SPD technology.

Never a company to ever play it completely straight, the deal was announced as being valued at "96 million yen", forcing the reader to go find a conversion table and discover that that comes to a bit under $800,000.

While this is by no means REFR's ticket to profitability in and of itself, it does show that REFR has managed to gain Hitachi's trust to the point where they are willing to give them an advance on future technology upgrades.

It's frankly a little mystifying that a company like Hitachi could view the rate of progress REFR has dragged through over the course of over 40 years, and expect the next two years to produce advances worth paying for, but then again REFR's having lasted this long in such a way is no minor miracle in itself.

At any rate, the stock is reacting as you might expect, attaching as much as $20 million in value to REFR for an $800,000 deal. But such things are liable to happen when you are in your own private market bubble, as REFR seems to be.