This particular article is really quite amazing, as it seems almost carefully written to include as much stock-promotional hoohah as could be fit into the column space.
"It's a thrill," said Saxe. "If you spend 40 years of your life building something and it does not work out, people will say you're a stubborn fool...."
Aw, poor guy. If this doesn't work out, all he'll be left with is a long career during which he made anything up to nearly a half-million dollars a year in just salary alone, and that doesn't even include profits from options.
"SPD glass is the holy grail of glass that architects have been clamoring for for years," said [Steve Abadi].I guess it does have one thing in common with the legendary vessel, in that few ever even get to look upon it.
Abadi goes on to claim SPD as a "green" technology, whatever they or anyone else means by that anymore, and then, hilariously, the article plugs the Popular Science award from 2002, without mentioning how all that applied to the old, failed, SPD Inc. version of the technology.
At this point, the article moves on into it's "cautionary" section, making a threadbare attempt to not look like the puff piece it is. REFR, per the article, has "annual operating expenses of approximately $3 million", and "operating losses of roughly $4 million per year." That's a heck of a good trick, managing to lose more money on operations than you spend on operations. Summing up: "lack of sales until recently means the company is still waiting to see a profit." Wow, there's some brilliant analysis.
But enough of that, back to the laughable stock promotion cliches! "If SPD glass is were used for even 1 percent of world glass sales..." It's at this point that I suspect Ms. Pickrell must be a highly inexperienced reporter to have not heard that old saw, a suspicion that seems to be the case. Given that my heart goes out to her, being used in such a way so early in her career.
Moving on, the Beechcraft arrangement is of course plugged, minus the fact that Raytheon is no longer associated with that company.
Ms. Pickrell does note that the message board chatter on REFR is "mixed at best", but the only specific criticism she cites is delays in getting product to market, not the myriad misrepresentations the company has made over the years.
Possibly saddest of all is a shareholder she managed to find, who is quoted as saying, "I wish I had more money to buy more stock."
