Monday, September 10, 2007

The Beechcraft boondoggle

REFR's stock has made a full recovery from the faceplant of a few weeks back, spurred on at least in part by its appearance on the Nasdaq SHO list, which, in some circles is apparently used as a speculative list of potential short squeeze targets. So we wish the would-be squeezers rotsa ruck with that endeavor.

But in the meantime, on the home front, an interesting new development is coming to light with regard to the after-market SPD shades from Hawker-Beechcraft (then Raytheon Aircraft) whose announcement spurred the stock into the tizzy it has remained in to this day.

It started fairly innocuously with a post by "rikes_of_hell" claiming to have contacted Beechcraft and found that the shades were unavailable. Now, normally this would devolve into a "he said, he said" that proves nothing either way, but a funny thing happened on the way to the denial. Posted "spd_where_you_look", (obviously) a big REFR bull, actually confirmed the shades' unavailability, by way of making the excuse that film was being diverted to other, more important (yet somehow entirely invisible) projects, and that film for the shades would come available sometime this month.

Now, if the diversion excuse rings familiar, it should -- it was used to excuse REFR/Inspectech's failure to win the Boeing 787 business, even though, as we now know, there was no film production at all, much less massive amounts being diverted to projects more important than the 787(!!)

Still, it's a rather amusing state of affairs on a lot of levels. The entire current run in REFR's stock was kicked off by the Raytheon/Beechcraft announcement last February, and was the target of article after article highlighting how this was REFR's big breakthrough into the market. And now we learn that the shades were not, in fact available and have yet to be?

Fortunately for shareholders, with the latest run propelling the stock back near its highs, there's no need to apply for a refund when you can still cash out almost certainly with a healthy profit. Or... you can hold out for the Next Big Thing, a rumor of an announcement at next month's Tokyo Motor Show, which may, or, given even the most recent track record of this company, may very well not happen.

It's your call, shareholders!