$2.85 million

And no sooner do I decide to put this thing on hold than one of the thing I listed as possible re-motivators, the closing of a new refinancing deal, happens.

"Recent developments have created exciting opportunities..." blah blah can you spare us the marketing speak just once, Joe?

As is the rule these days, the "investors" are unnamed, and will not be sticking around long enough to make themselves known. And the so dance goes on.

In a world where we're spending 1000 times this kind of money to overpay for old cars in the hopes of stimulating something, it's just so hard to get excited about $2.85 million. If Joe has this permanent sucker list that is prepared to hand him a million or so every quarter with no expectations for anything more than happy talk, well good for him I guess.

Me, I'm going back to sleep.

Bored bored board

The arrival of an alias on the Yahoo! REFR board copying the admittedly obvious pun has prodded me to do one more update. (Incidentally, "refrmadness" is not me. I post on the board as "refrmadnessblogger").

Honestly, even though there's a 10-K or maybe a 10-Q on REFR out I can't muster the interest to even crack it open. If the company itself can't be interested enough to make a press release out of it why should I bother?

I've finally decided there are things in this life that matter and REFR is just not one of them. Let Joe Harary make a fortune on broken promises. He's the one who has to look himself in the mirror.

For now, I'm done. Maybe when REFR succeeds or fails at raising more money I'll check back in, if I happen to hear about it. Until then, I'm pulling down the perfectly-good mechanical shades on this blog.

See ya round.

Stop the presses: Harary gives vote of confidence to self

Never let it be said that I never give the public what they want.

Back on April 30th REFR filed an 8-K announcing its new employment contract with Joe Harary, who is now the CEO and pretty much every other position that matters at REFR.

Maybe it's just all the medications I'm on for this cold but this doesn't spark any fresh outrage with me. Harary's salary is pretty much in the ballpark of what it's been, and the options aren't out of line with what he's been given in the past. Sure, there's the whole "the company itself has nothing to show for it" business, but that's been true forever.

Let's face it, this company has become nothing more or less than Joe Harary's little fiefdom. Since the trouncing would-be proxy fighters took a couple of years ago, there's really been no sign of any challenge to his authority.

In a couple of days I expect I will feel better, but for what ails REFR there seems to be no cure.

Oh, and I guess another quarter or something

REFR filed another 10-Q but I can't even muster the interest to even look it up. Something something about a lot of option awards to management but it's really gotten to the point where nobody even seemed interested in defending it. Nothing much else has changed, the glow from the Qantas deal, whatever it was, has faded, and the need for another trip to the secondary market is just a handful of months away.

I honestly don't know how many chapters are left in this story.

Qantas qanundrum

I've been a little slow to blog this one as I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It started, simply enough, with an article by Paul Goldberger in Travel & Leisure magazine about a new Airbus A380 put into service by Australian airline Qantas. Towards the end, Mr. Goldberger makes reference to a window in the lavatory with a distinct shading system:

The most extravagant detail of all, however, isn’t in the first-class cabin itself, but in its bathrooms. They are large, with an expansive sink and counter, and there’s a window. When you walk in, the window, the surface of which is covered in liquid crystals, appears to be translucent. (Who could look in from the outside to invade your privacy, I’ll never know.) When you lock the door it transforms, as if by magic, into a transparent surface. Where else can you shut yourself in a bathroom and gaze out at the world from 30,000 feet?

This would seem to have little to do with REFR or SPD, apart from being another scrap of evidence showing that technology was passing them by. Yet, some very vocal commentators immediately began to insist that the shade in question was REFR's SPD, in spite of there being no supporting evidence for that assertion.

Fast forward to April 1st, appropriately enough, when REFR's loyal one-man licensee Inspectech puts out a press release talking about their umpteenth trade show appearance in Germany, and, oh by the way, the Qantas Airbus lavatory window mentioned in that Goldberger article? Ours.

Seriously (and it being April 1st I waited awhile to be sure), they treated the Goldberger article as if that was the first they even knew about it. Perhaps even more dodgily, they chopped up the quote above, carefully removing references to liquid crystal technology (even though that is an integral part of the I-Shade product).

It recalls the Jeep Rescue fiasco of 2004, where SPD was apparently built into the sunroof of this showcase vehicle, but almost nobody noticed it. Likewise, the existence of SPD in the lavatory window, assuming it is in fact there, totally escapes Goldberger's notice, yet the fact that the window gets mentioned in the article at all is portrayed as some kind of PR coup for SPD technology.

Meanwhile, REFR stock, which had a rather big run on the article comments, doesn't seem to have reacted at all to the confirming PR. Maybe April Fools is just running long this year.

Into their own hands

It's a strange world we find ourselves in these days. People are having trouble finding solace in much of anything, it seems, and some are being led to measures more desperate than they ever consider under ordinary circumstances.

Case in point: Research Frontiers, the company that has made an artform out of outsourcing every possible aspect of its business plan, has been driven to the point of actually promoting its SPD technology itself.

Lacking any images, it's impossible to judge the effectiveness or impressiveness of the "design center" REFR has set up in its headquarters. But at least it presumably answers one long-running complaint about why, if SPD is this revolutionary technology, REFR used none of it in its own office.

As REFR couches it in terms of "hosting events", it tends to suggest that the "display center" will not be routinely open to the general public. Still, it's a start, a "beginning of the beginning" so to speak. The big question is whether there's any time left.

Seeing the light

More information is coming out on the Indiana Medical Center SPD installation, in the form of an article on one of REFR's favorite uncritical mouthpieces, glassonweb.com. The article itself is the usual fluff rehash of Innovative Glass's PR on the installation (only notable in that it links to an "original source" in Belarus of all places), but contained within is a picture which for once backs up an old adage by being worth at least as much as the thousand words of the article. Witness SPD in action:

No, I don't know what the inset in the corner is supposed to be, so let's focus on the main picture. First question: is this SPD in the light state or the dark state? At first glance it seems to be the dark state, but just look at the sunlight pouring in on the left, from a full room away. This is obviously nowhere near as effective as the mechanical blinds the article naturally denigrates, in terms of darkening a room.

So perhaps it is some kind of intermediate state? But if so, why would they choose such a state to show off, one that is neither effectively light blocking nor resembling of ordinary clear glass?

In fact, it might actually be the "clear" state. Some message board posters have asserted that SPD becomes significantly darker when viewed at an angle, perhaps even the relatively mild angle the photo is taken from. But why would they choose to highlight this "feature"?

Of course, the notion that SPD is "good in theory, not so hot in practice" is nothing new to regular readers of this blog. But it rarely hurts to keep verifying that, no matter what tune the share price might be dancing to, at the company itself, little if anything ever changes.

Update: a commenter has pointed out that the image that appears to be "behind" the glass is in fact almost certainly a reflection of the interior of the room itself. That certainly explains the choice of shot, although this means the only effect being illustrated is that SPD makes it hard to see outside of the room. I suppose they can use the room for focus group meetings or something.

Timely news?

We may have finally gotten an idea as to what was behind the strange little run, on no news (apart from Harary's long-anticipated promotion) and very little volume, that REFR has had the past two months, from a close of $1.60 last December 5th to over $4.00 today.

The key appears to be a project that had gotten quite a bit of hype on the message boards and which I thought I had blogged about myself, but apparently not. According to the press release from REFR licensee Innovative Glass (true to form as ever, REFR is not a party to the PR, but gets a nice plug for its ticker symbol) they have finally completed the installation of what is apparently the largest SPD-related project ever, at the Indiana University Health Information and Translational Sciences Building in Indianapolis.

The size of the project seems fairly impressive, involving a total of 68 interior and exterior panels (although the average panel size isn't stated). But what sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb was the length of the project -- three years.

Over those same three years, REFR itself burned about $12 million, so unless Innovative scored $120 million out of the whole deal, this doesn't exactly turn REFR into a money-making operation. REFR is simply not going to get rich off this "one project at a time" business, especially if such projects are going to be that drawn-out.

Note that this isn't the first SPD project Innovative has done, and REFR investors are still waiting for the big fat royalty check (not to mention the wave of publicity) from that.

We'll wait and see where this takes us (not very far for very long, so far today), but with REFR's built-in 90-day lag on royalty payments, it will be August before we get any hard data on how, or even if, this impacts REFR's bottom line. By which time, REFR will almost certainly have priced its next stock offering.

And so the music continues on.

And the award for Best Long-Running Fleecing of Investors goes to...

This one slipped by my radar for a while because our friends at the SEC (Motto: "We Have No Idea What We're Doing") helpfully separated out the insider transaction filings from other filings and put them in a much less obvious location.

But at any rate, as you can see from the link, it was a very happy new year for the gang at Woodbury, as officers and board members alike awarded themselves thousands of free shares for their sterling performance in the collection of back royalties.

25,000 shares went to each member of the board, except for brand-new CEO Joe Harary, who raked in 150,000(!) shares (of which he gifted 36,000 to his children). Non-board members Michael LaPointe and Steven Slovak split just under 10,000 shares.

REFR investors, meanwhile, enjoyed a 78% thrashing of their investment in 2008, with no hope that the profit reported in the third quarter will be repeated in Q4, and the need to issue another secondary at record-low prices in the offing.

Great job guys!