The wave that was great Mercedes partnership has crested and revenues have returned to 2011 levels, leaving REFR with only a few years of smaller than usual losses to show for it. So much for revenue projections in the tens of millions requiring only modest success in the marketplace. Technically, there's no official announcement that the partnership has been called off and that MagicSky, at least the SPD version of it, will slowly vanish (not that it was often there to begin with) from Mercedes dealer lots as the models that offer it go through their refresh cycles.
Along with the revenues, the share price has collapsed to lows rarely seen apart from the banking crisis of 2008-9. Only this time the market is decidedly not exacerbating the decline as it has just recently been setting all-time highs.
No, what is very likely a large cause, possibly in more ways than one, of the share price's approaching all-time lows is the passing of Robert L. Saxe, founder and for 50 years Chairman of the Board of Research Frontiers, last June 29th.
This would be the point where I would normally talk about what a loss his passing was, but unfortunately I have an annoying compulsion to the truth.
Now, I know nothing of Saxe's personal life. For all I know he may have been a great family man and kind and generous to all his friends. But I do know a few things, and, since we are over three months beyond his demise, I feel I have allowed sufficient mourning time.
Robert Saxe, in 50 years as Chairman of Research Frontiers, did nothing for his shareholders.
I'll qualify that he did things for some shareholders, in that, he gave them the occasional opportunity to become ex-shareholders with their investment intact. This of course came not at his expense but the expense of those he lured into investing in his company, and of course at the expense of his most loyal shareholders, some of whom have no doubt been taken for hundreds of thousands if not millions over the years.
It was not the ruthless dumping of literally trillions of shares some multiple reverse-split offender stocks performed, but in a way it was almost worse, going for the slow bleed, slowly but surely taking not only money away but many, many years of opportunities that his loyal fans missed out on, because of their faith in his promises.
Anything is possible, and it may be that the way Saxe ran Research Frontiers stood in stark contrast to the way he ran the rest of his life.
But I have my doubts.
Whether Joe Harary manages to keep things going or not remains to be seen, and is based on a lot of imponderables. Is there some kind of internal power struggle going on between Harary and Saxe's heirs? Are Saxe's heirs liquidating their holdings at a time when the company is getting quite close to needing to raise capital once again? How many of the company's connections were loyal to Saxe and not to Harary?
Who knows, maybe Joe can pull it off and continue to keep this sorry excuse for a public company trudging along for another 25 years or however many he has left on this earth.
Maybe there are some surprises yet, but one thing that should not surprise you is it being another long time before I speak again on the subject. There's a lot more to life out there. I hope some of you know this to be true as well.
