The secret of their non-success

An enterprising fellow on the Yahoo! boards recently reveals a scan he made of an estimate received on SPD "ThermaLite" window from Thermoview. It really kind of speaks for itself...


... but to review (and in case the print is too small for you), that's a hair under $21,000 (plus sales tax), for ten 24" x 36" SPD windows. Not particularly big windows! Oh, and that doesn't including shipping. From Korea. (Because it's not as if Thermoview believed in the product enough to keep an inventory on hand). And best of all, installation? That's your problem! Good luck finding someone to do it.

Small wonder, then, that sales of Alterlite windows were, shall we say, less than robust.

The question arises, therefore, whether the current offering of SPD shades from Raytheon Aircraft is in fact any more affordable. Unfortunately, that's a question currently without an answer. Though you'd think at least lip service would be made to the idea of improved affordability, were that in fact the case.

Payday!

Yesterday, in the middle the mild camouflage of a renewed flurry of tiny purchases by board member and former SPD message-board evangelist Al Malvino, REFR president and COO Joe Harary cashed in quite lucratively on the recent surge in the share price of his company's stock.

Per the SEC filing on the transaction, Harary exercised just over 100,000 options, using the proceeds from the majority of the shares to leave himself with 34,792 shares free and clear, which he promptly proceeded to sell at about $10.10 per share, thus pocketing a neat little bonus of just over $350,000. A sum that, it bears noting, is more than the company earned in license fee revenue (to say nothing of earnings) from the years 2004 and 2005 combined.

Meanwhile, today, investors in REFR (and to be fair, almost everywhere else) are taking it on the chin big time, as the offering price of $9.75 appears to have been decisively breached (not that there was any real support at that level anyway).

If nothing else, it sure tells you where this company's management's priorities really lie.

The other shoe drops

Another group of anonymous "accredited" investors, apparently acting upon an urge to pay as much as they conceivably could for shares of REFR, gave Joe Harary and company and big "I Love You" this Valentine's Day by gifting the profitless company another $6.65 million, by purchasing nearly 700,000 shares at $9.75 each. Given that that is a price level reached last week for the first time in almost three years, and that REFR's price was barely more than half that just over a month earlier, and that the events leading to the sudden spike in price are far from guarantees that anything will change with regard to REFR's profitability, it's hard not to conclude that this is more about keeping REFR solvent at any cost than it is about actually making money on the shares purchased.

Regardless, the check's been cashed and REFR will be with us on into the next presidential administration. I tend to expect that there won't be much to report now that the mission has been accomplished, but just in case we'll keep an eye on things.

A Raytheon of hope?

If you've been following REFR this past week you don't need me to tell you that the stock's had a lot of action in the past week, soaring to price highs not seen since the beginning of this blog almost two years ago. Just as the momentum was fading from the prior week's news regarding delivery of an unspecified amount of film to a small licensee, up pops a new release (links to PDF) from no less than Raytheon Aircraft, saying that they will market Inspectech's shading systems to their base of 6200 King Air private aircraft owners.

Needless to say, the notion of "Raytheon's selling SPD!" has invigorated the longs and spooked the shorts and long story short the REFR's share price has more than doubled from the beginning of the year -- all before the first sale has even been made.

And therein lies at least the beginnings of the catch in this tale. Splashy PR's aside (as one source noted, somewhat suspiciously including REFR's stock symbol in the text of the release itself), there's no way of knowing what kind of actual sales effort is going to go to a market that caps out at a few thousand installations. Now, you might answer by suggesting that this might only be a prelude to a wider-scale rollout, but if that's the case, then why not be upfront that this is a test market? (Not to mention how REFR needs cash now, and can't be comfortable waiting for the results of a test marketing effort to come in.)

Another point of interest. While Raytheon Aircraft carries a splashy name, it won't for long. Raytheon Aircraft is in the process of being sold to Onex Partners, a Toronto holding company, whereupon the company will change its name to Hawker Beechcraft. (A name, as an aside, which leaves one to wonder about the future of the King Air product line.)

At any rate, with an imminent merger and subsequent reorganization looming, there's really no assurance that this arrangement will even survive more than a few months. But of course, that message is completely lost in the middle of the mini-mania going on over the shares of this tiny patent company in Woodbury, NY. Such is the way of the world, I guess.

Morning!

The story of Research Frontiers, which frankly had been getting intolerably boring as of late, sprang to life this morning as the company issued its first press release in many months.

Actually that's not quite accurate. The press release came from REFR licensee Innovative Glass, in conjunction with its film supplier, Hitachi Chemical. The big news? Hitachi shipped some film to Innovative. That's it. Oh, to be sure, it was puffed up with a lot of long-winded comments about how great the film is and what might be done with it and so on, but the substance of the PR was nothing more than an unidentified amount of film being shipped from Hitachi Chemical's Silicon Valley plant to Innovative's Long Island location. Given the past history of such shipments, (viz. the entire sorry SPD Inc. saga) there is little reason to get excited at this point.

So naturally, this drove the price of REFR shares up as much as 51% to a peak of $9.75 late this morning. This may have been abetted by a piece on a non-coincidentally timed piece on Briefing.com that stated, in effect, "we've never heard of this company, but this news sounds great to us!" Sounds more like a reason to cancel my subscription to them, frankly.

Private board engages in auto fellatio

A new clue may have surfaced in response to the mystery of the newsless spike in the price of REFR stock a month ago, by way of explaining the similar short-lived spike experienced this week. Apparently someone with a bearish view of the stock has managed to infiltrate one of the "private boards" REFR shareholders use to share "information" (read: rumors and speculation) free of annoyances such as requests for supporting evidence and other fiendish acts of skepticism.

This infiltrator came public with information that the most recent hype on the board related to the Los Angeles Auto Show, where, the rumor had it, an auto manufacturer was going to unveil SPD as an official feature of one of their vehicles. Details were sketchy, and there remains the open question of how this would be any more of a big deal than the last time SPD showed up at at auto show, but expecting strong logic from this company's shareholder base has long proven futile.

Shortly after that report came out, another poster quickly noticed that the last spike coincided with the SEMA show in Las Vegas, another ostensibly likely forum for SPD automotive technology making a debut. Of course, it did not happen there either.

But no matter, I'm sure the regulars on the private board are quietly telling themselves. There's always the NAIAS in Detroit next month after all.

It's really a devilishly tempting logic behind the whole cycle of rumor. The key is that the rumors are always made big enough that, if they're actually borne out, it would render irrelevant the entire history of failed rumors of the past. Thus, we have a group of shareholders constantly on the hook, just one tantalizing rumor away from enormous wealth, constantly exciting themselves and each other over the possibility that the next one just might be the one that comes through for them.

P. T. Barnum would be proud.

So what was that all about?

REFR longs and supporters were feeling their oats for much of the past week as the share price surged past the momentarily stable level of around $5.50 up to a high of $6.82 on Friday. Since there were no new reported developments on any front, the assumption was that there was a leak of some kind of something that would be officially released in short order.

Then, one uneventful weekend later, the stock suddenly throws it into reverse, dropping as low as $5.55 on the following Tuesday.

So what was that all about? Darn good question. One clue is found on the REFR website, mentioning how Joe Harary had made a presentation to the Susquehanna Financial Group Emerging Trends Conference on Wednesday the 1st. That would certainly account for the timing of the spike but not really the magnitude. Supposedly these were somewhat sophisticated attendees ("fund managers, analysts, and others") at this conference, who you would think would hardly be the types to chase the stock up 25% on nothing more than a presentation from the CEO.

Were there false rumors of new releases? Were the Susquehanna attendees really that ham-handed in their buying of REFR? Were there some kind of expectations for the upcoming quarterly report that were remanded over the weekend? These and other questions... probably won't ever be answered fully. But it's still fun to ask them.

Back for seconds

REFR actually managed to pull of a bit of a surprise last week with their latest press release. Not with the subject referred to in the headline, which actually took second billing in the text of the release proper. Though I have to say I find it interesting that Joe Harary will spare no expense to go overseas and check up on the film supplier licensees, even though they have rarely if ever been the problem with the overall business model, yet apparently getting any kind of status update from end-product licensees like Steve Abadi's Innovative Glass, just a few miles down the road, is not within the company's budget.

No, the real highlight of the PR, smartly placed first despite not being the "headline" subject, is the decision of some of the investors from the August placement to step up and drop another $700K into REFR's coffers. This no doubt had to be a bit of a demoralizer for short sellers in REFR, who are now faced with unknown, anonymous benefactors who, for all they know, might be of a mind to fund the company indefinitely out of nothing more than spite for those betting against it. This, in my view, may have triggered some taking of profits on the short side, and the resultant upswing in share price. We will know more next week when the updated short interest figures are published.

Still, REFR officially has only one year of cash remaining as of now, meaning that if they want to avoid the "going concern" clause in the upcoming 10-K this winter, they need to find a home for about another 150,000 shares between now and December 31st. Just how willing and able are our new investors to keep things propped up? Only time will tell...

Getting under Second Skin

So SPD is getting shown off at yet another show. I suppose it's comforting to know that, in these times of financial uncertainty at the company, that management still knows how to stick to what works. That is, if you define "works" to mean, "doesn't trigger immediate public scorn or lead to the creation of new enemies of the company".

What's interesting (for relatively lax definitions of the term) about this particular display is that, rather than placing SPD as a technological marvel, as with the Smart Garage and Juno exhibits, this one caters to the arts crowd.

Admittedly, I am less than an expert on what excites the people who will go to this
kind of a show, so I can't assert positively that this is a bust in the making, but to my layman's eye, the SPD exhibit is pretty bland relative to some of the really off-the-wall stuff being paraded around at this show. Follow this slideshow to see what I mean.

Still, if the person who decided to sink $2 million to give this company one more chance at life is happy with how his or her money is being spent, who am I to argue?

A message board revolt?

Has something changed on the message boards? As one poster has just noted, the regular "strong-buy" contingent has not yet come back from the weekend. And it's not for a lack of anything to say -- that has certainly not stopped them before.

But even more striking was the appearance of an alias claiming to have participated in the group effort of promoting REFR on the message boards, not merely returning as a critic, but actually providing information on some of the happenings that went on behind-the-scenes among many of the shareholders closest to the company.

Most striking was the mention of a "letter of protest", dated just less than two years ago, with a litany of complaints about managements actions or lack thereof. Quoting the letter (my annotations in italics):

September 29, 2004


(Via E-Mail, Facsimile, and U.S. Mail)
Board of Directors
Research Frontiers Incorporated
240 Crossways Park Drive
Woodbury, New York 11797


Re: Shareholder Suggestions and Inquiries


Dear Directors:

As you are aware, Research Frontiers Incorporated ("RFI") benefits from a core group of extremely loyal shareholders who collectively own a sizable amount of the company's stock. These shareholders have communicated with each other over the years through a variety of forums to share perspectives and analysis of the prospects of the company and their investment in it. Forty-two of us, representing 725,357 shares and many more actual shareholders, are "co-signing" this letter. Should you require a detailed listing of us, we are amenable to providing that under separate cover.

For a considerable period of time, there has been a tone of ongoing frustration with the lack of discernable progress with the core technology and quantifiable progress with sales. This is only made worse by the ongoing oppression by short traders who appear to manipulate the stock almost at will.

As a result, considerable thought has been given to the formulation of a short list identifying our suggestions and inquiries for the company. The following represents a summary of the items that received widespread support from the group.

- RFI should provide a meaningful update on emulsion and/or film production.

(The updates came, in the form of dates of expected delivery, but these came and went with neither action nor explanation; if anything, beyond the date, was another date.)

- RFI should solicit acceptable, printable comments from any and/or all of its licensees relative to their work with SPD.

(That would probably have been amusing had it been done. I suspect the result would have been a medley of "Who are you again?", "Are you ever going to get back to us on...?", and "Kiss off!".)

- RFI should set realistic goals with estimated timelines for accomplishment, state these publicly, and base future compensation for key employees, at least in part, on measurable results.

(That would presume they had any control over the progress of any "accomplishments", or any desire to do so.)

- RFI should differentiate between income from license fees and income that is actually attributable to sales in excess of minimum fees. RFI can do this anonymously.

(In a way, they were already doing this. In the fourth quarter of 2002, REFR "recorded a small amount of royalty income related to sales of licensed products by its licensees ... which exceeded their minimum annual royalty payments." Since this language has not been used since, by implication, this circumstance has not recurred.)

- RFI should publicly declare its intentions to generously reward shareholders through future dividends A) as incentive for current shareholders not to sell, and B) to stimulate new investors to buy.

(This one is rather comical on the letter writers' part. Tell us what we want to hear, even if you don't really mean it, they seem to be saying.)

- RFI should offer a private placement to shareholders in lieu of continued dilution through Ailouros as we believe this practice risks making shares available to shorts in addition to diluting the value of our investments.

(At least there was no further dilution through Ailouros, as they, like Ramius before them and Stark afterward, declined to be the front for any more stock sales. And REFR had the built-in excuse of regulatory issues related to such a sale.)

- RFI should explain what actions, if any, have been taken regarding the investigation of illegal shorting of its stock and the current status of those efforts.

(It's actually a bit surprising that REFR has never attempted to hop back on that bandwagon, given how much press that group has been getting lately. I guess it just goes to show that some things are too low even for this group.)

We hereby formally submit our concerns to the company and hope to receive the courtesy of a thorough and prompt response. You may do so by e-mailing such to the attention of . The response will then be forwarded to all co-signers of this letter.

We wish to congratulate the company on its recent license agreements and look forward to announcements of actual and significant implementations of SPD technology in the near future.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Concerned Shareholders

In the words of our correspondent the letter "didn't do squat. Harary just spewed the same old BS non-answers the company always has." As I have noted, they did get a little bit of what they asked for, but of course, not what they actually wanted.

Stay tuned for the reply from REFR's message board supporters, if and when they ever show up again.

Lowering the bar on raising funds

No doubt Joe Harary would have liked to wait longer before pulling the trigger on the latest round of financing. Selling just over one-quarter of the two million registered shares, yielding only about seven months' worth of additional capital, has to be more than a little embarassing. But with cash having dwindled to approximately $1.5 million, and no institutional interest whatsoever, it basically came down to "take what you can and hope something develops soon".

It's really almost a case of "why bother". REFR still had a million shares (give or take) left over from the last round of financing, meaning that the current round of registered shares effectively went completely unsold. Meanwhile, the cash infusion puts them back to where they were at the start of last February, meaning they're essentially right back on the fund-raising trail almost right away.

Then again, if you could find people willing to front you $2 million no matter how abysmal your track record and regardless of your complete and utter lack of plans for the money other than "pay yourself a mid-six-figure salary while waiting for someone else to make money for the company", would you turn them down?

See you in October for the ramp up of film production at Hitachi... whether it actually happens or not. Bulletins if anything happens in the meantime, of course. But I wouldn't count on it.

The Falkner Follies; Stark Exits Stage Left

This blog last mentioned R. J. Falkner and its research relationship with a number of rather dubious public companies in June of last year. For over a year afterwards, no updates had been forthcoming on Falkner's coverage of REFR. Given the policy as stated on Falkner's research front page that updates typically occur about 3-9 months apart, it seemed reasonable to conclude that Falkner and REFR had had a parting of the ways.

Then last week, a message board posted stumbled across links to a new Falkner research report on REFR. You can scan the content of the report for yourself if you like; it's mostly a regurgitating of every self-promotional effort REFR has made over the past ten years. But what is interesting is the fact that this report is not as yet linked to the website's front page as the other companies' reports are, while the old report has been taken down in place of a stub that gives an executive summary of Falkner's ever-glowing evaluation of REFR, but with next-to-nothing in the way of detail.

One item of interest in the as-yet-unlinked report is a revamped list of the top institutional investors. Most of these are institutions with total-market index funds, meaning they invest in just about anything on the listed markets, which, as of yet, still includes REFR. But the list is already out of date: the top institution on the list, Botti Brown, just reported having sold 150,000 shares, more than half their March 31st position, dropping them to third on the list, while the #4 top holder, Stark Investments (they of the placement in February 2005), has sold out their position entirely. Rather pathetically, only ten institutions now report holding more than 1,000 shares of REFR, and of those, only three have fewer than 2,500 positions (in other words, the other seven very likely hold REFR as part of an indexing).

With apparently less than six months of operating capital left, it's really starting to get down to crunch time in REFR's efforts to gain new funding. Will Falkner's report help them out? We can only wait and see...

Go in peace. SPD no more.

Remember the Church of Pinnacle Hills, the showcase project that was supposed to kick off frenetic demand for SPD in the architectural market?

Well, apparently the fine folk of northwestern Arkansas have given SPD a "get thee behind me" and elected to use electrochromic glass from SAGE Electrochromics instead, as per a recent article on the construction project.

This is not a huge surprise given the revelation that SPD film products had only started in June and even then only in trial amounts. Nevertheless, it must grate long-suffering shareholders to see the feather in the cap go to a rival that not long ago they had dismissed as hopelessly behind them in terms of reaching commercialization.

Meanwhile, back on the message boards, promotional activity has seemingly dwindled to just a very small number of aliases. Furthermore, the ratings from the new "star" system for posts skew dramatically in favor of bearish posts, strongly indicating that the bears hanging out on the board now heavily outnumber the bulls. (Either that, or most of the bulls haven't yet figured out how to enter ratings.) And the one promotional poster that is remaining active is frankly going just a little off the deep end, forecasting, for example, a buyout in excess of one billion dollars for REFR (more than 15 times the current market cap).

Is this a sign that the whole operation is quietly winding down? Stay tuned.

Production confirmed... yawn...

Frankly I didn't think the presentation at this year's annual meeting contained anything even worth a post to this blog, but the sheer determination of a handful of people to make a big deal out of it has been impressive enough for me to make a note of it.

So. Annual meeting 2006. June 8, 2006. Attending the meeting are Shigeo Sase, a general manager at Hitachi Chemical and Anthony Pirro of DIC Trading, the sales/marketing arm of Dainippon Ink and Chemical. (This Mr. Pirro is not of any known relation to the Pirro brothers of NYC-area tax evasion infamy.)

Mr. Pirro revealed an extremely minimal SPD production installation at Dainippon, with "plans to increase production". Mr. Sase's presentation was somewhat more specific, advertising "plans" for production capacity increases in October of this year, and much larger increase in October of next year.

Of course, plans are nothing if not subject to change. No doubt SPD Inc. had big plans in its day.

But what should have struck observant viewers was what was not said, and who was not there. Where, one might ask, were the representatives of the companies actually licensed to sell products based on SPD to the general public and/or companies outside REFR's immediate sphere of influence? Where were the plans for products once all this film is available? Who's placing the orders for this film?

A month and a half has now passed and still nothing has surfaced indicating that anyone has anything they particularly want SPD film for, other than make sample kits that show off how neat SPD is. Which you would not think would bode well for REFR, as its cash slows bleeds away, mostly into the pockets of the management that has been living off it for decades.

So we continue to wait for something, anything, to happen.

Having more un than a blogger should be allowed to have

Just wanted note the coining of a new term to describe companies that, despite having no track record of earnings whatsoever, paradoxically get promoted on the basis of their "fundamentals".

The term is "undamentals", and credit goes to the person postings as xavierducats on the Yahoo! REFR message board. By xavier's own admission, the term was born of a typo, but is such an accurate description I heartily advocate its adoption for broader use.

Just goes to show that you never know where the next source of entertainment from this stock's story will come from.

Beyond the mountains, more BS

One enterprising reader with more tolerance for empty rhetoric than this blogger recently pointed out a particularly strained analogy in the latest REFR annual report. Quoting the correspondent's account of the report (the actual report is, almost predictably, not yet available on the REFR website):

"There is a Hatian(sic) proverb: "Beyound the mountains are more mountains." This proverb applies to most companies involved in bringing a new technology to market. In R&D, after one issue is resolved, others sometimes arise. It is appropriate to note that Haiti is an island nation, so that eventually, with perseverance and hard work, the mountains will end, the goal is reached, and smooth sailing across the ocean of opportunity can begin."

Notice how Harary actually turns the proverb completely on its head. The proverb speaks to how life always has another challenge to throw at you. Harary's vision is one of a switch flipping someday (soooooon!!) and all of REFR's challenges suddenly coming to an end, replaced by effortless perpetual cash flow.

Sorry, but that's the talk of a shyster.

Theoretical down-the-road challenges for REFR are legion. Conventional electrochromics by such companies as Gentex have already beaten SPD heads-up in the automotive and aeronautical market. Liquid crystal-based technology is always lurking. And there are plenty of wildcards out there like the material the Huskies are developing.

Then there's REFR's patent protection, which grows more questionable by the day. Shareholders have often been heard gloating at other companies receiving patents based on Harary's old patents (or in some cases, merely mentioning SPD in passing as a theoretically possible component of their invention), calling it proof of how interested in SPD companies are. Not occurring to them, apparently, is how those patents give the companies receiving them a nominal claim on the technology itself. And then there's the matter of whether REFR can even afford to fight a patent dispute. The upshot of all of this being that REFR may in fact have lost control of its own technology.

Of course, all that would remain to be seen in a patent court, and that won't happen until there's actually something to fight over.

As an amusing footnote, another correspondent produced a quote from Robert Saxe, citing the exact same Haitian proverb with the exact same twisting into the opposite meaning, dated 1993. Thirteen years later, and REFR's still sitting on the same mountain.

Give a hoot, don't dilute!

REFR bowed to the inevitable Friday, filing an S-3 with the SEC to register another two million shares of common stock for sale. In combination with the one million shares unsold from the previous filing, that represents more than 20% potential dilution to its investors, should REFR successfully recapitalize themselves in the next eight months. Of course, if they don't, that will be even worse for its investors.

Of course, whether there will be any takers this time around is another issue. In REFR's favor, there's a better economy about and investment dollars are flowing a bit more freely. Against them, their track record of failure is a little bit longer and a little bit more public. Fortunately for them, the recent high volumes suggest that they have successfully moved Stark Investments out of the picture and thus set up a clean slate for the next suc... er, institutional investor.

As P. T. Barnum would put it, an institutional investor is born every minute, so hope remains that Bob and Joe will find someone out in the big, wide world sufficiently naive to the REFR story that they will be reeled in. (Even though Stark seems to have made out all right in the end, it's unlikely we will see them coming back for seconds, especially after the 50% haircut they were staring down at one point.)

Time will tell.

A paucity of capacity

In an uncharacteristically helpful gesture on their part, the mangement of REFR issued an 8-K filing presenting the highlights of this afternoon's conference call. Specifically, they pointed out information that could be considered "new" for disclosure purposes. All of it, interestingly, concerned the progress of film licensee Hitachi Chemical, which had not been officially heard from in some time, despite being touted as being in the lead in terms of production progress.

Hitachi was reported to have a production line capable of producing film about 19 inches in width (narrower than the film Dainippon was reported to have produced), with a second line due to be activated later this year. The second line was said to be planning widths "in excess of one meter", with an expected capacity "measured in the tens of thousands of square feet per month".

Wow, that's... not very much. Let's run a little math, shall we?

We'll start by making some very generous assumptions:

• End-product licensees will be able to command $30 a square foot for the film, and sell out the full capacity of the new line.
• The capacity of the new line is 50,000 square feet per month (it could easily be half that and the announcement would not be misleading)
• REFR will collect royalties on 10% of the cost of the film (on most products the royalty cut is 5% of the sale price, we'll be generous and assume SPD to only be half the cost of the product).

Given that extremely favorable set of assumptions, the annual revenue to REFR would come to $1.8 million a year, or less than half the company's expenses. Throw in the original line, whose capacity is presumably not "in the tens of thousands of square feet per month", and you get to maybe $2.2 million a year.

Naturally, the mathematically-challeged SPDiots are already counting their cash dividends.

Bottom line, even making an almost comically optimistic set of assumptions, there is still no apparent path to break even cash flow in the foreseeable future for REFR. And when you add a dose of reality to the mix, in the form of management's chronic tendency to grossly underdeliver, and it quickly begins to resemble business as usual in Woodbury.

Stop and go trading

Just wanted to remark on the heavy trading volume in REFR, the largest in ten years, over one million shares. Clearly something is up, but what exactly that is remains a mystery. At least for three more days, as the "big news" triggering today's upsurge was the announcement of the company's annual conference call, scheduled for this Thursday afternoon (a full three weeks after the filing it is supposed to discuss).

Even more odd is the intraday trading pattern. Effectively, there was basically no volume until just a little before 10:00am ET, a half-hour into the session. Then the price spiked in a matter of moments, only to quickly settle up about 10% up from the previous close. Then heavy trading kicked in for about 90 minutes, after which, just as suddenly, the trading all but came to a halt. No, it was not an official halt; rather, it was just the traders in the stock spontaneously walking away from it. About 45 minutes later it resumed, only to take another 15 minute break a half hour later. After that came relatively steady trading through to an active close.

To the casual observer, who in a couple of weeks will only have access to the daily volume totals, this will no doubt come off as an establishment of widespread bullish interest in REFR. But between you and me, reader, this "interest" is about as natural as Velveeta.

Regardless of what I think, one thing is clear, and that is that something of interest to REFR, one way or another, is going to come out on Thursday. I'm staying on record that it's some kind of upper management change, most likely the very-due retirement of founder Bob Saxe, but I admit that's more gut instinct than anything else. At any rate, whatever it is, we shall soon see.

Uh oh, Asensio!

As if the past week were not eventful enough for a company notable primarily for its dormancy over the past couple of years, an old acquaintance of REFR's, the research firm Asensio and Company, has broken a nearly four-year silence on the company's continued failure to produce results of any kind. The firm, which, depending on who you talk to, may or may not maintain a connection with its namesake founder, controversial short-seller (a phrase about as redundant these days as "tall basketball player") Manuel Asensio, issued two brief reports Thursday summarizing the total failure the company has been over the years, referencing, as noted here first, the questionable lack of a "going concern" clause in the recent 10-K filing, and hypothesizing that the company's ability to raise funds to pay its management's comfortable salaries may be nearing an end.

Reaction to the reports was swift and predictable. It was noted that the report stated that REFR has been trying to sell SPD glass for years, when in fact it has not been trying to do any such thing. So apparently the primary objection to the report is that it gives REFR too much credit.

Other various charges were hurled at Mr. Asensio himself, none worth the dignifying that spelling them out here would give them. Suffice it to say that even asensioexposed.com, your one-stop shop for ad hominem attacks on various short-sellers including Asensio, is thus far not touching them.

Seems like everything old is new again, in REFR land.