Farewell to Robert Saxe

I know it's been almost four years since my last post to this blog, and no way for me to catch up on all that time, but I thought I'd hit a few highlights.

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.

Marking time

I really didn't have much else I wanted to say, the past couple of years of developments notwithstanding, as in the end was all just chasing the wind, as the Book of Ecclesiastes puts it. But just for completeness sake I will note the following that has taken place in the couple of years since my last check in here.

Apparently REFR's SPD formulation did finally get a taste of the big time, being offered as an option on some of the higher-end Mercedes Benz models.  The low inclusion rate of the feature, roughly 2% per scans of automobile websites, made the rather large bump in quarterly income quite a surprise to the message boards, but the actual stock market was deeply unimpressed, as well they might be given that even with the increased income they were in fact no closer to profitability.  Expenses, strangely, seemed to increase in line with the newly found income. I will leave the theorizing of the wherefores behind that to the usual suspects.

Actually, though, there was one exception of note to the blanket declaration that Wall Street was wholly uninterested in REFR's story. A Mr. Kevin Douglas popped in one day a few months ago with a filing that showed he had acquired 9% of REFR's common stock.

Who is Kevin Douglas?  A very good question, and one that has been of interest to some on Wall Street.  Mr. Douglas had a rather successful run of trades in companies such as IMAX and Monster Beverages. So the revelation that he had taken an interest in REFR in September started a small run on the stock, up as high as $5.00 a share.

However, other large investors appear to have failed to follow suit, and we may never know what spurred Douglas's interest in REFR, as earlier this month he registered the majority of his stock for sale, enough to put him below the threshold for any further reporting requirements.

(To address the inevitable nitpickers, yes, the filing does not constitute the sale of stock in and of itself.  After all, for example, Douglas has no guarantee he can find buyers at an acceptable price. But, let us be grownups about this: people do not file SEC registrations just to keep in practice. This is clearly a statement of intention to sell, and no further notices will be issued regarding the sale. So you may feel free to remain in your la-la land of "you can't prove he actually sold", but the rest of us will just ignore you.)

So effectively, we are back where we were two years ago.  And with that I bid you adieu once again.  I don't promise this will be my last word on the topic, I don't promise that it won't.  Good luck out there.

In reply to recent commentary

$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.