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Technology - Hardware, Equipment & Parts - NASDAQ - US
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EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2018 - Q3
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Executives

Joseph Harary - President and Chief Executive Officer Seth Van Voorhees - Chief Financial Officer and President-VariGuard.

Analysts

Michael Kay - Kay Associates Ishfaque Farouk - Westpark Capital Tom Mccarthy - Raymond James.

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Research Frontiers Investor Conference Call to discuss the Third Quarter of 2018 Results and Recent Developments.

During today’s presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode and following the presentation the conference will be opened up for questions [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today.

A replay of this conference call will be available starting later today in the Investors section of Research Frontiers website at www.smartglass.com and will be available for replay for the next 90 days. Safe Harbor announcements. Please note that some of the comments made today may contain forward-looking information.

The words expects, anticipate, plans, forecasts and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions that are part of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements reflect the Company’s current beliefs and a number of important factors could cause actual results for future periods to differ materially from those expressed. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our filings with the SEC.

Research Frontiers undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect new events or uncertainties. The Company will be answering many of the questions that were emailed to it prior to this conference call, either in their presentation or as part of the Q&A session at the end.

In some cases, the Company has responded directly to email questions prior to this call or will do so afterwards, in order to answer more questions of general interest to shareholders on this call. [Operator Instructions] Also we ask that you keep your question brief in the interest of time.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Joseph Harary, President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Frontiers. Please go ahead, sir..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Thank you, Erica and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me today is Seth Van Voorhees, he is our CFO and President of our VariGuard division. There are two areas that we have been giving our investors some guidance on when it comes to revenues.

The first is helping them back out non-recurring items from prior period so investors can better see the current level of activity via licensees from the sale of products using our technology.

Also in 2018, a new revenue recognition standard sometimes referred to ASC-606 came into effect, which changes the allocation of how our royalty income is recognized.

Along the same lines, we’ve also been giving investor’s guidance to better understand reported revenues by helping them understand what fee income would have been under the original ASC-605 revenue recognition standard, so you can compare apples-to-apples. So let’s get into the numbers.

When you adjust to the new accounting standard, and also back out non-recurring fee income from prior periods, fee income for the first nine months of this year would have been up over $115,000 or about 9.5% from the same period last year.

When doing the same comparison for the third quarter of this year with the third quarter of last year, fee income would have been up 11.6%. So compared to last year, this year our fee income is up between 9.5% and 11.6% depending on whether you’re looking at the three or nine month accounting periods.

Also when we look at sequential quarterly revenue by comparing this quarter to the prior quarter of this year, fee income was up 10.7%. If the same revenue recognition accounting standard as last year was in effect, fee income for the third quarter of this year would have been up 19% from the second quarter of this year.

So comparing last quarter to this quarter, also shows double digit percentage increases in royalty income. Many of us focus on our largest segment, the automotive business. Royalties from the automotive sector were up in the third quarter of this year compared to the second quarter.

I will talk about this in more detail later on in this conference call. Now moving to the expense side, we continue to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs. Operating expenses declined by over $150,000 in the first nine months of this year compared to last year.

We continue to march steadily and with determination towards being cash flow positive. We achieved this by both revenue growth which was up as I discussed earlier, and expense reduction.

Our loss for the first nine months of this year had some non-recurring onetime, non-cash expenses associated with the grant of stock options and the issuance of warrants from our recent financing.

When you back out -- when you back out the effects of these onetime non-cash expenses from option and Warrant grants, our net loss would have been almost $50,000 lower than last year, and would have been almost $120,000 or 7% lower when you also adjust for the change in accounting standards from last year.

This has been a sustained and continuous process at Research Frontiers. Last year, marked the fifth year in a row of decline in losses year-over-year. Let’s talk about other activity.

In less than three months since our last conference call, there has been a lot of significant developments to talk about and judging from the shareholder questions that were emailed to us for this conference call, the thing that most people want to learn more about is the developments with Gauzy, our newest filmmaking licensee and what is happening in the automotive market.

We’re going to talk about that. I’m going to maybe read a couple of the questions and then kind of answer them with part of the balance of the presentation. Please elaborate on management initiatives to accelerate the adoption of Research Frontiers technology and signed new licensees.

Which end markets are you most excited about, and give the highest potential for volume adoption? Also from [Indiscernible].

On the first quarter call, management indicated that there would be a renewed focus to getting the Research Frontiers story out to the investment community and that investor relations firm had been hired to assist in this process.

When asked about it again on the second quarter conference call, he suggested that the timing going into the summer months was not ideal.

Please elaborate on the upcoming schedule of investor relations activities and other initiatives we can look forward to in terms of rectifying Research Frontier’s current status and the capital markets as an orphan [ph] and a similar question from Chuck Michael, what is the evaluation of the IR firm that we’ve hired? So we did hire a great IR Firm came highly recommended from one of our largest shareholders.

And based on their recommendation, we started work with them. Getting the story out towards the end of August, early September, and the stocks started moving up, the volume started moving up. So we’re very happy with the effectiveness and the professional nature that they’ve exhibited there. A couple more questions and then we’ll get into the answers.

What significant new customers have you added since the second quarter? Describe the process in bringing down the cost of smart glass production and the timetable to introduce commercial sized products for architectural building markets? Okay. First let’s start with Gauzy.

As I mentioned this is the topic that most people had a lot of interesting and exciting questions about. In early September, our licensee Gauzy and we announced that Gauzy had led a $2 million investment in Research Frontier’s. Gauzy itself invested $1 million and our largest individual shareholder Kevin Douglas invested $500,000 in this offering.

Gauzy’s investment comes on the heels of a substantial internal investment that Gauzy has made in hiring new people, and special equipment to bring a SPD smart technology to the various markets. Gauzy’s investment was unprecedented, both in their history and ours as well.

And perhaps, if there’s a strategic reason, Research Frontiers might accept an investment by other licensees. The fact that a key licensee made an equity investment in Research Frontiers shows in a very concrete way their confidence in where the SPD industry is going, and their ability to supply it with SPD film.

And the fact that Gauzy is an SPD film producing licensee, also undoubtedly gives them somewhat of a better crystal ball as to future orders and growth in the SPD industry, because of course they’re one of the companies that will be supplying it. So where is this growth in our industry coming from? First, our biggest market is automobiles.

Throughout this film, automotive in the third quarter were up almost 42% from the second quarter. And normally one would expect revenues from a particular car model to go down overtime.

This is because as a typical pattern in automotive where the total production in terms of number of units of cars declines as a car model gets further and further away from its introduction date. And I note that the SLC, SLK which was the first car to use our technology is in its eighth year since introduction.

The SL Roadster is in its seventh year, and the S Class is in its fifth year. In each of the -- I’ve been asked this question too about kind of following up on some statements we made in the last conference calls about automotive projects.

And in each of the last two quarterly conference calls, I mentioned that automotive project with new OEMs had been introduced. Well, there was one and two, but since our last conference call three months ago, there was an additional five new OEMs that our licenses are quite optimistic about in terms of extensive use.

Now that’s pretty smart glass and very high volumes. In prior conference calls I remarked that after automotive, trains could be our second biggest market in the next few years. Based on the activity by our licensees, I believe this even more strongly than ever.

In September, two of our important licensees, vision systems and AGC [ph] had exhibited SPD smart stained [ph] windows at Innotrans in Berlin. Innotrans is the leading transport industry trade fair especially for the train industry.

At Innotrans, Vision Systems launched their Nuance V2 for trains, which after successful implementation in the aircraft and marine industries is now being used for trains. Vision Systems commented in connection with this that the Nuance V2 products has enhanced the optical quality, and I’ve seen this firsthand and was quite impressed.

And this is even more significant, 30% lower cost. These are improvements that everyone in the industry welcomes. SPD Smart Glass is being used in trains, primarily in Europe and Asia, where train travel is quite popular and very well developed, but also here in North America.

And these trains are all using SPD smart glass to relieve the loads on the air conditioning systems, while also improving the passenger’s experience in many ways that we talked about.

Some of the innovations introduced at Innotrans and windows using our technology were the Nuance V2 product that I described early as well as train windows with electronics built into the window itself to allow for rapid installation and even retrofit of existing trains.

If you think about it in every industry that our technology is being used in, the retrofit market can dwarf the original equipment market. Vision Systems also exhibited Innotrans, their info vision product where information such as train schedules, weather, services and trip information can be displayed right on the SPD window.

And moving from the passenger cars and trains to the locomotives, SPD was also shown for use in the driver’s compartment in the form of sun visors and other windows that block wear and increase the readability of instruments.

Vision Systems also announced at the Innotrans show, that at least two new main train projects are using SPD technology supplied by them. Another train licensee, Asahi Glass Company who also does the glass for the S Class also exhibited SPD train windows at Innotrans.

For those that follow our progress, Asahi Glass also announced that the popular JR East luxury sleeper train known as the Shiki-shima, uses our glass in the observation lounges, and other areas including the driver’s compartment. And on a recent visit that Asahi made from Japan here to the United States, they reinforced the benefits in that train.

Also at Innotrans Continental Automotive had their intelligent glass control electronic systems to power windows for SPD trains and automobiles.

The press also has been giving good coverage to the use of SPD smart glass in the train industry, leading upto Innotrans, Global Real News published an article about Continental News System for trains and Railway Age magazine, published an article about the New Rocky Mountaineer luxury train and the SPD smart glass used in the gold leaf dome cars on this train.

Now moving from trains to planes, InspecTech Aero Service and Vision Systems have their products at the most recent NBAA General Aviation show in Orlando and that was in October. Some of the newer products on display were a multi zone aircraft window using Milan’s V2 SPD technology.

The Info-Vision product and an elegant new cabin divider for use between the first class and economy cabins. Vision Systems collaboration with PPG Aerospace was also highlighted at this show, and I spoke with PPG at the show about some new OEM projects for SPD that were they are highly optimistic about.

Aircraft interiors giant Lufthansa Technik also had their interior which uses SPD and which was code designed with Mercedes Benz style on display at the NBAA show. This is a retrofit product.

Also check out the great timeless [ph] video of Duncan Aviation’s upgrade of an interior of the Bombardier, a Global Express to show how dramatic an improvement a retrofit refurbishment of an aircraft can be especially where they’re replacing mechanical shades with SPD smart window shades.

And as I mentioned earlier in the context of trains, the retrofit market in aircraft can be many times larger than the original equipment market. In the original equipment market, there is also significant activity going on with airliners. That was another question we got.

We and our licenses are also very optimistic about this area and it can result in very large business both in the original equipment and in the aftermarket as airlines constantly are upgrading the interiors of their planes.

At [Indiscernible] SPD was not only at the Vision Systems PPG and Lufthansa Technik booth, but also an actual aircraft manufacturer by Textron, HondaJet, Eclipse, Epic, Eurocopter, Bell Helicopter and others. So as you can see, September and October were busy months.

There were two other additional and very significant developments that also happened in October. For the past year, I’ve been speaking to you our investors about the importance of getting the cost of our technology to the customer down and for wider width, so that we can finally address the biggest market for smart glass, the architectural market.

About four weeks ago, I was honored to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for Gauzy’s factory line to produce SPD film. They have been moving quickly, and we have accomplished quite a bit together in a short period of time. It was only about one year before that -- that let Gauzy’s license was announced.

And during that time, we worked very closely with them. They hired additional people, invested in new equipment and focused on getting SPD film produced. Our technical and business development teams both worked very well together, especially recently after the Glass Tech show. Someone has asked about Gauzy’s plan for commercial introduction.

Gauzy’s calls for the introduction this year of SPD architectural grade film that is 1.2 meters wide. Next year, the width will go up to 1.5 meters, and the year after they plan to code SPD film at the same 1.8 meter web wide film that they currently produce for PDLC film. Gauzy’s significance is not only in their ability to make a wider film.

This certainly opens up the architectural market for us for the first time. They’re also targeting lower costs and these are two very important developments that I’ve spoken about at length during the last several conference calls. Now you know the details on how we accomplish this.

This should also translate into near-term additional revenues for both of our companies. Gauzy just had SPD at the largest booth they ever had at the big glass tech show in Dusseldorf. Over 42,000 visitors from 120 company countries came to this year’s Glass Tech.

So I’m confident that the architectural glass industry now knows about the wider SPD film. I expect also they will know it is very likely to be less expensive than the current SPD film. Gauzy and we, believe, that significant new business is coming out of the Glass Tech show, and this is very concrete business.

Another advantage of housing Gauzy is that there’s finally a second filmmaker. This is particularly important to the automotive industry, which typically requires or strongly prefers two sources of supply.

Of course, two sources of supply also create some healthy competition among the filmmakers and this is certainly welcomed by the entire SPD smart glass industry. Gauzy SPD film line can produce about 365,000 square meters per shift, per year of SPD film. Put that in context, the typical sunroof is about one square meter perhaps a little larger.

Hitachi SPD film cutter [ph] can produce about 400,000 square meters of SPD film per year, per shift. I’m going to read a couple more of the questions that we received before this conference call. Some of them we’ve already addressed in the general topics and here the additional ones, which I’ll answer.

Joe, you had indicated in the last conference call that trends could become our second largest market within a few years time. I presume, that the airline market would be number two considering the amount of time dedicated towards getting into the commercial airline market.

Does this mean that we’re more than a couple years out from developing traction with airliners? I would say, no. I don’t think we’re a couple years out. It’s just not a predictable market, but it could be a very large market. Now what I’m focusing on, is really the upgrade market with airliners.

So if you look at many of the videos that some of our licensees have put out, Vision Systems or InspecTech may design their SPD smart windows to be very much plug and play. You pop it into the sidewall and it works. This means that you can retrofit a very large plane with a lot of windows very quickly.

And the other benefit here is that unlike other technologies like the technology, that’s on the Dreamliner, we actually can be retrofitted to existing aircraft.

The Electrochromic Tech and the Dreamliner, I’m told by the windows supplier for the Dreamliner requires an external structural window to be specially made to protect the Electrochromic window on the inside. We don’t need that.

So you basically can take out that small plastic dust cover if you will and replace it with a module that’s very thin, very light that replaces the existing shade with an SPD-Smart shade. So, the retrofit market can be something that we can address today.

And a lot of the development work that’s going on, up until now was gearing up towards being able to do exactly that. So plug and play windows that don’t need any kind of change in the whole or the fuselage or the structural windows of the plane. Another question I got from Mr.

August Berman, your thoughts on the $1.1 billion investment by View in View by SoftBank, this is a rather large trunk of change and which I [Indiscernible] other investors may proceed with their beginning their next interaction in the architectural market. Anything you could say about this would be great.

We’ve also got another similar question asking for my thoughts on View? View has now raised a total of $2 billion, the most recent investment in early November was by Saudi Arabia backed SoftBank fund for $1.1 billion and up until that point there’s about $890 million raised for that company.

I’m told from people in the industry that [Indiscernible] rates about $100 million a year, that’s the burn rates not their revenues. They have a fairly large facility in Mississippi that can produce, has the capacity to produce 5 million square feet of glass, depending on the estimates of employees, several hundred people.

It’s a pretty large expense that they are bearing moving forward and every once in a while they announce a nice project that uses a considerable amount of glass we think, and I say we think because their press release is never disclosed how much glass they are using.

They disclose the number of square feet of buildings that they are in, but not the number of square feet of glass, so you have maybe in a couple of million square feet of building, but that’s like me saying that I’m in $4 billion worth of Mercedes cars, it doesn’t mean that the sale to Mercedes of our glass is $4 billion.

So it’s a little bit misleading. But getting back to the investment we have a much different business model. We rely on our licensees to make those capital investments. And I think what it shows is first of all, there is a potentially very large market for SmartGlass in the architectural industry.

And as I mentioned earlier we’re just starting to get into that industry now that we have a wider film that’s available. So it’s a very big market we’re entering and I think the investment in View reinforces that.

The other thing and this is some somewhat speculative on my part, but there is talk that View is going to try to go public at some period of time. And hopefully like many unicorns that have over billion dollar valuation the underlying numbers can justify that when they do go public.

But what I think it will also do is have a very positive impact on our public market valuation, because right now, the only public SmartGlass company in the world is Research Frontiers and our valuation is much smaller than View’s and our markets are much larger because not only do we have the architectural market that they're going after, but we also have the automotive market which we've already established a very strong foothold in.

We have the aircraft industry where the number of planes is growing and the number models of planes are growing. We have the train market which is also a very fast growing market for us. We have the museum market and of course we have the architectural market.

So I think that when people start looking at public valuations of the SmartGlass companies, I'm hoping that View goes public with a very large valuation, because I think that will help us considerably. Another question from Jeff RV [ph] deals with primarily the automotive market. Mercedes really have shown that it works well.

I know the price was an issue, so please update us on how close you are to the right price that will cause other OEMs to adopt. And then just opinion which I agree with without additional auto adoption, I don't see how you get the profitability. Well, Jeff, that’s an excellent question. We will get the profitability.

The quotes that I am seeing out there by our automotive glass licensees to new OEMs that are throwing out very large volumes and more than just the roof is substantially lower than the current price of our glass and these are quotes that are being presented now.

Another person asked me also how close to we hit the target that Mercedes had set for us about cost reduction to them so that they could cripple to quintuple the business they're doing with us.

And we've already gotten confirmation from Mercedes even without the introduction of the lower-priced Gauzy film that the supply chain is telegraphing that they could meet these cost reductions. So everything is going very very well in the cost reduction side. Mr. Carhart [ph] had asked a couple questions.

One of which are we in compliance with the NASDAQ listing requirements? And I’m happy to say that our stock has been above the $1 bid price that NASDAQ requires through quite some time now. We are in full compliance and we’re very good standing with NASDAQ.

Eric, I think I’d like now to open up the questions to -- the conference to additional live questions..

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Kay from Kay Associates. Please state your question..

Michael Kay

Hello, Joe. Hello..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Hey, Mike..

Michael Kay

I was wondering….

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Hey, Mike. Sorry, you caught me seeping a couple of coffee. I’m sorry..

Michael Kay

Okay. At the sunvisors I know Vision Systems was working very hard. And I think that would be a big seller that people could incorporate in their cars.

So when do you think that would be online commercially?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Yes. So now in the last couple of aircraft shows, that’s a great question. The last couple of aircraft shows, we’ve seen the sunvisor product much more prominently displayed. And remember in the aircraft market you’re talking about retrofitting existing aircraft with the sunvisor.

More recently you’ve seen as I mentioned SPD moving to the driver's compartment of trains and that's also acting as a sunvisors. So visor is now also being deployed in the train market, as well as the aircraft market. And what you're seeing also is kind of two different variants of the sunvisor that is making its way into the world.

If you look at some of the videos that are out there on our technology, for example, Continental Automotive has an excellent video with the Ford. That is completely outfitted with SPD SmartGlass all around to all the windows.

And in their windshield there’s a built-in sunvisor with multi-segments that can detect where on the horizon the sun is and only block out those areas that you need to block in order to prevent the glare from hitting your eye without reducing your visibility. So you have that as -- by far that’s not the only example of this.

McLaren [ph] has come out with SPDs product in their cars because the McLaren is lower volume obviously, but it shows that one way to deploy this in the automotive market is building the sunvisor right in between the glass of the windshield and it’s a great way to do this.

And if you look at a lot of the electric vehicle makers out there, for example, Tesla, they try themselves on having very few buttons and things protruding on the inside of their car is very [Indiscernible] and having a sunvisor built-in to the windshield makes perfect sense to that type of design choices.

And then moving to the aftermarket, all of the kind of preliminary development work that’s been going on in the aircrafts and train market certainly is beneficial to the automotive market as well. So, and we are….

Michael Kay

And if there’s any news in terms of progress with Panasonic and the signage that they have been interested in?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

I think that you will see – the short answer to your question is yes, there's been progress in Asia, there’s been progress in Europe, and I think in the coming year you’re going to start to see some more visibility with this at some very high-profile places in the United States as well, so, yes..

Michael Kay

Okay. Thank you very much. And I think the – in terms of fee -- revenue it seems there’s sustenance of upward momentum.

I hope it continues?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Yes. We’re working hard to do that, Michael. Thank you for the question..

Operator

Our next question comes from Ishfaque Farouk from Westpark Capital. Please state your question..

Ishfaque Farouk

Hi. Good afternoon..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Hey, Ishfaque, how are you?.

Ishfaque Farouk

I’m good. Just one quick from me.

In terms of the -- you mentioned the railroad, can you give me a sense for what dollar value the railway market might have in terms of potential on a fee income basis going forward?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Let me answer your question a different way. At our presentation that one of our very strong licensees in the rail market that happens also to be in the bus and aircraft market in Europe gave me. There’s a projected revenue graph for 2019 and by far the largest segment dwarfing everything else that they were doing was rail.

So it could be a very significant market. To give you maybe a little bit of color. So again, two kind of things that are going on in the rail market.

Couple of examples that the depressive step on is the Rocky Mountaineer, Luxury Train, we have this very high-end train as it goes from five-star hotel to five-star hotel with magnificent panoramic views of the mountains and things. And you have the Shiki-shima train which is very similar thing of it as a luxury crew ship on rails.

And that’s one market where we’ve been deployed. And then you have the other two public announcements that came out. One was both actually from Vision Systems that came out at the Inter-train show. One was a bullet train for the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the other was very large commuter train line in another part of the world.

And once you get in one of these things you get in all of them. So it’s – that’s why for the last two conference call I’ve been talking about the train market because we have very, very good visibility on where that can go..

Ishfaque Farouk

All right. Thank you very much..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Thank you, Ishfaque..

Operator

Our next question comes from Tom Mccarthy from Raymond James. Please state your question..

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Hi, Joe..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Tom, how are you?.

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Good, good.

Please address the Marine market in terms of current use and also near and medium term likely possibilities?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Okay. So the Marine market is something that goes hand-in-hand with the aircraft market, matter of fact, if you look at who’s been designing the yachts, it’s typically the same companies that are designing the beautiful interiors of aircraft.

So companies like, Lufthansa Technik has been in the Marine market, companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz Style, Gordon Wagner led the design of the Silverado Marine yacht which is starting to hit bigger volumes and uses a lot of our glass. And then you have a megayacht market which is quite significant.

You don't really read about it too much because sometimes the Russian oligarchs that are building these yachts, so we don’t want a lot of publicity, but these things are amazing, amazing yacht. And then if you go more towards the high volume more predictable part of the Marine market, you’re talking about crew ships.

And one of the things that I think is significant for crew ship is the width of the glass there is fairly significant, and because of that the width of the glass being significant. The fact that we're now moving into an era with wider film is very significant.

And our licensees that are supplying the crew ship market are quite excited about the advent of the water film and there’s been some fairly large purchase orders placed for that..

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Is spiking crews is one of those customers?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

I’m sorry..

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Yes.

There was a talk before about them what’s the status there?.

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

They’ve successfully tested the concept of SPD for certain -- I’ll call them architectural side windows on the crew ships because the one meter width was all that was available when that test started. The 1.3 to 1.5 meter widths from Gauzy will certainly beautifully address their needs in that market..

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Okay..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

So I think you’ll see some triggers being pulled..

Q - Tom Mccarthy

Thank you, Joe..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Thanks Tom..

Operator

Our next question -- [Operator Instructions]. At this time we have no further questions..

Joseph Harary Chief Executive Officer, President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Director

Great. Well, I think we answer the lot of the questions that we email to us and I appreciate the time that people took to send us those questions so that we could cover more grounds today. As you can see we’ve been quite busy in all of the markets.

And from what we see in the pipeline after a slow but firm initial startup period, the next several years should be great once for us in the automotive market.

This growth in automotive will be enhanced by new regulations limiting CO2 emissions in cars, the shift towards electric vehicles, the rise of autonomously driven cars, the need to create an open-air feeling in the roofs of coops and the strength of the premium market and new model introductions.

As we announced yesterday next week I'll be presenting these topics and the target markets for SPD in the automotive industry as a featured speaker at the largest automotive glass conference in Europe. And there are other activities going on in Europe next week as well which are quite exciting that I'll be participating at.

And our calendar of events is quite full for the remainder of this year and already well through the next year. I’m sure that all of our investors on this call will be pleased to hear about these things. The visibility of SmartGlass led by Research Frontiers in our licensees is an all-time high.

You’ve seen some of this activity over the past two months, some of this is public and some of going on at development centers and test tracks by major vehicle manufacturers in the automotive, train and aircraft industries. Some licensees such as American Glass Products in South America has also become very visible with SPD for the very first time.

Their focus is on the automotive market. They’ve put out some great marketing materials especially their videos and I urge you to see them. We also note the increased public activity by Asahi and PPG in the train and aircraft markets during the last six weeks at major industry events.

And starting next year trains can be our second largest market in terms of revenue. Innotrans was a big success for licensees. More importantly SPD technology offers unique and valuable benefits to the train industry in terms of controlling solar heat gain, keeping passengers comfortable and giving them a better riding experience.

Glass Tech also a huge success for us. Almost every week a new report comes out on the substantial market size and high growth rates that are expected for our market, especially the architectural market. And you’ve seen substantial investments by View and in Kinestral, another SmartGlass company being made over the years.

So people are seeing the strength of this market that we’re now for the first time being able to properly address, the large architectural market with the advent of a wider less expensive SPD film. Insiders have been buying when we can and we’re quite optimistic. We also run a very efficient company, very lean and very focus.

We’ve been focusing on growing revenues and reducing expenses. We saw a good revenue growth last year and that growth continues this year. We’ve seen substantial cost reductions as well. We’ve had over $2.5 million in cost reductions in the past two years or so.

And with five straight years of year-over-year reductions in our net loss which continued when you back out the non-recurring and non-cash items during the first nine months of this year. We’re steadily approaching our goal of being cash flow positive and profitable. We’re opening up new markets like architectural.

And in our existing and well established markets we are one aircraft program away from profitability. We are one new car model away from profitability. We are one train project away from profitability. As I noted earlier on our call there are more than one of these transformational events in each of the major markets we are in.

We have a deep pipeline of projects in each of these areas.

We and our licensees are working hard to get that next car, that next train, that next airplane model introduced into the market and given the high level of activity in all of these markets we have excellent and realistic chances for success in multiple markets and becoming a highly profitable company.

Thank you for letting me share with you today what's been happening in the company and what’s been happening in these markets. I look forward to the next conference call very much..

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending..

ALL TRANSCRIPTS
2024 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2023 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2022 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2021 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2020 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2019 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2018 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2017 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2016 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2015 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2014 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1