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Technology - Hardware, Equipment & Parts - NASDAQ - US
$ 1.97
0 %
$ 66 M
Market Cap
-49.25
P/E
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2019 - Q3
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Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Research Frontiers’ Investor Conference Call to Discuss the Third Quarter of 2019 Results and Recent Developments. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today.

A replay of this conference call will be available starting later today in the Investor section of Research Frontiers’ websites at www.smartglass.com and will be available for the next 90 days.Please note that some of the comments made today may contain forward-looking information. The words expect, anticipate, plans, forecasts.

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 Security 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 e-mailed 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 e-mail questions prior to this call, or will do so afterwards, in order to answer more questions of general interest to shareholders on this call.If you find that your question has been substantially answered, as a courtesy and to allow time for other shareholders to ask their questions, please remove yourself from the queue by pressing pound one.

Also, we ask that you keep your questions brief in the interest of time.I would now like to hand the conference over to Joe Harary, President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Frontiers. Please go ahead, sir..

Joe Harary

why don't more of your end product users cite Research Frontiers when advertising or highlighting smart glass uses and benefits?Well, we certainly encourage them and we actually have the legal right in all of our agreements to do it. But we also have to respect the branding strategy that these companies have. So, we do that as well.

And you'll probably see more and more of them proudly mention Research Frontiers and SPD technology.

You've seen this in some of the videos and things, where SPD is mentioned by name, whereas in the past a lot of the licenses were just using a generic electrochromatic term to describe it.We were also asked about our public relations and social media and Investor Relations efforts.

And this quarter we also expanded our activities in all of these areas and you’re beginning to see those results.Regarding our public relations efforts, key articles in auto industry publications, such as Car and Driver, the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune; and tech publications such as Mashable, about us have certainly brought in the awareness about our – us and our technology and what it can do.

And we've also put more resources towards Investor Relations, as well as social media, because this is a very inexpensive way to leverage everything we're doing in these other areas.So, we discussed a lot of exciting topics so far today.

And I will ask our operator, Erica, to open up the conference to any additional questions people participating today might have that we haven't already covered..

Operator

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

Michael Kay

what's the status of the Vision Systems’ marketing their sun visors? It seems to me that would be a very good market.

And also, as a result of the cost of SPD film getting to the sweet spot, have you – had they been increased interest among OEMs that previously were put up by the costs?.

Joe Harary

Yes. So, to answer your first question, Vision Systems is still working on the sun visor project. They’re still targeting it for trucks, for aircraft and for trains. And what's interesting in the commercial market for aircraft, there's a big problem inside the cockpit. So, there has been a number of those projects as well.

And just about two weeks ago, I referred one of those over to them because of their expertise in that area.Your second question was:Are we getting more interest now that the costs are coming down? Absolutely.

Some of the really high-volume car users – usages over the next couple of years is only made possible by the fact that we now have some much-needed competition among the filmmakers in the pricing. And it's just the quote Hitachi invigorated the industry nicely.

So, we certainly are seeing a big uptick in interest.And what's also nice to see is that, it's not just us and our licensees pitching to the potential users. The potential users are coming to us. They're finding us. They're doing the research. We're becoming much more well-known, and that makes everyone's job a lot easier..

Michael Kay

Thank you very much..

Operator

Our next question comes from Art Brady. Please state your question..

Unidentified Analyst

Hi, Joe.

I'm wondering if you're receiving any revenues at this point in time from Panasonic? And then number two is, where does Continental and their controller come into play? Has there been any sales as a result of Continental putting their controller factory?.

Joe Harary

Yes, okay. So, let me answer that one, Art. First – the first part of your question was, are we getting revenues from Panasonic? Not directly, we get it from the licensee that supplies them with the SPD glass laminated together and we are getting revenues there. And we expect based on – and you can see this on the Internet.

There has been really glowing recommendations about how good this is, because the challenge has always been how do you get the black blacks in an OLED that doesn't have a back plane that's, opaque. And what we do is, we provide an opaque on-demand back plane.So, when you're not a piece of glass, you're a high definition TV.

And what's interesting also is in that market, it's not just Panasonic now, it’s other consumer electronic manufacturers in that space that have also become much more active in this.

So, they're all beginning to realize that the solution to getting a dark back plane in a high vibrant video is to use SPD.And as far as Continental, I can't comment on specifics of their sales, because we don't get a royalty from them. So, I don't have direct knowledge of what their sales are. They don't have to report that.

We get the royalty reports from Daimler, when they incorporate the electronics into a car and we get the reports from Pilkington or Asahi, when they apply the glass. And that's where we have the direct knowledge. But I'm happy that we have someone like Continental and their videos that they've been using to promote this are quite remarkable..

Operator

Our next question comes from Francis Scott Weber. Please state your question..

Unidentified Analyst

Oh, yes, Joe, how you doing?.

Joe Harary

Good.

How are you?.

Unidentified Analyst

Pretty good. Several years ago, at a shareholders meeting, you had mentioned that there were signed contracts by airlines.

Can you give an update on that?.

Joe Harary

I don't think I've ever said there was signed contracts by airlines. The licensees have contracts with suppliers to the airlines, for example, one of the Airbus A380 in the lavoratories and that's not directly between Inspectech and Airbus, it's indirectly through the cabin integrators and things like that. But that's what goes on in that market..

Unidentified Analyst

So, you never said [Multiple Speakers] …..

Joe Harary

And we do have – and they do have direct contact with general aviation, because they're the – supply chain is a little more direct to the manufacturer. So, for example, Inspectech directly to Textron and Vision System sells directly to HondaJet, and those are actual direct contracts.

But in the airline market, it tends to go through the Tier 1 system integrators.

Unidentified Analyst

Thank you, Joe..

Joe Harary

Thanks..

Operator

Our next question comes from Len Lenzow]. So, please state your question..

Unidentified Analyst

Hey, Joe, it’s Lane [indiscernible]..

Joe Harary

Hi..

Unidentified Analyst

Just quick question. I was on another call when you started. I didn't hear what the revenues were for the quarter.

If you can repeat that, I'd appreciate it? And then the other question I have is, then we're getting royalty of 15% on the architectural side, is that correct?.

Joe Harary

That's correct. That's correct. We talked about our revenue increases, basically, overall revenue was up 29% in the third quarter. Fee income, I guess, in the interest of time, I don't want to really repeat, but if you just go to the press release Lenthat was issued, it'll give you the breakdown, but….

Unidentified Analyst

Okay..

Joe Harary

To summarize, it was up fairly substantially, both between this quarter, the third quarter of this year and the third quarter of last year, and also between the third quarter of this year and the second quarter this year. And I think the biggest and dramatic increase came from automotive and aircraft. So, all good news, but take a look at that..

Unidentified Analyst

Okay..

Operator

Our next question comes from Alan Ginsberg. Please state your question..

Unidentified Analyst

Yes. Hi, Joe..

Joe Harary

Hi, Alan..

Unidentified Analyst

Hi. In the last conference call, you mentioned, I believe at the annual meeting, you mentioned there was three automakers that would comprise, I think, you said 30 times what was done in the whole industry and you haven’t mentioned that today.

So, I was curious whether you can give me an update on that?.

Joe Harary

Nothing has changed. That statement is still true that I made in the last conference call. I've been asked to say less and less about specifics by the automakers themselves. So, I'm being a little bit more cautious on this call than I was on others.

And – but yes, the projections we've been getting from the automakers for use of our glass just taking three of them, yes, could be 30 times what the whole industry did last year..

Unidentified Analyst

Okay, thank you..

Joe Harary

Thank you..

Operator

[Operator Instructions] At this time, we have no further questions..

Joe Harary

(1) a world class, high performing and reliable technology, (2) hard and focused work by us and our licensees and their customers, and (3) determination.We said what we needed to do, and we did it.And we will also do our best to keep shareholders informed as best as we are able regarding new and exciting developments.I look forward to sharing those with you all, and thank you for your investment in Research Frontiers, for participating in today's conference call and for your support and your encouragement..

Operator

at Tue Nov 12 07:50:00 2019].

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