Research Frontiers Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
March 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Revenues rose 47% year-over-year to $1.336 million, net loss per share narrowed to $0.04, expenses fell 6% to the lowest level since 1996, and the company ended 2024 with $2 million in cash and no debt.
  • Royalty income increased 48% from automotive markets—led by Ferrari, McLaren and the Cadillac Celestiq—and 57% from aircraft customers including Boeing, Airbus and VIP jets, while an SPD retrofit system for buildings is on schedule.
  • R&D samples of a long-sought black particle SPD smart glass were showcased at CES and are moving into engineering trials, though further work is needed before mass production.
  • The company expects major high-volume automotive projects in 2026 that could significantly exceed prior programs and anticipates initial revenues from architectural retrofits in 2025.
  • Planned 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican auto parts are not expected to materially impact SPD license royalties, as contracts define net selling price to exclude such duties.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Research Frontiers Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Research Frontiers' investor conference call to discuss the Q4 and Q4 2024 results of operations and recent developments. 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. Some statements today may contain forward-looking information identified by words such as expect, anticipate, and forecast. These reflect current beliefs, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed due to various risk factors, including those detailed in our SEC filings. Research Frontiers assumes no obligation to update or revise these statements.

Operator

Today's call is in listen-only mode with a Q&A session to follow. To ask a question, please press star one. The call is being recorded, and it will be available for replay on Research Frontiers' website at smartglass.com for the next 90 days. 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 star two. Also, we ask that you keep your questions brief in the interest of time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe Harary, President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Frontiers. Please go ahead, sir.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Thank you, Paul. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 and Q4 of 2024 investor conference call. First of all, we've been asked by our largest shareholders to try to make these quarterly calls shorter and more focused, so we'll try to do this with your help. My remarks today will be relatively brief, and it's certainly easier to keep things short when the news is good. Let's start with our financial results. Revenues were up 47% to $1.336 million. This was an increase of $426,000 in royalty income over last year. This was driven by a 48% increase in royalties from the automotive market and an increase of 57% from aircraft. Total expenses this year were down more than $165,000, which is a 6% reduction in an inflationary environment.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Our expenses are the lowest they've been since 1996, and we have focused on operational efficiency consistently throughout the year. The total improvement in our bottom line this year was $597,000, and this gets us closer to profitability. Our net loss for the entire year was $0.04 per share compared to $0.06 per share last year. This is the lowest annual per share loss since we went public 38 years ago. Moving from our income statement to our balance sheet, we had $2 million in cash as of the end of 2024 and working capital of $2.5 million. Cash went down by $482,000 for the entire year for an average of $40,000 per month. Our burn rate is much lower than ever before. We have no debt and sufficient working capital for more than the next five years. Both our domestic and foreign patent portfolios currently extend to 2037.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Moving now to highlights from our business this year. 2024 marked notable growth in our Ferrari business and McLaren business, as well as the introduction towards the end of 2024 of the Cadillac Celestique with its amazing SPD-SmartGlass Roof. SPD remains a highly popular chosen option on the Ferrari Purosangue and multiple McLaren car models and is standard equipment on the Cadillac Celestique. Commercial airlines have begun to put SPD in their cabin windows, most notably in both Boeing and Airbus aircraft, as decision-making has moved from the OEMs to their airline customers. We also have steady business in small, medium, and large VIP corporate jets as well. We see the growth coming from the addition of new vehicles in 2025. Some of these were expected in 2024, but the launch of the entire model was delayed for reasons unrelated to our SPD-SmartGlass.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We're also working on major high-volume projects for 2026, and the volumes for these projects could dwarf anything that we or Gauzy have spoken about publicly to date. We also expect that you'll see the introduction of more architectural projects this year, both with the traditional method of replacing the glass with SPD-SmartGlass and also retrofitting SPD-SmartGlass to the inside of homes and buildings to make the building envelope smart. No one else out there can retrofit smart windows. This retrofit application promises to make it less expensive and less disruptive to building occupants to convert existing buildings from having ordinary glass to SPD-SmartGlass and will speed up the sales cycle considerably. Our licensee with this patented retrofit system has built an impressive manufacturing facility with high capacity supporting this retrofit application. Next year, we can see market expansion from other areas as well.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Let me now speak about the recently announced black particle, which many of you have asked about. This is something that the Smart Glass industry has sought for decades. We and Gauzy have had sustained efforts on this, working together since day one. Even prior to Gauzy becoming a licensee, Research Frontiers has been searching for the right materials for decades. It might be helpful now for me to explain a little bit about the physics behind SPD technology. There are nanoparticles that are randomly suspended in capsules filled with special polymeric and non-polymeric liquids. When an electric field is applied, these special particles line up and allow light to pass through. When they are unpowered, they naturally return, due to Brownian motion, to a random state that blocks light.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

The current particle appears blue because they are very, very efficient at blocking all areas of the visible spectrum except for blue light. That is why when you have an SPD window inside, it will look black because there is very little blue light in interior lighting. When you move that same piece of glass outside, the blue light in daylight is the only area of the visible spectrum that is transmitted, and that is why SPD windows appear to be sapphire blue when it is outdoors and you are looking through it. This is where the significance of the black particle comes in now. If we could also block blue light in this process, the window would appear gray or black. I want to reiterate that black SPD that has been shown behind closed doors at Gauzy's booth at CES in January were R&D samples.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Even though they were R&D samples, they had an impressive range of light transmission and other optical characteristics. More work needs to be done to refine things, and we are making excellent progress. Now, speaking from decades of experience, we know that there is a big difference between seeing a black particle, having it stay black when it's put into a liquid suspension, and then putting it into a film. The samples at CES accomplished all of these things beautifully. They were very well received by the special customers who saw it. The next step is going from R&D samples to engineering samples. These would be closer to the final product. After the current engineering sample stage, we then go into mass production. I've been asked how long does it take between the engineering sample stage and mass production stage, and that's relatively easy to explain.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

The SPD film coater that Gauzy has near Stuttgart, Germany, has been designed to be quite flexible in how it's configured. That means that almost every relevant variable that you can think of between film coating width, SPD emulsion coating thickness, line speeds, etc., can be adjusted in mass production on the existing line. The specially designed coating head itself on Gauzy's SPD film coater is also capable of handling many different materials. If the final engineered materials are close in reality, such as viscosity and flow characteristics, to the current SPD emulsion using the blue particle, then mass production of the black particle SPD film can happen very quickly thereafter. Typically, there are some adjustments that are always made whenever you change a material that you're coating, and the production experts at Gauzy and at Research Frontiers are quite adept and experienced at doing this.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Now, from a market perspective, the black particle is a nice alternative to the current one, but is by no means a necessary item. The current blue particle also can be made to look black or gray with post-production steps after the film is made, and in areas like sunroofs or skylights where you're looking up at the sky, the sapphire blue color may actually be preferable. For areas like side windows in cars, planes, and homes and offices, black or gray may be preferable, and those are the primary areas where we believe that the black SPD can result in meaningful market expansion beyond what we're doing now. Once again, this is not a necessary condition to commercial success, but it is extremely desirable and can expand the markets for SPD glass, as I explained, something that the Smart Glass industry has been trying to do for decades.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We have said that we can at this point, and that the joint—we've said what we can at this point, and the joint announcement that Gauzy and Research Frontiers made at CES is the extent of what we could talk about at this time, especially on an open call where competitors to our licensees have access. Stay tuned. With that, I look forward to answering the questions that I've not already answered in the course of my presentation. I'll read some of the additional questions that were emailed to us, and I'm, in some cases, combining several questions into one. One question is, "I'd like to know where our income comes from: Asia, Europe, the United States, etc." Rod, thank you for that question. Most of the revenues and the sales are occurring in Europe and in South America from the licensees there.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We do have also licensees headquartered in Asia with production both there and in Europe and, of course, the United States. You have a mix around the world of production, and that makes me shift more demonstrably towards the United States as the architectural application comes online and also as new cars that may be domestic come online as well. Let me go to the next question here. Judy asks, "I'm hoping for the best but expecting the worst if the administration goes ahead with its planned 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican auto parts. Can you indicate if the retail prices of SPD pipeline vehicles will be affected?" No, I don't expect that this is going to have a meaningful impact on our revenues based on these tariffs. Thanks for the question, Judy. You know, first, that as a former economist at the U.S.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Central Bank in the 1980s, my personal view is that free trade is usually the best solution. However, that only works when there's a level playing field, and I think the tariffs are meant to create that as well as address border security and the flow of fentanyl into the United States. My guess is that if these other countries handle the border security and fentanyl issues, the tariffs will revert back to where they were. To answer your specific question, I don't believe that these tariffs will have a significant impact on our automotive and other business. Over the past few decades, there have been high import duties in some areas of the world on cars, for example, and that market typically is not affected mostly in the premium car area.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Tariffs will have an effect, we believe, on less expensive cars that are more price-sensitive, but I do not believe that it will affect our business or our revenues meaningfully. John Nelson asks, "Are there any design ins for LTI's architectural retrofit product that you can talk about?" Yes, we have several government projects and some commercial projects that we are targeting and focusing on right now, and I'm actually meeting next week with them about it. The other question was indications that Ferrari and your other car customers could expand usage to windshields or windows. Yes, 2025, I believe, will show SPD in other areas of the vehicle besides just sunroofs, John. Thanks for that question.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Jared Albert, some of the questions we've already answered, but any real-world indication that there's room for SPD in a PDLC sunroof world outside of the super expensive aspirational kind of vehicles and the timeline for the architectural retrofit? I mentioned that we expect the retrofit to generate revenues this year. In terms of your question about cars that use PDLC, first of all, we are working with car makers that are not the super expensive ones that you refer to in your question. Yes, we do expect that there is plenty of room and probably a preference because I think the automakers are beginning to see, based on what we're talking to them about, that the PDLC sunroofs are not doing the job that they anticipated in terms of blocking heat and glare inside a vehicle.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Very much so, I believe that, if anything, those PDLC sunroofs are already wired for SPD, as far as I'm concerned, and there'll be a lot more cars like that using it. Okay. We have discussed a lot of the questions so far that have been emailed to us. I'm going to ask our operator, Paul, to open up the conference to any additional questions people participating today might have that we haven't already covered. In the interest of time, please try to keep them limited to questions of general interest. If you want to get into more specifics, we could certainly do that by email or calls offline.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. You'll be placed into the queue in order received. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted.

Operator

Once again, if you have a question, please press star one on your phone now. Our first question comes from Jeff Harvey, an investor.

Jeff Harvey
Managing Director and Private Advisor

Hi, Joe. First of all, the fourth quarter was about half the third quarter. What was the reason for that?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

A lot of our revenue comes from automotive, and a lot of car makers cut production in the fourth quarter to clear out what's on the factory showroom for the next year.

Jeff Harvey
Managing Director and Private Advisor

Okay. Given the fact that you've gotten some airlines to put the windows in and Gauzy announced last time it's 50,000 cars or something, the problem we have as an investor is nobody knows about this company because neither you nor Gauzy have been able to put out any press releases about new business. I mean, what can we expect going forward this year to let people know about Research Frontiers?

Jeff Harvey
Managing Director and Private Advisor

Because there certainly are not any analysts that are going to follow this company until there is something that is worthwhile for them to take a look at. I mean, we have been stuck in this mode for a long time, and I realize that you have legal obligations with these companies, but can we expect if you get an architectural contract that you could announce something like that? As I— Yeah, thanks for the question. I would like to see you go to some investor conferences and talk about your company.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Right. We will start to do that, and we have been lining some up. Getting back to your original point about trying to say things about projects, obviously, we have to defer to the requests of the customers, but we have been pretty good at getting information out.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We talked about Ferrari for the last two years before the car was even introduced with McLaren and Mercedes and Cadillac. In some cases, they've done the talking; in some cases, we have. GALSI and Research Frontiers have it in our best interest to announce what we can. We have been working together on that as well. Thank you for the question.

Jeff Harvey
Managing Director and Private Advisor

I'll do as much as you can.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Thank you. We will. We want to do that too. It makes it easier to sell more cars later too.

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Forrester, an investor.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

Yeah. My question has to do with the black SPD developed by GALSI and, I guess, Research Frontiers. Is GALSI going to apply for a patent, or is Research Frontiers going to apply for a patent on that black particle SPD?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Since a lot of this work was done jointly, we obviously want to have as strong a patent protection as possible, but I'm not going to talk on an open call about IP strategy because most companies will do a combination of both, and that's probably no exception here.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

The history, as I see it, is that the SPD film is part of what Gauzy refers to as solar-powered smart glass.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

That's different. No, that's different. Solar-powered smart glass is the combination of photovoltaics with smart glass. That would apply to any type of smart glass that they make, PDLC or SPD. It was demonstrated at CES. We've had other licensees develop a combination of transparent photovoltaics and SPD. Because our power requirements are so low, it's very feasible to do that.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Some of the retrofit applications are also using some proprietary systems to make these things self-powered. If you think about what that means in a retrofit, you may not need an electrician to ever come to the site. You just pop this into the window frame, and you're done. That's going to be an exciting time when.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

Yeah. You mentioned that the patent expiration is 2037, which is only 12 years away.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Currently.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

When is the last?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Right. We always have new things, and we always have new things coming online.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

When is the last time Research Frontiers applied for a patent?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We have a pretty extensive patenting effort. We spend quite a bit of money protecting.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

Most of them are before the year 2000.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Michael, I'm not going to go into IP strategy. I'm not going to go into IP strategy.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Sometimes you protect things with trade secrets, and sometimes you protect it with patents.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

I asked a specific question. When is the last time Research Frontiers applied for a patent?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I'll have to look that up. I'll have to look that up. We have things in the works too.

Michael Forrester
Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners

All right.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Chuck Michaels, an investor.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Yes. Hi, Joe. Hi. I'm not on the list, but on your website, I looked on your website, and I saw financials for the year, but I didn't see this year versus 2024 versus 2023, but I didn't see anything for the last quarter. Do you have quarterly financials somewhere I can look at?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

No. The 10K only reports yearly. You can derive the quarter from those numbers and comparing it to the nine months.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

The 10K and the financial press releases have to follow a certain format according to the SEC. That is what we did. I see. Can you tell us what the loss was for the quarter? It was lower than last year, this quarter.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Can you tell us what it was?

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

I would have to look it up because we do not break it out that way. If you want offline or you could derive it, you could derive it from comparing the nine-month loss and the 12-month loss. Okay. To subtract one from the other. Our loss per share was $0.04 for the whole year, though, which is the lowest it has been since we went public.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Yeah, I saw that. That is great. Also, I had the question, and you had mentioned some hopefully rather large sales coming through in 2026. How confident?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

That's not to say we won't have—yeah, that's not to say we won't have large sales in 2025, but in the context of what I said, what we're expecting in 2026 may dwarf anything we've ever talked about or Gauzy has ever talked about.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Yeah.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

By the way, they have their conference call on Monday, so I urge everybody to listen to that as well. I'm looking forward to it.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Right. I am as well. Okay. How confident are you on the timing on that? Do you have any—can you give us any information with regards to that?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I've mentioned it on the call, which means I'm relatively confident that what I say on these calls is going to happen. It doesn't always happen.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I mean, we had the CEO of Ford announce on CNBC that our glass was going to be in the Lincoln Continental, and it did not. Sometimes things happen between the cup and the lip, but for the most part, they happen on the timetable in the way that we expect. Not always on the timetable, though.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Right. I understand. Likewise, I know you have mentioned a number of quarters about one or more cars coming out in the near future, and they do not seem to come out either. I do not know if that was the Lincoln or if that is something else.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

No, no. This is something else. It is something else. The Lincoln was many years ago when they were rebranding their car. Yeah, we expect these cars to come out, like I said earlier in the call.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

They were delayed past 2024 when we thought they were coming out, but not because of SPD.

Chuck Michaels
CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Thanks a lot, Chuck.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Our next question comes from Avi Gross, an investor.

Avi Gross
Investment Director

On the topic of tariffs, royalty of like 10% or 15% paid some kind on top of the tariff or not? If you're shipping a module to a car company somewhere?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Typically, and that's a great question, Avi. Thank you for asking it. All of our license agreements have a definition of net selling price. A net selling price is basically the revenues minus some minor things, but it's basically revenues. It's not profit. You do exclude out things that don't go into the licensee's pocket, like for example, shipping costs and things like that.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

When you get down to tariffs, you would exclude taxes and sales tax and tariffs and things like that from the calculation of the royalty. However, there's a sublimitation that limits how much they can deduct for all of those things I just mentioned. If you add up shipping costs and tariffs and other things, if they go above a certain level, the licensee cannot deduct that from the calculation. If we're talking about a 25% tariff, a very small piece of that is going to be deducted, if any. Like I said, they're not going to affect our royalty. It may affect at the lower-end cars how many cars are sold in general. When you're in the premium market, let me give you a simple example.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

In China, for example, which was the largest market for Mercedes and BMW and Audi, the cars would typically sell for a multiple of the MSRP, not necessarily because of tariffs, but because the distribution was set up to create certain market leverage so they could command charging a lot for these cars. They still sold very well. At the high end, I do not expect there to be much movement in terms of what the tariffs are doing. I also, as someone that is a student of politics and a student of economics, do not think they are going to be that long-standing. I may be wrong. I do not want to make the same mistake and say they are transitory that they said about inflation because that did not happen. I never said that either, and I never believed it was.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

But in this case, I do believe that they will be somewhat more temporary than people expect.

Avi Gross
Investment Director

Okay. That answers the question. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you do have a question, please press star one on your phone. We do ask that you keep the questions brief in order to facilitate as many questions as possible. Just one moment. Our next question comes from John Nelson, an investor.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Hi, Joe. A couple of questions. First, I have one that I always ask is, any progress on the Sunvisor development?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

There is both on the OEM side and in the aftermarket side, but I have to leave it to the licensees to continue their work, work with their customers, and get the product down. It is something I believe a lot in.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Okay. Understood. An up-and-comer in the commercial jet market is Embraer.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Do you have any contacts with them, or are they aware of your product?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Oh, yeah. Very much so. Very much so. Matter of fact, some of the early expansion that our licensee in the aircraft market, Vision Systems, had done from being just European-based to being worldwide was because of Embraer. And their transport category regional jets are great.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Yep. Do you expect any of the new vehicles for 2025 to be in the middle market for cars?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Yes. Yes, I do. Okay.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Good. Last conference call, you mentioned work on Holy Grail patents. Are they related to the black particle, or is this something?

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Black is certainly the Holy Grail. When I talk about that, it's what the whole industry has been trying to get. We are very excited about the black particle.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

We're experienced enough to know that what we showed at CES was remarkable. I mean, if you saw this up close and personal, you would be extremely impressed with it. We have to go through the from R&D sample stage to engineering sample stage to mass production. Assuming the viscosity and the flow characteristics of the emulsion are similar to the blue, I don't want to minimize it, but it may be simply as easy as pouring different material into the bucket and coating it. There's always adjustments, so I wouldn't expect that to be what really happens. It shouldn't be that difficult of a material to translate up into mass production.

John Nelson
Investor at ANX

Good. Very encouraging. That's all my questions.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Thank you very much. Thanks, John.

Operator

Our next question comes from August Bermann, an investor. Hey, Joe. How are you? Hey, August. How are you? Dr.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Bermann, I must say. Sorry. That's right. Hey, calling. Just wanted to see with regards to the 2025, are we talking about introductions, or do we know it's more about revenues from the new vehicles? I kind of equate them. I kind of equate them for the following reason. In the early days, there would be several years' lead time between when an automaker wanted to think about putting SPD-SmartGlass in a vehicle and when they would put it in because there was testing. Mercedes went through, what they told me, $5 million of testing and built special chambers, and now they use it on all their materials. In the case here of nowadays, there's only a very short time period that's often necessary between when you decide to put SPD-SmartGlass in a vehicle and when it goes in.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

It could be a year, year and a half, and we've been working with some of these companies for that period of time. I think you'll expect introductions in 2025. Assuming the cars come out. That's always the big assumption. Cars come out. Right. Okay. I think maybe part of the frustration last year is we're just looking at the jobs and filings. When I'm mentioning Daimler as SPD, and then I'm looking at the web and seeing that the 2020 S-Class had been delayed, I always kind of try to connect it up there. Are we still expecting the Asian automobile to come out as well in 2025? Yes. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Great. Okay. That's all I had, Joe. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Take care. Our next question comes from Alan Ginsberg, an investor. Yeah. Hi, Joe. One question.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Hey, Alan. Yeah. Hi. The structure of the royalty agreement regarding the black particles, do you expect it to be similar to the royalty agreements that you have in place right now? Yeah. I mean, that's something that we and Gauzy are going to determine, but I don't see a real need to change the royalty arrangement. We get a 10-15% royalty from the customer with the blue material. You would think that because the black is a better thing, we would get more. On the other hand, they would probably sell a lot more of the product or sell it at a higher price. Our royalty could go up just with the same percentages in place. Your protection is similar with the black particle as it would be your intellectual property protection as it would be in your other products.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Is that correct? Yeah. We're very focused on protecting IP, as you could tell. We have 250 patents and equal number of patent applications. It's quite a bit. Okay. Thank you. It's a lot of. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Alan. All right. Our next question comes from Alan Yakubov of Kingsview Partners. Joe, how are you doing today? Alan, how are you? I'm sorry we haven't been able to hook up. I spoke to your partner when you had called, but wasn't able to get back to you. No problem. Just a quick question. You're here, so yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yes, I can. Your royalties are up 47% for the year, and that's great. You're saying you have momentum in all the markets for this year. If you duplicate that number, it's terrific.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I know you're going to have some lumpy quarters from time to time, whatever reason. If you see momentum in all these markets, do you anticipate the possibility of a profitable quarter this year? Can you share that if you have any knowledge? Yeah, sure. Sure. We almost hit profitability this past year, so I'm certainly looking forward to achieving a truly profitable quarter in the coming year. A lot of it depends on the timing. If a car comes out at the end of the year versus the beginning of the year, that affects our royalties. Also, if the architectural retrofit comes out, that could significantly increase our royalties. We are very focused on that.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

The 2026 event that you mentioned or the potential for 2026 is something—can you give us any more detail as far as which markets is that going to address, or is it multiple markets? I would say that the most predictable market we have is automotive. If I'm projecting out to 2026, it's probably on an automotive project and multiple ones, actually. All right. That's all I have. Just want to be brief. Thank you very much. Thanks, Alan. Appreciate it. Our next question comes from William Brazzel, an investor. Yeah. Good afternoon. Hi. How are you? I'm good, but I'm going to go back three years ago because back in February of 2021, this stock was at $3.96. Today, it's up 4.72% to $1.33. One of your earlier callers talked about the problem with the stock prices. Nobody knows about Research Frontiers.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

That's not the problem. The problem is if you go out and do a roadshow now, you'll be wasting your time and the company's money because these broker dealers will not be interested until you have significant revenues, and they will contact you and want to have a dialogue. I mean, we need $500,000, $1 million in revenue is not going to bring them to the table. I mean, I'm surprised that we're not, based on what I knew three years ago, you're not in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and obviously that would take care of the stock price. That's why I'm disappointed, and I'm wondering how much longer this is going to take to have that kind of significant revenue if you can talk about it at all at this point. Sure. Sure.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I appreciate it, and I'm also in agreement with you that the real money is going to come into Research Frontiers as an investment when we have much higher revenues. That's true. We need contracts, and the problem is how to be right. It's hard to be confident in that when I've been waiting for these significant contracts for three years. I am very sympathetic to what you're saying there. We are working, and Gauzy is working as hard as we can to land these contracts sooner, to be able to talk about them sooner so that the stock price appreciates sooner. Of course, the least thing I'm worried about is revenue. It's really what can we say about it, and those are the things we're working on right now.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I appreciate the question, and I am in agreement that our stock price will do much better when we could talk about more of this stuff and have higher revenue. I know these companies, and you have a fiduciary responsibility as a publicly traded company to make those announcements on a timely basis when you do have a significant contract. I'm not worried about that happening, but I sure hope it does happen sometime soon. Right. Right. We try to have as many things in the works so that we could have more and more of those. Okay. I'm hopeful, and obviously, I've been hanging on. Thank you very much, and I appreciate the trust. Thank you for your time. Thank you. If there are any final questions, please press star one on your phone now.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I think we've answered a lot of the questions, and if we haven't fully answered anyone's questions, please feel free to either email us or call us. We're happy to talk to you. I'd like to make a few closing remarks now if I could. For the past several years, you've seen a constant increase in revenues year over year and a steady reduction in operating expenses without a reduction in operational or other business accomplishments. The reason for this is simple. We have a highly desirable and the best-performing smart glass technology in the world. By increasing revenues, reducing expenses, and preserving the best aspects of our asset-light business model, we're steadily moving towards being cash flow positive and profitable. Because of the nature of the industries we're in, winning a project today often results in many years of business.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

The typical car model has a seven-year life, and the typical aircraft model much longer. We go elephant hunting, and nobody is better at this than us and our licensees, and it creates steady revenues from each of the programs that last for years as we land these programs. In areas like architectural, the numbers can be even bigger by virtue of the sheer magnitude of the size of the glass market for buildings and homes. Also, the sales cycle can be much shorter than aircraft and automotive, especially now with the SPD Smart Glass retrofit application. Several of our competitors who have raised massive amounts of money and inevitably spent even more than they raised, notably companies such as View and Halio, went bankrupt this year. Another company just got delisted.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

Part of this relates to the limitations in their technologies, part of this is that they were only able to approach one market, and part of this was simply not paying attention to key areas of their business. By preserving our asset-light business model along the way, we're well-positioned to reduce risks, apply more of our resources towards technology and market enhancements and expansion. We can also leverage the expertise and production capacity and capital and technological resources of a large list of diversified licensees by working with them closely from a technological and business development perspective. This allows us to have a strong presence in multiple industries that others can't, such as automotive, aircraft, architectural, marine, and consumer electronics. With predictable and lower expenses, we can start to pay dividends to our investors more quickly.

Joseph Harary
Joseph Harary
President and CEO at Research Frontiers

I thank you very much for your continued support as we travel together down this road together. If you believe that the future is smart glass, and I believe all of us here do, and you like diversified asset-light companies and a management team focused on efficiency and driving the company towards profitability, then you've come to the right place. Thank you very much. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending.

Executives
    • Joseph Harary
      Joseph Harary
      President and CEO
Analysts
    • Chuck Michaels
      CEO & Chief Investment Officer at Sierra Global Management
    • Jeff Harvey
      Managing Director and Private Advisor
    • John Nelson
      Investor at ANX
    • Avi Gross
      Investment Director
    • Michael Forrester
      Investment Director at Antin Infrastructure Partners
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