Didn't have time to watch the whole thing, so I printed out the transcript:
0:02
Welcome to Alpha Wolf Capital. I'm Tim and I want to personally thank you for stopping by. This channel is designed to
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help small companies, both public and private, gain exposure with potential
0:14
consumers, investors, even partners. Take for example today's guest,
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CEO Joe Harrari from Research Frontiers, Inc.
0:28
Research Frontiers is revolutionizing the way the world experiences glass.
0:33
Their patented SPD smart glass technology let you instantly control light, enhance comfort, and transform
0:42
environments with electronically dimmable glass products. Instant light
0:48
control at your fingertips. Their patented SPD smart glass empowers users to precisely control daylight, reduce
0:55
harsh glare, and reject up to 95% of heat. All with touch of a button or
1:02
through automated sensors. SPD equipped electronically dimmable windows, skylights, sunroofs, and more provide
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enhanced comfort, efficiency, and aesthetics across many industries while maintaining views and blocking out 99%
1:18
of UV rays. This is an impact company. They have a
1:23
report that shows that they can reduce building temperature by 18°.
1:29
Imagine if we have been using this film and all the windows of all the buildings
1:34
that we've built since 1965. Because that's how long this company has been in business. How much energy could we have
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conserved over that time period? I'm going to let I'm going to let Joe
1:47
tell you more about that in just a minute. This is not to be taken as investment advice. I am not a certified
1:53
financial planner. This is for education and entertainment purposes only. I
1:58
encourage everyone to do their own due diligence.
2:04
Here we are inside a factoryinstalled option for Mercedes in the S-Class. It's a SPD smart glass roof. And if I press a
2:12
button, it instantly changes from dark to clear
2:20
and back again. Imagine if we had this technology in every home, building, hotel, where you
2:28
walk in, the room is blacked out just like that. But a $2 sensor picks you up
2:35
and clears out the window so that you can see the view when you leave the
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room. and there is no movement detected,
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what will the window do? It will black out again. How's that for energy conservation?
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And why don't all our buildings have this technology?
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How much energy consumption would we have been able to reduce by using this
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smart glass? Imagine driving your car and you turn
3:13
turn the corner right into the sun and it darkens your windshield, a third of
3:19
it within a second. Doesn't that make sense to you?
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Hey everybody, Tim from Alpha Wolf Capital coming at you with a uh a brand new company, brand new uh interview. And
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uh this is this is actually a company that I I looked into I want to say
3:44
easily probably 10 years ago. Uh I I'm fully aware of this company. never met
3:50
anybody from management but was very intrigued with their product and the uh
3:57
the the name of the company is research in frontier research frontiers inc
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ticker symbol is referr to be confused with marijuana has
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nothing to do with that at all I've got Joe Harrara here from Joe you
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are the CEO of Research in Frontier, right? How long
4:25
you been with them? Well, Tim, I started with Research Frontiers in 1986 when I was a junior
4:32
lawyer on the team that took it public. And in 1992, I joined the company as a
4:38
part-time general counsel. Uh the chairman, Bob Sachs, may rest in peace,
4:44
uh had asked me to work part-time there and have my law firm the rest of the
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time. Uh my wife and I cashed in all of our frequent flyer miles, uh flew to
4:55
Hawaii, sat on a hammock, and stared at the ocean. Came back and decided that we were going to take Bob Sachs up on his
5:02
offer. And he gave me every caveat and reason not to do this. He said, "Joe, we're a small company. We only have two
5:08
lences at the time. Now we have several dozen by the way. Uh and they're all huge companies. But uh you know and
5:15
there's no guarantee that this is going to be successful. But I trusted him because he was the one client I never
5:21
had tone down in his public statements when he said something. You know he had six ways to Sunday to prove it
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scientifically, business-wise, etc. So I knew he was an ethical person and he was
5:33
a smart guy. He had a uh MBA from Harvard and also a degree in physics
5:38
from Harvard. And um how he got started, he was a security analyst on Wall Street
5:44
at what was Cun Lobin Company at the time. And they sent them out to look at smart glass technologies in the early
5:50
60s. And the company they sent them to investigate he said they really don't
5:56
have anything. But in the course of his analysis, he ran across some work that Edwin Lan from Polaroid had done. And
6:04
Edwin Lan invented the first suspended particle device or SPD, which is what we
6:09
call our technology um device. He called it a light valve because just like a water valve will
6:15
control the flow of water, this could control the flow of light. But Edwin Land, as smart as he was, couldn't get
6:21
it to work. and he tried and he tried and he tried and kind of in a funny full circle story uh years later we got it to
6:29
work when we started research frontiers and put in a very sustained and focused
6:35
development effort and about $125 million we got it to work and Polaroid became a lency so the technology came
6:42
full circle back around and something that someone as smart as Edwin Len couldn't get to work Bob Sax could and
6:50
um I said, "Bob, how'd you do this?" He said, "Joe, you got to think like a molecule." So,
6:59
and and by the way, that's what he did. He he was brilliant in that he looked at the structure of the materials that
7:06
Edwin Lan was using and he said, "Well, if I could put a carbon atom here and a and an ionic bond here, I could get this
7:13
to be much better." And then he figured out how to do that and then he did it.
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Unbelievable. So when we're talking about this, you and I, we were talking before we hopped on. This technology has
7:27
been around since well really since what did you say 1935? Oh, I could even go
7:32
back further. Dr. Herapath in England had a dog with an upset stomach. And you
7:38
and I are both dog lovers, Tim. Um, this dog had an upset stomach, so they fed
7:43
him quinine bulfate. And quinodinine was what was used back then in the 1850s to calm the stomach.
7:51
And the dog urinated in a tray of iodine somehow. And these scientists came into
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the lab, they saw this and rather than hitting the dog, they put the crystals
8:04
that had formed in the um in the tray under a microscope and they saw that
8:09
they were really really good light polarizers, these crystals. and they
8:15
wrote up the experiment and nothing really happened. And then Edwin Lan, flash forward to 1934,
8:21
was looking for a cheap polarizing material for sunglasses because back then they used fairly expensive
8:27
materials like tormylene, you know, semi-precious, you know, jewel stones to
8:32
polarize light. And he came across this experiment that Dr. Herapath had done
8:38
and duplicated it using a dog, believe it or not. And uh I kind of kid people
8:44
in the beginning that had we not come up with a synthetic way of doing this, we probably would have had elephants in the
8:50
lab when we got into mass production urinating. But but we you know
8:55
fortunately figured out how to do this artificially. But um but Edwin Lamb then discovered the next part of this
9:01
equation which was if you apply an electric field to these particles they will line up
9:07
and allow allow light to pass through. He called it a light valve, but he couldn't get it to work. It very quickly
9:13
degraded into, you know, a mush, if you will. Okay. Yeah. Think of Edison's
9:19
light bulbs. How many of them burnt out before he got one that lasted, right? Same thing here. Edwin Lan couldn't get
9:25
it to work. Um, but through determination and some very smart
9:30
scientists, we were able to get it to work. And we realized that
9:36
we're good at some things, but not at everything. we weren't going to be able to manufacture this as well as some of
9:43
the large glass companies and chemical companies in the world. So, we
9:49
established a licensing business model where we would license the technology to these companies and let them do the
9:57
heavy lifting, let them build the factories, let them use their sales force to go out and talk to their
10:04
existing customers. And also, we weren't so arrogant. We knew that in markets like automotive,
10:12
we're in five different markets, but automotive is our biggest. Um, in those markets, if you're Mercedes or Cadillac,
10:20
you're going to feel more comfortable dealing with the companies that are already supplying you with glass, right?
10:26
So, we license the who's who of the glass industry. So we had at one point the number one, number two, number
10:32
three, number four, number five glass companies in the world, all licensed to use our technology. So when Mercedes
10:39
wanted to put this in their cars, two of them, their two top suppliers of
10:45
glass were already lences. They just called them up and said, "We want you to supply us with this new thing called SPD
10:53
or suspended particle device, smart glass." and the rest is history. And that was in
11:02
2010. They floated the idea at the first trade show and they told me that if this
11:10
was going to get positive results, they hope to put this in series production in 2011. Now, what I learned after that is
11:18
that they've spent over 5 million euros validating our technology and five years
11:24
of testing. And some of the people actually did their PhD thesis on SPD,
11:30
you know. So, um, they were very serious about making sure that whatever they put in the car was good. And their motto was
11:38
the best or nothing. And we were the best smart glass technology on the planet. We still are. And the
11:44
bestselling. So, they launched this in the SLK Roadster
11:50
in 2011. Um, it was very successful. They didn't know
11:56
how this was going to work out because the SLK was a small car, $45,000 or
12:02
$45,000, and this was a fairly expensive $2,500
12:07
option at the time, and they didn't know if this option was going to sell or not.
12:13
It sold multiples of what their expected take rate was for this. So then they put it in the SL Roadster, which was the
12:20
$100,000 big brother the next year. And then after that, that was very
12:26
successful and the take rates were off the chart from what they expected. So they started to put it in their
12:32
flagship, the S-Class coupe, the Maybach, the S550, the S450. And around
12:38
that time, McLaren started putting this in their cars. And then after McLaren,
12:45
Cadillac approached us and wanted to put it in their new Celesteic, which yesterday was the first day that it was
12:51
delivered to customers, but the glass has been produced already, you know, for that car uh in anticipation of this. And
12:58
then Ferrari. So, we kind of have this really long list and growing list
13:04
because we have a lot of other companies in the pipeline. Just today I actually met with one of them to um get SPD smart
13:12
glass incorporated into their vehicles. So along the way you had this really aggressive intensive testing program by
13:20
Mercedes and um and that gave us the credibility
13:26
to make it into other cars and other markets like the aircraft market, the
13:32
yacht and cruise ship market and now the architectural market. So we're basically in all these different markets now. Um,
13:40
so that's that's that you just nailed. So when I looked into this company,
13:47
it was such a no-brainer to me. I I just thought to myself from an energy
13:53
conservation standpoint, maybe let me back up. Maybe you should
14:00
explain what the benefits. It's not just it's not just that you can shade out the
14:06
sun. You're blocking out the UV rays and you're controlling temperature, right?
14:15
So, when Mercedes first put a small sunroof in the SLK, it was about a half
14:20
a square meter. They did a lot of testing. And by the way, the way they tested this car for
14:26
durability will blow your mind. Um, I mentioned they did five years of testing. Yeah. They did an Endless
14:33
Summer test where they took this car into every hot climate in the world.
14:38
Just like the movie The Endless Summer, the surfers would follow the waves around the world. They were following the sun around the world from the
14:46
deserts of Dubai to Larredo, Texas to Death Valley, pretty much everywhere
14:52
where it's really, really, really hot and really, really, really hostile. And
14:57
they did the same thing on the cold end. They tested this in the Arctic Circle, okay? And they've admitted that these
15:04
conditions just don't exist on Earth, but our customers have to have a car that works. And you know, the postcript
15:11
on this is there tens of thousands of cars on the road today with our glass in
15:16
the roof. The roof is the hardest part, by the way, of a car to withstand the heat. And there hasn't been one reported
15:24
problem ever. Now, I wish I could say that about other things in my car, but the glass is
15:30
really, really robust and good, and that helped us get into all these other markets, too. But, um, but they, you
15:38
know, they really, really kicked the tires hard. And being Mercedes, they also kicked the supply chain pretty
15:44
hard. And that was really good for us as a company because all of our lences had to rise to the occasion and come out
15:51
with a world-class product. And they did. And along the way, we became the industry standard, the gold standard, if
15:58
you will, for smart glass. And there's other stuff that is trying to do what we do or have tried and failed to do what
16:05
we did. But, you know, we just stuck to our knitting and, you know, we had
16:11
blinders on. We wanted to make Mercedes happy and we did. And after that, we made everyone else happy. So, I asked
16:17
you before we jumped on, I asked you, you know, would you credit Mercedes for being the ones to
16:23
to really kind of kick you guys off, right? I mean, here's a company that's been around since 1964.
16:30
I mean it this this is the thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is that we
16:37
have had a technology that if it was being implemented into the
16:43
buildings and the vehicles since 1964
16:50
our energy consumption wouldn't be nearly where it is today clearly. I mean
16:56
there are a lot of things that we could have avoided that we didn't because we didn't have
17:04
the adoption of your technology. Yeah. Yeah. We we have a philosophy um
17:11
which we talked about make the world a better place than it was when you came into it and if you keep doing that the
17:18
world will constantly improve. And we had a mission to make the world more
17:25
energy efficient, more comfortable, more safe. You know, there's safety aspects of this, especially in automotive. Okay.
17:32
Where you can Can you can you can just a temperature inside a car? I live in Vegas.
17:38
Okay. Let me give you an example. So, you leave your car parked outside in on the street in Las Vegas for two hours
17:45
and you come back in, it is very, very hot. Yes. and to the point where and I grew up in
17:51
Florida where same thing happened. You'd go to the beach with your friends, you'd come back and you couldn't sit in your
17:56
car. So what the car makers do is they overpower the air conditioner by a
18:01
factor of 5x so that you'll be comfortable maybe
18:06
within the first five minutes of getting in your car and blasting the air conditioner. Right. Well, well, now imagine you got
18:14
in the car and instead of the car being 90°, it's 72°.
18:21
Well, that's what Mercedes test results show our glass did is it reduced the temperature inside the car by 18° F.
18:30
So, without using the air conditioner, just having the car sitting there,
18:36
not using any power, we've now reduced the temperature inside the car by 18°.
18:42
That means your air conditioning compressors could be 40% smaller. You
18:47
have less weight to travel to bring around because they're smaller. You have more room inside the vehicle, and um
18:55
you're using the air conditioner a lot less. So, what does that mean? Let me let me put some numbers on that one. So
19:02
in a internal combustion engine car, icy ice car, you have
19:10
an increasing the driving range of 5 a.5% because you're using the air
19:15
conditioner less less. Yep. And you're reducing CO2 emissions by four grams per
19:22
kilometer. Now, if you don't know what that means, I'll tell you. In Europe,
19:28
there's a standard that came out that requires car makers to pay a penalty of
19:34
€95 per gram per kilometer that their cars do not meet the emissions
19:41
standards. And they've tried everything. First, they were trying diesel, but then you had the dieselgate scandal, so they
19:48
abandoned that. The glass will save 4 g per kilometer.
19:53
That's huge. Okay, it increases the driving range by 5 and a half%. So, you're getting better gas mileage. Now,
19:59
move to an electric vehicle world. Okay, two things. Number one, you can increase
20:05
the driving range of the electric vehicle also by about 5 and a half% which is huge. I mean, they really try
20:11
to to increase the driving range by hook or by crook to to get these cars to go
20:17
further. But also, if you think about it, you're sitting on a b a bank of
20:23
batteries in an electric vehicle that are underneath your feet. So, headroom becomes very, very
20:30
important to you. So, now let me flash back to 2010. The guy that developed
20:35
this for Mercedes developed pretty much every iconic car that they made from the S-Class on down. But he was a very tall
20:43
person, much taller than me. and he really was sensitive to the fact there
20:49
wasn't a lot of headroom and um he was looking to get a couple inches extra
20:55
inches of headroom, but if you put a pull across shade like you shade most sunroofs,
21:02
you wouldn't be able to do that. Right. Right. So, he needed something that would eliminate the shade
21:08
of the car to increase the headroom. That's where we came in. we were a
21:15
couple extra inches of headroom. That also translated into all those other benefits I mentioned, lower CO2
21:22
emissions, increased driving range, better comfort, okay, all of these things and better stability in the car
21:28
because if you raise the center of gravity of the car by raising the roof up higher,
21:34
you're going to decrease stability. So by keeping as low a profile you can
21:42
actually increase the stability of the car on the road. Now who would have thought that glass would have done this
21:47
smart glass that happened to change tin but these are all the benefits that happened out of that.
21:53
See that's that to me is that's the that's the key right there. Right. So that's what I mean by if we would have
22:00
implemented this right out of the shoot. right now. I guess I guess the the issue
22:07
could have been the cost because the costs are higher when you when you have when you don't have a lot of uh
22:14
production. Right. Right. Right. You have to come up the economies of I used to be an economist at the Federal
22:19
Reserve Bank of New York. We looked at economies of scale all the time. I learned two things that and you can't
22:26
predict micro trends, but you could predict macro trends. And the macro trend is my friend. So I looked at major
22:35
macro trends, energy efficiency, move towards electrification, higher energy costs, uh better safety in
22:43
cars, um you know, and maybe the best thing I could say is and and this is not
22:51
my thought. This was the leading glass consultant in the world who did the building envelope consulting work for
22:57
pretty much every skyscraper that's gone up over the last 25 years.
23:03
He said to a a panel where he was introducing the idea of smart glass and it was not just our smart glass but all
23:09
smart glass but I think he had a special place in his heart for ours because when it came time to put the glass in his
23:16
office he put ours in his office. Okay. But he said you know when it's hot out
23:21
you take off your jacket and when it's cold you put it back on. Why can't your building envelope do the same thing? Why
23:28
can't it work symbiotically with your your your your windows, your air
23:35
conditioning, your mechanical rooms? So, you're in Vegas. You don't have this
23:40
problem. You have hot weather 12 months. Well, 11 months out of the year, maybe
23:47
10. That bad, man. Right. We we we have the opposite. In New York, you have two
23:55
months out of the year where it's unbearably hot. happens to be now. Okay. Uh so you design your buildings for
24:02
those times and you design your mechanical rooms for those times and you
24:07
design your equipment for those times. Okay? So what happens is your building
24:13
has oversized mechanical rooms. That means less rentable space for the landlord.
24:20
Okay? It also means that for 10 months out of the year,
24:25
your equipment is working at suboptimal efficiency, right? Because they want,
24:32
you know, July and August, they want you to be cool. Yeah. Okay. In the winter
24:37
time, you have the opposite. You want to bring daylighting into a structure, but if you put a heavy window tint on a
24:43
building, you're not doing that. So now imagine we change the way these things are thought
24:49
about where our glass, and this is not theoretical, our glass can go
24:57
20 times darker than the darkest window tint you ever see on a building
25:05
to five times clearer or anything in between. And how fast of a time? One to
25:11
two seconds. So there's other technologies that could do the same thing, maybe not with the same range,
25:16
but they could switch from clear to somewhat tinted and it would take them
25:22
on a typical architectural size window 40 minutes. So you flip the switch and 40 minutes later it adjusts. We're doing
25:29
this in one to two seconds. So, you when you and I first talked, you
25:36
gave me an example of something that makes so much sense to me that I I I
25:43
cannot believe that it it isn't in every single car.
25:48
And that is the visor, the third of a window, your windshield.
25:56
I hate those stupid visors that never
26:02
block all the sun and are in your way because you can't
26:08
see through them. So, they're really pretty much useless. I mean, they pretty
26:13
much and if you're tall or short, they're really useless because they're not designed for for for, you know,
26:20
anybody unless you're a certain height. Um, you know, Bob Sachs and I, he he lived in Manhattan, so we would drive at
26:27
the end of the day west into the sunset and we always were talking about the sun
26:33
visor as being the killer app because you have this problem, as you perfectly
26:39
articulated, Tim, of they don't really work well. Now, we're
26:44
going to change the dynamic on that to do what Jim Morrison from the Doors
26:50
said. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. Hands by the wheel. You don't have to touch anything.
26:56
You can hook up these sun visors to a photo cell. So, as soon as you turn into
27:01
the sun, boom, they go dark. As soon as you turn away from the sun, boom, they
27:06
go clear. Or a tunnel. You drive through a tunnel. Exactly. All of a sudden, all
27:12
your windows in your car clear up. You're inside a dark tunnel. But the second, maybe a half a second after you
27:19
leave, all the glass goes dark. Now, if you don't believe me, go on our website, go
27:24
to our YouTube channel, you will see a car that's completely outfitted with SPD
27:30
smart glass that Continental Automotive did this video. And it's incredible because it shows all of that. It shows
27:37
going into a tunnel and having it automatically lighten up. And as soon as the driver comes out of the tunnel,
27:42
dark. Sun visors with multi-segment adjustment. So if the sun is high on the
27:47
horizon, only the top third of the sun visor may darken. So you're not blocking
27:53
the rest of your windshield. If it detects that the sun's a little bit lower on the horizon, maybe the top two
27:59
of the three segments will darken. Uh I'll share with you um a comment made by
28:07
an automotive engineer. So they asked us to actually embed the sun visor inside
28:12
the glass and and we did it. It's not, you know, we could do that. It's easy. Um, and it
28:19
had a three segmented sun visor and we pulled it out of the crate and they sent
28:24
their whole team of engineers over to see this thing in operation. And um,
28:29
they're videoing it and they have their iPhones out and they're taking pictures of it and things like that. And then we
28:35
flip the switch. And I'm gonna clean this up a little
28:40
bit, but Oh, the And I have this on audio from the video. Oh my freaking god
28:49
was the was the reaction. So So it works. It works. So why is it taking so
28:56
long? Well, there's a lot of noise out there. There's different technologies that are
29:01
all trying to do what we do and they're all promising everything including lower
29:06
costs and things like that. Nobody has actually come up with a non-subsidized lower cost than we have. Okay? We don't
29:14
subsidize anything. Our licences are in this to make money and the technology is
29:19
really good and by every right you deserve to make money
29:24
and our licences have built meaningful businesses and they've made meaningful investments in doing this as have we.
29:31
But we always wanted this to be economically viable. And I think the mistake that a lot of our competitors have made is they think that they will
29:39
buy market share by heavily subsidizing the market. And if the technology if
29:45
their technology allowed for that, maybe that's a you know a viable approach. But
29:51
it wasn't. You know, one company that went bankrupt last year, um, they had
29:57
such poor yields and such poor economies of scale and they were throwing away so
30:03
much glass that subsidizing and doing bigger projects just dug them a deeper
30:09
and deeper hole and and you know they say when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Well, they didn't and they
30:16
went bankrupt. So, so Joe, I I I
30:22
am looking at this thing and I'm saying, "Okay, I live in Vegas. All the casinos are glass." I mean, every every one of
30:30
them are glass, right? Uh I look at I look at the cars. The
30:37
visor thing is such I I don't know why every every vehicle does not just have
30:43
your smart glass as a visor. Oh, we'll just add the word yet to that. Okay. Um
30:50
Okay. I the cost has come down a lot since we started and it's coming down even further as more and more cars adopt
30:56
it. So, um so it will get there even in the cost sensitive areas of the market.
31:03
Um right now it's mostly in the al although the first car was an exception. It was a $45,000 car that was able to
31:10
sell, you know, a $2,500 option. Now it's a lot less um expensive for the car
31:17
makers to put this in and they could put it in more and more vehicles and you know we have things in the works for all
31:23
different levels of vehicles. Um getting to Vegas for a minute. Um so imagine I'm
31:29
staying in one of the casinos and
31:35
you look on the outside. It's mirrored glass. Think of the Venetian as gold glass I think. Right. You could do that
31:42
easily with our technology. From the outside, you wouldn't know which glass was smart and which one wasn't. From the
31:47
inside, you have so much heat coming in. So, imagine I left my my hotel room to
31:54
go out to a conference or to go gamble or go see a show.
32:00
The windows in my office have proximity sensors, motion detectors.
32:06
When I go up to the window, it clears up. It's almost like it's reading my mind, saying, "Joe Joe wants to look out of his window." And when I walk away, it
32:13
darkens again. And you can set the interval on how long it takes to darken. It looks like it's magic. It looks like
32:19
it's reading my mind. It's not. It's just simply putting a motion detector onto our glass. Very easy to do, right?
32:26
I think it's a $2 item, right? So imagine now in a hotel where I leave
32:32
my hotel room for the day, how much air conditioning they would save, especially in Vegas, if
32:39
excuse me, if after I left the room, an occup occupancy sensor said there's
32:44
nobody in the room and darkens the glass and then Joe comes in after lunch, maybe
32:50
it clears it up so I can look out at the beautiful Bellagio fountains dancing or something and then boom, it goes back to
32:56
being dark. You're going to save a lot of energy that way. Also, how often do
33:02
you think they clean the the vertical blinds in these hotels?
33:09
I have no idea. One word, never. So, you know, so and then how often how often do you
33:17
think that the me mechanized motorized shades break? One word. Always. Right.
33:23
Right. So, so, so now imagine where you have a window where it does both of
33:28
those things. It doesn't break. There's no moving parts. We've done
33:34
it must be about a 100 million onoff cycles by now. So, you know what? I I
33:41
Joe, I I got to bring this up to you because I literally just went and watched F1 the movie. Yeah. And I don't
33:49
know if you know since we have F1 come to Vegas, right?
33:54
the walkways over. So, in order to keep the
34:01
pedestrians from that didn't pay to see F1 from seeing F1,
34:07
they're literally like coating the the the the bridges
34:14
that glass so you can't look through it. I love it. I love it. Imagine flipping a
34:19
switch when the F1's in town and or you know for other reasons, you know, right?
34:28
I you need to have somebody because I think literally it's a mess. It's a
34:36
mess. They they are like all these walkover bridges over the over Las Vegas
34:41
Boulevard have this glass that they're putting stuff on so that during that
34:47
time period people can't see. Right. Yeah. That is that is like a no-brainer
34:54
in my head. All right. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that like that that are
35:00
not immediately obvious, but then when you think about it and see it become very obvious as good uses for SPD smart
35:07
loss. Um, you know, and and you said we should have people going out and and pitching this what we do and fortunately
35:16
our business model is such that we license our technology. We have about 250 patents worldwide and we license it
35:23
to the hoou of the glass and chemical and automotive and aircraft industry. And you know, you know, you can throw a
35:30
stick at almost any major name and somewhere they've been using SPD smart glass for something. Um,
35:38
but it's our lenses too that are beating the bushes because they have built
35:44
factories and businesses and they have sales forces throughout the world that are out there paying calls on
35:50
architects, paying calls on the automakers, explaining to the automotive engineers what the benefits are. I do
35:57
that too. I did it today with a major, you know, OEM, new OEM that was needed to be um, uh, updated on where things
36:04
were. And um I explained to them this is not science fiction. This is stuff we've
36:11
done now. Yes. I this is what kills me, man. This is
36:16
what I try to convey to everybody about the stock market and the ability to be
36:23
part owner of a company that literally
36:29
changes the world for the better. Right. And if I think we spend a lot of time I
36:36
just look at the two political parties and I want to make everybody understand I don't like any politicians. I just
36:44
don't like look I like you certainly wouldn't hire them for your business. I like logic. I like common sense. I like
36:51
smart. I like this is better for the environment. This is makes sense. I like
36:57
logic. That's what I like. So when I see a company like this that's been around
37:03
since 1965 and it's it took till 2010
37:11
to really have this thing start to kick, right? And I mean when it your glass the
37:18
roofs you can have it in quadrants. We were talking about that. I mean the kids
37:24
are in the back they're watching t you know a movie. They got that thing black as black me, right? I'm in the front
37:30
seat driving and I want to stay awake. I got the sun blasting down on me,
37:37
right? So, how cool is that, right? It
37:42
just this exists. This isn't this is not the Jetsons. This is this is real,
37:49
right? And there are real tangible benefits to this and nobody knows about
37:54
it. Nobody talks about it. Consumers have power. They really do. If if
38:01
because you look when they get behind something, look at Apple, right? Look at Starbucks. I mean, $8 cup of coffee.
38:08
Let's all go to Starbucks. Great idea. I I mean, when we focus on something,
38:14
Reddit, I think, proved with AMC and GameStop, which are two not great
38:20
company mo not. I mean, look, those models are broken.
38:26
But they proved that there is strength in numbers. Clearly. Clearly. You know,
38:31
and if you think about where I think a lot of companies make their mistakes,
38:38
it's taking inappropriate shortcuts. There's a lot of roadkill on the side of
38:45
the road of the smart glass industry from companies that took inappropriate
38:51
shortcuts. And
38:56
the other mistake I think that people make is they make the assumption that something
39:03
is something that it isn't or vice versa. And we have a lot of noise in the market because there's a lot of wannabes
39:10
that want to um be in the smart glass space. And a lot of it is hype. A lot of
39:18
it is things that will work on a very very small scale in a lab. And I remember when we were in a lab, um, and
39:27
there's a huge difference between that and being in the real world. And
39:33
the thing that bothers me, Tim, you you mentioned the frustration of if we did this in the 60s, how much better off
39:39
would we be? Um, there's so many things that I've seen happen in large corporate
39:45
America where stupid decisions are made routinely every day, but they get away with it. And um and there's so many
39:53
things that could exist that don't exist because of that. And the difference often is is somebody determined enough
40:02
to overcome that inertia of the middle manager where it's easier to say no to something and keep your job for five
40:08
years than say yes to something and lose it in three. But your company may not be
40:13
around in five years if you don't innovate. So that's the problem where you end up at the same result. You just
40:20
nailed it. Yeah. So, so yeah, we have a lot of patents, okay, as
40:26
a licensing company, you know, that's that's important. But the real secret to
40:32
our success is smart determination. I spend 150th
40:38
of what my competitors spend and I have more to show for it. Trying
40:44
to be smart, especially when it's shareholder money. You know, I fly economy. It's shareholder money. Not
40:50
when I'm on my own personal vacation, assuming I took one, but for business, I
40:56
fly economy. It's a shareholders money. For marketing, for manufacturing, for
41:01
all of the things that go into a business, you want to get as much bang for the buck as you can, right? And you
41:08
can if you are willing to do the homework and think through these things and come up with solutions that are not,
41:17
you know, let's, you know, my my son is in venture capital. He tells me, you know, you could predict Facebook's
41:24
revenues pretty much to the dollar every quarter. I said, how do you do that? says what you do is you go on Crunchb
41:30
and you see how much venture capital was raised in that quarter
41:36
and every business plan of every startup in Silicon Valley is you take 40% of
41:42
your money and you throw it into Facebook ads. So now we know what Facebook's revenues are going to be
41:49
because she got the leading indicator, you know, crunch face. Um these are
41:54
brain dead um approaches. They'll work for some people. Sometimes they work really well and sometimes they're just
42:03
peeing money down a hole. So, you always try to be efficient in what you do. And
42:09
having determination to succeed, I think was one of our strong suits, you
42:15
know, and Bob Saxs, our founder, said, you know, the difference between uh spending 30 years doing something
42:22
um if you're successful, you're a persistent genius. If you're not successful, you're a stubborn crackpot.
42:30
Well, I think history has shown with Mercedes and McLaren and Cadillac and Ferrari and Boeing and Airbus and um the
42:39
yachts and you know and and the architectural applications that Bob Saxs
42:44
was a persistent genius, not a stubborn crackbot. you know, it was that determination
42:50
um that you know and that culture that was imbued in this company that you know, if you can't do something, it
42:57
doesn't mean it can't be done. It just means you haven't figured out yet how to do it. And that's been something that I
43:03
think has been a mantra around here and why we were able to succeed where, you know, the experts said we would never be
43:08
able to do this. Listen, you're fortunate because I look at I look at companies today that are tackling huge
43:18
problems that nobody knows about them. I mean,
43:23
literally, you're not going to see them on CNBC. You're not going to see them on Bloomberg because
43:29
they're too small. They're just little tiny companies that that built it and
43:34
thought they would come and that's Field the Dreams. That's a
43:39
movie. That's not reality, right? reality is you build it, you think
43:46
everybody's going to come because it makes so much sense and nobody comes and then then it's like literally
43:56
it's painful to try and get people to understand why this is so important
44:03
and why it could make such a huge difference in the world. and and people
44:09
are so myopically focused on their personal lives and their political
44:14
parties and that all this other stupid And I'm sorry to say it that way,
44:20
but it is stupid Yeah, usually the word goes after stupid.
44:26
I learned that in second grade, right? We were diagramming sentences. It's like
44:32
we just get so caught up in stuff that just doesn't matter in 10
44:39
years from now. Not going to matter. Whatever that that protest was, not
44:45
going to matter. Yeah. What matters is stuff like this where
44:51
if there was a a a a a ground swell movement saying why are we not putting
44:58
this on all of our buildings all of our glass buildings why is that not being
45:04
done because it would save energy. I mean, there's this this is such an
45:12
obvious thing to me. This is something that you could feel good about getting
45:17
behind and supporting and saying, "Hey, this is what should be happening. Let's
45:23
make this happen, right? Have a ground swell for that." Yeah.
45:30
Yeah. Obviously, obviously. Um let's make it happen
45:37
needs to have two other conditions which is uh a solution that works has to be
45:43
practical and it has you have to have a team from the receptionist on up that is
45:50
dedicated to making it work and and has the ability to make it work. If you don't have those two things, there's
45:56
going to be a lot of stuff still sitting on the side of the road, you know, that never makes it into the real world. And
46:02
that's the tragedy here is that we can be so much better than we are. Yep. You
46:08
need a couple people with guts, a couple people with smarts, and a couple people that are determined to make something
46:14
happen in a positive way. And you push the other stuff aside. You
46:20
push, you know, you know how we bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.
46:27
You know, Sam Walton, Walmart when he he
46:32
everybody had got shares of stock down to the janitor, okay?
46:39
And when Walmart went public, there were a lot of people that became millionaires
46:44
that I mean, and I'm talking just the everyday employee.
46:51
What happens with Wall Street is the when the private equity and the and the hedge funds get involved,
46:58
all those programs like the janitor getting stock, they go away
47:06
because they try to figure out how to make the company more profitable. Right?
47:11
There are what's what's your your stock today is priced at a a maybe a couple of
47:18
bucks, right? bucks 70 or so. Yeah. You could scrape your couch and your car and
47:26
probably find enough change to buy a couple of shares. Right. Right. No, it's
47:32
it's definitely a a very good buy. And what you said about incentivizing people
47:37
is very important. You want everyone waking up feeling like an owner. And and
47:44
I used to tell a receptionist, she goes, "Well, I'm just, you know, I'd ask her opinion on something. what do you think of this market or what do you think of
47:50
that? She goes, "Joe, Joe, why are you asking me? I'm just a receptionist." I said, "First of all, you're not." And
47:57
number two, you're our director of first impressions. When someone walks into the door, you're who they see. You're who
48:04
they see. Okay? And when you answer the phone, you're who they hear. And you're extremely important part of that
48:10
experience that anyone contacting our company has. So, of course, you're going to get stock options.
48:17
Everybody at my company gets stock options. I even wrote an article for Inc. magazine years ago, which to me was
48:25
common sense, but to them they thought it was startling. It's called Stock Options for All.
48:36
You and I get it, Joe. I wish the rest of Wall Street got it because I I think
48:43
Wall Street is really really screwed up now with the algorithmic trading and the
48:50
you know uh naked short selling and I mean it's just it they make it so
48:55
difficult for small companies to succeed. You know, it's as if you walked into one of the casinos near you and
49:02
there was no regulatory uh environment to prevent a crooked casino from
49:08
existing. Yeah. Right. That's what the market can be like. It's a crooked
49:13
casino. And I remember years ago, we had a fairly notorious short seller
49:18
attacking our company. And I went to the SEC, the NASDAQ, uh when they started
49:25
threatening my family, I went to the FBI. But
49:30
I said, "There's something called naked shorting going on." They said, "Oh, no. There's no naked shorting going on." Um,
49:36
this is Yeah. Unfortunately, one of the biggest profitable areas for brokerage firms is lending out my stock
49:43
without my knowledge and making money on it. And it's against my interest because I want my stock to go up, not down. So,
49:51
you know, I don't keep it in a margin account. you know, you don't you don't do these things to allow them to make
49:57
money on it and go against your interest, but nobody knows about this stuff. And it's, you know, a little bit
50:03
of education goes a long way. That's why Tim, I really love what you're doing, which is educating investors.
50:11
That's what I'm trying to do. I I don't know how that is so important. That is so important because you know at at some
50:18
point you're going to have the fidelity problem where you know fidelity became
50:23
so large it became the market so it was very hard for it to outperform the market right with all these program
50:29
trading and things like that they're going to be having a hard time outperforming you know and as economists
50:35
when you have these kind of things the commoditization of something which is really what these program trading has
50:42
become Okay, all the profit goes out of it. All the ability to make profit. It
50:48
becomes a commodity. It becomes something where you know you're going to eat along with a very very modest
50:53
return. So the only way I know is to step outside that box.
51:01
But people feel they don't have the tools or the ability to go up against these large brokerage firms and these
51:07
program trades and these hedge funds that are doing this. And they can. And if you look at our
51:15
shareholder base, it's mostly very wealthy, very smart people. A lot
51:20
of them are scientists and made their money in science related businesses, but made a lot of money doing it and have
51:26
huge positions. It's not the institutions that are
51:32
Yeah. So, so, so something's happening. You know, I feel as though the investor
51:38
is becoming a thing of the past, right? I mean, everything's about the fast money. And look, Warren Buffett, average
51:45
holding time, 10 years, right? This company has been ex in existence
51:52
since 1964. I bought my first share in 1987.
51:57
Oh, okay. All right. So, I've held it for a while. So, I'm I'm sitting here thinking to myself, okay, look how long
52:06
this is. This is to me a no-brainer technology that should have been being used since 1975,
52:14
right? I mean, it literally should have been being used the entire time. We'd be in a very different place if if if we
52:21
were using it, right? Yeah. So, it's taken that this. That's what I mean by
52:26
the adoption curve, right? I mean, it's uh I knew I I I met the guy that
52:33
actually came up with RF RFID. Yeah. 20 something years ago.
52:41
It It took that long for it to be adopted. It's just like I don't know
52:48
what it is. I mean, look, I I'm guilty of it. I held my Blackberry phone
52:53
for for way too long while everybody else had smartphones, right? I I like my
52:58
Blackberry. But, you know, there's a thing to be said about let's look at what something
53:05
does. Let's make the case that this is much better than what we're currently
53:10
doing. And then if every look if this is the one thing that the retail investors
53:16
have a big advantage in when it comes to a small cap company
53:23
because the funds have gotten so big 10 billion 20 billion 30 billion and they
53:29
invest as a percentage of their portfolio.
53:35
They can't even look at a small cap that's got a 50 or a hundred
53:42
million market cap. They can't. I mean, they just And and a lot of the funds, they can't invest in stocks that are
53:48
below five bucks and they can't invest in stocks that are below a buck.
53:53
That's an advantage to the retail investor, believe it or not, because you can get
54:00
into an amazing company like this that I think could make the world a much better
54:06
place in and in in several areas, right? Not just one, a lot of areas. And
54:15
then you get behind the company and you start asking communities, why are we not doing this? Right? I mean, force it to
54:22
happen, force it to be used. There is hope, Tim. There is hope. I'll give you an example. So, um,
54:31
there's a company that makes construction equipment. And
54:37
they took what I would consider a non-obvious use of our technology and
54:44
incorporated it into their construction equipment. What was it? It's a windshield that has a transparent OLED
54:52
display, but now transparent OLED, it's just like OLEDs that you have on your TV, except
54:57
that they're transparent, so you could put them on things like windshields. But the problem is daylighting will wash
55:04
out the image. So they said, "Aha, put an SPD film
55:12
next to the transparent OLID." And when it's too bright out and you're washing out the image,
55:18
darken the SPD film. And when you want it to be completely clear, lighten the
55:23
film. And I was at CES and I saw this
55:29
earth mover and they had a augmented reality windshield
55:36
and it used our technology and transparent lid technology in combination and they were superimposing
55:44
on the windshield where all the gas lines and electrical lines were in this field that the guy was digging.
55:50
so he doesn't inadvertently cut a gas line. Right? So here's a very practical
55:56
application. Increases safety, increases productivity.
56:02
Right? So there's a lot of things that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface on at Research Frontiers. So I
56:08
want you I want you just brought you just hit you just nailed one of the biggest uh so I have been on
56:16
a company for five years that literally identified underground utility location
56:23
as a problem. There are 400 people that die a year from accidental utility
56:29
strikes. Okay. Yeah. Because the stuff's been in the ground for how long and we
56:35
don't know where the hell it is. It's on asbuild plans which are paper somewhere.
56:40
Who knows? Right. Right. There's 35 million miles worth of utilities in the
56:46
United States. 35 million. To put that in perspective, we have 2.6 million miles of paved road.
56:56
Okay. 35 million miles of utilities and we don't know where the they are.
57:03
Right. There is a guy that came up with a software
57:08
system that can identify underground utilities within centimeter accuracy.
57:15
I have been talking about this company for five years
57:20
and I just the other day saw another gas line was struck. somebody died
57:27
and it I start out first I'm s I'm I'm sympathetic to whoever lost a loved one
57:34
and then I get frustrated because I have been talking about the solution for this
57:39
for five years and the traction of getting
57:46
construction insurance uh municipalities
57:53
nobody gives a and and and it's like I don't get it. The company is
58:00
struggling because they can't they don't have a massive sales force. They can't
58:06
do a huge marketing campaign. It's a little company that solved a
58:13
billion dollar problem. This it cost this country between 30 and 50 billion a
58:20
year plus the deaths. Yeah. And I think to myself,
58:26
why? Why? These things don't have to happen. There is a solution. They don't have to happen. And that's the tragedy
58:32
here is that, you know, there's many solutions out there and they have to
58:38
bubble to the surface. And um and some companies have the wherewithal to do it
58:45
and some don't. Um and this is where Wall Street is all jacked up because
58:50
here's the deal. You get these companies to go public, you tell them they're going to get institutional investors.
58:58
No, they're not. When they're little, they're getting retail investors and that's all they're getting, right? And
59:05
retail investors are emotional and don't know what they own and they don't know how the capital markets work, which
59:12
makes it even worse, right? So you look at this whole thing, this whole system
59:20
and NASDAQ just raised the minimum. You used to be able to IPO for $5 million.
59:28
Now it's 15. Who does that help? Does that help the
59:33
small company take a risk and uplift? No. You just
59:39
made it harder for that little company, right? That's what we seem to do. We just seem to keep making it harder for
59:45
the little guy and more lucrative for
59:50
the NASDAQ. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's what you did. We were a $5 million IPO
59:57
in 1986. Bingo. And we didn't need more money than that and we didn't want to
1:00:04
dilute our shareholders more than that. And you know, we've been very cautious ever since. So now they're creating an
1:00:12
adverse incentive, a perverse incentive so that you have to go to the
1:00:19
alternative sources for capital which are not Does that mean you're a better business or you're a better company? No.
1:00:24
What it means is you have access to capital. Yeah. That's what it means. Right. Right. Not not that you're a
1:00:31
better company or or or you know there were it's worth NASDAQ's time to think about you at 15 million where it's not
1:00:38
at five. Right. Exactly. And that's what disgusts me because the small business
1:00:45
is the is the economic engine of this country. Certainly is. It certainly is. Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla are the
1:00:55
next Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Apple or Tesla is not going to come from
1:01:00
Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple or Tesla. It's going to be some little company that
1:01:07
comes up with something big that people recognize and that's going to be the
1:01:12
next one. Yeah. But if we keep making it difficult for the little guy to get list
1:01:17
to even get to the to the field to play the table. Yeah. Right. If we keep
1:01:23
making it more difficult, we're not going to have them. They won't come. We're just we're we're literally
1:01:31
being anti-inovation, anti-ingenuity, and at this particular point in time, I
1:01:37
think we need to be all of that and more. So, absolutely. I mean, Joe, this
1:01:42
has turned out to be an amazing interview. I mean, I really truly we haven't I really enjoyed our
1:01:48
discussions. I really do. Tell me tell me tell me real quickly how many shares outstanding fully diluted. Uh it's about
1:01:55
36 million fully diluted. 33 and a half on a straight basis. No debt. No zero
1:02:02
debt. Zero debt cash for the long haul. Very modest expenses. Our burn rate is
1:02:08
about $200,000 a quarter. So, you know, and one car,
1:02:15
one aircraft makes us profitable. So, you know, we're on the cusp of becoming profitable. Um, I've given up on trying
1:02:23
to predict publicly. I I have my own spreadsheets that show things pretty
1:02:28
clearly, but I won't say them publicly because there's always things that could happen between the cup and the lip. And
1:02:34
I, you know, I don't want to be unfair to people by um giving them expectations
1:02:40
that any need to raise capital at all, Joe. Not unless it's strategic. I mean, if Mercedes came to me tomorrow and
1:02:46
said, "Joe, we want to put 20 million into you." I'd figure out how to take 20 million from them. But um just to just
1:02:52
to get get them a little more pregnant, you know what I mean? But um but uh but no, we don't we don't need capital. Um
1:02:59
you know what we what we need is um what we have is a very loyal shareholder
1:03:06
base. We're very very fortunate uh to have a very loyal shareholder base that
1:03:12
understand what they've bought and they understand the time frames and they understand how we're going to get across
1:03:18
the finish line in every one of our markets. It's always going to be a different way for each market, but it's
1:03:24
the same technology and the same basic approach, you know, and you win you win a ball game by hitting singles and
1:03:30
doubles and triples, not necessarily home runs and grand slams. um you know
1:03:35
what what are you most excited about within the next Do you feel as though
1:03:40
you potentially have some catalysts in the next 6 to 12 months? Yeah. So so
1:03:46
what I'm the most excited about Tim first of all is our pipeline. Um the
1:03:51
frustrating part about the pipeline is you can't always talk about it because the customers are trying to do their own
1:03:58
thing. Um, I respect that. As long as they pay their money, they and use our
1:04:03
technology, I know that everything else comes along. Uh, but I'm very excited about the pipeline. I'm very excited
1:04:09
that a lot of the noise that has been out there, even though there's been more and more entrance, a lot of people are
1:04:15
realizing that some of these technologies are just not as advertised, you know, and um, and they're not able
1:04:22
to deliver what we've been able to deliver reliably. And you know we have the credibility which uh you know
1:04:29
through Mercedes and McLaren and you know Ferrari and and um and Cadillac and
1:04:35
Boeing and Airbus and all of these household names that have entrusted
1:04:41
their products to our technology as part of it. Um and that builds on itself. It
1:04:48
builds on itself. Um, and I'm just excited that we have a good team of
1:04:54
lences around the world that are also similarly understanding what they have
1:05:00
invested in as as lenses and what the potential is for the market and how they
1:05:06
can make a lot of money and make the world better by doing this. And
1:05:11
architecturally, I mean, and we talked about it before we hopped on. You have
1:05:17
essentially what you've done is you don't have to replace the windows. You actually have a uh you come out, they
1:05:23
measure the window, and they you put a window on the inside of the window, right? Yes. And it's it's like buying
1:05:30
carpet. um you know, you uh you go to the store, you pick out the color, they
1:05:35
come and measure your house, they order it from the mill, it shows up and it's installed, and you have new carpet. We
1:05:41
now have basically carpetized the smart window market. No one else can do this. And um and um in terms of
1:05:49
near-term catalyst, that's probably the biggest one because I know what's coming in automotive, I know it's coming in
1:05:55
aircraft, I know what's coming in the marine market. Um, you know, those have
1:06:02
longer sales cycles, but if you wanted this in your home this year, you could get it in your home this
1:06:08
year, you know, and through a retrofit. And what would that do to your power
1:06:14
bill, right? We've done some Well, the hardest thing to quantify is
1:06:21
what the question you just asked because every building is different. It's different. I'll give you I'll give you a
1:06:27
simple example. You have three buildings identical in the same block in New York. One houses a retail store, one houses an
1:06:35
accounting firm, and one houses a law firm. They're going to have totally different energy footprints. The law
1:06:41
firm, you have people working from 8 a.m. to midnight. Yeah. The accounting firm, you have people going in and out a lot, but really not the same hours. And
1:06:48
the retail store has its own, you know, traffic pattern, right? So, it depends
1:06:55
on the use, depends on where the exposure is. Is this in Manhattan? Is it in the UK? Is it in Las Vegas? But what
1:07:03
we've seen typically is you can reduce your air conditioning bills by about 20%.
1:07:11
Yeah. Now, I'm saying smart deployment of SPD in the right areas. Yeah. Now,
1:07:18
the other other benefits here, you have a nice view. You have a a high-rise apartment. Go to any high-rise
1:07:25
apartment, you'll see the vertical blinds are completely wide open. They paid a premium for the view. They don't
1:07:30
want to block it. Well, now they get there's couple hours a day when they either have to close those blinds, which
1:07:36
is a little bit of a chore, or they leave them open and suffer. now changed the equation where you could just
1:07:42
basically take a remote control. Little key fob like this operates some
1:07:48
of the windows in my office and open and there you go. Or talk to my Amazon Alexa. I better not say it too loud
1:07:54
because the window inside will turn on. But I can control my windows with an Amazon Alexa. Yep. Or a photo cell. Have
1:08:02
it automatically adjust. There's so many different things you can do here. And
1:08:07
it's simple. It's it's not rocket science. It's not science fiction. It's basically simply interfacing,
1:08:15
you know, an intelligent control system of some sort, whether it's a dimmer switch, a smart speaker, a photo cell,
1:08:24
AI, whatever. Oh my god, I got to the windowing
1:08:30
telling it to darken. I think I think this is an exciting company that has been ignored.
1:08:38
I can tell you this. I I'm look I looked at the chart and so you know I'm not I I
1:08:44
was always a fundamental guy but and I never could understand what the hell is it looking at a chart going to tell me
1:08:51
about a stock and then like 17 years ago I took a course in technicals and now
1:08:57
it's the first thing I look at. Right? What I've learned is that price action
1:09:05
can actually tell you a lot and areas where there is congestion that
1:09:10
tells you where supply and demand is, right? So, there are things that you can tell from the chart and I can tell you
1:09:17
this. So, you just had a a massive pop, right? From uh 90 cents right up to
1:09:26
about I mean up to two and then it came back down. So, two round numbers are a psychological thing
1:09:34
for for human beings. So those always have significance when it comes to
1:09:39
trading. Uh but what was what was the spike from 90 cents up,
1:09:46
Joe? What was that? There's a number of things. Um Mercedes introduced a vehicle
1:09:52
at the um uh Shanghai Motor Show uh where they were kind of using our
1:09:58
technology in a different way than in the past. Not just in the sunroofs, but in the side windows and a concept. I
1:10:04
think that got people's imagination going as to other uses for the technology. Um, you know, we've had a
1:10:11
lot of singles and doubles and triples that once you clear out the person that
1:10:18
has to sell their stock to pay for a wedding or whatever it is, you know, creates, you know, positive price
1:10:24
action. You know, ultimately in a company like like ours or any small cap or micro cap company, it's not the
1:10:31
fundamentals so much that move the company as supply and demand for the stock that will move the stock price.
1:10:36
So, if somebody is making a wedding and needs to sell something or has a margin call because of something else, right?
1:10:43
Has to sell something, right? That can affect us. You know, what we learned to
1:10:48
do though is obviously you tell the story as broadly as possible, Tim, and
1:10:53
you're a big part of helping us with that. Um, because I think you have an informed audience um that, you know,
1:11:00
understands what you're telling them and why it's important. Um, but also, you
1:11:06
know, we stick to our knitting. We don't get ahead of our skis. We don't, you know, we are out there beating the bush
1:11:13
every day. I mean, if I told you my day today, it was constant, you know, meetings with prospective customers for
1:11:20
the technology, right? Um, including major auto companies. Why? Because those
1:11:27
seeds that get planted grow and they grow faster when you have other seeds
1:11:32
that are growing around them. And we've had those other seeds. You know, we had good success in each of the markets
1:11:38
we've been in. And you know, and we're fortunate that we actually have five markets to go after, whereas most smart
1:11:45
glass companies will pick one. Usually it's architectural and usually that's a very tough market to break into because
1:11:52
it's not predictable. You have I I think I mean, as I look at
1:11:58
it, I mean, I've always thought when I looked at this company years and years ago, architectural was the thing that
1:12:05
that was just in my head. I just thought you guys it was a no-brainer home run, right? Same here. By the way, if you
1:12:12
told me that a price sensitive market like automotive was going to be our bread and butter, I would have said, you
1:12:18
never would have thought that, right? Yeah. I would have thought not. You're nuts. But you know what I learned to do is realize that I I don't have a
1:12:24
monopoly on the truth here. you know, and if you adjust, if you adjust and and
1:12:30
are able to build a business model that could adjust, you know, I I once gave the analogy about how to build a good
1:12:36
company. I said, "What you need to do is" and and I was lecturing a group of
1:12:43
um engineering students at a at a major engineering university and I was saying,
1:12:50
you know, if you can build something that has the resources of an aircraft carrier and the maneuverability of a
1:12:57
skiboat, you've built a good company. And then I figured out that's what we did through a
1:13:04
licensing model. We have the resources of an aircraft carrier. We have the
1:13:09
world's largest glass companies, the largest car companies, the largest chemical companies, the largest material
1:13:15
science companies, all involved as lenses. That's the aircraft carrier. But
1:13:22
Research Frontier sits at the focal point at the steering wheel of all this with the maneuverability of a speedboat.
1:13:29
I need to all of a sudden move from automotive to construction because of
1:13:35
this breakthrough we had in the um in the retrofit application. I don't have to spend money
1:13:42
to do that. I just need to turn the wheel, you know. Yep. Yeah. I mean, look. Yeah. I think
1:13:50
this is the story here is I I look at everything from a riskreward, right?
1:13:57
Yeah. 90 90 cents. It It was not an accident that it bounced off of there because you had some real real
1:14:03
congestion in that area. You can see that from the Oh, well, actually, you can't see it because I have a green line
1:14:11
and because I have green screen, you actually can't see the line. So, that's uh Let me change the color of that line
1:14:18
real quick. Um,
1:14:30
let's see. Okay.
1:14:36
So, if let's go with a blue.
1:14:42
There we go. And then I'll change one more.
1:14:53
Okay. So, if you look at the 90 cent area, that
1:15:01
isn't an accident that it found support there because you can go all the way back
1:15:07
over here and that is in 2019
1:15:13
you had support at 90 cents. So, isn't it something that it just came down here
1:15:19
in 2024 and found support there and then it came
1:15:25
down and what you just did was you did what's a called the double bottom test.
1:15:32
So, in other words, you hit the low, which was a previous low back in 2019,
1:15:39
you bounced off of it, and then you came back down and you tested it again, and
1:15:44
you bounced right off of it again. So, that's a double bottom, which is a bullish formation.
1:15:51
And then you did something interesting. you broke above the long-term downtrend,
1:15:58
which the longer the trend, the more dominant the trend, right? So, you have
1:16:04
a dominant downtrend from the upper left to the lower right.
1:16:11
You actually So, and and it's tough to get break through that because it's like inertia, right? So when something's got
1:16:18
momentum, you have to have something of greater or equal to break that momentum
1:16:24
and go the other way. So it's tough to do, right? So you have a long-term trend
1:16:29
down. Well, you just broke it. You didn't hold it. You but you did pierce
1:16:35
it, right? And now you're at this area of about a buck 65, buck 70 that's
1:16:43
acting as support. And that is an area of congestion right here. It's acted as support. It's acted
1:16:49
as resistance. So that's a little battleground.
1:16:55
I have a feeling what I try to do is I try to match up a
1:17:01
good-look chart setup with a fundamental story.
1:17:07
and you because I think your odds of of are of of having a a home run
1:17:13
increase significantly when you match up technicals with fundamentals, right? And I think the second half of the year,
1:17:19
Tim, when the retrofit starts to, you know, come out, that'll have a
1:17:25
meaningful impact on our revenue. That's predictable. We we'll have other meaningful impacts from pipeline things,
1:17:32
but that is kind of a a sea chain. So that's So that's what I try to do. So, I've got a chart that is telling me it's
1:17:40
trying to break the long-term downtrend. So, you were in this trend for one, two,
1:17:47
three, four, five years. That's been a downtrend for five years,
1:17:53
right? You break a fiveyear trend, and this is where it's breaking.
1:18:00
This could be the beginning of a five-year uptrend, right? a whole new
1:18:06
trend and that's where you are right now and you are also there fundamentally
1:18:12
from what you're telling me because you've got I think this is a very exciting time for
1:18:20
research right uh my I don't tell people what to do I
1:18:26
don't tell them to buy I don't tell them to sell it's not what I do I'm not a financial adviser what I would say
1:18:33
though is This the riskreward here is definitely in the
1:18:41
reward fave. I mean, if if you go to zero, Joe, are are you going to go bankrupt on me in the next year?
1:18:49
I mean, you've only been here since 1965. Yeah, right. I I don't think we're going anywhere except up. But, uh, but
1:18:56
we and by the way, we're also very very conservative on fiscally, so we're not
1:19:01
going bankrupt. Okay. So, my downside risk is maybe I go back
1:19:08
down. I I I test 90 cents. If it did do that, I would back up the
1:19:14
truck. That's where I would load up, right? I would start here and and start
1:19:20
dipping my toe. So, what I would tell people is if you don't, you know, this
1:19:25
is the thing. You hear the you watch the video, you see this, it sounds good. Two weeks from now, you forget all about it.
1:19:32
and you're back in the your everyday life and you forget about research,
1:19:37
buy it. Buy one share. Buy one share. I could tell people to buy one share, right? Because what
1:19:45
happens when you buy one share and you go to their website and you sign
1:19:50
up for their email alerts and you are now invested. You have one
1:19:56
share and you will pay attention to what's happening with the company. You will regret that you only have one
1:20:03
share if it takes off and goes to 10. But at least you participated, right?
1:20:09
It's worse to not participate at all. At least you have one. Right? That is what
1:20:16
I am starting. That's that's actually a CEO of another company said that on in
1:20:22
one of my interviews and when he said that I thought that was the most brilliant thing I think I've heard
1:20:28
anybody say because he's right I mean buy one share see what happens right I
1:20:36
think you have a fantastic story there's a lot of history here there's a lot of stuff we didn't talk about Hitachi
1:20:42
Mercedes a lot of stuff fascinating stuff to me I love stories like this and
1:20:48
and I love the fact that you are doing you do something that makes it more
1:20:55
comfort quality of life improves quality of life right I live in Vegas I would
1:21:02
like to have those windows on my house right now because it is hot as hell yeah
1:21:07
I don't I don't think any company could ever go wrong by doing something that has a societal benefit
1:21:13
if we can make people's lives better will be a market and people will understand what that market is and they
1:21:20
will act on it and they will buy it. Yep. So there may be competitors out there that try to have their claims.
1:21:28
This is the real deal. This is a proven company that the deserves the support of
1:21:34
the consumer, right? That really deserves the support
1:21:39
of the forget the new guys that are trying to come out with bogus claims and all this stuff. support this company.
1:21:48
Simple. And you could feel good about doing that, right? So, that's that's
1:21:53
where I'm at. Joe, if I could if I could leave your your viewers with one thing,
1:22:00
go to smartglass.com and look at some of the videos and understand none of this stuff is
1:22:07
computerenerated. None of this. It'll blow your mind what's possible. It'll
1:22:13
inspire you. not just about us but in general that people can do things that you didn't
1:22:19
think were possible. Yes. But this these shareholders that have been holding in
1:22:25
and in invested in this company, they deserve to be rewarded for their
1:22:31
patience, right? And for supporting the company. So I I I think it's time that
1:22:38
you had your time in the sun, right? No pun intended.
1:22:45
But I do think that it is a deserving company. So here's what I want to do.
1:22:50
This is our first interview. I think it's going to be an amazing I think it's an amazing interview. Uh when when do we
1:22:56
have you back, Joe? Whenever you want. I enjoy our discussion so much. I really do. So
1:23:04
anytime you want, Tim, I'm listen I I learn from listening. So keep talking.
1:23:10
When when do we when do you feel as though there could be an event or
1:23:17
something that we'd have you back and maybe want to update shareholders on?
1:23:25
Well, I think when the retrofit comes out, which we're saying is the second half of this year, so we're talking, you
1:23:31
know, Yeah. Well, starting in a week. Um,
1:23:38
okay. But yeah, I I think I think that uh you know, are you going to be doing any shows uh any uh the what what what
1:23:46
shows would you be going to conventions and stuff like that? Would you Well, there we just got back from the um
1:23:52
cruise ship design show. Okay. Miami. And that was phenomenal because um
1:23:58
everybody there that was relevant to our market knew about us, knew about SPD,
1:24:03
knew about our licenses, right? And they're able to put a face with the name
1:24:10
so that now they know how to get, you know, move things forward, you know,
1:24:15
faster, if you will. Okay. You know, you have a number of car shows coming up in
1:24:20
the fall. Um, in the summer there's, you know, there's a lot of prep activity,
1:24:26
but um, but I think what you're going to see is, you know, um, we, uh, we really,
1:24:34
you know, work towards the seeds that we've planted, making sure they sprout, making sure they grow. And the new seeds
1:24:41
that we're planting now with the retrofit are also something that we're very focused on right now, which I think
1:24:46
is going to be huge because it's enormous potential revenue and very
1:24:52
visible benefits to the consumer or to the building owner or facility manager.
1:25:00
The the the builder show is in Vegas. Yeah, the one it was in February. Yeah,
1:25:06
I like going to that. Next time I come, I'll look you up. Okay,
1:25:12
absolutely. Yeah. Okay. CES is always good. So, I'll make sure that I see you
1:25:18
in January of this coming year, too. You'll see me every month in Vegas for
1:25:23
something, maybe. All right. That that works for me. Joe, look, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to do
1:25:28
this, and it was a pleasure. Yep. We're we're going to have you back. I think
1:25:34
probably as soon as I see a headline that I think is is really worthy of maybe going beyond the the press
1:25:40
release, right, and explaining how important that is to the to the company and what it could mean. And I think
1:25:47
people will see good things happen with the company. You know, we, you know, we have a very easy to understand business
1:25:53
model. We license technology. You get a 10 to 15% royalty. We have no debt. We're very conservative and we're in
1:26:01
very big markets and we have other people doing the heavy lifting. So these are the kind of things that you know
1:26:07
hopefully make me look smarter than I am. I think you're a pretty smart guy. All
1:26:13
right, Joe. Thank you so much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it and uh I can't wait. All right, hold on one
1:26:20
second. I'm I'm gonna shut this off. Thank you for tuning in to another CEO interview here at Alphawolf Capital.
1:26:27
Today we had Joe Harrari from Research Frontiers, Inc., ticker symbol REFR.
1:26:35
I hope you enjoyed today's interview and if you did, do us a favor, give us a like. How about giving us a share? And
1:26:41
while you're at it, make sure you smash that subscribe button. All of those things are extremely important to us
1:26:47
here at Alpha Wolf Capital, and we want to thank you for taking the time to do
1:26:53
that. Until next time, stay safe. Alpha Wolf Capital wishes you the very best of
1:26:59
success.
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