Presentation
Management
Research Frontiers Incorporated (REFR)
Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 14, 2019
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Presentation
Management
Operator
Operator
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Research Frontiers’ Investor Conference Call to discuss the Fourth Quarter and Full Year of 2018 Results and Recent Developments. During today’s presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today. A replay of this conference call will be available starting later today in the Investors section of Research Frontiers’ website at www.smartglass.com, and will be available for replay for the next 90 days. Safe Harbor announcement. Please note that some of the comments made today may contain forward-looking information. The words expect, anticipate, plans, forecasts and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions that are part of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements reflect the company’s current beliefs and a number of important factors could cause actual results for future periods to differ materially from those expressed. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our filings with the SEC. Research Frontiers undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect new events or uncertainties. The company will be answering many of the questions that were emailed to it prior to this conference call, either in their presentation or as part of the Q&A session at the end. In some cases, the company has responded directly to email questions prior to this call or will do so afterwards, in order to answer more questions of general interest to shareholders on this call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference call over to Joe Harary, President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Frontiers. Please go ahead, sir.
Joe Harary
Analyst
Thank you, Erica. And good afternoon everyone, and thanks for being here. Joining me today is Seth Van Voorhees, our Chief Financial Officer. We have some very exciting developments to talk about here, but before we do that, let me jump right into the numbers briefly. If we use the same accounting standards as last year, royalty income would have been about $65,000 higher than last year. As I noted in the past, as cars get further and further away from their initial introduction date, the total number of cars produced each year declines. So to maintain steady royalties under that environment requires higher and higher take rates for options. To put this also in context, if we look at Gentex as a good example of a company – that has a technology-based product in the automotive industry; in their last report for the fourth quarter, they reported net income down 19% and a decline in revenue on vehicle production concerns. So there were some headwinds in the industry that we overcame with higher royalty income this year versus last year. 2018 also represented the fourth consecutive year that expenses at Research Frontiers have decreased and the fifth consecutive year of lower operating losses for your company compared to the prior year. On a cash basis, our expenses were down by over $40,000 in 2018 versus 2017. We came in at a net loss of $0.02 per share, which is right in line with analysts’ expectations for the fourth quarter results of operations. During 2018 we also solidified our balance sheet by raising $3.25 million in additional capital from long-term investors in February and September, and since then we received over $1.1 million from the early exercise of warrants by these investors. We are in good financial shape with plenty…
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Thomas McCarthy from Raymond James. Please state your question.
Thomas McCarthy
Analyst
Joe Harary
Analyst
Thomas McCarthy
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Joe Harary
Analyst
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. Please state your question.
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Joe Harary
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Operator
Our next question comes from John Nelson [Private Investor]. Please state your question.
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Joe Harary
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Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Mark Raymundo [ph]. Please state your question.
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Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. Please state your question.
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Operator
We have a follow-up question from [indiscernible]. Please go ahead.
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Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Claire Horton [ph]. Please state your question.
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Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] At this time we have no further questions.
Joe Harary
Analyst
Okay. I’d like to make some closing remarks. We have a number of growth areas for our business in automotive. Our largest market right now is automotive and the focus has been on reducing CO2 emissions and we can save 4 grams per kilometer of pollution. And with the new standards coming in Europe in the next few years, this amounts to a savings of about €380 per car in and avoided penalties from the regulators. There’s also a pronounced movement towards electric vehicles. Our SPD-SmartGlass technology can increase the driving range of electric vehicles by 5.5%. And electrification is a the cornerstone of Audi’s future and they recently announced that they will debut 30 electrified vehicles by 2025. Their parent Volkswagen Group, which also owns such brands as Porsche and Škoda, sold over 10 million cars in 2018, but only 40,000 of these were plug-in electric cars. That’s less than 0.4%. Volkswagen announced today that they plan to produce 22 million electric vehicles by 2028, a 47% increase from their previously announced electric vehicle targets. Today we spoke about not one but four new car models using our SPD-SmartGlass technology. I can assure you that this is not the only new cars we will be speaking about in the next few conference calls. 2019 and 2020 are expected to be the big beginning of highly significant years for us in the automotive industry. Trains are doing well and could be our second biggest market over the next few years, but there’s some possible and exciting major developments and programs in the aircraft market that could keep aircraft as our second biggest market next to automotive. And with the introduction of a wider and less expensive film and competition among SPD filmmakers; Hitachi and Gauzy, all markets will benefit. And it also opens up for the first time the very large potential architectural smart glass market. Our licensees have made substantial investments in the coming success. They see it coming and are acting upon it. Many investors also have seen the success coming. New investors have established large positions in Research Frontiers. Existing long-term investors have also added to their positions. They also see our coming success and have acted upon it. Almost all of the warrants issued in connection with our February offering were exercised more than four years before they were set to expire, bringing in over $1.1 million in additional capital to our company. Investors in the September offering have also begun to exercise their warrants to increase their position in Research Frontiers. We all see the successes in multiple markets that are rapidly coming. We are working hard to expand upon these successes and there’s no shortage of opportunities for us or our technology, and we’ll look forward to sharing this success with you, together. I also want to thank everyone for participating on today’s conference call and your support over the years. Thanks again.
Operator
Operator
This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending.