Research Frontiers Incorporated (NASDAQ:REFR) Q3 2022 Results Conference Call November 3, 2022 4:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Joe Harary – President and Chief Executive Officer
Operator
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Research Frontiers Investor Conference Call to discuss the Third Quarter of 2022 Results of Operations 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 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.
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 e-mailed to it prior to this conference call, either in their presentation or as part of the Q&A session at the end.
In some cases, the Company has responded directly to e-mail questions prior to this call or will do so afterwards in order to answer more questions of general interest to shareholders on this call. [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
Thank you, Bailey, and welcome aboard. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter of 2022 investor conference call. In our last call, we discussed how inflation and recession would probably not affect our business and the reasons for that. We were also asked about the energy situation and its impact on our business, especially in Europe. We also discussed in our August 4 conference call, new cars being introduced in the third and fourth quarters of this year as well as other developments in the smart-glass industry.
Let’s see today how well we did so far with our predictions. A quick financial summary. As noted in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, fee income from the automotive and aircraft markets were up this quarter. Expenses were down in the third quarter compared to the prior year. Expenses in the third quarter were also $192,000 lower than in the second quarter. It’s not bad for an inflationary environment, and we run a pretty tight ship. And our net loss this quarter was $258,000 lower than the previous quarter.
We remain in strong financial condition. We raised capital on favorable terms continue to have no debt. And as of September 30, 2022, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $4.8 million, working capital of $5.2 million and total shareholders’ equity of $5.4 million. We expect to have sufficient working capital for at least the next five years of operations. This is based upon our further reduced quarterly burn rate of $250,000 to $300,000 with higher projected revenues during the next 12 months, mostly from new car models.
In our last conference call, we spoke about new car models being announced in Q3 and Q4 of this year with our SPD-SmartGlass technology in it. This has indeed happened as we had indicated, with Cadillac launching the Celestiq for delivery to customers towards the end of 2023 and earlier in 2023, another sports car maker in Europe, delivering cars to customers, offering an SPD-SmartGlass panoramic roof. The Cadillac four-quadrant SPD-SmartGlass roof is the largest piece of automotive roof glass ever produced and its standard equipment.
The other car and SUV crossover although it looks very much like a sports car, offers the panoramic roofs as an option, but if you want glass, it’s only SPD-SmartGlass. So one introduction from U.S. car maker and one introduction from the European carmakers, we’d like to win the Triple Crown and it looks like we will. This month, we expect yet another car maker this time in Asia to introduce a vehicle with higher volumes than the other two that will offer SPD-SmartGlass.
Moving now from automotive to the aircraft market and other mass transit vehicles, such as trains and specialty vehicles. In aircraft, last year, there were significant new projects in the aircraft industry, including the ACJ 220 program by Airbus, Comlux and Vision Systems also SPD electronically dimmable windows by vision systems in the new Epic aircraft and in the Daher TBM 960 aircraft. Two of these aircraft were on display at the NBAA aircraft convention in Orlando two weeks ago.
And I must say that it was — I was quite impressed at how our technology looked and performed in the aircraft. Some of the new specialty engineered materials by Gauzy and vision systems that are used in conjunction with SPD are really amazing, very well done. Vision Systems also had a nice booth at the NBAA, that follows on strong exhibitions by Gauzy and Vision Systems at InnoTrans and Glasstec, both in Germany and September.
I also want to congratulate Vision Systems on the great successes they revealed in October with newly announced projects for SPD Smartclass, which include 17 aerospace programs, 9 marine programs, 9 specialty vehicle programs, 3 railway programs and 3 RV programs. InspecTech SPD aircraft window business also picked up this past quarter. Let’s look at some other economic trends.
And forgive me, I used to be in a federal reserve economist. So I can’t help looking at various aspects of the world economy, especially when they have useful leading economic indicators. As noted, we set up our business to be resistant to inflation and recession. However, there is also a concern expressed in our last conference call about potential supply chain and energy issues. I’m happy to say that in these areas, it’s not all gloom and doom out there, and we and our licensees remain relatively unaffected.
First, we need to look at the way our licensees use energy. Gauzy’s facility in Germany does not need high-energy machineries such as smelters. They basically just need to keep the temperature inside their facility comfortable and within certain levels for accuracy. They reported to me that they do not need to raise prices and pass on higher energy cost to their customers.
Also in Europe, natural gas prices dropped 70% since their record highs in August when we had our last conference call. Shipping costs are down to — about two weeks ago, I read an article, which observed that while recently, and we all remember this, there was an epic backlog of container ships waiting to dock at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
At one point this year, that back out stretched 109 ships deep and almost 60 miles from the coast. But now the shipping situation is almost back to normal with the number of ships waiting to drop off their goods standing at just four according to the Wall Street Journal. Plus the cost of sending a 40-foot container from Asia to Los Angeles has plummeted from its peak of more than $12,000 to almost $2,000, which is nearing its pre-COVID average.
In our last conference call, I reported on multiple car models that were expected to come out in the near term using our SPD-SmartGlass technology starting in the second half of 2022 — sorry, 2023. We’ve already seen the indications of cars coming in North America and Europe with new cars expected to be announced this month coming out of Asia with much higher volumes. It is expected that these cars will all start to be delivered to customers during 2023.
The preparation for the production ramp-up has already begun. We also noted earlier increased economic activity in other product areas, including multiple programs by Vision Systems, Gauzy, AGP, which is now producing SPD for two new car models coming out next year and LG display with their transparent OLED display products using SPD film. We have seen major exhibitions of SPD at InnoTrans and Glasstec in Germany.
The Aircraft show in the U.S., the Specialty Vehicles show in Europe and is expected that Gauzy and Vision Systems and perhaps others will have their largest exhibition ever at the upcoming CES show in Las Vegas in early January. Unless for Vision Systems at the Marine Equipment Trade Show in Amsterdam November 15 to 17. It is the largest show of its kind in the world.
In our last conference call, I noted that my internal estimate was that these near-term automotive introductions can use more than double the amount of SPD film sold by Hitachi in our best year so far. I also noted that Gauzy has made substantial additional investments in expanding production capacity, quintupling production capacity for SPD emulsion — we get our royalties on the selling price of SPDM products.
And one of the most important and accurate leading economic indicators of sales levels of SPDM products is the sales levels of SPD film, which goes into all of these end products. So the capacity ramp-up and hiring from Gauzy and others is probably the best indicator of near-term sales and royalty income.
With that, I look forward to answering your questions. And we took some of the questions previously sent in by our shareholders that were emailed to us. And in some cases, I’m going to combine several related questions into one.
Question-and-Answer Session
A – Joe Harary
John Nelson asked, why did Research Frontiers do the $4.6 million private placement on September 16, 2022? Any more specifics on potential use of the funds, when will investors in the deal be revealed, complements to you on a well-designed private placement that was very protective of existing shareholders?
Well, thanks, John. And there are several reasons we did it. First, fiscal responsibility and strength and also flexibility to pursue future opportunities should they undoubtedly arise, also showing customers that they’re part of a stable and reliable supply chain is very important and a strong research on tiers, coupled with strong license fees is good for our entire industry.
We’ve seen companies like you have even their existing customers look for alternatives because of their airline financial health and uncertain future. And as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you look at what other public smart window companies have done, just in the past month, View has doubled and Crown has tripled the number of shares that they have outstanding and highly diluted financings that just buy them months more of life. And I predicted that in prior conference calls.
Just this year-to-date, View has seen its shareholders lose 68% of their value as of yesterday, and Crown’s performance was even worse with their shareholders losing 93% of their value. And we know from experience that they have quite a road ahead of them because they have yet to deliver a product to their launch customer, receive feedback on their narrow film strips, design and build their production line and then generate revenue.
Our shareholders have placed their trust in us, and we never want to have our shareholders even remotely risk such a tragic result. In fact, I think the market certainly realizes that we are a well-run company with excellent and stable growth prospects. As of yesterday, our stock was up 30% this year in the bad stock market, where even after a record October, the Dow is still down 12%, Nasdaq is down 34%. The S&P 500 is down 22% and small caps in the Russell 2000 are down 21%.
One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that unless you want to substantially dilute your shareholders with desperate equity offerings at very low prices, the best time to raise money is when you do not need it. And if we don’t use it, we can always return it to shareholders in the form of dividends or use it to accelerate the growth of our business.
Getting to John Nelson’s next question about who invested. Another thing I’ve learned over the years is it’s not how much money you raised is as important as how you raise it and with whom you raise it with. And we are very fortunate to have some very large individual shareholders who already have substantial positions in the Company.
And institutions that started investing with us as far back as the 1990s involved in the last offering. They understand where Research Frontiers is and where it’s going, and we’re willing to accept restricted stock, which has a holding period. And now there’s a strong network of investors who participated in this offering, and we’re very fortunate to have them supporting our efforts now and in the future.
Another question. Joe, in the last conference call in August, you shared some general observations about the economy, inflation, the effect of a recession and other trends. What is your opinion about the automotive industry in general since we expect much of our near-term revenues to come from it?
Well, thanks for the question. Speaking generally, I had indicated in the past that I thought that the higher end of the automotive market would do well. We also saw this during the world economic crisis of 2008 when luxury carmakers had rapid profits during major economic, general economic downturns and financial crisis.
Last month, automotive news noted that sales of the ultra-luxury cars are booming this year in Europe with companies such as Bentley, Ferrari and Lambergini, shaking off supply concerns to lift a segment that is becoming more and more profitable. So if someone who studies economic history, I’m not surprised by this. Speaking more specifically, there will be winners and losers in the industry.
I think the wild-wild days of investors selling massive amounts of cash at start-ups like the EV market are over for the foreseeable future. There are just too many companies that have gone public and raised massive amounts of capital only to spend it all and crash and burn. And I think you’ll see more activity from the well-established companies. Porsche had a very successful IPO, other well-established players in the automotive industry also have gone public or spun off divisions.
These well-established automakers have also announced massive investments in going all electric. This is also being accelerated by government mandates and incentives in this area. And remember that these government mandates all help research frontiers. First, for the next 15 years or so, we don’t expect cars will be all electric. And the carbon penalties in Europe of €95 per gram per kilometer that carmakers in Europe face for their internal and combustion engine fleets is helped by the 4 grams per kilometer carbon reduction that SPD-SmartGlass can offer.
And for the accelerated adoption of electric vehicles, we can help there, too. The estimated 5.5% increase in electric vehicle driving range that SPD-SmartGlass can achieve makes electric vehicles more economical and desirable to own and operate. And the 30% investment tax credit from the Dynamic Glass Act for smart windows also helps to make SPD-SmartGlass more affordable for architectural applications, both residential and commercial.
And there’s another important macro trend to note in automotive, and this is the pronounced movement towards large panoramic roofs. Bentley has noted in their public presentations that a stationary SPD-SmartGlass roof can save 54 components and eliminate 13 pounds of weight in the roof of the car. And the larger the roof, the more you need SPD-SmartGlass for shading because traditional pull-across mechanical shades are not feasible for large roof areas.
The public is also beginning to publicly note that unless properly shaded, panoramic roofs can cause an otherwise wonderful car to become an oven. Independent test by Mercedes and others show that SPD-SmartGlass can reduce temperature inside a vehicle by 18 degrees Fahrenheit even when it is just being used on a small roof. Imagine making your AC compressors 40% smaller and getting in your car and having the interior temperature be 72 degrees instead of 90 degrees without having to use your air conditioning.
A related question. Joe, we see published reports and articles that the Hyundai Grander will be introducing a smart glass roof. What can you say about this car?
Well, thanks for the question. I follow Hyundai quite closely, and my wife, Rebecca also drives one. They do make great cars. Why do I follow Hyundai? Oh, they’re a strategic investor in Gauzy, and that should tell you something. There are also a high-volume mid-level manufacturers, so not just premium cars.
And Hyundai Motor Group is also a strong number two behind Tesla and EV sales. In fact, Hyundai said that so far this year, its EV sales rose more than 27% from a year earlier. They also raised our EV sales target for 2023 by 40% to about 300,000 units. Hyundai said it will focus on luxury models, SUVs and electric vehicles to achieve what it expects to be a record high earnings this year.
If I had to make a prediction here and nothing has been announced yet about the car, but the first official announcements is expected to come out later this month. Have a look at how cars have historically been launched with our technology at other automakers. They start with a selected car model. This may not be the most expensive car, but sometimes it is as in the case of the Cadillac Celestiq.
The first car model within a car maker for SPD is usually the one that has the development budget for a new option to be featured and the proper timing for introduction. Once SPD is developed and validated within an automaker and it starts to be deployed on other car models within that automaker as well. This happened at Mercedes, at McLaren and all indications are that this will also happen at General Motors.
Sometimes an automaker will take an established technology, and now we are considered a reliable and established technology in the auto industry due to the tens of thousands of cars that we’ve been deployed on without any reported problems. And they may use it on the upper end flagship and then let it propagate down to the lower-priced cars.
Staying with Hyundai for a minute, let’s take Hyundai’s flagship, for example. It’s Grander, the code name is GN7 is their flagship sedan, and it goes by the model name Azera in markets outside of Korea. According to some industry publications and nothing official yet, the seventh generation Grander’s release date for both the electric vehicle and nonelectric versions is expected to be August 1, 2023, and preproduction sales of this car are quite strong and it is in high demand.
I watch Hyundai and this car very carefully, and it’s a beautiful car, and it is known to be loaded with useful features and technology. Another area I watch closely is the SUV market. As noted with Hyundai and their affiliate Kia, SUVs play an important role in automakers’ revenues and profitability.
Another trend I noticed is that carmakers that are known for their sports cars such as Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari or for their luxury sedans such as Rolls-Royce and Bentley have all introduced SUVs recently. These newly introduced SUVs are quite popular in the luxury segment and now account for high profits as much as 2/3 of their revenues.
In this area, I note that McLaren’s CEO, Michael Leiters became CEO on July 1 after Jobs as Chief Technology Officer at Ferrari and a product line Director at Porsche. They had success with the Porsche Cayenne and the Ferrari Purosangue, which incidentally has a beautiful smart glass panoramic roof, which I’m quite fond of. And I’m not the only one found at the glass roof in the Ferrari Purosangue. Benedetto Vigna, the CEO, Ferrari, said this in his recent quarterly conference call.
Let me tell you one thing that the Purosangue has, a lot of accessories, a lot of options, a lot of opportunities for personalization because we’ve been reaching the offer. I mean, we mentioned just one that is very interesting is the electrochromic glass roof. It’s very, very interesting. It’s very well appreciated. And this is quite a popular car.
The Ferrari Purosangue was unveiled in mid-September, and shipments are expected to start in early 2023. Production for the life of this car is almost already sold out. Ferrari sold 11,155 cars in 2021 and is on pace to sell over 13,000 cars in 2022. The Ferrari sticks to its goal of limiting production of this car to — I’m sorry, yes, if Ferrari sticks to its goal, which they’ve stated of limiting production to 20% of their total, we’re talking about over 2,600 Purosangue cars per year. But Ferrari may also go above their self-imposed 20% limit because of this overwhelming demand and the desire to take good care of existing Ferrari owners who very much want this car.
And as I noted earlier, some of the SUV makers are having as much as 2/3 of the revenue come from the SUV premium segment. Getting back to McLaren, they said they’re not ruling out having a McLaren SUV as well. And given the popularity of the SPD-SmartGlass roof within McLaren, can tell me that their customers love it, and it is a highly taken option for our percentage, the CEO’s experience at Ferrari with the Purosangue and the strategic contribution of SUVs to revenue and profit at luxury carmakers, this can be a quite nice development for research frontiers.
Another question. I note that LG Display has been quite active combining their transparent OLED technology with SPD starting with CES in 2022. And then in September at two major trade shows in Germany, how big can this market be for research frontiers?
Well a report just came out this morning about this. It estimates the global transparent display market size at about $1.26 billion in 2021 with a compounded annual growth rate of 45%. Interestingly enough, Smart Glass in particular, is highlighted in this report as one of the factors for the high growth rates in this market. If you’ve had the opportunity to visit CES, Glass Tech or InnoTrans, you’ll see what a great job Gauzy and LG display did in making a transparent window, turn into a high definition and vibrant television using transparent OLED technology and SPD film. It’s very, very cool.
While we’ve discussed a lot of exciting topics so far today, and I’ll now ask our operator, Bailey to open up the conference call to any additional questions people participating today might not have already had covered. And if we haven’t fully answered any questions that were either e-mailed to us or in their presentation today or in the live Q&A, please feel free to call or e-mail than encourage it.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jeff Harvey. Jeff, your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst
So my question is — so I understand that SPD roof will save energy on an EV. The question is how many EVs are going to have roofs at all? I mean how — what — do you have any feel for what percentage of new EVs are going to carry a panoramic roof, — that’s really the just as a whole.
Joe Harary
Yes, it’s a great question. So what we’re finding is that if you can control the shading, roofs are very popular. And if you can make them stationary, which is what you’re seeing now the panoramic groups, you save a lot of weight and also components. A couple of EVs have had massive complaints, though about their panoramic crops that didn’t have a shading system. And customers have resorted to all sorts of ad hoc solutions to try to solve that. And the carmakers are not unaware of that. They actually have approached us because they know that they have a problem that needs to be addressed.
But getting back to your question, typically, what we’re finding in the mid-level and upper level market is about 80% of the cars in the United States have Sunroofs, it’s a little different in Europe. Historically, Sunroofs have been less popular in Europe. They’re certainly popular in the Middle East also. And depending on the styling of the car, you usually see this more on the luxury cars and also on the support of your cars. So I think it’s going to be a big market. But — I’m sorry, go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst
If you were to guess like on the, say, the $30,000 to $40,000 range, how much added cost would it be for somebody to order one with an SPD roof? I mean that’s really the thing we have to discuss is it’s an extra cost. It is not a cost and it’s then — and as you said, if they’re getting 80% of people are ordering panoramic roofs then it makes a lot of sense.
Joe Harary
Right. So there’s two aspects of that question. So number one is, what does it cost the automakers? And then what do they charge the customer. And typically, the customer is going to pay 3x to 5x what it costs the automakers for a component for an option because that’s where they make their money. But that’s going to depend also on what the market can bear. And let’s just take a present example.
If you look at the McLaren, for example, it roof is about $8,000, okay? But it’s the same glass, the same roof, actually the same supplier as a $2,000 retail roof at Mercedes. So it depends on what the market for the car will bear, the same glass, same supplier, but a much different retail price. So, it’s up to the automakers to decide how much they think they can get and still maximize profit and revenue.
But the good news is, on our end, we’re focusing on the cost side of the equation. We want to make this as affordable as possible for even mid-level cars. And some of the cars that I mentioned earlier in the call are actually mid-level cars that have panoramic roofs and are specking in SPD.
So, I think it’s going to be a popular option even at the mid-level. Just seeing the unit volumes, the premium market is about 3% of the unit volume of the car market. If you did get down into the mid level, you’re talking about many, many, many multiples of that in terms of your home…
Unidentified Analyst
To get into that space.
Joe Harary
Absolutely.
Unidentified Analyst
Absolutely.
Joe Harary
And that’s always been our goal and that’s always been the focused effort that we and Gauzy and our other licensees have had is to get into that mass market.
Operator
And our next question will come from Michael Kay.
Unidentified Analyst
Joe, could you clarify. You said fee income increased compared to the previous quarter and also to the one in 2021. But I looked at the SEC filing, and I could be mistaken, so I apologize, but it seemed that there was a sell-up decrease in fee income in the…
Joe Harary
If you read the press release and what we said is that when you exclude the one-time items from last year, fee income last year to this year is up in automotive and aircraft. And last year, we had some collections from license fees that were in a different period than when they were incurred, which contributed to a higher amount and also some other one-time things like new contracts and large payments under them. So, if you just compare apples-to-apples last year versus this year, we were higher this quarter than the same quarter last year, and we were certainly higher. And I think this is more relevant also last quarter to this quarter in terms of our revenues.
Unidentified Analyst
And when will the sun guard come out that’s supposed to have been for the cause that could be fitted onto existing cars, Isn’t vision systems going to market that eventually?
Joe Harary
Yes. The sun visor you’re talking about…
Unidentified Analyst
The sun visor, yes.
Joe Harary
Right. Right. That’s being worked on not only by Vision Systems, but by others as well. And you’re also seeing it incorporated into the windshield itself on some cars like the McLaren where they build it into the laminate itself, which is kind of cool.
Unidentified Analyst
But would people eventually be able to buy it separately and install it under existing cars?
Joe Harary
Yes. Yes. And aftermarket sun visors…
Unidentified Analyst
I think that would be a big source of revenue because people wouldn’t have to actually buy just the car that had it already. And if they could just install it themselves…
Joe Harary
I agree. I agree. And people like to upgrade their cars. And that seems like a very not only practical but interesting way of upgrading your car that puts something very, very cool in it.
Unidentified Analyst
And are you not allowed to name the sports vehicle that you mentioned that has installed SPD?
Joe Harary
I’m not yet allowed to name it, but I think that everybody can probably ascertain from the timing of the introduction in mid-September and the fact that they’re very well known for their sports cars and some of the comments by their CEO, what I’m talking about. If you look back on this conference call, you’ll probably be able to have a reasonable degree of confidence.
Operator
And our next question comes from John Nelson. John, your line is open.
Joe Harary
Thanks for the earlier questions also. Appreciate it.
Unidentified Analyst
You’re welcome. I just feel real good about the course that you’re taking. And again, the private placement, I think, was excellently designed and executed. So thank you from one of your shareholders…
Joe Harary
Thank you, Tom. I appreciate that.
Unidentified Analyst
I’ve got a couple of questions. One is related to a kind of an offshoot of transparency, Anderson Corporation, and you Ubiquitous Energy, announced plans recently in a press release in August to develop energy-generating windows and doors without aesthetic compromise. And so my question is, is Reefer working with any glass or window manufacturers on using SPD in this space, which is being called transparent solar for windows and doors?
Joe Harary
Yes. Yes. So actually, one of our licensees, Vision Systems had the Energia window, which was a transparent photovoltaic. So very similar to what Anderson was starting to work on today, but this was years ago that can generate 20x more power than the window needed. And one of the hallmarks of what we do is we use such low power that things like even low-efficiency transparent photovoltaics can work well with us.
And what they did is they actually had an aircraft window where it would be completely self-powered. Now not only is that important because of the energy savings but also the installation. Imagine just snapping this in and some of their videos, you could actually see them snap this into the side of an aircraft, and it’s in. So you don’t have to wire, you don’t have to sort of pretty much literally plug and play.
And it was generating so much extra power that they put a USB charging port on it so the can power your cell phone also. So very, very feasible to do. A lot of the transparent photovoltaics that we’ve seen though have been ones where you can see visible lines in the glass. And for a lot of window applications, you don’t want that. And I don’t know if this ubiquitous energy has that.
I’ve seen a number of companies, some came out of Princeton that have been working with and things like that, where they have a fairly good aesthetically pleasing transparent photovoltaics and you might as well use the real estate on your window to generate power if you can. And certainly, that’s very feasible because of our low power consumption.
Unidentified Analyst
Well, it might be something worth FPD investigating as far as whether they could be combined with the transparent solar.
Joe Harary
Yes. No, we very much have development work going on in that area.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Terrific.
Joe Harary
Yes. A lot of that also just to be kind of fair to people’s expectations, our costs have come down a lot. The cost of any new technology typically starts out high. So I think it remains to be seen whether some of these transparent photovoltaic technologies will be economically feasible to be adopted. But that’s not — that’s kind of independent of us. What we offer not only is a smart window but probably one of the largest markets for self-powered transparent photovoltaic for a window.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Got it. Second question is. Do you know at this time whether the magic group on the 2023 Hyundai Grander would be offered as a single option or part of a package on unlimited or a broad set of the model tanks for that for the Grander?
Joe Harary
I don’t think that decision has been made yet. I don’t think it’s going to be standard equipment, but I don’t know if it’s going to be part of a stand-alone option like Mercedes, did or part of a package. I hasten to add, it hasn’t been officially announced yet. So…
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Got it. Right. And last question regarding the Research Frontiers press release on October 17. You mentioned 41 Vision Systems contracts in transportation.
Joe Harary
Very impressive, they have been busy.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. Were the…
Joe Harary
I know the question you can ask me, how many were new and how many were legacy ones, most were new.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes.
Joe Harary
Most were new — that’s all I could say. But — they’ve been very active.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. Okay, excellent.
Joe Harary
I wish I could own those guys there amazing.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. And then well, the other subset question for that one does — you’ve got in this the listing specialty vehicle contracts. Does that category include automotive, automobile companies, such as Hyundai and the…
Joe Harary
No, but remember, Vision Systems is licensed for certain things and automotive passenger cars is not one of them, although I wouldn’t mind if they got involved with that. Specialty vehicles are more like harvesters and construction equipment and things that have a lot of glass that really have a need for solar control. I mean if you — you wouldn’t think about it, but if you said a big harvester, it’s a lot of glass in there and throughout in the field, and you want to make sure that you don’t have to truck around the second air conditioner just for the cab of the harvester. So, this is where the glass really helps.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. And the last one is related to the sun visor update that a previous questioner mentioned. Do you have any comments that you can give us on a timetable for that product?
Joe Harary
Not that I could share.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thanks.
Joe Harary
Thanks a lot, John.
Operator
And our next question will come from Alan Ginsberg.
Unidentified Analyst
My question is this. It seems like a lot of things are coming together now and from all of what you said.
Joe Harary
It wasn’t an overnight success. I’ll assure you and you assure me also.
Unidentified Analyst
Believe me I know it’s not an overnight…
Joe Harary
You know the hard work that went behind it.
Unidentified Analyst
I’m not — I understand. My question is this, with everything coming together, wouldn’t it be prudent, especially since you have some money now to increase your investor relations. I mean, the stock, you could tell me that the stock has been doing better, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it has no volume. And from what you’re saying, it could really do very, very well in the future, much better than what we’re talking about in the past year. And wouldn’t an increase in exposure to investors be something that you would think would be a good timing right now?
Joe Harary
I think that increasing our investor relations, especially since we have so many good things to talk about to investors is appropriate. How quickly and how much we ramp it up is a different story? But right now, I focus obviously, as a shareholder, I’d like to see our stock price always be higher. It’s where my net worth is. But I also have to focus on the business, and that’s really where I would have been really focusing on. And I think that as we generate revenues, the population of investors that will invest in Research Frontiers growth and my wife likes to invest in companies that pay dividends. I’d like to be a dividend-paying company very soon so…
Unidentified Analyst
But maybe you could hire a few people or one person that would have explanations.
Joe Harary
We do have an Investor Relations function working.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Joe Harary
Thanks, Alan.
Operator
And at this time, there are currently no more questions. I will hand the call back over to you, sir.
Joe Harary
Thanks. And I’m just going to make some closing remarks. Some people have chosen to throw enormous amounts of money at this industry, and they have high labor costs and high raw material costs and high manufacturing costs and high levels of capital expenditure and high levels of debt. And resources, of course, are necessary to build and grow in the industry. However, I believe that the way that some of these other companies are doing it is not the best way.
And based on their existing cash positions and what they had to do to raise money and their high cash burn rates, which are 10x to 30x higher than ours and the method of doing business. By the time we have our next conference call, these companies may be close to being completely out of business or have terrible and unrecognizable balance sheets. But we chose to take a different approach and it’s quite straightforward. Approach is to have the best-performing technology even if it starts out as being like any new technology, more expensive.
Then we get the best people to work with us. And then together, we were required to get the cost down. And the way we set up our industry for SPD is to have these great companies deploy large resources in a sensible way. We’ve done this in some of our licensees. They hire the best people, make focused decisions and expand what they’re doing as their customers’ need for SPD-SmartGlass expense. And a great example of this is what Gauzy has done. I mentioned in our last conference call that they have expanded their emulsion production capacity by 5x.
In the last month or two, you’ve seen where a lot of that activity is being directed. — in new cars. And just for this year, there was one in the U.S., one in Europe and one coming out in Asia, new trains and aircraft, new types of information displays and other projects that use SPD-SmartGlass and SPD film. And while we can’t always say directly what specifically our licensees are doing, many times, they put this information out there and plain site. And many of you have pointed out the job creation from SPD, and we’re quite proud of that.
Look at the job creation at Gauzy, Vision Systems and AGPs surrounding their SPD-SmartGlass businesses and also at their customers. You can also ascertain from their hiring where these companies are moving. They’re growing quite nicely in strategic areas around the world and in strategic industries. Energy efficiency, business efficiency, logistics, transportation and the way people live, work, move and interact are all things that we strive to make better.
And history has shown that the best way to predict the future is to create it. We and our licensees are doing that, not by swinging for the fences in an irresponsible way, but by clearly seeing the path where key decisions and key industries are moving. We’ve seen this in the form of large strategic investments by a number of our licensees from AGP to Gauzy to Vision Systems and others. You’ve also seen this by their customers demonstrating what could be done to make cars more comfortable, efficient and safe. Train and air travel more enjoyable, energy-efficient and entertaining. You’ll see this in our homes and our offices.
We’re a green company with the goal of making lives better for people. We are doing this through the conservation of energy, the more efficient delivery of information, the improvement of existing products be that sure windshields, side windows and cars and trains and planes, sun visors or even TVs in your homes. In many respects, the challenge has not been with the technology, which is now very mature, reliable and established to be able to be mass produced.
The challenge has been helping the makers of these existing products understand what SPD smart technology can do to help them. And with each new product introduction, whether it’s a new car model, a new way of using our SPD technology such as what LG is doing for televisions and transportation windows for trains, what BMW and others have done with adaptive headlights and heads-up displays or other products and other vehicles.
Each one of these introductions of products that are enhanced using SPD technology adds to the public knowledge and awareness of how to make products better, more efficient and more enjoyable for the user. We’re also quite proud of the way we have accomplished these achievements and our efficient use of resources to get to be the leader in the smart glass industry. Research Frontiers is financially strong and very well positioned for success.
And the leading indicators of economic activity are all positive for us. Our licensees have expanded their production capacity, major customers such as Hyundai have invested in them and our projected product pipeline through the end of 2023 is quite strong. Going back to the macroeconomic trends, electric vehicle adoption has accelerated at a much higher rate than any of us originally anticipated just five years ago.
Almost every major car company in the world has now announced they’re going all electric. And for the cars that are not electric, during this time, we’ll be able to help them reduce their CO2 emissions by as much as 4 grams per kilometer. Glass is a highly desirable building material, making homes and offices more functional and livable.
With our technology, we also bring beneficial day-lighting in when people want it, keep unwanted UV heat, light and glare out and save energy in the process. In vehicles such as aircraft trains and, of course, cars, we give passengers a better connection with our outside world and block harmful UV heat, light and glare, while enhancing security and privacy. We have worked hard to get here, and we’ll continue to work hard for you, our shareholders, and we appreciate the trust and support that you’ve put in us.
Thank you. And please vote if you have not already done so.
Operator
Thank you. And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
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