Good afternoon, and welcome to Research Frontiers' investor conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and year-end 2025 results of operations and recent developments. 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. Some statements today may contain forward-looking information identified by words such as expect, anticipate and forecast. These reflect the current beliefs and actual results may differ materially from those expressed due to various risk factors, including those detailed in our SEC filings. Research Frontiers assumes no obligation to update or revise these statements. [Operator Instructions] The call is being recorded and will be available for replay on Research Frontiers website at smartglass.com for the next 90 days. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe Harary, President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Frontiers. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Paul, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our year-end and fourth quarter 2025 Conference Call. 2025 was a year of not just incremental developments but structural adjustments in the supply chain and meaningful expansion in our automotive pipeline, architectural retrofit execution and new product development and capital positioning. This call is important because when you step back and look at 2024 and 2025 together, the trajectory of this becomes clearer. We have maintained production continuity in automotive through license transitions, expanded OEM engagement with high unit volume vehicle programs, allowing cost reductions by our licensees and expanded engagement through other areas of the vehicle besides just the sunroof. We've seen Ferrari expand production of cards with SPD-SmartGlass and Cadillac enter the market with SPD. We've seen Mercedes showcase SPD broadly in a concept vehicle and launched architectural retrofit initiatives. We've seen advancement in the Black SPD development. We've strengthened our balance sheet. And our licensees, and I think this is important, are making new investments that are specific to SPD business, and they're moving forward and winning new business. We're going to talk about that later. I'll begin with financial results and our recent financing and then address Gauzy directly and then transition to the significant positive developments that have occurred since our last conference call. For the full year 2025 and continuing in 2026, we remain debt-free. We strengthened our working capital. Our royalties improved when adjusted for onetime licensee events early in the year. And let me now just address our February financing directly because we've gotten some questions about it. And keep in mind, I'm trying to save time by answering as many questions as possible. And I have basically taken questions that have been given to us and included many of them…

With that, I look forward to answering your questions, and we'll first include some of the questions previously sent in by our shareholders in -- so first, without pulling any punches, here are the additional questions we received that were e-mailed to us. And in some cases, I'm combining several related questions into one. And also, we covered some of these topics earlier, but I thought it would be helpful to you to hear some of the questions and for me to go into more detail. Joe, how concerned are you about Gauzy's French rehabilitation proceeding? What happens if things deteriorate further? Well, that's a fair question. And by the way, all indications are that they're not going to deteriorate further. They're actually improving from where I sit. First, it's important to separate the French subsidiary proceedings from the broader organization. The rehabilitation process applies specifically and only to Gauzy's French subsidiaries. It does not apply to the German SPD some production outside of Stuttgart or the SPD emulsion production operations in Israel. SPD film production in Germany continues and SPD emulsion production in Israel continues. Automotive and architectural development programs continue. Market development and new business development for SPD continues. And yes, the French filing required liquidity allocation and management attention. And yes, Gauzy reduced headcount as a part of the restructuring. But restructuring when done properly, can be very -- a very healthy change that strengthens the company. And we, of course, remain in regular contact with Gauzy and from our standpoint, we see operational continuity and SPD production and program execution. I'm going to take another question that's related to that. Do I have a contingency plan of Gauzy does not perform? The answer, Michael, is yes. We do. We have a plan A, B, C and…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jeff Harvey an investor.

So Gauzy announced a $50 million funding proposal. That obviously hasn't gone forward. At least I haven't seen anything to indicate that the funding has been in place. So that's a little disturbing. The other thing is that......

Having -- yes, let me address that first because having cut my teeth on corporate transactions as a lawyer and also as the CEO of Research Frontiers. It's not that it hasn't gone forward, but equity credit lines require a registration statement we filed with the SEC and they go effective. Due to kind of the timing of the year, I believe that Gauzy would have to actually have their audited financials in place in order for them to file that registration statement. So I think -- but I think it's also probably important and I don't think I'm revealing anything that I shouldn't about Gauzy's funding plans. But that's more of an intermediate funding plan. They don't need that much money to execute on their business plan and move it forward. And they have access to more immediate, shorter-term capital. That's meant to take care of some of the debt that they have with a particular lender at a higher interest rate. And it's nice to reduce your interest expense. We don't have any debt, so we don't have any interest expense. But they're a different company, so they do. Anyway, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to address the question while it's fresh. I think you had another question or comment.

Yes. Two other things. First of all, the stock has been under $1 for -- I would think getting to a point where they're going to get another letter from the SEC about getting delisted being under $1, but I also....

You're talking about Gauzy stock. You're talking about Gauzy stock.

Correct. So I think that's -- and the other thing is I would think that they're not going to be able to pay you on time the way you'd like to be paid until they get their financial house in order. So I would think that your expectations of getting royalty revenue from them, again, are going to be subdued near the near term. And I also.....

Let me address that while it's fresh. Okay. I'm sorry if it's related. I want to make sure I answer all your questions, Jeff.

I would think also that potential customers would be reluctant to want to do business with Gauzy given their financial distress.

Right. They're all excellent observations. Let me maybe put some color on it because like I said, I've been in very close contact with Gauzy throughout this process since pretty much the day after the filing, the bankruptcy filing. So the first question is, are we going to get paid? And the answer is yes. They have stressed to the French -- remember, we get our funding from 2 sources from Gauzy. Vision Systems, which is in France. Now that's directly under the control of the French regulators. And it's more of a monitor to basically just like internally, we have a list of bills that we had to pay, and my office manager presents it to me as CFO and CEO, and I approve it and our audit committee looks at it and it gets approved and then we pay it. What you're doing is you're adding 1 level on top of that, but it's a bureaucratic level, which is a French bureaucratic official that also has to do that. So it could slow down the process. Our invoices have been submitted. I'm told. No guarantee, but I'm told that it typically takes the regulators 1 to 2 weeks to approve something like that. So we're in the queue. As far as post filing things, that's a little smoother because really what they do is they treat prefiling obligations a little bit differently than they do post filings. And November 13 was the prefiling -- was the filing date. So anything that existed, which is about half of our receivables from Gauzy, and from Vision Systems rather, is subject to the French regulator. And the other half is ongoing in the queue for payment. As far as your other question, and it's an excellent observation, are they experiencing any…

And our next question comes from Mike Forrester, an investor.

My question arises out of the third quarter report of Research Frontiers. And in light of everything you've said about how positive our whole situation is. It leads me to wonder why do we have a capitalization in January at basically $1 a share plus opportunities to buy more stock at $1.10 a share with a selective group of investors, including family members of a director when at the end of the third quarter report, it said we currently expect to have sufficient working capital for more than the next 5 years of operations. End of quote. So how do you justify that?

Sure. Michael, thank you for bringing that up, and I appreciate the question. So as I mentioned earlier, there was a qualifier on that, which is assuming we get paid what we're owed and assume there's no more supply disruptions because we had one in the second quarter with AGP, as you know. And also for strategic reasons. And what I said earlier in the call, I'm not sure if you were on it, is all three of those factors were present here. Now you asked about directors participating or their family members participating. That was basically the terms were set not with the directors, obviously, they were set with the large investors, the anchor investors that were much larger investors in this offering. And then we were asked, "Hey, why don't you have a director participation in this?" And I said, "Guys, we already circulated our 10-K internally." No company in the world would allow a director to buy stock once that happens. We're closing on this deal. If there's people who know that want to participate on these terms, which have already been set, they're welcome to come into this. And I'll say this to any shareholder out there. Where do these friends and family investors come from? A lot of them had amassed large positions in Research Frontiers and wanted more. And because they have large positions, they would call me throughout the year, throughout the years, I got to know them. Most of the people in this round had invested in the last round, which was in September of 2022. So I knew them there. And they had invested in the prior rounds and the prior rounds and the prior rounds. So these are long-term shareholders. And maybe just to kind of put a color on…

Well, it's not just with respect to there being recapitalization, although the third quarter report does mention an expectation that there wouldn't -- this wouldn't happen for 5 years. But.......

But if you listen to the conference call.....

Hang on.

Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Well, it's the timing. I mean you're giving us all this glowing information about how Gauzy's situation isn't as bad as the press, so to speak, present it to be. And I'd love to believe that because I have stock in Gauzy as well. But they just filed the bankruptcy or thrown into bankruptcy in mid-November, and here it is January, less than 3 months later that with Research Frontiers' stock plummeting just as Gauzy is plummeting, the offer is at $1 a share. When you talk about '22, I think it was like $2.30 a share and with better warrant rewards for those who reward to the company in terms of the total income. I question the timing, why not wait at least until May. We had at least 12 months before -- according to the latest quarterly report that we have cash and cash equivalents to take us at least 12 months. While this timing is like you're giving a gift to people who may not need that gift. .

I'm not giving a gift to anyone. This is an investment. But I will say this. Listen to what I said, please. If we were paid what we were owed, and we didn't have any supply disruptions. Two things that didn't happen, by the way. We did that -- we weren't paid what we were owed and we'd have supply disruptions, okay? And if we had a strategic reason, we would do another one. So here we are in March. We have something sitting at a French regulators desk hoping that it gets paid today versus tomorrow. And I don't think anybody on this call would want Research Frontiers to not have the liquidity to execute on our business plan. So I'm thinking about the long-term shareholders and the execution of the business plan and capitalizing on the successes we've had in multiple markets and something no one else has done. And I'm not going to sit there and roll the dice with your money or my money and hope that I get paid on time or hope that there's no more supply disruptions. You wouldn't want a CEO of your company being that reckless.

One last question then for you. In light of what you're predicting is when you get the money and so on. Are you going to put out a press release of how things are going so that we might know?

Yes. We typically don't put out press releases unless there's a specific event like the launch of the Celestiq was a specific event or a major nonfinancial development, but the financial developments are on a cadence of being announced quarterly. And our next quarterly conference call is in the beginning of May. It's not that far off the way that the SEC filing schedule falls, early May is when we typically have our first quarter call. You might see it then.

So by then, we should know whether or not Research Frontiers has got its licensing fees from the bankruptcy monitor, right?

Yes. Yes. I think you'll see a change in our receivables when that happens and in our cash position. And that's not too far off. So financial results, we don't announce in between quarters, but it's close enough where you'll know about it soon enough, I think.

And our next question comes from John Nelson, an Investor.

Joe, just a couple of quick questions. You mentioned 4 projects with the retrofit window. Do you have -- can you give us any idea as to how soon any of those could start? .

I think they -- I mean, they've already started. I mentioned earlier that we're working on some peripherals that go in conjunction with the retrofit window. The retrofit window is a very solid developed product. But now think about any kind of smart window. You're going to want to have ways of controlling it in a smart manner that hopefully will be just as easy to install and integrate as the glasses. So that's one of the things that we're actively working on together. That's LTI and Gauzy and Research Frontiers and the customers to give them a choice. So that's basically what it is. And we've selected different types of projects because I view these not only as revenue sources. I'm not worried about revenue on this. Revenue, when we decide that we're going full force with this, and we have these peripherals all done. AIT has the capacity and the customer base to do this quite quickly without buying a Super Bowl ad or anything like that. But I also want to have white papers so that the architects could get their ideas as to, hey, why would I use this? In some cases, it's obvious. I have building facility management, building envelope issue that I got to deal with. I need glass on the outer skin of the building, but what about things like one of the residents has, I think, 30 or 40 interior windows that to take out the glass and put this in, it's a residential project would be very disruptive to the tenant and very expensive, whereas we could just pop it in and be done with it. And so it's a matter of creating proof points there.

Yes. Successful application will create awareness, more awareness......

And good news, John, I think -- the good news, John, is that in the architectural market, we have a lot more control over that good news getting out more so than an automotive aircraft where you're somewhat beholden to the OEM. Here, the architects and the homeowners like to brag about what's in their home unless they're rushing oligarchs or something that are trying to lay low. And we've had that happen, too.

Okay. And second question is, has Ferrari expressed any interest in expanding the SPD roofs to other models?

They have. I can't talk about the specifics on that, but they make a lot of money on the [ option ], and they're thrilled with the performance. I mean it has the performance of Ferrari. So what wouldn't they like about it?

Our next question comes from Art Brady, Investor.

Basically, I'm interested in learning a lot more about what is happening with the GL project, the Korean company that concentrates on building kiosks?

I'm not going to talk about a specific project. And I don't think, given that this has been an hour phone call, we should probably spend a lot of time on specifics. But Art, I know you try to reach me earlier in the week, and I typically don't answer shareholder calls right before the SEC filing because I don't want to get any shareholders in trouble, but feel free to call me tomorrow, and we could talk about that. And if you have -- I know you're a resourceful person, you might have some thoughts on that. I'd like to now maybe make some closing remarks. Look at the fact that Ferrari and McLaren have their production continuity going on in Cadillac entering the market and Mercedes integrating SPD broadly in a concept that covered 75% of the car, not just the sunroof and the expanding OEM quotations, high-volume quotations that helped us get the cost down significantly and Black SPD advancing and the architectural retrofit launching and the strengthening of the balance sheet and new investments by our licensees and SPD equipment, and in one case, a direct investment in research frontiers to the friends and family offering. You don't see a static company, you see a foundation that's been built and a technology platform that's being embedded in many of the different places. It's being embedded across geographies worldwide. It's being embedded across vehicle segments. It's being embedded across applications. And the major investments have already been made and the infrastructure has been built. And we've always had the best performance of any SmartGlass technology, and SPD continues to deliver industry-leading performance. And cost and color are being addressed and diversification has increased. The breadth of engagement today is stronger than at any point in our history. And when you connect these developments together, you see a business that is no longer dependent on a single vehicle or a single OEM or a single customer in general or a single market. And we believe all of this positions research printers for durable, diversified growth as these programs mature and enter the marketplace. With that, I want to thank everyone for their participation in the conference call today. If we haven't answered your questions, feel free to e-mail me or call. We try to do the best we can to respond quickly. And I look forward to sharing more upticks with everyone.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending.