ParkerVision Conference
Call Response to Barrons Article
December 3, 2007
Paul G. Henning, Cameron
Associates - Vice President
Jeffrey L. Parker,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Robert G. Sterne,
Independent Director
David F. Sorrells, Chief
Technical Officer
Greg Lewin, Levin
Capital
Jim Whitten, Laidlaw
Philip Anderson,
Pinnacle Fund
Wilson Jaeggli,
Southwell Partners
Operator: Good day everyone, and
welcome to the ParkerVision’s Special Conference Call and webcast. Today’s call
is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would
like to turn the call over to Mr. Paul Henning. Please go ahead, sir.
Paul Henning: Thank you very much.
But, before we get started, I wanted to remind listeners that this conference
call will have certain forward-looking statements, which involve known and
unknown risks and uncertainties of our business and our businesses, and the
economy and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially
from our expected achievements and anticipated results. Included in these risk
factors are, the ability to maintain technology advantages in the marketplace,
achieve timely market introduction and acceptance of our products, maintain
product copy protection, and the availability of capital among others. Given
these uncertainties and other factors about our business, listeners are
cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements
contained within this conference call. Additional information concerning these
and other risks can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
We’ll begin today’s call with Jeff Parker, CEO of ParkerVision,
who will add some additional comments to the release that was put out this
morning. Jeff, would you like to go ahead?
Jeff Parker: Yes, I would. Thank
you, Paul, and good morning to those of you who’ve joined us on this call. When
last we spoke, I told you that I expected to have to conduct an unplanned
conference call before our next scheduled call. I certainly want you to know
that the topic of our call today is certainly isn’t what I was referring to.
And it wasn’t something that I expected or that our dedicated employees or
shareholders deserve.
Many of you called me, when you saw an article issued by Barron’s
this past weekend. You as am I were outraged that a reporter would write such
an overtly inaccurate, poorly researched, one-sided story. You were incensed
that a publication would be so haphazard as they publish as fact, information from
two individuals who have acknowledged as having a short position in the
company, while publishing for years an anonymously written website. It is
purposely created, inaccurate information about our technology, and our
relationships with prospective customers. The Barron’s reporter, never so much
has questions how an assessment of a technology can be conducted without even
having seen the technology. Without having visited the company, or even engaged
the company in dialogue, about how the technology works. The Barron’s reporter
never asks how the authors of the PV notes website, obtained information
regarding the validity of the technology from named companies. When
ParkerVision has made it clear that in-depth technology reviews of its
technology has till date only been conducted under non-disclosure agreements
with OEMs.
Barron’s received guidance from me in the form of a written
letter, which we filed as an 8-K Exhibit today, and which I would encourage you
to read for yourself. As you can see in the article, the reporter doesn’t even
have the decency to use one of my quotes without lifting several words from my
quote and then changing the meaning by adding his own words to the end of the
quote. I’m referring to the topic, where I’m guiding him that our D2P
technology embodies what is currently done today by the use of a separate RF
transmitter and separate RF power amplifier, that our technology should not be
confused or compared with a traditional RFPA. He chose to change the meaning of
my quote to say, that our technology should not be confused with traditional
radio devices implying that we don’t want to compare our benefits to what it
replaces which of course is ridiculous, that’s not correct. We work with OEMs
to compare our technology to that which it replaces, which is the entire
transmit chain Mr. writer, not just the RF power amp.
I made it clear to the Barron’s reporter who asked in his e-mail
questions to me, if our CTO, Mr. Sorrells and myself have ever been clients of
the Swiss Life-owned Banca del Gottardo. I informed him, that neither of us
have ever been clients of the bank, ever. However, he chose to cite an unnamed
source, which I challenged him to reveal that says otherwise. This is nothing
than his 100% pure fabrication. The essence of this article is that it is
written based on the set of information that is not truthful, from a couple of
people who stand to gain a great deal financially should we not succeed in our
business plan. And who conversely stand to lose a great deal financially, as we
do succeed.
Why Barron’s believes that credible OEMs would violate
non-disclosure agreements to inform authors of an anonymous website about the
validity of our technology is beyond my comprehension. Why Barron’s would give
greater credence to Farmwald’s claims regarding the company’s contract with ITT
than to the statements from both myself and an ITT spokesperson, that the
companies are engaged in an ongoing relationship is also beyond me.
The folks behind PV Notes are desperately trying to do whatever
they can to slow down or prevent ParkerVision from successfully commercializing
our technology. While I don’t believe their efforts will succeed, and in fact
in some perverse way may actually help us, as some OEMs who will not take
kindly to the stock manipulation of a company, that is diligently working with
them to bring better products to market. You should also know that we are
pursuing and investigating all legal avenues and alternatives given the content
of and the circumstances surrounding this article.
Some of you know that we have a lot of very hard working, very
smart people with ParkerVision, both internal to the company as well as on our
Board of Directors. And, at this time, I’d also like to ask one of our board
members and our intellectual property legal counselor, Robert Sterne to say a
few words to you today as well.
Rob, I know you’re traveling around, are you there with us now?
Robert Sterne: Yes, Jeff, can you hear
me?
Jeff Parker: We can hear you, fine.
Robert Sterne: Okay, well thank you,
and pardon any background noise that may exist from where I am. But good
morning, and thank you. My name is Rob Sterne, and I am a founding partner of
Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC, one of the largest specialty patent
law firms based in
You can obtain more information at our website www.skgf.com. We
represent some of the most innovative and technologically someway I think
innovators on the planet. I have had a life-long personal interest in radio
technology. My interest in radio took me to engineering school at Tufts
University in
To be frank, I was dubious such RF breakthroughs could come from a
design team in an off the technological beaten track of
We have endeavored from the very beginning of the project to
achieve the highest quality of legal protections that we can obtain from the
various patent offices around the world. I can tell you as a person who is
extensively involved in RF technology, that the ParkerVision breakthroughs are
fundamental and extremely real. And have been tested and verified and quantified
at all levels. So, any questions that have been raised by this article
concerning the technological effectiveness and efficiency of these
breakthroughs are in my professional opinion completely incorrect, and I cannot
understand why these statements have been made by individuals who do not have
the access to the technology that I have. Thank you Jeff.
Thank you, Rob. I appreciate your taking the time to join us today
on the call. I know you’re juggling a lot of activities right know, and this is
on short notice.
I’d also like to ask our listeners to listen to a few words today
from our CTO, David Sorrells. David normally doesn’t join us on these calls as
he is focused on of course a technology-centric mission. But, I thought, in
light of the ridiculous statements in the article on the PV notes website that
we should have David to say a few words.
David Sorrells: Thank you, Jeff. I have
more than a few words to say, but I will try to keep it brief. Developing new
technologies is one of the most rewarding career activities an engineer can
experience. Engineering by definition is using scientific principles to achieve
a practical result. By my definition, a successful practical result must meet
four criteria.
The first of which is, the technology must have significant
advantages over the current state-ofthe-art. In today’s world, this is a
monumental task, because governments all over the globe, large companies and
universities spend billions of dollars over multiple decades to bring new
technologies to market. By comparison, companies such as ParkerVision have a
fraction of the budget, time, and resources available to other entities.
Number two, a multitude of working prototypes must be built and
tested to ensure the technology meets both today’s and future product criteria.
Having working hardware ensures that all calculations, simulations, design
criteria, and production criteria can be verified not only by ParkerVision, but
any engineering team with sufficient expertise.
The third criteria is, the technology must be patentable
internationally. A patent by definition is an agreement between an inventor and
a country. To receive a patent, an invention must be shown to be novel,
non-obvious, and have utility. In ParkerVision’s case, we internally require
that our technology inventions be significantly novel over the prior art to
ensure the best international protection possible.
Looking to the non-obvious requirements, ParkerVision’s patents
and patent families sight hundreds of prior art references that offer
conflicting ideas, theories, opinions, and results. In order to receive a
patent, the technology and its advantages must be shown to overcome each and
every one of these prior art references in a new and novel way.
Finally, and perhaps the most important concept, is that of
utility. The technology must be shown to work and function as described. At the
time of the first D2P examination, ParkerVision was able to provide measured
results of working hardware that match both the theory of operation and
technology simulation. To date, ParkerVision has over 40 patents in process for
the D2P technology alone. In addition, these patents adhere to the criteria
required by the World Intellectual Property Organization located in
The fourth and final criteria is, the technology must be able to
be commercialized in multiple ways. There are many commercialization methods
that can be applied to the d2p technology including, but not limited to,
licensing all the part of the technology to customers and/or providing
integrated circuit solutions either directly from ParkerVision or design
partners and foundries. From a CTO’s perspective, I believe ParkerVision’s
engineering team’s innovation, tenacity and persistence should be a new model
for technology development. This team has successfully moved from developing a
concept to having working demonstrable hardware, using an entirely new
technology that will be employed in one of the highest volume in most demanding
applications created in history.
I have no question that the size of this opportunity puts the advanced
state of the technology development in the potential magnitude of the profits
that can be generated, has motivated our detractors to issue false, misleading,
and damaging statements concerning ParkerVision’s technology.
Well, David thanks for your words. And, operator, I guess what we
would like to do is open our call up for a few questions. So, let’s do that now
if you would.
Operator: Thank you, Mr. Parker.
The question-and-answer session will be conducted electronically. And our first
question comes from Greg Lewin with Levin Capital.
Greg Lewin: Morning, Jeff.
Jeff Parker: What I’d like to do is
try to look at where we are today. One of the slight-of-hands that the article
tries to pursue is to take claims made from the period of 1997 through 2001, and somehow through their
form of subterfuge, gives you the impression that they’re discussing current
events. And, so what I’d prefer to do is discuss current event. And, what I
would like to do is start with a discussion of
- in two parts, if I may ask them. In the past 18 months, could you
estimate how many different OEM’s, carriers, and technical vendors have
evaluated your product or have - had called you to present, to come up with
discussions of the technical merits, and then transport that into the current
timeframe. And, could you discuss how many potential customers are currently
evaluating the technology, in some way, shape, or form? And, what I would then
like you to do, if you could, is please describe to what ends these customers have
done, what level of testing have you provided them, have they done
independently, what has been involved, and could you then summarize in some way
or fashion the whole spectrum of results, strengths, and weaknesses that have
been independently achieved through the testing and work, more - less of
ParkerVision but more of these independent customers who are now evaluating
your technology?
Jeff Parker: Okay, Greg, I’m going to
try to get through that. That’s quite the question. How many have looked at and
evaluated the technology? I don’t have the exact number at my fingertips.
Greg Lewin: Use your estimates.
Jeff Parker: To the best of my
recollection, it’s more than 10 and less than 20, okay. There are still I would
say approximately that number engaged in dialogue with us. When they look at
the technology, Greg, they run it through a whole suite of tests typically
using Agilent test gear, not the only test gear in the industry that’s used.
There is a small - couple of other smaller competitors. But, they’re the lion
share of the market. And, what they look at on our Transmitter Technology are
things like, how pure is the spectral quality of the transmitter waveform. Does
it meet the specifications of the particular standard? In our case, we show lots
of different cell phone standards. So, there’s lots of different specifications
that they go up and look at. We show the technology to be compliant. We show
that there is no showstoppers in the way they want to implement the technology
in continuing to be compliant. We go into an in-depth disclosure with these
OEM’s as to exactly every transistor that’s used to create the function blocks
of the technology. How the function blocks go together? Why they’re stable over
their simulations? Why they’re stable in the actual silicon? How it can be
partitioned differently if they don’t like the way we partitioned it. I mean,
Greg, there just isn’t pretty much any stone that’s unturned. There are several
OEMs now that have gone to the point of actually studying over high volumes,
how does the technology stack-up in terms of its yield on various semiconductor
processes, and there’s a lot of tools in the industry today to help you both
verify that, both electronically and using actual physical hardware. So, there
is extensive - we have 100s, probably 1000s of pages of test report that both
ourselves and our OEM potential customers have created in making these
measurements.
Greg Lewin: So, in plain sort of
English, have you and they tested your product in a foreman fashion that could
then move directly into a finished product. And, could you then give us the
spectrum of strength and weaknesses and results that have been achieved?
Jeff Parker: We have tested the
product in a form that you couldn’t take that and drop it right into a handset.
But you could - or in the other customer’s case, into some of their products.
But, you can take the chips we’ve developed and anybody who’s experienced in the
industry can see a clear roadmap. This is why I told people, it’s not something
that when we sign a deal, they’ll be putting into a product next week. I’ve
projected 12 months, 18 months from the time we get signing, depending upon how
comprehensive number of standards they wanted to operate in. But that’s the
process of taking what we’ve got today, converting it to their high volume
usage. And, this is something they do, Greg, with many chips that come their
way, whether they develop them internally or they outsource them from other
companies, or they license them and develop them with other companies. Now
that’s the pretty standard, common approach. I can tell you, there is not one
of them that I’m aware of that doesn’t believe that this technology won’t work
exactly the way that we’ve stated it will work. Now, I’m not sure if I’ve
completely answered your question. I want to get on to the next question, but
did I answer that yet?
Greg Lewin: Sort of - just two words. I don’t want to monopolize
anything...
Jeff Parker: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Lewin: Please give us a
summary of - if it were two to three
taglines on exactly what the technology will provide for the customers?
Jeff Parker: Well, okay. Sure. It’s
highly efficient especially for the 3G and beyond standards. If you look at 2G
today, GSM, it’s already pretty efficient because it doesn’t have the same
kinds of complexity in the waveform that creates inefficiencies in traditional
linear power amplifiers and their associated transmitters. So, GSM is a fairly
efficient technology today. We are as efficient as what’s out there in GSM and
generally a little bit more efficient, but that’s not where people are having
the problems. We’re significantly more efficient in 2.5G, which is EDGE, but
even that is what’s called a bursted signal. It’s only on one-eighth of the
time. So, it doesn’t drain the battery that quickly, and frankly people are
finding it doesn’t bring that much more bandwidth of data to the party. So,
EDGE is pretty much going to be the transition standard. But where people have
been struggling is in the 3G, CDMA, and Wideband CDMA, and especially moving
beyond that, things like HSUPA, which is an extension of the 3G Wideband CDMA
standard and into LTE and WiMAX, which is four-generation standards. Those are
all very complicated waveforms. They have high peak to average ratio of
modulation in their envelopes of what’s transmitted and the challenge with that
is those power amplifiers and their supporting transmitters are very
inefficient. We bring 100s of percent of improvement in efficiency to those
kinds of waveforms, and if you look at the waveform over its - those waveforms
are changed in their power control, when you’re near versus farther from a base
station.
If you look at our response of our efficiency curve, it’s
relatively flat compared to everything else that’s out there today, which tends
to drop off in efficiency exponentially as you move down in the power level.
So, we have a much flatter curve, there is a much more exponentially lower, and
if you added up all of the beneficial efficiency of those two curves, what you
would see is we bring a significant amount of power reduction to any 3 or 4G
application, which translates to significantly longer battery life. We’ve
already said a one and a half to two hour talk time on a handset with a 900
milliamp power battery using Wideband CDMA with our technology is going to be
more like four hours maybe steady four and a half.
In terms of the other benefits today a lot of the different standards
are done through redundant chains of components. We can collapse those down to
as few as one, depending upon how you want to switch the output of our
technology around, or you can collapse it down to maybe a fraction if today -
to do a full hedge phone, HSUPA, Wideband CDMA, EDGE and GSM on both low and
high bands might be six, seven, eight redundant chains. The very least you
could easily reduce that down to two chains, a low band and a high band, which
could eliminate four, five, six redundant chains of power amplifiers in those
associating supporting transmitter circuit. And that translates to smaller size
and it also translates to lower cost. It’s the same thing we’ve said from the
beginning. It hasn’t changed, and if anything, our confidence and our ability
to deliver
on those commitments has not only increased, but to the extent
that we can deliver on those has also increased, in terms of actually smaller
than we thought, uses fewer - less amount of silicon than we had originally
thought. And, frankly, the efficiency curves have gone higher than we thought
because we’re also learning that with the smaller geometry semiconductors, our
efficiency increases faster than we had thought it would. So, it’s - if someone
is looking for longer talk time, smaller size, lower cost, and to do all the
standards in a single architecture, that’s what we bring to the party.
Greg Lewin: Thank you, sir.
Jeff Parker: I’d take the next
question please.
Operator: And our next question
comes from the Jim Whitten with Laidlaw. <Q>: Good morning, Jeff.
Jeff Parker: Good morning, Jim.
Jim Whitten: I really don’t have too
much of a question except that in most of these articles and most of the things
where people sometimes complain about how long this thing has taken, 17 years,
according to this paper. I think it is probably appropriate that we point out
that when this company went public, you went public as a camera company, which
did become viable, commercially, and from what I understand is viable now
commercially, and that the technology from the camera led you to the embryonic
state of the technology that ended up in the D2D and then eventually this. And,
maybe there have been a few slips and slides in between, but it wasn’t just the
17-year pursuing D2P, and I would like to ask your opinion on that.
Jeff Parker: I appreciate your
mentioning that. Look, there is no question we started as a camera company, we
innovated ultimately a very advanced, novel architecture for automating
television newsrooms. We turned our attention during the development of our
camera products to this wireless technology development when we were looking
for enhanced wireless technology for our own internal products, and along the
way came to a fork in the road and said do we want to just focus on camera
products and associated studio control systems or do we want to make this
technology into something that’s more of a broader play in wireless
communications. Certainly, with the opportunity to participate in a market
opportunity, orders and orders of magnitude larger than our studio products
business could have ever become. So, did we innovate breakthrough technology in
studio automation? Yes. Did we get it into newsrooms of creditable companies,
McGraw-Hill, ABC Studios, The Canadian Broadcasting Network, Channel 12,
Cablevision, I think all their stations. I don’t remember all the customers,
but there were quite a laundry list of them. But, we knew that it was a limited
business and it wasn’t a business that we wanted to build our entire company
around once we saw what we could do with the wireless technology. In terms of
the time it has taken our technology in the wireless front. Again, by the way
Thomson bought that business, and to the best of my knowledge continues to sell
those products today and it is in fact one of their flagship products. But I’m
not focused on their business. I am focused on our business today. Our
technology started in the wireless business really in earnest when we’ve got
Rob Sterne involved back in ‘98. We knew he had some fundamental breakthroughs
and I had been working on bringing advanced technologies to the marketplace
long enough in my career to recognize when we needed to reach out to the
heaviest heavyweight we could find who could help us protect this technology,
because I believed then and even believe more strongly now, that the technology
will ultimately be a very important technology to the industry, and that
there’ll be a lot of people who won’t want to pay us for it, and who’ll try to
use it without - if they could if we didn’t protect it intellectually
correctly. So, I wanted to make sure we have the best intellectual property
protection possible.
Taking the last 8, 9 years to get it to this point, is that a long
time or a little time; well honestly, out of my career, it’s been a long time.
Okay, I mean I’ve said publicly, I personally didn’t know that it would take
this long to innovate this technology, but we’ve tackled breakthroughs, that
when you look at the industry at large, they have tried to solve for literally
decades. We cite in our patents decades and decades of prior art of people
trying to do what our relatively small team with relatively small research
dollars compared to the industry that we’ve been compared to, and what they’ve
been able to do is to unlock the puzzle to solve this problem both from the
receiver and the transmitter side in a way that frankly many, many, many others
who’ve come before us have fallen short.
And so I don’t think we have anything to be anything other than
greatly excited about, the opportunity in front of us is larger than when we
started. So when we first started we were thinking there might be 1 or 200
million cell phones sold a year in the marketplace. It’s now up to a billion
and 2, I believe, 200 million, growing to a billion 500 million - who would
have thought. Wireless is going everyplace, it’s becoming kind of the link that
may even someday challenge some of the wireline stuff that we’ve been so dependent
upon in a lot of different applications, and our technology fits literally any
wireless signal that you want to create and transmit or you want to capture and
demodulate.
So, the opportunity is there for us and we are not going to let
some thugs with a website disparage us any further, and I don’t believe our
OEMs will be affected by this one iota. They have seen the technology, they’ve
tested the technology, some of them are working with the technology, and the
technology will be judged on the merits of the technology, period; not what Mr.
Farmwald makes up in his own head with his wife. Jim, does that answer your
question?
Jim Whitten: Yes very good. One
other little thing too, could you add the background of one or two the
distinguished Directors that we have on the Board?
Jeff Parker: Well, we have more than
one or two distinguished Directors...
Jim Whitten: Just one or two of them
because it would seem to me that they wouldn’t jeopardize their career on
something that was a boondoggle, okay?
Jeff Parker: Well, okay. So, we start
with Bill Sammons, who has been a Director since the company started. Bill is
now in his 80s. We should all have - be blessed with his health. The man is
incredibly energetic and sharp as a tack in terms of his mind. Bill was one of
the partners that we had in our - in the previous business that was a privately
held company my family and I started that innovated heating, air conditioning,
microelectronic controls. We had a partnership with Carrier Corporation, and we
did quite a significant amount of business and profits in that company, and
Bill watched us in action in that business, and was happy to participate in
this one as a Board Member. Bill’s an MIT graduate. Bill is the consummate
engineer’s engineer. He is also a great businessman. He continuously tells me
that he wants to be with us long enough to see the technology launched, and
believes that we are getting very close now. And he has been a terrific partner
and supporter.
And you’ve got Papken der Torossian, who was the gentleman who was
the Chief Executive of the Silicon Valley Group that innovated some of the
world’s best lithography for making semiconductors. I believe he began running
that company when it was 30 million in revenue and
he took up to over $1 billion and it was sold now few years ago to
a Dutch company. You’ve got Nam Suh, who is a Ph.D. with many distinguished
awards, everything from Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Director of the National
Science Foundation. He is now a distinguished professor and Dean of Engineering
at MIT. He is now a CEO of KAIST which is kind of the - I hope they’ll find
that to be a compliment, but I analogize it to the MIT of Korea. And
You’ve got Rob Sterne, who has already spoken for himself.
You’ve got Bill Hightower. Bill Hightower was the President of the
Silicon Valley Group, was also one of the Presidents at AT&T, really knows
telecom, really knows growing businesses, and has done a turnaround or two in
his career and again a guy who is an engineer and really understands technology
from the fundamentals, again wouldn’t be somebody who would be involved - none
of the people I just mentioned will be involved with our company if they didn’t
know the technology works and believe that we are on the right track. I mean
they all have a lot of personal financial net worth and they all have a lot of
great reputations that they’ve built over many decades of their career. There
is no reason they’d jeopardize that for ParkerVision. So, Jim, I hope that’s
helpful to you.
Jim Whitten: Great. Thank you.
Jeff Parker: Oh! And just, so I don’t
leave him out, John Metcalf also, who is our CFO expert who came on our Board a
few years ago. By the way is - was started his career at AMD within the
financial organization there, and has been a CFO at various semiconductor
companies. Also understands this space, is more on the financial side of the
business, but certainly is a great testimonial to Cindy Poehlman and her staff
’s ability to be compliant with all of the Sarbanes-Oxley influenced
regulations, and continuously works closely with Cindy and our audit committee,
to make sure that we are doing everything in our power to be 100% true to the
law of what Sarbanes-Oxley and the general regulations call for.
Operator, your next question?
Operator: Our next question comes
from Philip Anderson with the Pinnacle Fund.
Philip Anderson: Hi, Jeff.
Jeff Parker: Well, it’s progressing
exactly as per the contract. I mean, you know I’m not going to violate any
confidentialities. It was nice that ITT at least returned the guy’s call and
did acknowledge, yes, we have a relationship with ParkerVision that’s ongoing.
ITT is a very excellent company, conservative company. Isn’t going to tell the
public or their competition what they’re up to and why they’re doing what they’re
doing? When they have something to say publicly, they’ll say it.
I’m not going to violate any confidence, other than to say our
relationship with ITT is very good. The project is going along as planned, as
per the contract. So, these guys can make up whatever nonsense they want to
make up. Phil, one of the challenges I have to fall not in the trap of, is you
know there’s an endless number of lies that can be built around anything, that
you could fall into the trap of having to respond to absolutely every lie.
There are only a certain limited number of truths. These guys who make up these
lies aren’t under the same public scrutiny or rules and regulations that we
operate and adhere to the letter. So, they’re slinging mud out there, and we
have to be careful not to get into the trap of responding to every single thing
that they try to sling our way, because it’s going to make customers
uncomfortable that we’re not going to adhere to agreements that we have of
confidentiality, et cetera. And, we’re going to adhere to that. The ITT
agreement is going along as planned, the relationship is good, and that we
believe they will be able to get their products out as we communicated to the
investment community before as scheduled.
Philip Anderson: Well just - let me ask
my same question in a different way. But I’d appreciate you answer very much,
and I suspect the people who made these statements are going to have a bit more
scrutiny than they have had prior to this weekend. But, to be clear on the ITT
contract, the extent that you and your company and your engineers and your
technology are contributing to the development of whatever product or products
ITT intends to sell, that your contributions are moving forward in a timeline
and in a manner that the contract laid out.
Jeff Parker: I am sorry, Phil. So,
you are saying that - is that correct?
Philip Anderson: Yes.
Jeff Parker: Yes, that is correct.
Philip Anderson: That’s all I had.
Thanks very much, Jeff.
Jeff Parker: Thank you, Philip.
Operator, the next question please?
Operator: Our next question comes
from John Stanley with Stanley Partners.
John Stanley: Yeah, actually I don’t
have a question, Jeff. I just wanted to commend the company for its appropriate
response to the outrageous, factually incorrect allegations made by people that
seem to live by different standards than most of us. Thank you...
Jeff Parker: John, I appreciate that.
You know what’s going to speak the loudest is when we bring the next deal in
the boat, and the scope of that deal. And I believe that will probably
stimulate additional business closure thereafter. And, what we’re going to be
measured by is did the technology get adopted, did it get adopted in a timely
fashion. Obviously, this article was put out in a hurry. I don’t know why they
were in such a hurry. The facts of the matter is the PV Notes website has been
up there for years. I said to the reporter, I’m busy with business development
stuff right now. Be happy to talk to you later, can’t do an interview right
now. But no, no, he had to put the story out bing-bang right now. I’m assuming
there was some motivation behind that.
Perhaps Mr. Farmwald and Paldus feel that they’re coming to their
last chance to try to manipulate our stock price based on the fact that they
believe that we’re very close to getting our next deal closed. So, I can’t
imagine what the motivation was outside of that, because these guys have been
out there disparaging us for years. But boy this had to have an immediate
answer. And it’s just - it’s about as slimy as it comes. But, John, I
appreciate your support and your comment.
John Stanley: Good luck.
Jeff Parker: Thank you.
John Stanley: Thank you.
Operator: And we have time for
one more question which will come from Mr. Wilson Jaeggli with Southwell
Partners.
Wilson Jaeggli: Okay. Jeff, thanks for
putting on this call. Phil Anderson also actually dug into the question I had,
which was with ITT, which is our largest and I guess most active, paying
customer right now. So, I think you handled that question properly. The point
being is there has been from the initiation of this relationship, there has
been no pushback from ITT. Is that fair to say?
Jeff Parker: That is fair to say. ITT
has certain product goals and needs. We have a certain technology that can
solve those product needs and goals. And, we’re working with ITT in a way that
will enable them to take advantage of the technology, get into the market as
quickly as possible, and take advantage of that in their products. That’s what
the relationship is all about, and that’s what the contract was written too.
Wilson Jaeggli: Okay. You had mentioned
on the last conference call, and you mentioned in starting this one that you
hoped we would have another conference call of another subject?
Jeff Parker: That’s right. And, I
said that I believe we’d have another conference call before the next scheduled
call, which would be our year-end and fourth quarter call and I still believe
that. And, while I can’t say that I have been able to reach out and talk to
some of the OEMs about this nonsense from Barron’s this weekend. I’ll be doing
that when we hang up from this call. And, I believe, people will still measure
us on the merit of the technology. And, as I said, maybe in some perverse way
they may actually feel empathy with us and say, you know what, let’s help you
get these jerks put in their place and we’ll - let’s get these deals closed
like now.
Wilson Jaeggli: Hey, Jeff, thank you
much. Keep up the good work.
Jeff Parker: Thanks for your support,
Jeff Parker: Well guys, listen, there
may be more callers, I don’t know. But actually I do want to get off this call
now and start talking to my customers. So, I appreciate your support. I
appreciate those of you who’ll continue to hang in there and who aren’t going
to be manipulated by, as I said, these thugs with a website. And, as I said in
my response to the Barron’s article by the way, I have an open invitation to
Mr. Cripps, who is well known in the industry; under the same terms we do with
OEMs.
Come on down to
Folks, have a nice day. Thanks, Bye.
Operator: That concludes today’s
conference. Thank you very much for your participation.