Industry News
Gentex reports record 2007 figures
1st Febuary 2008
Gentex Corporation, the Michigan based manufacturer of automatic-dimming rearview mirrors and commercial fire protection products, reported that its net income for 2007 was negatively impacted by the $2.9 million (pre-tax) litigation judgment related to patent litigation between Gentex and K.W. Muth and Muth Mirror Systems LLC, by approximately $1.9 million (after tax), but net sales increased by 14% to $653.9 million and net income increased by 12% to $122.1 million.
The litigation referred to related to exterior mirrors with turn signal indicators; after a trial in July 2007, the Court found last December that Muth’s patents were invalid and unenforceable, and that Gentex’s Razor Mirror product did not infringe the patents in suit. However, the court did find that Gentex had breached the agreement between the two companies and entered a judgment against Gentex of $2.9 million in January.
Gentex said in announcing its results that a number of new products were “just starting to get some traction,” including SmartBeam® and a new Rear Camera Display (RCD) Mirror. Each of those products have incremental average selling prices at least three times higher than the price of one base feature auto-dimming rearview mirror, and Bauer detects significant market demand for each.
In exchange for granting a price reduction to an unnamed OEM which impacted on its fourth quarter 2007 earnings, Gentex reached an agreement in the ordinary course of business to be this customer’s sole supplier of RCD Mirrors for model years 2011 to 2015.
SmartBeam is the high beam headlamp assist system that Gentex developed and introduced in the 2005 model year. For the 2007 calendar year, the company shipped approximately 304,000 SmartBeam units.
Gentex’s RCD Mirror consists of a proprietary LCD device that shows a panoramic video view of objects behind the vehicle in real time. When the vehicle is put in “reverse”, the display illuminates and automatically appears through the mirror’s reflective surface thanks to ‘transflective’ coatings, to give a high resolution, bright-coloured image, generated by a camera or cameras placed in a protected area at the rear of the vehicle. When the vehicle is put in “drive”, the display in the mirror automatically disappears.
The RCD Mirror is currently offered as an option on four Ford and Lincoln models, and on the Kia Mohave for Korea. Pending legislation, called the “Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007,” passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and introduced into the Senate on December 2007, which initiates regulations to revise the federal standard to expand the field of view on light vehicles so that drivers can detect objects directly behind vehicles, Gentex believes the legislators to be leaning toward the use of camera-based systems. Some seven years from now, it expects systems such as its RCD mirror to become mandatory in the U.S. market.
News Headlines
