Vuzix has an eye on the future with its smart glasses and augmented reality technologies

Products include personal display and wearable computing devices Used across multiple industries including medical and defense Holds 184 patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the video eyewear field What Vuzix Corporation does: Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI) (FRA:V7XN) is a leading supplier of smart glasses and augmented reality (AR) technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets. The company's products include personal display and wearable computing devices that offer users a portable high-quality viewing experience, provide solutions for mobility, wearable displays and AR. Founded in 1997, the group holds 184 patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the video eyewear field. It has won Consumer Electronics Show awards for innovation for the years 2005 to 2021 and several wireless technology innovation awards among others. The company manufactures and sells two main products - Vuzix Blade Upgraded smart glasses, and the M-series smart glasses. The Vuzix Blade upgraded smart glasses offer complete with personal protective eyewear support out of the box. They deliver a hands-free connection of the digital world to the real world, providing unprecedented access to location-aware information, data collection, remote support communications with both audio and video, and more. The Blade upgraded glasses benefit from the same features as the regular Blade but include an auto-focus 8-megapixel camera, built-in stereo speakers, and advanced Vuzix voice control. The Vuzix M-Series boasts the new M4000, M400 and cost-effective M300XL. All models are rich in features, including nHD color displays, voice control, touchpad navigation, three-axis gyroscope integrated head-tracking, 64GB internal flash memory, and left or right eye use. The M4000 uses the M400 as a foundation with the addition of the Waveguide optics enabling see-through displays. How is it doing: Vuzix has, as always, been busy thus far in 2021, inking a plethora of deals involving its smart glasses within a number of industries. In medicine, Vuxix announced on May 10 that it received an order of additional Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses from Medacta International, one of the world’s largest providers of orthopedic products, to support its augmented reality surgical platform. Having used the Vuzix Blade to complete the first smart glasses-based total knee replacement in the US in 2020, Medacta is now using the glasses to leverage AR in shoulder, hip and spine surgeries.  In April, the company announced its M400 and M4000 Smart Glasses now support BlueJeans by Verizon Communications Inc, the telecommunication giant’s cloud-based digital workforce video collaboration platform. BlueJeans combines high-quality audio, HD video and web-conferencing capabilities for cloud-based meetings or large interactive events. With Vuzix glasses, it can be run hands-free. The company also partnered up with TechSee, an intelligent visual assistance technology company, in order to deliver a remote solution to field service technicians using augmented reality (AR) and computer vision on Vuzix M400 and M4000 Smart Glasses. The companies’ combined platform solution will support field service, manufacturing, insurance and consumer electronics industries, Vuzix said. Vuzix glasses have even found a home in insurance and financial services. In March, the company received an initial deployment order of about $400,000 for Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses from a US-based Fortune 100 insurance and financial services company. Vuzix Smart Glasses will be used by this company's fleet of insurance agents to help them in the field when they are capturing and reviewing claim-related information.  On the financial front, Vuzix's first-quarter results for the three months ended March 31, 2021, revealed record smart glasses sales of $3.8 million. Total glasses sales easily more than doubled from $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2020, and gross profit improved to nearly $1.1 million from $81,000. Its net loss was $6.6 million or $0.12 loss per share, compared to a loss of $5.9 million or $0.18 loss per share, a year earlier. Vuzix ended the period with about $145 million in cash on hand, thanks to warrant exercises in the quarter. Inflection points: Continued acceleration of its business in healthcare, manufacturing and field service Utilizing $145 million in cash to fund projected growth, planned product development and potential strategic initiatives What the boss says: Commenting on the company's first-quarter results, Vuzix CEO Paul Travers said business is picking up speed as more people get vaccinated against the coronavirus (COVID-19) and companies reopen in earnest.  "The reopening of global economies is waking up segments of our business that went dormant over the past 14 months due to COVID, specifically within logistics, warehousing, retail picking and ecommerce,” Travers said.  “At the same time, we continue to see acceleration of our business across healthcare, manufacturing and field service. Our balance sheet is the strongest in our company's history and we believe that we are well-positioned to continue to achieve significant year-over-year comparative revenue growth throughout the balance of 2021, thanks to the growing success of our M-Series and Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses."  Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel