RE:RE:ResultsAgain, I am also frustrated, but let me address your comments.
Making false or misleading comments, especially in Quarterly commentary can lead to lawsuits and in rare cases jail time. In the past, I agree the commentary centered around increased non descriptive "Interest". That could be more one on one conversations at oil & gas conferences, to more phone calls requesting information, etc. So as i said, very subjective.
RFP's (vs RFI's) are a clear and specific contractural action vs conversations at conferences. For an oil & gas company to put out an RFP for a project like this is very costly and has gone through an internal approval process to get to that stage of a contract. The package they sent to QST (and maybe others) was probably in the 50-100 pages in detailed engineering in both how to intigrate into their operations and requirements for output/results. The time & costs to evaluate the submissions is also an expense process. Oil & Gas Co's do not take on this expense unless they have APPROVED budget and desire to execute (assuming they like the submission).
As you saw from a Major Alberta Based Ol & Gas Co a couple weeks back, one RFP resulted in $1.2M in sales (maybe as a start for this Co). So what does in terms of # of RFP's, "Increased Significantly" mean? Again, misleading in quarterly letters is not likely given litigation risks (and as you know, QST is VERY risk adverse), i would assume it is more than just a few.
So be skeptical...I am not wearing rose coloured glasses, but that careful wording is very specific to the first (legal) stages of getting to contracts, which is way higher in seriousness vs the previous "Increased Interest in our technology".
As for Mexico, if you reread the Q2 results, it is very evident that this contract was not favourable to QST when COVID Supply constraints hit last year. Steel doubled. Electronics even more, and getting equipment to site more expensive. Again reading that report, they had to take on the scope of QST's partners (not the customer). I read this as one of their subcontractors failed, went under, whatever, and QST was left holding the bag. They also mention that they were trying to get that cost overrun from the customer, but not hearing any outcomein Q3 commentary, sounds like it wasnt successful.
As for 'why would any customer buy from them after the Mexico issues?' The last year has been ugly everywhere. This project was not an anomoly, but rather the norm. I think a potential customer would look at the end result (which I think they say have surpassed requirements), and QST's focus on finishing despite these hedwinds and eating the costs ($500K) as a good thing. They could have dug in their heals and litigate contract with the end customer. That happened more than you think in the last 18 months.
Anyway, I respect and understand where you are coming from, but I see it a bit different.