Remark Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARK) Is A Runner In AR Tech

Remark Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARK) is a company that is getting an awful lot of attention right now.Back on October 23, Remark shares went for around $3.30 apiece.Fast forward to today and the company trades at $7.76 – a more than 131% appreciation across the period. MARK Daily ChartThis is a company that bills itself as an online media entity and it is one that controls a number of pretty high profile domains across various niches and geared toward millennials, offering travel, fashion, banking, and tax ideas.However, what's really getting markets excited at the moment is a technology that Remark has created over the last few years and that runs as a separate but parallel operational arm of the company. The technology is called KanKan and it is developed and marketed by a subsidiary of Remark that operates under the same name – KanKan.It's an augmented reality (AR) technology that is designed to recognize facial features and movements and – in turn – is designed to be incorporated across a whole host of different types of use cases. Facial recognition technology is very much a hot topic right now, with one of the major features of the new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices (the iPhone X and the iPhone 8) rooted in the ability to animate a user's face through the camera lens.With its KanKan technology, however, Remark is going after a far more commercial type of market and it is doing so with a considerable degree of success – the company just signed an agreement with Sina Weibo that will see its technology being used as the core AR element of a brand-new mobile application called SuiShouPai.SuiShouPaiI was initially designed as a photo taking application but Sina Weibo intends it to become a sales tool. How? Rather than we try to describe the model, it's best to take a look at this video.The video was created by Remark, not Sina Weibo, so keep that in mind, but it does a good job of illustrating the potential applications of this sort of technology in a commercial environment. For those not wanting to watch the video, it basically shows a female using the application to try on various pairs of sunglasses as well as different colors and types of lipstick.The link between this type of application and a cosmetics or apparel retailer is immediately obvious and is one that could drive serious revenue generation for Remark over the coming 12 to 24 months – especially if Sina Weibo can get its SuiShouPaiI in the hands of a substantial amount of users.At September 30, 2017, the company's unrestricted cash position came in at $16 million, while Remark maintained a restricted cash balance just shy of $11.7 million, bringing its combined cash position to $27.6 million at quarter end. This compares to a combined cash position of $18.5 million at December 31, 2016, and provides a substantial runway into the end of next year, negating any near-term dilution risk on a position picked up in and around current pricing.Management recently held a conference call to outline operational updates for the third quarter of this year and – on the call – detailed the revenues generated from some of its online real estate (vegas.com, bikini.com and more). While these revenues are not insubstantial, we're going to repeat ourselves here and say that it really is all about KanKan for the foreseeable future.To illustrate why, and as outlined on the just discussed call, for the company's KanKan business, management expects to report more than $30 million of revenue during 2018, which could quintuple the revenue that the company expects to report for the entirety of 2017.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on MARK, sign up below!Image courtesy of Sheila Scarborough via FlickrDisclosure: We have no position in MARK and have not been compensated for this article.