Attempts to Hold On:

Best Buy recently changed their return policy, cutting the allotted time to return an item from 30 days to 15 days. Michael McCarthy, the managing director of QualityStocks, found this out by surprise when he tried to return a faulty cable modem 17 days after the purchase date. The customer service representative allowed an exception, but this was clearly a red flag; especially considering that employees aren't informing customers of the new policy during the checkout process.

The return policy change has caused uproar among consumers and certainly seems to be a step backwards at a time when the retailer is struggling. Knowing there must be something going on internally as none of the other retailers have made dramatic adjustments to their return policies, we did some digging through SEC filings and found that the company's cash position is down significantly. In just eight months, the company's cash and cash equivalents dropped from $1.2 billion to $309 million. It's clear to us that the return policy was changed to help conserve cash.

In another company-wide change, Best Buy recently turned its Price Matching Guarantee holiday program into a permanent policy in hopes for costumer retention. The positive move is an attempt to address the problem of showrooming, the practice of using storefronts to browse through and test products before going home and purchasing online at a cheaper price. Abram Brown, a Forbes markets reporter, stated that, "the price-match guarantee may have come too late to save the company. But, there also may be signs of hope as sales recently increased for the first time since 2010."

Partnering with Samsung, Best Buy will also soon set up "Samsung Experience" shops staffed with trained Samsung employees. The Samsung shops will be installed inside around 1,400 Best Buy stores. A number of these convenient in-house stores are currently already in existence.

Helpful Numbers:

Last month Best Buy sold its 50% holding stake in Best Buy Europe, a joint venture with Carphone Warehouse Group (CPW), Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer. The deal will mark the end of Best Buy's presence in Europe. Best Buy Europe in the ongoing fiscal year was expected to be in the range of $5.5 to $5.6 billion. Therefore with a 50% holding stake, the deal will help fund turnaround efforts for the giant, although still at a loss on investment given that Best Buy sold its 50% interest in Carphone Warehouse back to them for about $775 million. The original buy-in almost five years ago was $2.15 billion.

In 2011, Best Buy's stock lost 40% of its value. Fast-forward to 2013 and Best Buy reported a 0.9% Fourth Quarter Domestic Comparable Store Sales Increase for the 13-week fourth quarter. In its March earnings report Best Buy managed to post sales of $16.71 billion to squeeze a weak gain above the $16.67 posted a year ago.

Ending Thoughts:

Critics claim Best Buy stores are nothing but showrooms for online retailers like Amazon.com. With a need for a strong digital presence, Best Buy is currently planning to invest around $750 million on company improvements, including a digital facelift. Best Buy will also cut more than $400 million in overall costs. There may be life left in this sleepy retail giant but the future looks uncertain. Best Buy may still be generating signs of life, but the e-commerce versus brick-and-mortar battle continues onward.

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html

Interesting timing, considering AdCare's stock turned down a rocky road in mid-March when the company delayed its Q4 earnings release, citing errors in 2012 financial statements. Roughly a month later, on April 15, 2013, Adcare CFO Martin D. Brew bowed out, resigning from the company while an audit committee reported finding material weaknesses and further delayed the restatement. A day later, the Brogdon Family issued a press release outlining its intent for a tender offer of the company.

Despite the hurdles, the market cap of AdCare has risen by more than 30 percent in the past month. But what's more perplexing is the fact that the Brogdon Family has set the offer price at $8 per share, though AdCare stock has never topped $5.78 - ever. Following the mayhem in March, it's hard to imagine this stock making new all-time highs any time soon.

Let's take another approach and look at another angle. Compared to its peer group (Ensign Group (ENSG), National Healthcare (NHC), and Skilled Healthcare (SKH), Adcare is trading at 25x EBITDA vs. 8.5x for the group. The $8 per share offer equates to buying AdCare for 29x EBITDA. That's more than a marginal difference.

Briefly noting the peculiarity that the Brogdon Family announced their "intention" to submit a tender offer vs. making the actual offer, why is the Brogdon Family only interested in a stake of 55 percent - 75 percent of the shares outstanding? The huge premium, again, is a high note compared to AdCare's peer group and considering the Q4 earnings fiasco - so if it's such a great investment, why not the whole thing vs. dropping the tender offer to a more seemingly reasonable premium and gobbling up 100 percent for full ownership?

According to SEC documents and a little dirt digging, the Brogdon Family has yet to position its financing for the deal, and it hasn't appeared to have retained an investment bank to help facilitate the process despite taking publicly announcing its intentions with a press release on www.cnbc.com.

AdCare today issued a press release announcing that it will not meet the extended deadline to file its Q1 report by May 20 and released preliminary data for the quarter, repeating its message that previously issued financial statements for Q1 are not reliable due to the errors in connection with the audit for FY 2012. New CFO Ronald W. Fleming has his hands full.

AdCare said it anticipates Q1 revenues in the range of $56.0 million to $59.0 million - analysts peg revenues for the quarter at $68.5 million. Net income is expected to range from $1.1 million to $2.2 million, excluding costs associated with the restatement process. The company anticipates these costs in the range of $1.2 million to $1.5 million.

Shares are down 5% at $5.50 mid-day Friday following the release … $8, hmm?

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html

One of the elements driving this growth is the increasing demand for personalized medicine, something that requires a clear and accurate view of key biological processes occurring deep within the body. Other market drivers include an aging population and the growing demand for cost-effective imaging technologies in the Asia-Pacific market. Cardiology and neurology remain two of the industry's strongest growth opportunities. In the case of FluoroPharma, the current focus is on cardiovascular (CV) disease and Alzheimer's disease, with imaging drug products that allow PET scans to display in exquisite detail processes that can lead to such diseases.

One in three adults have some form of CV disease, and PET molecular imaging offers superior image quality, but there are no widely adopted PET drug agents in cardiology. FluoroPharma has three products directly addressing the CV market:

• BFPET - For measuring cardiovascular blood flow, in combination with stress testing in patients with presumptive chronic cardiovascular disease, BFPET has the potential to become the new "standard" and replace SPECT (Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography) in institutions with PET capability.
• CardioPET - For detecting regions of fatty acid uptake, CardioPET is for the diagnosis of acute and chronic CAD in patients that cannot undergo stress testing.
• VasoPET - For detecting inflamed plaques, which are plaques most likely to rupture and cause a heart attack or sudden death.

FluoroPharma is also developing AZPET, an amyloid deposit imaging agent for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease.

For more information, visit www.FluoroPharma.com

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html

A multi-year initiative, Veterans Relationship Management restarts previously troubled programs with the end goal of providing veterans, service members, and eligible beneficiaries with fast, accurate, and easily accessible healthcare information and benefits. DRC delivers the next generation of IT solutions geared for veterans, providing a full range of program and portfolio management services across more than 30 projects. The company's solutions include identity management, advanced voice-recognition tools, enhanced Web self-services tools, and integrated desktop interfaces.

DRC is engaged in providing program architecture, program planning and management, requirements analysis, IV&V, and life cycle engineering to create an IT system that provides veterans with access to the VA through various methods, enables them to access information about VA benefits and services through a uniform interface, and allows them to complete multiple business processes within the VA without the necessity of reentering identifying information.

For more information, visit www.drc.com

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html

eFuture is focused on providing software and services to China's retail and consumer goods industries, as well as providing software and services to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, logistics companies, and retailers in China's front-end supply chain market.

The company's products include Salesforce Automation, a sales management application allowing manufacturers and their distributors to manage sales force efficiency. Data Link products, such as the products specified in the SCA agreement, are distributor relationship management applications that allow manufacturers and distributors to access supply chain data.

eFuture's Data Link services will allow SCA to access real-time sales, inventory, and replenishment information directly from their distributors.

For more information, visit www.e-future.com.cn

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html

Sales for second quarter of 2013 increased 14.1 percent to $16.7 million, as compared with sales of $14.6 million for the same three months of 2012. Sales for the six months ended March 31, 2013, increased by 16.4 percent to $34.2 million, as compared with sales of $29.4 million for the six months ended March 31, 2012.

Net income was $1.4 million, or $0.03 diluted earnings per share, compared with net income of $0.7 million, or $0.01 per share, for the second quarter last year. For the first six months of 2013, net income was $2.7 million, or $0.05 per share, compared to $1.1 million, or $0.02 per share, reported for the first six months of 2012.

Second-quarter income from operations increased 107.2 percent to $2.3 million, as compared to $1.1 million in the prior year period. For the first six months of 2013, income from operations increased to $4.6 million, as compared to $1.9 million in the first six months of 2012.

Net income for the second quarter of 2013 increased 112 percent to $1.4 million, as compared to $670,000 for the comparable three months of 2012. Net income for the six-month period increased 147 percent to $2.7 million, as compared to $1.1 million for the comparable six months ended March 31, 2012.

As of March 31, 2013, Liberty Medical had $7.0 million of cash and $4.3 million available from its credit line facility.

"We continue to manage the level of our direct response advertising spend to maximize profitability and cash flows for fiscal year 2013. During the first half of fiscal year 2013, we increased our sales by 16 percent, improved our operating margins to 13.4 percent of sales, and generated $4.1 million in operating cash flows for the first six months of fiscal year 2013 compared with the first six months of fiscal year 2012," Mark Libratore, Liberator Medical's president and CEO, stated in the press release. "We expect to continue to increase our operating margins and cash flows during the second half of fiscal year 2013 compared with fiscal year 2012."

On April 3, 2013, the company's board of directors approved a cash dividend of $0.02 per common share to its shareholders.

For more information, visit www.liberatormedical.com

Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html