John F. Heerdink

Founded in 2005 by Ross Silver, Vista Partners LLC is an independent equity research firm located in San Francisco, California with an additional office in San Francisco. The firm provides services to institutional, high net-worth and retail investors. Their objective is to identify investment opportunities that will significantly outperform small-, mid- and large-cap equity indices. Vista Partners focuses on publicly-traded small-cap companies with market-cap of $5 million to $600 million. Their research process begins with an examination of a company's product(s) to determine its efficacy, efficiency and scalability. The firm then interviews current customers, potential customers and competitors to determine if the product has the potential to succeed in the marketplace and if it has a sustained competitive advantage. Vista Partners then meets with management to determine the company's strengths and weaknesses and to assess their short and long-term goals and objectives. Finally, the firm evaluates the company's fundamentals to determine what assumptions are built into the current stock price and whether the company is undervalued, appropriately priced or overvalued.

Founded in 1986, Merriman Capital, Inc. is an SEC-registered broker/dealer and investment banking firm headquartered in San Francisco. The firm is a subsidiary of Merriman Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MERR), a financial services firm that focuses on fast-growing companies and their institutional investors. Merriman provides advisory and investment banking, equity research, institutional services, corporate services and venture services primarily to corporate clients. Merriman Capital provides research, brokerage and trading services primarily to institutional clients. The firm offers a full range of specialized and integrated services including: equity research, specialized trade execution, equity capital markets, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, sales and trading, market making, corporate and venture services, restructurings and strategic advisory services. Merriman Capital employs bottom-up, fundamental analysis of small-cap companies in select industries including clean technology, healthcare, technology and consumer/Internet/media. The firm also has expertise in emerging markets, with emphasis on emerging markets in China. Merriman Capital is known to engage in shareholder activist investment strategies. Merriman Capital is a member of the NASD, the SIPC and FINRA. The firm serves as an introducing broker/dealer for Pershing LLC. They do not hold or maintain funds or securities or provide clearing services for other broker/dealers.