Our Small-Cap investment strategy is based upon a “core” investment philosophy reflecting our belief that competitively advantaged companies can generate superior rates of return for shareholders over longer periods of time. Taking a long-term investor’s approach, the investment objective of our Small-Cap investment strategy is to achieve long-term capital appreciation and investment returns that exceed the applicable benchmark while attempting to manage portfolio risk and volatility.
Our Small-Cap investment strategy seeks to achieve its investment objective through fundamental analysis of individual companies and seeks high quality companies based on various criteria, such as high profitability levels, strong balance sheet quality, competitive advantages, strong market share positions, ability to generate excess cash flows, management teams with meaningful ownership stakes, attractive reinvestment opportunities and attractive relative valuation.
The development of investment opportunities in our Small-Cap investment strategy emanates from the fundamental research process led by our experienced internal research staff. Our experienced internal research staff performs rigorous, primary research that seeks to identify companies with market capitalizations between $0.8 billion and $7 billion that have a true competitive advantage in their industry. This proprietary fundamental research effort provides the basis for stock selection in our Small-Cap investment strategy sectors, and culminates in a portfolio of approximately 70-90 companies diversified among a number of industries and groups.