The fund seeks capital appreciation in the long term by investing in small-and mid-size companies in the United States.
The sub-advisor’s investment process is designed to highlight companies in the benchmark index that exhibit excellent growth opportunities.
Then the research team focuses on companies that display the potential for superior sales and earnings growth rates, sustainable competitive advantage, and with proven management teams aligned with shareholders’ interests.
The team also looks for companies that are open to innovation and utilize technology to improve efficiencies, gain pricing advantages, and achieve market leadership position.
In addition, the team believes innovative companies have the ability to develop new products or services, operate a business model that is displacing legacy industry incumbents, that are pursuing a large unmet need or total available market, and/or that are benefitting from changes in demographic, lifestyle, or environmental trends.
The research process identifies companies with future earnings potential that are mispriced and seeks to exploit those discrepancies.
The investment team also focuses on the strategy of capital allocation of companies and valuation methodologies such as earnings and book value multiples, operating profit margin trends, enterprise value to EBITDA and free cash flow yield.
The team also meets with management, and surveys a company’s vendors, distributors, competitors and customers.
Then the manager constructs a diversified portfolio from a list of companies favored by the research team and allocates capital based on its conviction level.
The manager may invest in any sector, and at times may emphasize one or more particular sectors.
The fund may invest up to 25% of its net assets in securities of foreign issuers through American Depositary Receipts and similar investments.