Mr. Kumbhani: Apex is a long-only, growth equity manager. The company was founded in 1987. I'm the Founder and CIO of the company. Sunil Reddy, a portfolio manager and Investment Committee member is here with me. Our SMID growth product has consistently remained in the top decile over the last seven years. We're getting a lot of traction; in fact, we are on as a Tier 1 manager on most of the platforms nationally, like Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley. The bulk of the assets are still in the Large Cap Growth product, but our small and mid-cap product is beginning to take off. We also have an All-Cap product beginning to grow with increasing institutional interest. As for the investment philosophy, we at Apex use a combination of both a top- down and a bottom-up approach to construct our portfolios. The top-down process primarily involves looking at secular growth and identifying emerging trends, especially with a global mindset. We think the majority of growth today comes from emerging markets and we have a heavy focus on companies positioned to benefit from those trends. The bottom-up process basically involves a lot of quantitative and fundamental analysis. Unlike many managers who use a funnel process to filter stocks, our approach is different. I've developed several models that really try to understand the growth cycles and where in the growth cycles various companies are. Our screens are designed to find companies that are emerging growth, early growth, mid-growth or late growth cycles. Once we have identified securities that have these characteristics, our focus turns to rigorous valuation and fundamental analysis. A company's global strategy, presence and positioning as well as the quality of management, earnings sustainability and uniqueness of their product niche are analyzed.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ARMH, ARO, CREE, ISRG, PCLN
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.