Mr. Wilson: Lapides Asset Management is now a four-year-old firm. We manage over 300 million for a range of institutional and individual clients and our approach is to focus on the opportunity rich smaller cap US investment space. We define that as companies with market caps between 50 million and 10 billion. We believe that's an area that is not properly researched, leaving plenty of opportunity for those who are willing to do hands-on investment research work, which is what we are all about. We focus on long-term opportunities, we are risk averse and what we are trying to do is outperform on both a relative and an absolute basis over a three to five year investment cycle.
TWST: For your type of investing, I assume that the low of the market in March was an optimum time and since then it has been getting a little more difficult. Tell us how you've performed in 2009.
Mr. Sussman: We traditionally outperform in down markets and don't fully participate in very strong up markets. During the current recovery, all our portfolios have performed well, each having a very strong bounce. For the first 3 quarters of this year, all of our products: concentrated, micro cap and small/mid cap, have outperformed on a relative basis.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ACS, ADS, BPI, HAIN, HURN, NTY, RX, TPX, XRX
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.