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TWST: Within a summary of the group that you cover, set the stage for 2001. What are the expectations for this group in 2001?

Mr. Moore: The eProcessors and financial technology companies provide technology and services for automating and processing what are mainly financial transactions. It’s a relatively diverse group of companies; they operate in a number of different businesses. The common thread, though, is that they’re all ultimately driven by the financial services industries — including asset management, commercial banking, insurance, and securities brokerage — and generally by all of the industry drivers. These are business-to-business companies selling technology and services to other businesses whose customers are the end-users. Those end-users conduct the financial transactions — whether those are mutual fund transactions or securities transactions, buying insurance, or banking. We currently cover nine stocks. The vast majority of our stocks are Buy-rated at the moment. The fundamentals for the eProcessor stocks should hold up fairly well this year, despite what we’re hearing about a vacillating economy and stock market. We’re projecting a 23% increase in core revenue and EPS up 21% in 2001 on average for our group, which is about comparable to what the group did last year. There may be upside earnings surprises for some select companies within the group.

TWST: What should an investor consider when reviewing BISYS?

Mr. Moore: BISYS (Nasdaq:BSYS) is a Buy-rated stock with a 60 price target. The growth outlook this year is for a 20% increase in EPS. We see BISYS as one of the leaders in the provision of third party outsourcing services to a wide diversity of financial services companies. It has three different businesses — bank processing, mutual fund processing, and insurance and education distribution and processing. The demand for those services remains fairly stable in this environment, and in particular the insurance and education business should be a source of tremendous growth for the company this year. Increasingly, we’re seeing financial institutions, insurance companies, and financial intermediaries seeking ways of getting greater access to insurance products. Online training services and certification services are increasing, and those services will be a particular source of growth for BISYS as the market share leader in that business. BISYS is a third party provider of outsourcing services and excels in providing the best-of-breed technology across all their businesses. That will be an important competitive advantage for BISYS and will provide a pretty strong demand for their products and services throughout the year.