Mr. Ahlsten: I'm the director of the research team. I also am the portfolio manager of the Parnassus Equity Income Fund and the Parnassus Fixed-Income Fund. I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994, started working at Parnassus in 1995 and have been with the company ever since. I became Director of Research in 1998, started co-managing the equity income and fixed income funds in 2000 and then became the sole manager in May 2001. Parnassus Investments has four mutual fund products. We have the Parnassus Fund, which is a value fund; the Parnassus Equity Income Fund; the Parnassus Fixed-Income Fund and a municipal tax-exempt fund for California residents. We manage about 700 million. One of the important things about Parnassus is that we take social factors into account when we make investment decisions, which means that we don't invest in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, weapons or nuclear power. We try to focus on companies that sell products that are beneficial to society, management teams that contribute back to their communities, companies that are good places to work, and companies that are progressive with respect to the environment. So that's how we try to develop our list of companies. We don't invest in a company unless it makes financial sense, so we also have strict valuation guidelines when we make investment decisions. We're value investors; we like to buy good companies at the low end of their price ranges, and consider price to earnings, price to cash flow and price to book value. Then we look for companies with good business prospects over the next 12 months and subject these financial factors to our social screens before picking companies for our portfolios. So that's the overarching theme of the firm.
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