Susan S. Hager

AGAM utilizes growth, core and specialty strategies. Their growth strategy is committed to long-term growth. They identify fundamentally strong and dynamic growth companies trading at a discount to their growth rates. The firm finds profitable investment opportunities and long-term returns by combining comprehensive, fundamental research, growth themes, risk controls and fundamental stock-picking. Portfolio construction consists of careful qualitative and quantitative analysis overseen by each strategy's lead portfolio manager. AGAM's core strategy asserts that small- and mid-cap markets are inefficient. They exploit this inefficiency with intense fundamental research and bottom-up stock-picking. The firm employs a relative value approach aimed to identify companies at the low end of their valuation range when compared to similar companies and the market overall. AGAM's objective is to achieve excess return of 3-5% over market cycles with less risk than the benchmark. They seek to deliver competitive returns in strong markets due to the undervalued earnings power of portfolio companies and superior performance in weak markets due to their quality and valuation discipline. AGAM has developed specialty strategies to extend our research edge beyond growth and core portfolios. Through these specialty strategies, they achieve specific and well-focused client goals. As with the growth and core strategies, the firm deploys intensive fundamental research, a disciplined investment process and a rigorous risk management oversight.

Functions as a College/University

Functions as a College/University

Evercore Asset Management focuses on investments in the stocks of small-cap and mid-cap US companies. The firm offers small-cap and mid-cap core equity products and small-cap and mid-cap value products. Though not limited by sector, Evercore tends to invest in the stocks of companies in the finance, commercial services and electronic technology sectors. The firm maintains a medium turnover rate. Evercore Asset Management's small-cap and mid-cap core strategies employ a fundamental, bottom-up investment approach that seeks to build portfolios in which each company's upside return potential is at least twice that of its downside risk. Portfolios typically hold 35 to 45 positions. Individual securities are usually weighted equally at the time of their inclusion in the portfolio with position sizes averaging 3%. No individual security will comprise more than 4.5% of the portfolio at market. The small-cap strategy targets companies with a market-cap of $200 million to $2 billion and the mid-cap strategy targets companies with a market-cap of $2 billion to $15 billion. Evercore looks for companies with a valuation at the low end of their historical range, for companies with an identified catalyst and strong management teams. For their small-cap and small/mid-cap (SMID) core strategies, Evercore utilizes a proprietary valuation tool to identify companies with significantly greater reward than risk. Once identified, they conduct thorough research on each security, including on-site management interviews, building our own earnings models, as well as supplier, competitor and customer checks. If their analysis indicates that the security is mispriced, Evercore will initiate a position if they believe they have identified a catalyst which will cause others to recognize the company's value over the next 12 to 18 months. The benchmark for their small-cap core strategy is the Russell 2000 and the benchmark for their mid-cap core strategy is the Russell Mid-Cap Index. Evercore's small-cap and mid-cap value strategies seek to capitalize on pricing anomalies created by investors' irrational response to near-term events. Portfolios typically hold 40 to 60 positions. Individual securities are usually equally weighted at the time of their inclusion in the portfolio with position sizes averaging 2% to 3%. No individual security will comprise more than 5% of the portfolio at purchase. Evercore's small-cap value strategy targets companies with a market-cap of $200 million to $2 billion and their mid-cap value strategy targets companies with a market-cap of $1 billion to $7 billion. Evercore looks for companies with an understandable business model, a realistic route to improvement and a compelling valuation. Evercore's value investment strategies begin with the use of a proprietary quantitative model that makes an estimate of the long-term normalized earnings power of all of the companies in their capitalization range. The calculation of normalized earnings is based on the principle of mean reversion. They calculate the ratio of price to normalized earnings and rank stocks from low to high on that metric. The stocks with low price/normalized earnings tend to exhibit traditional value characteristics such as low p/b, low p/e and low price/cash flow. Stocks ranking in the top quintile are the source of Evercore's investment ideas. From this focus list, the firm's CIO prioritizes research projects. Next, Evercore performs an initial evaluation of companies on the priority list to understand the investment controversy and to generate a preliminary earnings forecast. This is used as a basis for further discussions to determine additional research that would be required to reach a decision on the stock. If they decide to move forward, the firm conducts intensive fundamental research to gain a unique understanding of the operational, strategic, financial and competitive issues facing the company. Once the research is completed, Evercore constructs a detailed 5-year forecast of the company's financials. This forecast provides the basis for consideration of the investment's merits and risks and leads to an investment decision.