The following are today's upgrades for Validea's Low PE Investor model based on the published strategy of John Neff. This strategy looks for firms with persistent earnings growth that trade at a discount relative to their earnings growth and dividend yield.
VIRTUS INVESTMENT PARTNERS INC (VRTS) is a small-cap value stock in the Investment Services industry. The rating according to our strategy based on John Neff changed from 58% to 77% based on the firm’s underlying fundamentals and the stock’s valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.
Company Description: Virtus Investment Partners, Inc. provides investment management and related services to individuals and institutions. The Company offers investments strategies for individual and institutional investors in different investment product structures and through multiple distribution channels. The Company provides various asset classes (equity, fixed income, multi-asset and alternative), geographies (domestic, global, international, and emerging), market capitalizations (large, mid, and small), styles (growth, core, and value) and investment approaches (fundamental and quantitative). Its retail products include open-end funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs), as well as closed-end funds and retail separate accounts. Its institutional products are offered through separate accounts and pooled to a variety of institutional clients. The Company also provides sub advisory services to other investment advisers and serve as the collateral manager for structured products.
The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.
| P/E RATIO: | PASS |
| EPS GROWTH: | PASS |
| FUTURE EPS GROWTH: | PASS |
| SALES GROWTH: | FAIL |
| TOTAL RETURN/PE: | PASS |
| FREE CASH FLOW: | FAIL |
| EPS PERSISTENCE: | FAIL |
Detailed Analysis of VIRTUS INVESTMENT PARTNERS INC
About John Neff: While known as the manager with whom many top managers entrusted their own money, Neff was far from the smooth-talking, high-profile Wall Streeter you might expect. He was mild-mannered and low-key, and the same might be said of the Windsor Fund that he managed for more than three decades. In fact, Neff himself described the fund as "relatively prosaic, dull, [and] conservative." There was nothing dull about his results, however. From 1964 to 1995, Neff guided Windsor to a 13.7 percent average annual return, easily outpacing the S&P 500's 10.6 percent return during that time. That 3.1 percentage point difference is huge over time -- a $10,000 investment in Windsor (with dividends reinvested) at the start of Neff's tenure would have ended up as more than $564,000 by the time he retired, more than twice what the same investment in the S&P would have yielded (about $233,000). Considering the length of his tenure, that track record may be the best ever for a manager of such a large fund.
About Validea: Validea is aninvestment researchservice that follows the published strategies of investment legends. Validea offers both stock analysis and model portfolios based on gurus who have outperformed the market over the long-term, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig. For more information about Validea, click here
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
