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Geneva Capital Management. We’re a boutique asset manager located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have been in Milwaukee since 1987.

We were acquired by Henderson Global Investors in 2014 and we really do primarily focus on small caps, mid caps and mid cap growth equities here in the US.

We believe that managing in a team is kind of the best way to manage money. So currently there are about 12 people on the investment management team. Ten of us are involved in research. We have six portfolio managers, three analysts, myself and then we have two traders that are on our team.

We have a generalist philosophy. So no one on the team is dedicated to any certain industry or sector.

Instead of being myopically focused on one industry or one sector, you really have a good understanding of what is going on across the sectors, across market cap spectrums, and we really believe that that is an advantage when you are making investment management decisions. Within the strategies, we manage things as a team and do things by consensus. So when we are making investment decisions, they are discussed as a team, but at the end of the day, it is up to the portfolio managers to kind of make those decisions. And the portfolio management teams on each one of the strategies, they do things by consensus.

Philosophically, we are trying to find high-quality companies.

Our definition of high quality can be distilled down to the three components. So we are looking for companies with great management teams, first of all. So before we make an investment in any company, we are going to go out and meet with the management team, face-to-face.

We feel that it is important, because these are the folks that are making the decisions at these companies and we want to get to know them. And not just the CEO, but some of the folks on the senior management team and maybe even one level below that as well. We want to make sure that they have a deep bench of talent in each one of these companies. So meeting with management is very important to what we do. Secondly, we are looking for conservative balance sheets, so ideally 50% or less debt-to-cap, looking at debt-to-EBITDA as well or other metrics.

Companies that have financial flexibility so maybe when things get difficult and they can pivot and make sure that they can sustain themselves, but conversely, maybe it is just being opportunistic as well, maybe buying a competitor or making an investment in a production facility or things like that. We really want these companies to not be over-levered and overburdened by debt.

Then lastly, we are looking for double-digit growth. So ideally, double-digit revenue, double-digit earnings growth, but almost more important than that is the consistency of growth. So we would rather invest in companies that can grow 10 to 15% year in and year out, rather than cyclical growers that maybe over a five-year period, they do have that double-digit growth, but it is very volatile from year-to-yea and when you put those three things together, which is great management, conservative balance sheets and high sustainable growth rates, we are able to build portfolios that outperform over a full market cycle, but with less risk.

So again, when we talk about investment process, we really have three key components. So we have a qualitative aspect, a quantitative aspect and then our top down economic and investment outlook. About 80 to 90% of what we do is bottom up fundamentally driven, that qualitative and quantitative. Qualitatively, again, we are looking for companies with great management teams, companies with a long-term focus, companies with a sustainable competitive advantage or maybe they operate in a niche part of the market. Quantitatively, we are looking for companies with, again low debt-to-cap, high growth rates, double-digit return on assets, return on equity where applicable. So we do have a quantitative screen that we use. Then we have a third component, which is our economic and investment outlook. I think this is a little bit unique in the sense that we are fundamental bottom-up manager, but we do have this top down component. It is something that we put together as a team, we put together on a quarterly basis and it is our views on markets in the economy in both the short term and in the long term. And it doesn’t necessarily drive investment decision, so we are not overweighting or underweighting sectors because of it, but rather it is helping to make more well-informed investment decisions. It’s a great communication tool as well. So its something we post on our website, we send to clients and its available to anyone who wants to see it.