NEW ORLEANS – The Hancock Horizon Burkenroad Small Cap Fund is among the best performers according to the November 2014 issue of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Bloomberg’s Rocky Swift reports the “$850 million fund returned 360 percent from its inception on Dec. 31, 2001 through Sept. 8, 2014.”
The Bloomberg article also cites Burkenroad as one of the best funds based on their calculations of risk-adjusted returns.
Swift reports The Burkenroad Fund, managed by Hancock Bank’s managing director David Lundgren, holds about 90 companies in Southern states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They look to discover undervalued companies, mostly in energy and retail, examining free cash flow.
The Fund is named after Burkenroad Reports written by Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business grad and undergrad students who size up companies’ performances. Peter Ricchiuti founded the program in 1993.
Burkenroad Reports is a credit course, where about 200 MBAs and undergraduate business students are divided into teams and students receive extensive training in the field of equity analysis. Each team is assigned coverage of one public company and students meet with top management, visit company sites, develop financial models and publish extensive investment research reports on the companies they follow. Students participate in a full day analyst workshop when alumni return from Wall Street to lecture current students on "real life" applications and suggestions for securing positions in finance.
According to Bloomberg’s Swift, Hancock licenses the Burkenroad name for its fund and uses the Tulane student generated reports to “compliment its own quantitative investment model.”
Lundgren tells Swift they look for a companies’ free cash flow versus market value, earnings surprises and momentum factors like the strength of a company’s share price movement.
Kathy Finn, in the September/ October 2014 issue of Louisiana Life Magazine, reports the latest hot picks from Burkenroad Reports include Cleco Corporation, an electric utility in Pineville, LA, Conrad Industries Incorporated, a ship manufacturer in Morgan City, LA, IberiaBank Corporation in Lafayette, LA, Gulf Island Fabrication Incorporated in Houma, LA and Houston, TX, which provides services for offshore drilling and production, and Covington, LA’s Pool Corporation, which sells swimming pool supply products.
The 19th Annual Burkenroad Reports Investment Conference will take place on Friday, April 24, 2015, at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans.
It's free and open to the public and provides individual and institutional investors an opportunity to meet management and to learn more about some of the region's top public companies.
The keynote luncheon speaker will be legendary investor Mario Gabelli.
