Portfolio Insights: Alger Weatherbie Specialized Growth Strategy

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Question : It does. Thank you for that. But how many would you say would be in your bullpen normally that have a chance of fighting for the top 50? Josh Bennett : We don't think of it in terms of a bullpen. It is a steady flow of ideas. We have five analysts who are looking for ideas. You may remember that George and I, even though we're senior portfolio managers on this product, we also cover names. And then you have Ed and Dan and our most recent hire as well, who's following health care services. We have five people who have been assigned areas of the market. Dynamic growth areas is what we call them, all hunting for ideas and coming up with a steady stream of ideas. We have a constant inflow of ideas ready to come in. And as those ideas fight to come in, they're going to push out the less attractive, smaller names in our portfolio. Speaker Question : Sorry, Josh. I'm back. There was a short report out on eHealth that got a fair amount of press. Any thoughts that report and your comfort level with the stock? Thanks. For better or for worse, this has become a reality of working in the smaller cap growth space. There are companies that are out there, and I won't name the names, but their business is essentially to sell their service to folks who want to come up with short ideas. They're always these small elements of truth that are sprinkled throughout these short reports, but then they're way blown out of proportion and typically under- researched. In the case of eHealth, we did what we always do, which is immediately get our hands on the short report, go through it in detail. We have a primary set of eyes on that name. and then quite often multiple other analysts or portfolio managers will also dig in and review. And that's exactly what we did. In this case, we had a meeting specific to eHealth, talking about the short report and what portions of it might be true and what Josh Bennett : Yes, we were very aware of the short report. It might be informative to talk about how the team reacts when that happens.

portions of it were clearly not true. So we'll go through point by point.

By the way, these short reports almost always come out when the company is in a quiet period, so the company isn't allowed to respond and we're not allowed to speak to the company. That's done on purpose to try to drive the stock down, given the short positions already in place. We're very aware of the short report. We had a meeting called specifically to talk about that short report and our response to it, but I can't talk about recent trading action around eHealth, but we do see that as a strong business model. Alan Kirby : Josh, thanks for addressing those and to everyone who had questions for a say, if you have additional questions regarding Alger the portfolio, please reach out to your Alger representative and let us know how we can help. Thank you all for participating on today's call. Please stay safe.

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