 |
| Rick Imperiale, Dylan Harkness and Dr. David Krause |
Rick Imperiale, the President & Chief Investment Officer
of Uniplan, visited the AIM classroom today and talked about his firm’s
approach to micro-cap investing. He presented ideas for stock screening and approaching the process of conducting primary research on micro cap stocks.
He founded Uniplan in 1984 and has been the lead portfolio
manager for the Uniplan REIT Strategy since its launch in 1988. He started
investing in REITs in 1984 and with more than 30 years in financial services,
Rick is one of the most experienced investors in alternative asset strategies.
In 1999 he founded the Uniplan Micro Cap fund – which invests primarily in
companies with market capitalizations under $500 million. It has a ‘value with catalyst’
focus concentrating on stocks with low relative P/E ratios; low relative
price-to-free cash flows; and low leverage relative to peers.
After graduating from Marquette University, Rick got his start
in financial services as a Credit Analyst at First Wisconsin Bank in 1980. The
credit scoring models he built for evaluating companies still serve as the
basis for some of the quantitative models Uniplan uses today. In 1982, Rick
moved to Ziegler, an investment bank, where he served as a Corporate Analyst.
Initially, his focus was on financial models that would help project how
changes to specific variables would be likely to influence a company’s income
statement and balance sheet.
Rick was asked to join a new project at the investment bank
involving the creation and management of a hedged municipal bond fund. While he
was managing the fund, Rick developed his formative ideas for measuring
relative values of securities based on spreads. The REIT Strategy was the first
of three alternative asset strategies that Rick has successfully managed at
Uniplan. Over the course of his career, he has been a pioneer in the analysis
of alternative asset classes and authored two books on the topic, including Real Estate Investment Trusts: New
Strategies for Portfolio Management. He is also the author of Author of The
Micro Cap Investor: Strategies for Making
Big Returns in Small Companies. He leads a team of 9 investment
professionals with more than 150 years of total investment experience.
