Neal St. Anthony of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune has a story on Mairs and Power, a decades-old fund shop located in St. Paul that has gotten strong returns from a newly launched fund.

The Mairs Power Small Cap Fund has seen a 44 percent gain in its first year in operation, putting it in the top 15 of all U.S. mutual funds, St. Anthony writes. And it's the first fund that the slow-and steady Mairs and Power has launched in 50 years.

Of the new fund's success, Mairs and Power PM Andy Adams told the Star Trib that "[o]ur timing was pretty good. The market was down when we launched last Aug 11. We live and die by Minnesota stocks, and some of them have done really well."

The small cap fund mostly invests in companies based in the Upper Midwest, St. Anthony notes, "because the portfolio managers like to be close to the firms they own and know some of the customers."

The older Mairs and Power funds have had strong and consistent long-term returns, according to the article. Both the Mairs and Power Growth and the Mairs and Power Balanced funds have five-star ratings from Morningstar.

Morningstar analyst David Falkof told St. Anthony that Mairs and Power's success comes from the firm's steady management. "A lot of their performance has to do with their culture," Falkof said. "Their turnover rates, buying-and-selling companies, are in the low-single digits," much lower than for the typical mutual fund.

"Mairs and Power really does focus on that three- to five-year investment period and they have held some stocks for decades," said Falkof. "It's fairly simple to talk about, but difficult to execute."  

Edited by: HFD


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