A team of U.S. small-cap growth specialists led by industry veteran Drew Cupps has joined Polen Capital to enhance the $54 billion manager's active small-cap strategies.
Cupps’ Chicago-based team — which includes research analysts Kevin Leitner and Chris Bush — uses fundamental, thematic, and technical disciplines to identify inflection points across emerging trends, industry shifts, innovation cycles, and strategic pivots that can fuel sustainable long-term earnings growth.
In a statement, Cupps said his teams’ screening process “recognizes that no company is perfect and that strong performance can emerge from anywhere,” and that “by favoring data over dogma and maintaining a pragmatic approach, we have generated consistent value for our clients.”
“We think we have developed some insights into the mission of building great small-cap growth portfolios. And we’ve been doing it in the dark without much presence in the marketplace,” Cupps told Institutional Investor.
Since coming together at Cupps’ own firm (Cupps Capital Management), the team has been working together at a number of companies for over 18 years, the most recent being Advisory Research. For the last six, the team has been looking for a partner. According to Cupps, Polen was “a perfect match.” So, in the second quarter, they joined the investment manager, serving as Polen’s first Chicago office.
Cupp’s team runs three U.S. growth strategies: microcap, small-cap, and smidcap. Since inception, they have delivered top-decile results, which he hopes to continue under Polen.
“We built a lot of processes to equip ourselves to do that,” he added. While he has “learned setting AUM targets is a fool’s errand,” Cupps hopes the “products grow over time and many more people are exposed to them.”
Per Cupps, investing in small-cap growth stocks focused on technology and disruption requires deep daily analysis of emerging business models to identify future winners in a rapidly changing landscape. This constant learning and adaptation are central to the small-cap team’s strategy.
“It’s a joy for us to learn and to adjust our view about what the near future looks like and allocate to the winners,” he said.
