Put financial services and insurance together in a sentence and most people think of some of the nation's largest companies in the industry: Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRKA), American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG), MetLife Inc. (NYSE: MET), Allstate Corp. (NYSE: ALL) and The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: HIG). But one ever-growing small-cap is poised to make a name for itself.
Meet American Physicians Service Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMPH), an Austin, Texas-based $130 million company that not only provides brokerage and asset management services to individuals and institutions, but also provides insurance services including medical malpractice insurance. The insurance services segment provides financial management service to banks and insurance companies that provide liability insurance to doctors, while its financial services segment provides brokerage, asset management and investment advisory services to individuals and institutions.
Though the company has been around since 1974, American Physicians Service Group is not exactly a household name. But with a strong second quarter under its belt and glowing future prospects, that is bound to change. The company owes much of its recent success to smart management. The ambitious firm is expanding from its rather modest local roots thanks largely to a savvy acquisition. In April 2007, the company completed its acquisition of American Physicians Insurance Company [API], a firm whose operations it had managed since the mid-1970s.
In the quarter ended June 30, APS increased both revenue and earnings, reporting a net income of $12 million, or $2.37 a share, compared with $598,000, or $0.21 a share, in the same quarter last year. Revenues more than tripled to $29 million, compared with $8 million over the same period in 2006. In addition, the company posted a gain of $2.3 million related to the API merger. 2007 EPS projections of $3.38 are more than 300% higher than 2006 results.
American Physicians Service Group: Ready For Prime Time
Ian Wyatt is an active investor, a well-regarded investment expert and an Internet entrepreneur. He is the Chief Investment Strategist at Wyatt Investment Research, and plays a leading role in each of the company’s investment newsletters and trading services.As a well-regarded market expert, Ian has written for Marketwatch, Zacks Investment Research, Seeking Alpha, Yahoo! Finance and The Burlington Free Press. He has been interviewed or quoted in articles in well-known publications including AOL Finance Blogging Stocks, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, Barron Magazine, Barrons.com, Forbes.com, The Dick Davis Digest, The Dick Davis Income Digest, The Wall Street Transcript, TheStockAdvisors.com, Money Show Digest, The New Jersey Star Ledger, The Wisconsin State Journal and The Seattle Times.
In 1998, Ian combined two of his passions, stocks and the Internet, with the launch of a free investment web site with expert advice about investing in stocks.
Ian founded Business Financial Publishing and Wyatt Investment Research in 2001, publishing investment newsletters for individual investors. Since then, the company has evolved into an Internet content company publishing e-letters, special reports, newsletters, trading services and financial web sites.
Business Financial Publishing was named #185 on the 2008 Inc. Magazine Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in the United States, achieving a 3-year growth rate of 1,303%. The company currently reaches over one million individual investors weekly through its free e-letters.
His first book, The Small-Cap Investor: Secrets to Winning Big with Small-Cap Stocks, was published by John Wiley & Sons in September 2009. Ian lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont with his wife Carrie.