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The following are today's upgrades for Validea's Low PE Investor model based on the published strategy of John Neff. This strategy looks for firms with persistent earnings growth that trade at a discount relative to their earnings growth and dividend yield.

REGIONAL MANAGEMENT CORP (RM) is a small-cap value stock in the Consumer Financial Services industry. The rating according to our strategy based on John Neff changed from 60% to 77% based on the firm’s underlying fundamentals and the stock’s valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Regional Management Corp. is a diversified consumer finance company. The Company provides installment loan products primarily to customers with limited access to consumer credit from banks, thrifts, credit card companies, and other lenders. Its products include small and large installment loans. It provides its customers optional payment and collateral protection insurance. It offers small installment loans with cash proceeds to customers ranging from $500 to $2,500, with terms of up to 48 months. It offers large installment loans with cash proceeds to customers ranging from $2,501 to $25,000, with terms between 18 and 60 months. It offers its customers optional payment and collateral protection insurance relating to its loan products, including credit life insurance, accident and health insurance, involuntary unemployment insurance, and personal property insurance. It also offers indirect retail installment loans of up to $7,500. It operates under the name Regional Finance.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

Detailed Analysis of REGIONAL MANAGEMENT CORP

About John Neff: While known as the manager with whom many top managers entrusted their own money, Neff was far from the smooth-talking, high-profile Wall Streeter you might expect. He was mild-mannered and low-key, and the same might be said of the Windsor Fund that he managed for more than three decades. In fact, Neff himself described the fund as "relatively prosaic, dull, [and] conservative." There was nothing dull about his results, however. From 1964 to 1995, Neff guided Windsor to a 13.7 percent average annual return, easily outpacing the S&P 500's 10.6 percent return during that time. That 3.1 percentage point difference is huge over time -- a $10,000 investment in Windsor (with dividends reinvested) at the start of Neff's tenure would have ended up as more than $564,000 by the time he retired, more than twice what the same investment in the S&P would have yielded (about $233,000). Considering the length of his tenure, that track record may be the best ever for a manager of such a large fund.

About Validea: Validea is aninvestment researchservice that follows the published strategies of investment legends. Validea offers both stock analysis and model portfolios based on gurus who have outperformed the market over the long-term, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig. For more information about Validea, click here

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