In our Large Cap Growth portfolio, CastleArk Management emphasizes a proprietary "Life Cycle" investment process. We generate superior risk-adjusted returns by identifying growth companies which successfully deploy investment and R&D dollars to produce high returns on invested capital - in our view,  the most important variable in defining and valuing growth companies.

Portfolio Management Team:

• Bob Takazawa, CFA
• Jerry Castellini
• Quentin Ostrowski, CFA
• Rick Drake, CFA

CastleArk's mission is to provide our clients with superior risk-adjusted returns through our "Life Cycle" investment process. Life Cycle investing highlights growth companies with opportunities to earn superior returns on invested capital.

The CastleArk investment team prides itself on its long-term record of success. The investment process, philosophy, and team of investment professionals have been in place for more than two decades, pre-dating the formation of CastleArk itself.

Large Cap Growth Strategy Overview

We believe the ability to grow earnings in the future is a function of the opportunities to earn high returns on investments made today. At CastleArk, we seek superior returns for our clients by identifying companies that are (or will be) dominant in their respective industries. We consider return on invested capital to be the most important element in achieving superior investment returns.

The Investment Process

Future Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) is at the core of CastleArk Management's investment process. Evaluation of a company's opportunities to sustain or increase ROIC is the key component of our fundamental research effort.

We always ask: is the company investing its capital in a way that will sustain or increase total ROIC?

Working with a universe of roughly 600 growth companies, our portfolio managers identify those with opportunities for accelerating growth. We believe these opportunities are made possible by a company's ability to make sound, high-return investments in areas such as

• new product development
• expansion of production and/or sales and marketing efforts
• geographic expansion.

Wise investment of shareholder capital leads to increased market share and higher margins, which produce faster revenue and earnings growth.

CastleArk Management uses a proprietary Growth Company Life Cycle Analysis to evaluate the approximately 175 companies with the best opportunities for accelerating growth -  namely those that pass our ROIC test.

We value growth companies by determining the company's place in its growth life cycle. We can determine in which phase of growth a company belongs by examining the consistency and predictability of quarterly trends in ROIC, revenue and earnings growth, operating margins, and cash flow.

Once this determination is made, we evaluate a company's relative fundamental outlook and valuation to determine the appropriate range for buying or selling the stock. In short, the Life Cycle Analysis allows us to compare apples-to-apples when evaluating the attractiveness of companies in various stages of growth.

Our valuation process produces approximately 75 companies with opportunities for both increasing ROIC and attractive valuations.

The final step in our process is active management of the portfolio. CastleArk Management seeks a well-diversified portfolio of 40-55 "high conviction" stocks. By actively managing the portfolio, we are able to manage risk through diversification of sectors, size, life cycle phases, liquidity, opportunities, and market sensitivity.

This dynamic process is continuous, driving both the sell discipline and the selection process.

Insuring Process Integrity:

Assets in the Large Cap Growth portfolio will be capped at approximately $5 billion, ensuring the quality of our Large Cap Growth portfolio, rather than driving the size of our client base. Capping the asset base allows our portfolio managers to consider all the best investment opportunities, without the impediments of liquidity issues, in order to meet our objective of providing our clients with superior performance.

Large Cap Growth Strategy profile:

AUM (12/31/10):                $1.9 billion
Number of holdings:          40 – 55
Benchmark:                           Russell 1000 Growth
Capitalization universe:    > $1 billion
Median Market cap            $16.4 billion
Cash position                       0% - 5%
Annual turnover                80% - 120%