Apple, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions. Apple has a checkered past in Ben-Hur lore as it has been suggested, and rejected, as a buy several times. However, a dip in the market afforded an opportunity to secure the stock at a value. Apple has harnessed an increasing amount of market share over the past several years on account of its top of the line selection of MacBook laptops, iPod digital music players, and the iPhone. Additionally, their stable operating system allows compatibility with Microsoft Windows and Office applications like never before – undoubtedly another reason for the increase in market share. The club sees a lot of promise in this growth stock. Apple looks to continue to be a force in the market for some time as they offer improvement with each generation of their products.

Total System Services is a payment processing company Ben Hur chose as an international growth investment. Their business model is to process payments, a task which they do very well as they were the first in this market and a handful of their clients in the past have unsuccessfully tried processing in house just to re outsource to Total System Services. Internationally they own over 40% of a similar company in China which controls its processing market their. In addition they are making progress in the UK by making London the international headquarters for expansion with new offices in India, Germany and the Netherlands. The plan is to be a part of their international growth which should result in a diverse base for healthier earnings.

NETC is the leading Brazilian cable & broad band provider. Currently Brazil’s population % of people using cable and the internet is much smaller then in other developed markets like the US, Japan and Europe. Ultimately Ben Hur feels the standard of living increase especially in the Brazil’s middle class will tend towards narrowing the gap. As time goes on we expect the % of Brazil’s citizens using cable and or broadband to potentially double in the next five years. This growth play is long term and should be revisited once a year to track the progress Brazil’s population is making with these markets. We are looking for population of about 60% users.