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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.

MIDWESTONE FINANCIAL GROUP INC (IOWA) (MOFG) is a small-cap value stock in the Money Center Banks industry. The rating according to our strategy based on John Neff changed from 40% to 79% 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: MidWestOne Financial Group, Inc. (MidWestOne) is a financial holding company. MidWestOne is the parent company of MidWestOne Bank (the Bank), which operates banking offices in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, and Colorado. MidWestOne provides electronic delivery of financial services through its Website, MidWestOne.bank. The Bank is focused on delivering relationship-based business and personal banking products and services. The Bank provides commercial loans, real estate loans, agricultural loans, credit card loans, and consumer loans. The Bank also provides deposit products, including demand and interest checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and time deposits. Complementary to its loan and deposit products, the Bank also provides products and services, including treasury management, Zelle, online and mobile banking, credit and debit cards, ATMs, and safe deposit boxes. The Bank also has a trust department and an investment services department.

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 MIDWESTONE FINANCIAL GROUP INC (IOWA)

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

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.