CLEARWATER, Fla. — Nicholas Financial recently announced it has been included on the Russell Microcap Index during Russell Investment's annual reconstitution of its family of U.S. indices, which became effective at the close of business on June 25.

Membership in the Russell Microcap Index, which remains in place for one year, means automatic inclusion in the appropriate growth and value style indexes, according to officials.

Russell determines membership for its equity indexes primarily by objective, market-capitalization rankings and style attributes.

Peter Vosotas, Nicholas president and chief executive officer, indicated, "It will be interesting to see what effect that our inclusion on the Russell Microcap Index will have on the price of our stock. We are hopeful that our company will benefit from this additional exposure and that it will help to increase the value of our share price."

Russell indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for both passive and active investment strategies, the company highlighted.

About $3.9 trillion in assets currently are benchmarked to them. The annual reconstitution of Russell Indexes captures the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks as of the end of May, ranking them by total market capitalization to create the Russell 3000 Index and Russell Microcap, officials noted.

The company presently operates out of 52 branch locations in both the Southeast and the Mid-Western states. It has approximately 11,716,000 shares of common stock outstanding.

For more on the index, visit www.russell.com.