Small biotech stocks may grab a lot of headlines, but don’t let them distract you from less-publicized yet equally exciting small caps in other areas of healthcare. For instance, in all the biotech hoopla of the past few years, how many investors overlooked WebMD Health (Nasdaq: WBMD)?

Too bad they did. Shares of the $1.8-billion firm, a world leader in providing health and medical information, more than tripled since mid-January 2013.

A powerful tailwind for WebMD’s stock: the graying of the population. The ranks of the elderly are swelling, and as people age they tend to have more health problems. They naturally want all the information they can get about those problems, and WebMD has long been a trusted source.

Growing traffic on the firm’s website is driving stronger ad sales and, in turn, the top and bottom lines. Revenue now tops $600 million annually, up from $470 million in 2012. Net income has soared to $53 million from 2012’s $20-million loss. Annual free cash flow of $79 million is nearly double that of three years ago.

The latest quarterly report (for Q3) showed an 8% increase in the number of unique visitors to 206 million per month and an 11% gain in the number of page views to four billion. Quarterly revenue rose 6% to $153 million, while earnings jumped 39% to $0.32 a share. Management expects to report the best quarter in WebMD’s history when it reveals fourth-quarter performance in a few weeks.

Importantly, WebMD also holds sway with healthcare professionals, especially physicians, who are a preferred target market for pharmaceutical and other advertising. WebMD increasingly reaches physicians through its Medscape mobile medical reference app, as CEO David Schlanger illustrated during the third-quarter conference call:

During the quarter we averaged approximately 6.8 million physician sessions per month, an increase of approximately 12% over the prior year period. For physicians and healthcare professionals throughout the world, Medscape is the premier source of medical news, clinical reference, point of care tools and medical education. In the U.S., Medscape has approximately 645,000 registered U.S. physicians that are active on an annual basis, representing a substantial majority of the practicing physicians in the US. During the third quarter, an average of approximately 380,000 U.S. physicians were active monthly.

We also reached approximately 2 million other U.S. healthcare professionals many of whom engage with patients and impact prescribing decisions, such as nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, and are therefore an important audience for our advertisers. For health advertisers, we reach highly targeted consumers and physician audiences of scale at the time most likely to impact decision-making and with measurable outcomes.

The takeaway: WebMD still holds plenty of growth potential. So even if you missed out on it the past three years, consider being a shareholder for the next three.

Around the Roadrunner Portfolios

Property and casualty insurer W.R. Berkley (NYSE: WRB), up almost 30% since joining our small-value portfolio in March 2014, overcame significant challenges to deliver a solid third quarter. And we’re betting the firm’s fourth-quarter report due out February 2 will contain more good news.

The lowdown on Q3: Berkley improved net written premiums 3% to nearly $1.6 billion, despite weakness in noncore foreign and reinsurance markets. In core domestic P&C markets, net written premiums climbed a sturdy 6% to almost $1.3 billion.

We’re also liking Berkley’s combined ratio, a widely used measure of underwriting acumen. A combined ratio under 100% means an insurer collects more in premiums than it pays out in claims. The lower the ratio, the greater the underwriting profit.

Berkley’s third-quarter combined ratio of 92% signifies especially robust profitability. On an annual basis, its ratio ranged from 93.1% to 98.5% since 2008.

Better combined ratios are a welcome development, as they go a long way toward offsetting other headwinds Berkley is facing, such as underperformance of noncore markets, the dollar’s strong negative effect on foreign profits and smaller returns on invested premiums due to low interest rates. During Q3, these factors contributed to a 19% decline in earnings per share.

As usual, though, the quarter saw Berkley enjoy a longstanding competitive advantage—a highly decentralized corporate structure that minimizes the risk of large claims that could be financially catastrophic for the company. CFO Eugene Ballard summarized Berkley’s latest “cat” experience during the quarterly conference call:

Our cat losses were relatively light again this quarter at $6 million or 0.4 loss ratio points. That’s down from $15 million in the third quarter of 2014. And on a year-to-date basis, our cat losses were $46 million or one loss ratio point.

Is it any wonder we’re so optimistic about W.R. Berkley? We rank the stock a “buy” ahead of fourth-quarter earnings.

Many companies are shy about offering guidance on future performance, but RoadRunner small-cap momentum pick The Ensign Group (Nasdaq: ENSG) has no qualms about it. In its latest earnings release, the California-based owner of skilled nursing and rehab facilities forecasted top and bottom-line gains of about 20% and 15%, respectively, in 2016, excluding certain costs such as acquisitions, amortization and facility construction.

For the year, Ensign expects revenue of $1.53 billion to $1.58 billion and earnings of $2.87 to $3.01 per diluted share.

Those projections came on the heels of outstanding third-quarter results, which CEO Christopher Christensen highlighted during the conference call:

Consolidated adjusted net income climbed 55.7% over the prior year quarter to $15.9 million while adjusted earnings per share of $0.60 outpaced the prior year quarter of $0.44 per share by almost 37%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDAR was $57 million for the quarter, an increase of 46.9%, which to us is much more important than top-line growth.

Same-store skilled revenue grew by 6.4% over the prior year quarter with a skilled revenue mix of 52.8% and Managed Care days increased by 12.45% over the prior year quarter, demonstrating that we can continue to grow skilled mix as we enhance our relationships with our Managed Care partners.

In addition to vigorous organic growth like the healthy same-store skilled revenue gain Christensen mentioned, Ensign is also expanding through frequent yet financially sustainable acquisitions. In Q3, for example, the company acquired 12 skilled nursing operations, 20 assisted and independent living facilities, a home health business and a hospice agency without compromising its balance sheet.

Christensen remarked:

Our balance sheet remains strong in spite of our record acquisition activity with its conservative adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.27 times at quarter end. It’s remarkable that we transitioned so many acquisitions while protecting our balance sheet and simultaneously driving record setting same-store growth.

Christensen was spot-on when he said this year holds plenty of opportunity for Ensign. With an earnings multiple only around seven times management’s 2016 guidance, the firm’s stock is an attractive opportunity for investors.

Real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap (NYSE: MMI) has done well by shareholders, returning about 9% since its August 2014 inclusion in the momentum portfolio versus a slight loss for S&P 500 during the same period. Like always, the firm is leveraging its core private client business, which handles property sales in the $1 million to $10 million price range.

During the third-quarter conference call, Senior Executive Vice President Hessam Nadji explained why this market remains “a bedrock of strength”:

Over the long term, the $1 million to $10 million private client segment has proven to be at least 30% less volatile than sales in higher-priced assets, as transactions are typically driven by personal factors such as death, divorce, partnership breakups and other circumstances. In terms of sheer size, once again, in the last 12-month period, 83% of all commercial property sales and 60% of the commission pool were in this segment.

For MMI, this segment accounted for 89% of transactions and 77% of revenue. I’d like to emphasize that MMI’s $1 million to $10 million transaction count increased 17.8%…and our overall transaction count increased by 10.4% year-over-year.

Some highlights from the third-quarter earnings release:

• Quarterly sales volume totaled more than 2,200 transactions worth $9.4 billion, nearly a 12% year-over-year increase. Adjusted EBITDA jumped more than 15% to $30 million, pushing the EBITDA margin up to 17.8% from 17% in the third quarter of 2014.

• For the first three quarters of 2015, revenue spiked almost 22% to $486 million, while adjusted EBITDA soared 41% to $89 million. At 6,255 transactions, sales volume was up more than 13% compared with the first three quarters of 2014. In dollar terms, it rose almost 16% to $27 billion.

Looking forward, the firm sees plenty of room for expansion in its still highly fragmented core market, with factors like capital availability and a healthy commercial real estate sector providing ample tailwinds. Marcus & Millichap has a P/E to growth (PEG) ratio of just 0.72, meaning its stock is cheaply priced relative to expected profit gains.