STOCK STRATEGIES April 3, 2009, 12:01AM EST

A Stock Screen with a Forward-Looking Twist

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To sum up, here's the list of criteria I used:

* Return on Invested Capital greater than 15%

* Enterprise Value to EBITDA less than 6

* Free Cash Flow to Operating Income greater than 75%

* Total Debt to Invested Capital less than 30%

* Capital Expenditures to Property, Plant, and Equipment greater than 30%

And here are the dozen stocks that resulted from this screen (using data available as of Feb. 27, 2009):

Quantitative Stock Screen

Company	Symbol	Market Cap ($mil)	ROIC	EV/EBITDA	FCF to Oper. Income	TD/EBITDA	Capex to PP&E
Autodesk	ADSK	2,872	30%	3.2	124%	6.7%	75%
Robert Half International	RHI	2,326	24%	4.0	90%	0.7%	49%
T. Rowe Price Group	TROW	5,820	20%	5.7	87%	0.0%	36%
Adobe Systems	ADBE	8,754	19%	5.3	110%	28.2%	36%
EZCORP	EZPW	467	18%	5.2	87%	11.2%	41%
QLogic	QLGC	1,118	16%	3.3	98%	0.0%	31%
Sapient	SAPE	488	15%	4.9	122%	0.0%	55%
Comfort Systems USA	FIX	368	16%	3.4	126%	13.1%	47%
Accenture	ACN	17,729	77%	4.8	96%	0.2%	38%
NeuStar	NSR	1,221	18%	5.3	87%	9.1%	40%
Net 1 UEPS Technologies	UEPS	806	23%	5.7	94%	26.1%	71%
Teradata	TDC	2,721	36%	5.9	117%	0.0%	39%

Tortoriello is an analyst for Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services. He is the author of Quantitative Strategies for Achieving Alpha, published by McGraw-Hill in November, 2008.