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Get Four
|  | JANUARY 21, 2005
 STOCK SCREENS By Michael Kaye, CFA Consider Consistent Companies S&P sifts through its database to find outfits that have reliably delivered on key measures of performance in the last five years One theme we try to emphasize in this column is consistency -- the ability of a company to achieve solid performance over the long term. While past performance is no guarantee of future results, it can be useful to examine corporations' track records to get an indication of the overall direction of their business. Performance can be measured in many different ways. This week, we thought we'd try to find a list of names with favorable long-term track records in three key measures of the health of a business: • Return on equity percentage • Earnings per share • Net profit margins Our requirements were fairly simple. We looked in our database for those issues that have seen growth in those metrics in each of the last five years. When we ran the numbers, these 14 names emerged:
 Kaye is an analyst for Standard & Poor's Portfolio Advisors All of the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect the research analyst's personal views regarding any and all of the subject securities or issuers. No part of analyst compensation was, is or will be, directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendations or views expressed in this research report. Standard & Poor's Regulatory Disclosure Any advice, analysis, or recommendations contained in articles labeled "Insight from Standard & Poor's" reflect the views of Standard & Poor's, which operates separately from and independently of BusinessWeek Online. It is possible that BWOL may from time to time publish information that is not consistent with advice, analysis, or recommendations that are published by Standard & Poor's. Standard & Poor's and BusinessWeek Online are each units of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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