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research report

Validea's pick of the week provides a detailed report on a company that scores well in the stock-screening service's model portfolios. On Validea.ca, investors can analyze 1,000 Canadian stocks through 12 different guru-based models and get individual reports on each company. Globe Investor has a distribution agreement with Validea.ca. Try it.

California-based Robert Half International, founded in 1948, was the world's first specialized staffing firm. Today it is its largest, offering professional consulting and staffing services. It is also the parent company of Protiviti, a global consulting firm that helps companies solve problems in finance, technology, operations, governance, risk and internal audit. RHI has staffing and consulting operations in more than 400 locations across the globe and has a market cap of $6.3-billion (U.S.).

Robert Half has a 12-month relative strength of 73 and a price/sales ratio of 1.46, a combination that helps it get strong interest from the James O'Shaughnessy-based growth model. The O'Shaughnessy-based strategy also likes that it has upped EPS in each year of the past half-decade.

RHI has grown EPS at a 43-per-cent pace over the long term (using an average of the 3-, 4- and 5-year EPS growth rates), which the Peter Lynch based model likes. It has 0.56 P/E-to-growth ratio, helping it get strong interest from the Lynch model.

The company has just $1.3-million in long-term debt versus $650-million in net current assets, which the Benjamin Graham-based model likes. It has strong 53.5-per-cent return on capital (using EBIT/tangible capital employed). It has a 2.2 current ratio, a sign of good liquidity, according to the Graham-based approach.

Robert Half International gets some interest from the Kenneth Fisher-based model, which likes its strong growth, reasonable debt, positive ($1.21) free cash per share, and 5.0-per-cent three-year average net profit margins. The company also has a trailing 12-month return on equity of 29 per cent.

John Reese is long RHI.

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