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FactSet Research Systems (FDS) is a company whose products most professional money manager are familiar with, but it’s the stock that’s been catching my eye lately.

The story here is pretty simple: Wall Street is addicted to data and FDS is their dealer. The fundamentals are solid; fat margins, zero debt and nice history of churning out 20% EPS increases.

I’ll warn you, FDS is expensive although it recently got a little less expense. The shares are off about 20% from their high. I think the market is concerned that many of FDS’ clients are these dearly departed hedge funds. I doubt that’s the case. FDS has a large diversified client base (2,000 clients and 33,000 users). This is a well-entrenched business.

Posted by edelfenbein at August 22, 2007 12:36 PM