Before the Call: Infosys

Who's on first? What's on second? Search me, bud. But I do know who's on fourth. Fourth quarter, that is. Bangalore behemoth Infosys (NASDAQ:INFY), the Indian outsourcing success story, releases its last earnings report of fiscal 2006 tomorrow.

There will be time aplenty to dissect the news after Infosys reports. But in these few hours before we begin obsessing over its short-term progress, let's take a moment to review what investors think about Infosys as a long-term investment. Our tool in this endeavor: Motley Fool CAPS, where we poll 26,000-plus investors for their views on more than 4,000 companies, Infosys among them. Here's what Fools have to say about the company.

Up or down?
More than 500 investors have submitted ratings on the company. The verdict: We love Infosys.

Overall, 98% of CAPS investors think the company will outperform the market. And when we poll the very best investors -- those designated as "All-Stars" on CAPS by virtue of their outperforming 80% of their peers -- the sentiment holds firm, with 97% giving Infosys the thumbs-up. That's good enough to earn it a whopping four out of five possible stars under the CAPS rating system.

In comparison with its peer group on CAPS, Infosys ranks pretty high on the totem pole:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
Moreover, when you ask the investors who supposedly know the most about investing -- Wall Street analysts -- they, too, agree that Infosys is a long-term winner. Out of 27 analysts polled, fully 26 of them, or 96%, rate Infosys an outperformer. Even the one holdout thinks Infosys will match the S&P's performance, and not a soul says "sell."

And indeed, if you examine the stock's performance over the past 52 weeks, you'll see that it has outperformed the market by nearly 27 percentage points.

So what is it, exactly, that makes Infosys so darn good an investment?

Bull pitch
The top-rated Infosys pitch on CAPS, and one submitted by a highly rated All-Star investor, no less, highlights the firm's 50% year-over-year growth over the past three years, and notes: "More importantly, [in] the previous earnings report there was no talk about slowing down."

Bear pitch
Even the ursine crowd basically likes Infosys, with one CAPS player suggesting that investors "revisit this one in a year." That said, citing a "strong rupee, which hurts sales to the USA," this bear predicts "a disappointing revenue report in April."

Who said that?
To learn the identities of the wise Fools who penned these words, and to explore the plethora of additional financial data we've put together on the company, just click here.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. You can find him on CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handle TMFDitty, where he's currently ranked 190th out of more than 26,000 raters.