As the world's third-richest person and most celebrated investor, Warren Buffett attracts a lot of attention. Thousands try to glean what they can from his thinking processes and track his investments.

We can't know for sure whether Buffett is about to buy Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) -- he hasn't specifically mentioned anything about it to me -- but we can discover whether it's the sort of stock that might interest him. Answering that question could also reveal whether it's a stock that should interest us. In this series, we do just that.

Writing in a recent 10-K, Buffett lays out the qualities he looks for in an investment. In addition to adequate size, proven management, and a reasonable valuation, he demands:

  1. Consistent earnings power
  2. Good returns on equity with limited or no debt
  3. Management in place
  4. Simple, non-techno-mumbo-jumbo businesses

Does Alcatel-Lucent meet Buffett's standards?

1. Earnings power
Buffett is famous for betting on a sure thing. For that reason, he likes to see companies with demonstrated earnings stability.

Let's examine Alcatel-Lucent's earnings and free cash flow history:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Over the past five years, Alcatel-Lucent has had a difficult time generating earnings. Earnings have turned around significantly since 2011. While a lot of that has to do with improved operating performance, a big chunk did come from the company's discontinued Genesis operations.

2. Return on equity and debt
Return on equity is a great metric for measuring both management's effectiveness and the strength of a company's competitive advantage or disadvantage -- a classic Buffett consideration. When considering return on equity, it's important to make sure a company doesn't have an enormous debt burden, because that will skew your calculations and make the company look much more efficient than it is.

Recently, Alcatel-Lucent has generated moderate returns on equity -- 10%, a lot better than its five-year average of -19% -- while employing a moderately high 89% debt-to-equity ratio. That return on equity isn't anything to write home about, though it's largely in line with the industry.

3. Management
CEO Ben Verwaayen has been at the job since 2008. His time at Alcatel-Lucent started in 1997, interrupted for a few years when he was CEO of the massive London-based telco BT Group.

4. Business
Communications equipment requires constant research and development, but the industry isn't particularly susceptible to wholesale technological disruption.

The Foolish conclusion
So is Alcatel-Lucent a Buffett stock? Probably not. The company has a tenured CEO, and it's improved quite a bit over the past year, but it doesn't yet particularly exhibit the other characteristics of a quintessential Buffett investment: consistent earnings and high returns on equity with limited debt. To stay up to speed on Alcatel-Lucent's progress, simply add it to your stock watchlist. If you don't have one yet, you can create a watchlist of your favorite stocks by clicking here.

And if you're looking for a promising stock in communications, check out The Motley Fool's "The Next Trillion Dollar Revolution." You can download the name of the company and the free report for free by clicking here.