The Drip Portfolio has launched a search for a new, high-growth investment. Now that we own a foundation of stable growers, we are in a position to be more aggressive. We're searching for a leading company expected to grow earnings per share at least 20% to 25% each of the next four years, about 15% to 18% on average in each of the following five years, and 11% to 12% on average in the remaining eight years.

To begin our new study, we asked you for company suggestions. Over the last week, the best investment ideas from many of you floated onto the Drip discussion board. I compiled your responses in the following list of high-growth companies. Today we share the entire list so that you can utilize it however you wish -- perhaps print it. Tomorrow, we'll refine the Drip Port's company requirements as we outline our investment criteria. That will shorten our own list considerably.

The first group listed below is the companies that were suggested more than any other. The group is shown in order of popularity based on the number of times each company was suggested. Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX) (the runaway leader), Corning (NYSE: GLW), and Enron (NYSE: ENE) were the three most popular suggestions. Paychex led, but all three of these leaders were suggested at least twice as often as the next group of runners-up, which included Network Appliances (Nasdaq: NTAP), JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and Scientific-Atlanta (NYSE: SFA).

Every company in the first group was suggested at least twice. Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI) is the cutoff company. After that, every company was suggested only once. Those companies are listed in the order of their expected growth rates, from highest to lowest.

Finally, you can get more information on any company by clicking on its ticker symbol. Some company names are linked as well. Names that are linked take you to good posts made by Fools that briefly describe the company and why they like it. Now, we present the list!

Multiple Votes Listed in Order of Popularity 
                                Market     EPS
                                 Cap      Growth
Company (Ticker)              (Billions)   Est.*
Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX) $16 28.3% Corning (NYSE: GLW) $91 27.4% Enron (NYSE: ENE) $62 17% Network Appliance (Nasdaq: NTAP) $35 56% JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU) $99 49% Nokia (NYSE: NOK) $200 28% Scientific-Atlanta (NYSE: SFA) $11 23% Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) $60 18% Ariba (Nasdaq: ARBA) $38 61% Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT) $217 24% Home Depot (NYSE: HD) $126 23% Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM) $51 48% Sandisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) $5 34.2% Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HDI) $14 18.5% Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) $253 19.9% Millennium Pharm. (Nasdaq: MLNM) $12 27% Human Genome Sci. (Nasdaq: HGSI) $9 N/A Single Votes Listed in Order of Estimated Growth Rate Phone.com (Nasdaq: PHCM) $7 100% USinternetworking (Nasdaq: USIX) $0.871 72.5% Nextlink Commun. (Nasdaq: NXLK) $8 70% InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP) $9 68% Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC) $12 67.5% eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) $17 66.7% Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) $4.8 64.3% Marimba (Nasdaq: MRBA) $0.370 58.3% Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) $15 57.7% Redback Networks (Nasdaq: RBAK) $19 52.8% Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) $57 51% Newport (Nasdaq: NEWP) $5 50% Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) $3.6 50% America Online (NYSE: AOL) $128 48.4% Cree (Nasdaq: CREE) $4.4 47.5% RF Micro Devices (Nasdaq: RFMD) $6.4 44% Applied Micro Cir.(Nasdaq: AMCC) $24 42.7% Qiagen (Nasdaq: QGENF) $6 42.5% Medimmune (Nasdaq: MEDI) $15 41.8% Vitesse Semi. (Nasdaq: VTSS) $15 41% Check Point(Nasdaq: CHKP) $23 40.7% PMC-Sierra (Nasdaq: PMCS) $34 40% Mercury Interactive(Nasdaq: MERQ) $9.6 39.1% Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL) $39 38.8% Palm Inc (Nasdaq: PALM) $25 37.5% Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) $47 36.8% Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN) $29 36.3% Trex Company (NYSE: TWP) $0.528 35% Identix (AMEX: IDX) $0.500 35% Concord EFS (Nasdaq: CEFT) $7 34.5% Gemstar-TV Guide (Nasdaq: GMST) $16 33% Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) $462 31.6% Jabil Circuit (NYSE: JBL) $13 31.5% Dell Computer (Nasdaq: DELL) $100 31.3% Flextronics (Nasdaq: FLEX) $17 31.1% EMC (NYSE: EMC) $211 29.9% Solectron (NYSE: SLR) $29 29.6% ADC Telelcomun. (Nasdaq: ADCT) $26 28.8% Panera Bread Co (Nasdaq: PNRA) $0.196 28.3% Knight Trading (Nasdaq: NITE) $4 27.5% Genentech (NYSE: DNA) $44 26.1% Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) $6.8 26% Fastenal (Nasdaq: FAST) $2.3 25.6% WorldCom (Nasdaq: WCOM) $87 25.3% Krispy Kreme (Nasdaq: KREM) $1.1 25% 20%-25% Estimated Growth Telephone and Data Sys (AMEX: TDS) $7 24.7% Teradyne (NYSE: TER) $10.3 24.6% Chico's FAS (Nasdaq: CHCS) $0.627 24.2% Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) $100 24.2% Chiron (Nasdaq: CHIR) $8.5 24.0% Catalina Marketing (NYSE: POS) $2.2 23.8% Adaptive Broadband (Nasdaq: ADAP) $0.970 23.5% Tetra Tech (Nasdaq: WATR) $1 23.3% Motorola (NYSE: MOT) $74 22.9% Dollar General (NYSE: DG) $7 22.7% Applied Biosystems (NYSE: PEB) $21 22.5% Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) $12 22.1% Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) $19 21.6% Amer. Power Conv. (Nasdaq: APCC) $4 21.5% PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT) $9 21.5% Tyco International (NYSE: TYC) $97 21.3% Coldwater Creek (Nasdaq: CWTR) $0.304 21.2% Elan (NYSE: ELN) $13 20.8% 20% Cutoff Guidant (NYSE: GDT) $20 19% Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) $75 17.2% Walgreen Co (NYSE: WAG) $35 16.8% Alliance Capital Mgmt (NYSE: AC) $10 16% AFLAC (NYSE: AFL) $15 15.7% American Capital (Nasdaq: ACAS) $0.592 15.2% Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP) $122 14.9% Associates First Cap.(NYSE: AFS) $28 14.7% Carlisle (NYSE: CSL) $1.3 14.6% General Electric (NYSE: GE) $581 14.4% Citigroup (NYSE: C) $250 14.1% SYSCO (NYSE: SYY) $14 13.8% El Paso Energy (NYSE: EPG) $14 13.8% Gillette (NYSE: G) $32 13.1% McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP) $12 13% London Pacific Group (NYSE: LDP) $1.4 13% Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) $82 12.4% Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) $155 12.3% Quaker Chemical (NYSE: KWR) $0.148 12% Aventis (NYSE: AVE) $55 9% Duke Energey (NYSE: DUK) $30 8.8% IXYS (Nasdaq: SYXI) $0.913 N/A Nasdaq 100 (Nasdaq: QQQ) N/A N/A
*The "EPS Growth Est." is the five-year average earnings per share growth estimate as compiled by First Call.

Now, I realized a few things from this table. First, there are many multibillion-dollar companies in this country! Second, there are many quickly growing companies, too. However, keep in mind that these are earnings per share growth estimates only, and not by any means guaranteed. Also, a handful of these companies are not yet profitable (including Phone.com, USinternetworking, Ariba, Human Genome Sciences, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Commerce One, Amazon.com, Red Hat, and others). So, take these companies' estimated growth rates for what they're worth. They assume growth from a profitless base.

Finally, many of these companies do not offer Drip programs. We would need to buy them via a synthetic or pseudo-Drip, such as BuyandHold.com or ShareBuilder. For now, this does not play into our decision. We simply want to find the most superb companies, period. Later, the availability of a Drip may become a deciding factor among our small handful of finalist contenders.

Tomorrow we'll begin to weed this list as we start to present our investment criteria for this study. To discuss these companies tonight, before the ax comes down, visit the Drip Companies board.

Fool on!

--Jeff Fischer, TMF Jeff on the boards.

P.S. Every company that Fools suggested was listed. If your entry is not listed, it means that I couldn't confirm the ticker and company name despite three different online searches. This happened to seven companies.