Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, industrial automation specialist Rockwell Automation (NYSE: ROK) has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Rockwell's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Rockwell facts

Headquarters (Founded) Milwaukee (1928)
Market Cap $10.2 billion
Industry Electrical components and equipment
Trailing-12-Month Revenue $5.7 billion
Management Chairman/CEO Keith Nosbusch
CFO Theodore Crandall
Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years) 26.3%
Cash/Debt $1.02 billion / $905 million
Dividend Yield 2.4%
Competitors ABB (NYSE: ABB)
Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR)
General Electric (NYSE: GE)

Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 88% of the 258 members who have rated Rockwell believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include hobidan and VandalPride.

Earlier this year, hobidan tapped Rockwell as a particularly strong selection:

Historically a solid performer in industrial automation. Supports sustaining and retooling manufacturing industries. This will continue to do well as US economy recovers.

Over the next five years, in fact, Rockwell is expected to grow its bottom line at a solid rate of 16.4%. That's slightly faster than competitors like ABB (13.8%), Emerson (14.6%), and GE (14.7%).

CAPS member VandalPride offers some inside insight into the bull case:

This is my Peter Lynch pick. As an automation professional the vast majority of control system programmers consider Rockwells Logix platform the best PLC to program by far. Their Human Machine Interfaces (i.e. touchscreens, computer visualization software) is a good as any other I've used (different but not better). They have excellent support services for their products and a relatively easy to use website (compared to some of their competition in the automation field).

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