Salomon’s Selections

Salomon Smith Barney named Allstate, Amgen and Honeywell to its “10+ Exceptional Names” list Thursday for the second straight year. The brokerage arm of Citigroup annually publishes the index of what it expects to be the top performers in the coming year. Since its inception in 1994 through the end of June, the list has outperformed the S&P; 500, on average, according to Salomon. Over the last three years, stocks within the index rose more than 39% a year, on average, compared with 29% for the blue-chip Standard & Poor’s 500 index. This year’s selections:

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Ticker Thursday P/E 3-5 year proj. Company symbol close ratio* EPS growth** Albertson’s ABS $52.38 22 14 Allstate ALL 36.81 12 11 Amgen AMGN 65.63 38 15 Bank of New York BK 39.13 25 12 Dayton Hudson DH 71.38 34 15 Electronic Data Systems EDS 59.69 33 14 Fort James FJ 38.50 15 14 Honeywell HON 119.94 27 12 Lucent Technologies LU 71.56 67 22 Marsh & McLennan MMC 78.56 25 12 MCI WorldCom WCOM 90.00 89 31 Mobil MOB 103.13 39 8 Pitney Bowes PBI 70.00 33 13 Raytheon RTN/B 74.50 24 11 Tyco International TYC 97.88 41 21 S&P; 500 SPX 1,394.42 29 7

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*Price-to-earnings ratio based on trailing four quarters

**Estimated average annual earnings-per-share growth for the next three-to-five years, based on analysts’ consensus

Source: Bloomberg News