FOOL CONFERENCE CALL SYNOPSIS*
By Debora Tidwell (MF Debit)

CDI Corporation <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(NYSE: CDI)") else Response.Write("(NYSE: CDI)") end if %>
1717 Arch Street, 35th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103-2768
(215) 569-2200

UNION CITY, Ca., October 29, 1996/FOOLWIRE/ --- CDI announced third quarter 1996 results last Friday afternoon. They had a 13% increase in revenue and a 16% increase in earnings. For the 9-month period they had a 16% increase in revenue and a 22% increase in earnings. Revenues were $374,673,000 compared to $331,485,000 last year. Earnings from continuing operations and net earnings for the current quarter were $10,239,000 or $0.52 per share compared to $8,872,000 or $0.45 per share a year ago.

The real star of their technology division is their information technology segment. That segment did about $50 million in 1994, rose to about $100 million in 1995 and has continued to rise and the third quarter operating rate is about $200 million now. The IT margins are better than most other margins including the technical/engineering margins. CDI does a very broad spectrum of services in the IT area. They do everything from IT staffing, to application development and systems maintenance, to year-2000 compliance, help desk, all the way up to consulting where they do the migration from mainframes to client/server networks. Their strategy for handling this is to emphasize the internal growth and leverage their existing technical branch network where they have a lot of relationships and use that to sell and service their IT operations. Now they are also branching out into a lot of other customers -- banks, insurance companies, etc. -- that were not their normal customers. They have also developed a selected strategy of acquisitions where they would need a platform if they were going to nationally deliver, for example, some systems integration or other complex added-value solution where they need a platform to do that nationally.

CDI has a strategic alliance that they just began in September in the IT area. There are four participants -- one is a company named SAIC, a $2 billion San Diego company. They bring to the table the project management aspect of an IT project. Another participant is a company called Avatar, a very small company, that brings the assessment tools capability to the party. They figure out what the chore is to do to fix a year-2000 problem. The third participant is a company named Alydaar, which brings the mediation capability. And the fourth player is CDI and they are the staffing company. And together this strategic alliance addresses year-2000 date change chores that almost every organization is facing today. The customer list they have in this area is not only technical companies where they have a strong presence in many of those technology intensive large manufacturers, but it touches a broad range of industries including chem/petrochem, insurance, food processing, banks, accounting firms, Wall Street firms, telecom, etc. The strategic alliance started in September. Already CDI has 100 of their people at work on these projects and they have demand for 1100 people right now.

They have also had pretty explosive growth in the managed staffing area. It was doing about $100 million in 1994, $200 million in 1995, and it's current running rate is about $260 million. But that has experienced some tightened margins. So, CDI has eased back on the growth in response to those tighter margins.

CDI's traditional staffing is still very strong. In the automotive section, they discontinued the prototype and tool builds and closed a tool build in the first quarter and delayed the sale of the prototype while they got some cost controls and backlog built up. They intend to sell that by year end. In the other two areas they have an engineering business with a run rate of about $50 million per year and they have had disappointing results in that activity. And they have another automotive staffing area with a run rate of about $100 million and that is doing quite well. It is doing as well as other non-automotive sections. So, they are going to make an announcement by year end as to what they are going to do with those assets in the auto area.

Telecommunications is strong but always has the little year-end possibility of seasonal fall-off, but a quick pickup. The chem/petrochem has a good long-term growth strategy; it grows for a while, then pauses, then grows. Today's is continuing its growth and has good growth of 15% at very good margins. MRI is back to its continuing 20%+ growth at very good margins.

* A Fool conference call synopsis represents an effort to highlight the salient points of a conference call and should not be taken as an authoritative accounting or transcription of the entire event. Note: Statements made by a company other than historical information may constitute forward-looking statements for which the company can claim protection under the Safe Harbor Act. Please consult the company's filings with the SEC for information on risk factors which might cause actual results to differ materially from the information contained in these forward-looking statements.