111 companies scored with the Corporate Default template — standard moat analysis for public companies.
Updated 8 days ago
Most public companies sell a product or a service at a margin, so the moat question is whether that margin survives contact with competitors. The Corporate template scores the six defenses that show up in a general operating company's financial signature: whether it can hold price, produce more cheaply than rivals, keep its customers, earn a return above its cost of capital, withstand a downturn, and turn size into economics.
Pricing power is the ability to raise prices without losing volume. In an ordinary operating company it shows up as gross and operating margins that sit above the industry and stay there year after year — a competitor who can be undercut loses margin first. A company whose margin holds through a period of cost inflation is charging for something its customers cannot easily buy elsewhere.
A cost advantage means delivering the same product for structurally less — better purchasing, denser distribution, a more automated process. It is the mirror image of pricing power: the company earns a wider margin at the same price rather than a higher price at the same cost. It counts as a moat only when it comes from a structural asset, not from a round of cost-cutting a rival could repeat.
Stickiness is what makes revenue repeat without being re-won every year. It comes from switching costs, contracts, habit, or integration into the customer's own operations. In the financials it appears as revenue and cash flow that vary far less than the end market does — a business customers leave easily has cash flows that move with the cycle.
Capital efficiency asks what the company earns on the money tied up in the business. A return on invested capital that stays comfortably above the cost of that capital is the clearest evidence a moat exists at all: in a genuinely competitive market, excess returns attract entrants and get competed away. Returns that persist for years suggest something is keeping those entrants out.
Resilience is the capacity to get through a bad year on its own terms — enough liquidity, enough interest cover, and enough cash generation to avoid a rescue financing or a forced sale. A moat that exists only in good conditions is not a moat. Resilience is what lets a company hold its advantages at the moment weaker competitors are surrendering theirs.
Scale matters only when it converts into economics. This defense looks for the financial signature of a leading position — margins that sit above smaller competitors and improve as the company grows — rather than for revenue size on its own. A large company earning peer-average margins has volume without market power.
Zoetis Inc. (ZTS), Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD), Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO) currently hold the widest moats of the 111 companies in the group, led by Zoetis Inc. at 85 out of 100. The full ranking is on this page, and each company links through to the six defenses behind its score.
Most public companies sell a product or a service at a margin, so the moat question is whether that margin survives contact with competitors. The Corporate template scores the six defenses that show up in a general operating company's financial signature: whether it can hold price, produce more cheaply than rivals, keep its customers, earn a return above its cost of capital, withstand a downturn, and turn size into economics.
It scores 6 defenses: Pricing Power, Cost Advantage, Customer Stickiness, Capital Efficiency, Resilience, Scale & Market Position. Each is measured independently and then weighted, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another. The weights differ from other templates because the defenses that decide who wins in Pharma / Mature Biotech are not the ones that decide it elsewhere.
Across the 111 companies in this group the median moat score is 47, with the middle half falling between 31 and 64. A score above the upper quartile puts a company in the strongest quarter of its industry. Because scores are percentile-based, roughly half of any industry sits below its own median by construction.