Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| AppLovin | Palo Alto Networks | Tempus AI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow The filing's own words support a narrow moat. Auctions run 'at vast scale and at microsecond-level speeds,' revenue is earned only 'when our advertisers achieve their return on advertising spend targets,' and FY2025 adjusted EBITDA margin was 82.3%. What limits the width: clients 'are not required to enter into long-term agreements' and 'Substantially all of the Company's contracts with customers are cancelable at any time'; the solutions 'primarily operate in the mobile app ecosystem and specifically mobile gaming'; and distribution runs through 'the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, and Meta' while AppLovin relies 'in part on IDFA.' | narrow Real but bounded. The FY2025 10-K's own Competition section calls the enterprise security industry "intensely competitive" and names four categories of rival — platform incumbents (Cisco, Microsoft, Alphabet), independent security vendors (Check Point, Fortinet, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Wiz), point-product startups, and the public cloud vendors — while conceding that "some of our competitors may have substantially greater financial, technical, and other resources, greater name recognition, larger sales and marketing budgets, broader distribution, more diversified product lines, and larger and more mature intellectual property portfolios." That record supports a defensible position, not an unassailable one: narrow, not wide. | narrow The FY2025 10-K documents a real asset: a network "connected in some way to more than 55% of all oncologists practicing in the United States" and "more than 65% of all academic medical centers," via "more than 700 unique data connections" across "more than 5,000 healthcare institution sites," with "broad data rights, including the rights to longitudinally updated data." Not eroding: revenue $693.4M to $1,271.8M (+83%), net loss narrowed from $705.8M to $245.0M. Not wide: still loss-making against "an accumulated deficit of $2.4 billion," with payment received on only "approximately 55% of our clinical oncology NGS tests and 50% of our hereditary tests." |
| Moat type | network effects Network effects, with a caveat. The 10-K states the loop: as more advertisers use the solutions 'we gain access to more data regarding users and user engagement,' 'further strengthening our scaled distribution,' and 'As our distribution grows, we gain better insights for Axon AI.' The mechanism is two-sided matching of advertiser demand to publisher supply, though much of the force comes from data-and-learning scale. It is not switching costs, since contracts are 'cancelable at any time,' nor intangibles or IP, since 'there can be no assurance that we will adequately protect our intellectual property or that it will provide any competitive advantage.' | switching costs The 10-K describes an installed estate standardised on one operating system — "All of our hardware and software firewalls incorporate the PAN-OS operating system and include the same rich set of features, ensuring consistent operation across our entire product line" — across hardware, containerised CN-Series and virtual VM-Series form factors, centrally administered through Panorama and Strata Cloud Manager. That estate is monetised as recurring contract: subscription and support was 80.5% of total revenue in fiscal 2025 (80.0% in fiscal 2024, 77.1% in fiscal 2023), on terms "typically one to five years." The company's own risk factors describe the friction from the other side — customers "may face real or perceived switching costs when switching to our solutions from legacy security vendors" and "have often invested substantial personnel and financial resources to design and operate their networks... [and] may prefer to purchase from their existing suppliers rather than add or switch to a new supplier." As the incumbent in most of those estates, that friction now runs in Palo Alto's favour. | network effects The filing states the mechanism: "Each product line is designed to enable and enhance the other, thereby creating network effects." That is the filing's own characterisation, so the rating rests on corroborating facts: 700+ data connections across 5,000+ sites with longitudinal rights; roughly 801,000 tests in FY2025 (about 340,500 Oncology) feeding the records Insights licenses; Insights working with "19 of the 20 largest public pharmaceutical companies based on 2024 revenue" at "approximately 126%" net revenue retention. Intangibles fit less well: the xT PMA, ADLT status, Paige's clearance and five CAP/CLIA labs are real, but named peers hold comparable approvals. |
| Leadership | at parity The filing discloses no share of any market, names 'Meta, Google, Amazon, and Unity Software' as competitors, and concedes rivals 'may have greater resources' and 'better technological or data analytics capabilities, or stronger brands or competitive positions in certain product segments.' Its one positional statement is parity language: 'We believe we compete favorably with respect to these factors.' Two unquantified points cut upward: Meta and Google are also clients, and MAX is called 'the preferred in-app bidding solution for many publishers worldwide.' | co leader The 10-K claims parity-plus, not primacy: "We believe we generally compete favorably with our competitors on the basis of these factors as a result of the features and performance of our portfolio, the ease of integration of our security solutions with technological infrastructures, and the relatively low total cost of ownership of our products," and reports that its "products and services have been recognized as leading in 25 categories by third-party industry analysts firms." It qualifies that immediately by conceding that some competitors carry greater resources, name recognition and distribution. Independent analyst placements match a co-leader read rather than a sole-leader one — a Leader in the inaugural 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewalls, a Leader for the third consecutive time in the 2025 Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms, and a Leader in the 2026 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms for the fourth consecutive year — in categories that name other Leaders too. | at parity The filing claims no ranked lead; its positional language is hedged, as in "one of the largest sequencers of cancer patients... in the United States." Two disclosures cut the other way: the reimbursement goal is to become "more in line with other NGS providers who have adopted similar strategies, such as FMI and Guardant," and competitors "may have longer operating histories; larger customer bases; greater brand recognition and market penetration." Competition names Foundation Medicine (Roche), Caris, Guardant, Natera, Neogenomics, Quest, LabCorp, Flatiron, IQVIA, ConcertAI and major CROs, all unranked. Scaled positions on both sides support parity, not a top position. |
| Pricing power | strong Strong, with the mechanism shown. The 10-K states that 'Advertisers are charged dynamically based on their campaign goals , rather than a simple fixed price per impression or per action.' Growth composition is the evidence: FY2025 revenue +70% with 'the volume of installations increased 3% and net revenue per installation increased 72%'; H1 2026 +56% with per-installation revenue +75% against 'a decrease in the volume of installations of 10%.' Adjusted EBITDA margin was 82.3% in FY2025 and 84.2% in H1 2026, though payment is performance-contingent and contracts cancel at will. | moderate Moderate, with the evidence pointing both ways in the same filing. Gross margin computed from the three years of income statements inside this FY2025 10-K runs 72.3% (fiscal 2023), 74.3% (fiscal 2024) and 73.4% in fiscal 2025 on revenue of $9.22 billion — against 68.8% in fiscal 2022 as reported in the prior-year 10-K (accession 0001327567-24-000029, filed September 6, 2024). Over the same span subscription and support rose from 77.1% to 80.5% of revenue: a mix shift toward software that has been margin-accretive, not margin-destructive, which is the direct answer to whether platformisation is simply discounting. Against that, the 10-K's risk factors state plainly that sales prices "may decline for a variety of reasons, including competitive pricing pressures, discounts, a change in our mix... or promotional programs," that the company "anticipate[s] that the sales prices and gross profits for our products could decrease over product life cycles," and that it "has also experienced demands for customer financing and deferred payments." Pricing is defended by bundle economics rather than commanded outright. | weak Diagnostics prices are administered: after a CPT code is set, "CMS, establish payment levels and coverage rules under Medicare," delegating to MACs, while "Private payers establish their rates and coverage rules independently." Average revenue per Oncology test rose from about $1,510 to about $1,600, "driven primarily by increased Medicare reimbursement rates" — the payer moved the price. Collection came on "approximately 55% of our clinical oncology NGS tests and 50% of our hereditary tests," and payer "cost-saving initiatives... are likely to result in pricing pressures." The moderate pocket is confined to Data and applications ($316.4M of $1,271.8M). |
| Summary | One reportable segment: an AI-priced auction matching advertiser demand to publisher supply, where 'Revenue from Axon Ads Manager comprises substantially all of our revenue.' The filed flywheel is real - more advertiser spend yields more user-engagement data, 'further strengthening our scaled distribution,' which feeds Axon AI - and it converts: FY2025 revenue $5.48B, up 70%, at an 82.3% adjusted EBITDA margin, carried by price (net revenue per installation +72%) not volume (installations +3%). What the filing does not evidence is a lock. Contracts are cancelable at any time, revenue concentrates in mobile gaming, and the distribution and identifier layers belong to Apple, Google and Meta - two of whom are simultaneously named competitors and disclosed clients. Wide margins with no disclosed structural lock is narrow. | A deployed firewall estate is the anchor. Every Palo Alto firewall — appliance, VM-Series, CN-Series, Cloud NGFW — runs the same PAN-OS with the same feature set and is managed from one console, so the security policy, the operator skills and the integration work are all specific to the vendor, and 80.5% of fiscal 2025 revenue is the recurring subscription and support contract sitting on top of it (10-K, Business and Risk Factors). Platformisation is the attempt to convert that anchor into wallet share: the 10-K states the strategy as helping customers "simplify their security architectures through consolidating disparate point products" by packaging offerings "into a tightly integrated architecture," and the acquisitions are consistent with it — IBM's QRadar assets in August 2024 "to help accelerate the growth of our Cortex business," Protect AI in July 2025, and the CyberArk agreement signed in July 2025. The evidence that consolidation is real rather than a discount: remaining performance obligation grew 36% year over year to $18.4 billion against 31% revenue growth in the quarter ended April 30, 2026 (Palo Alto Networks FQ3 2026 results release, June 2, 2026) — contracted future obligation compounding faster than recognised revenue, which is the opposite of what buying revenue with price would produce. The counterweight is disclosed in the same filings: the 10-K warns sales prices "may decline for a variety of reasons, including competitive pricing pressures, discounts," anticipates that "sales prices and gross profits for our products could decrease over product life cycles," and reports "demands for customer financing and deferred payments." Against CrowdStrike in security operations and Zscaler in SASE, Palo Alto is competing across the whole surface rather than defending a monopoly on any one of them — hence a narrow moat, not a wide one. | Tempus AI's durable asset is an installed provider network and the longitudinal data rights attached to it, not any single assay: connections to more than 55% of practicing U.S. oncologists and more than 65% of academic medical centers, 700+ data connections across 5,000+ institution sites. That network makes the linked clinical-molecular database sellable — Insights serves 19 of the 20 largest public pharmaceutical companies by 2024 revenue at roughly 126% net revenue retention, and the trial network (1,400+ trials signed, 40,000+ patients identified) depends on the sequencing base. Economics are improving: revenue up 83% to $1.27B, net loss down from $705.8M to $245.0M. It stops short of wide on the filing's own terms — a $2.4B accumulated deficit, payment on only ~55% of oncology and ~50% of hereditary tests, and Diagnostics prices set by CMS, MACs and private payers. |
| Chain position | Demand-side AI ad platform: it monetizes third-party mobile-game publishers' inventory and sells outcomes to advertisers, so it sits downstream of Apple/Google app distribution and Apple's IDFA identifier layer and upstream of publisher monetization. Meta and Google are simultaneously named competitors and disclosed clients. Single reportable segment after the June 2025 Apps divestiture. | A security-software consumer of the AI stack rather than a supplier to it — it buys compute to run Precision AI and now sells protection for the stack itself through Prisma AIRS (AI model scanning, posture management, red teaming, runtime and AI-agent security). Distribution is two-tier and concentrated: 44.2% of fiscal 2025 revenue came through three distributors and more than 8,500 channel partners, while no single end-customer exceeded 10% of revenue in fiscal 2025, 2024 or 2023. | Tempus sits between clinical care and pharma R&D. It ingests data from 5,000+ institution sites, runs five CAP/CLIA labs (Chicago, Atlanta, Raleigh, Aliso Viejo, Minneapolis via OneOme), and sells Diagnostics to providers and payers ($955.4M FY2025, +111%, administered) and Data and applications to pharma ($316.4M, +31%, negotiated). The clinical output is the data business's input. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.11 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.01 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |