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.
| IBM | JPMorgan Chase | The Walt Disney Company | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow IBM's FY2025 10-K describes "a highly competitive environment" with "hundreds of competitors" and says IBM is "regularly exposed to new competitors" as it executes its hybrid-cloud/AI strategy, while differentiating through "incumbency with enterprises" and "client relationships and trust" — a real but narrow moat, not a wide one. | wide The 2025 Form 10-K opens with a balance sheet and a licensing perimeter that a new entrant cannot assemble: $4.4 trillion in assets and $362.4 billion in stockholders' equity at December 31, 2025, a principal bank subsidiary (JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.) with branches in 48 states and Washington, D.C., 318,512 employees across 66 countries, and consolidated supervision as a bank and financial holding company by the Federal Reserve, layered with the OCC, FDIC, SEC, FINRA, CFTC, U.K. PRA/FCA and the ECB over its principal subsidiaries. Item 1 also notes the Bank Holding Company Act restricts holding companies to banking and closely-related activities, so the charter itself is scarce. Rated wide rather than higher because Item 1's own Competition paragraph calls the environments 'highly competitive' and names e-commerce, digital-asset and financial-technology entrants that 'disintermediate traditional banking products'. | wide FY2025 10-K: a content library spanning approximately 100 years of production history — roughly 5,300 live-action film titles, 460 animated film titles plus deep episodic series holdings — feeds every segment (streaming, parks, consumer products, theatrical), and the physical parks portfolio (Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland 48%, Shanghai Disney Resort 43%, Disney Cruise Line) is not replicable at comparable scale (sec.gov dis-20250927.htm, FY ended 2025-09-27). |
| Moat type | switching costs The 10-K roots IBM's differentiation in "incumbency with enterprises" and "client relationships and trust" — installed-base lock-in across its hybrid-cloud platform (Red Hat) and enterprise software and infrastructure raises switching costs. | cost scale The filing's durable advantage is scale rather than a proprietary technology or a stated network effect: $4.4 trillion of assets and $362.4 billion of equity, 318,512 employees, a 48-state branch footprint and a GSIB capital and liquidity regime administered under the Basel III framework. Item 1A repeatedly frames technology as a required expenditure - 'New technologies have required and could require JPMorganChase to increase expenditures to modify its products' and possible 'significant investments in technology' for quantum-resistant encryption - which is a fixed cost the firm spreads over a base few competitors match. The filing asserts no network effect and no switching-cost lock-in. | intangibles ip The moat is franchise IP and brands: the FY2025 10-K lists Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic as the top-level pillars of Disney+, and Mickey and Friends, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Disney Princess, Frozen, Avengers and Toy Story among the major licensed properties; the same IP is monetized across theatrical, streaming, parks and licensing windows (sec.gov dis-20250927.htm). |
| Leadership | fast follower An enterprise incumbent that differentiates via "incumbency with enterprises" but is "regularly exposed to new competitors" in its hybrid-cloud/AI push (FY2025 10-K) — a follower in the current AI cycle rather than its leader. | co leader Item 1 claims the firm is 'a leader' in five distinct businesses at once, and 'a leading financial services firm based in the United States' - but it claims to be 'a leader', never the leader, and names no rank or peer comparison anywhere in Item 1 or Item 1A. Scale disclosed in the filing (assets, equity, 318,512 employees, 66 countries, CCB 144,196 / CIB 94,563 / AWM 29,722 headcount) puts it in the front rank; the document itself supports a co-leader reading and not a sole-leader one. | co leader Clear leader in its two profit engines — TEA's 2024 Theme Index ranks Disney Experiences the top park operator worldwide with Magic Kingdom #1 for 19 straight years (laughingplace.com, 2025-10-24), and the studio topped the 2025 global box office at $6.58B (Screen Daily, 2026-01-04) — but in total video Disney is second: Nielsen's April 2026 Media Distributor Gauge puts Disney at 10.3% of US TV viewing vs YouTube's 13.4% (MediaPost, 2026-06-25). Co-leader is the honest company-level band. |
| Pricing power | moderate Gross margin is high and rising (54.9% FY2021 to 58.2% FY2025) on a software-mix shift, but "price" is a principal method of competition per the 10-K and consulting/infrastructure remain price-competitive. | moderate Item 1 states the businesses 'generally compete on the basis of the quality and variety of the Firm's products and services, transaction execution, innovation, reputation and price' - price is one of several axes, not absent. Item 1A is explicit that 'Actions by competitors could put pressure on the pricing for JPMorganChase's products and services or could cause it to lose market share, particularly with respect to investment products and traditional banking products,' and separately that higher rates can cause 'the loss of deposits, including where customers transition to higher-yielding products.' The filing states no margin trend supporting stronger pricing power. | strong Q3 FY26 (quarter ended June 2026, reported 2026-08-05): domestic Parks & Experiences operating income rose 27% on 11% revenue growth, and streaming operating margin expanded from 6.6% to 12.9% on 11% subscription revenue growth — margin expansion well ahead of volume in both engines (thedesk.net earnings summary). Counterweight: the FY2025 10-K notes MVPD consolidation may pressure linear carriage terms, so pricing power is concentrated in parks and DTC, not linear. |
| Summary | IBM's moat rests on deep enterprise incumbency — sticky installed-base relationships across hybrid cloud (Red Hat), enterprise software, and mission-critical infrastructure, plus brand and a large patent base. But its own FY2025 10-K frames "a highly competitive environment" with "hundreds of competitors" and says IBM is "regularly exposed to new competitors" as it pursues hybrid cloud and AI, so the moat is durable but narrow and contested in the AI/cloud growth arena. | Item 1 describes JPMorganChase as 'a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management' operating off a $4.4 trillion balance sheet with $362.4 billion of equity as of December 31, 2025. The protection is the combination of that scale with a regulatory perimeter - Federal Reserve consolidated supervision, a national bank charter under the OCC, and separately licensed broker-dealer and credit-institution subsidiaries in the U.K. and Germany - that bounds who may offer the same product set. The filing is candid that the perimeter is leaking at the edges: it names non-depository and internet-only entrants offering lending, payments processing, cryptocurrency and stablecoins, tokenized securities and algorithmic investment advice, and warns of 'disruption to payments processing... from the use of new technologies that may not require intermediation'. | Disney's moat is a century of franchise IP monetized through mutually reinforcing windows that competitors cannot assemble: the FY2025 10-K describes a library of ~5,300 live-action and 460 animated film titles built over approximately 100 years, distributed through streaming (Disney+ ~132M and Hulu ~64M paid subscribers as of 2025-09-27), linear networks, theatrical release and physical parks. The parks flywheel is the clearest expression: TEA's 2024 Theme Index (published 2025-10-24) again ranked Disney Experiences the top theme park operator worldwide, with Magic Kingdom the most-visited park for the 19th straight year. The studio led the 2025 global box office with $6.58B — its ninth #1 finish in a decade — driven by its own franchises (Zootopia 2 $1.48B, Lilo & Stitch $1.04B, Avatar: Fire and Ash) per Screen Daily (2026-01-04). The challenged edges are real: in Nielsen's Media Distributor Gauge for April 2026 Disney held 10.3% of total US TV viewing — second to YouTube's 13.4%, ahead of Netflix's 7.8% — and the 10-K flags MVPD consolidation pressure on linear carriage terms. But the Q3 FY26 report (2026-08-05) showed the model inflecting: revenue +7% to $25.25B, Experiences revenue +10% to $9.97B with domestic parks operating income +27%, and streaming operating margin expanding from 6.6% to 12.9% year over year. |
| Chain position | A hybrid-cloud platform, enterprise-AI (watsonx), and consulting provider to large enterprises — a software/cloud layer of the AI stack. | An AI adopter and a possible AI casualty, not an AI supplier: the filing books no AI revenue line and mentions no data-center or model exposure, and instead carries a dedicated risk factor on 'the development of advanced technologies such as AI' warning of 'competitive disadvantage if competitors are able to deploy AI more quickly or effectively' and of 'replacement or disintermediation of direct customer relationships if AI agents autonomously manage or intermediate financial decisions' - so its AI exposure as filed is defensive and operational rather than a supply-chain position. | Content/IP owner at the top of the entertainment value chain: produces and owns franchise IP (Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, 80%-owned ESPN), distributes it through owned channels (parks, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN DTC, ABC, theatrical), licenses it downstream to consumer-products makers and retailers, and is a major upstream buyer of sports rights (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football) — including the pending NFL Transaction exchanging a 10% ESPN stake for NFL Network assets (FY2025 10-K, sec.gov dis-20250927.htm). |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.30 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.35 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |