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 | Lam Research | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 The FY2026 10-K competition section describes tool-level qualification lock-in as the structural fact of the industry: 'semiconductor manufacturers must make a substantial investment to qualify and integrate new capital equipment into semiconductor production lines. As a result, once a semiconductor manufacturer has selected a particular supplier's equipment and qualified it for production, the manufacturer generally maintains that selection for that specific production application and technology node as long as the supplier's products demonstrate performance to specification in the installed base.' The filing then sizes what that incumbency is worth: of 23,232,690 thousand dollars of FY2026 revenue, 8,347,202 thousand - about 36% - was customer-support-related revenue and other, which the same document defines as 'sales of customer services, spares, upgrades, and non-leading-edge equipment' sold back into the installed base. A qualified position plus a third of revenue annuitised against it is a durable barrier rather than a cyclical one. |
| 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. | switching costs The 10-K grounds the advantage in the cost of requalification, not in scale or patents: a customer that has qualified a competitor's tool is hard to win, and conversely Lam's own qualified positions persist for that application and node. The same section adds that the company must keep serving 'our installed base of customers through the delivery of high-quality and cost-efficient spare parts', naming the installed base as the asset being defended. |
| 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 The 10-K claims position but not primacy: 'We believe we are in a strong position with our leadership and expertise in deposition, etch, and clean markets.' The same document names Applied Materials as primary competitor in deposition and Applied Materials, Hitachi and Tokyo Electron as primary competitors in etch, which is a shared-leadership structure rather than a clear single leader. |
| 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. | moderate Real but bounded, and the filing is explicit that the recent gain was mix rather than price. Gross margin as a percent of total revenue rose 180 basis points to 50.5% in fiscal 2026 from 48.7% in fiscal 2025 (gross margin of 11,725,308 thousand dollars on revenue of 23,232,690 thousand, against 8,979,059 on 18,435,591; 7,052,791 on 14,905,386 in fiscal 2024), and the MD&A attributes that: 'Gross margin as a percentage of revenue increased in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025 largely due to favorable customer mix, partially offset by aluminum and steel tariff-related spend.' Against it, the same filing says manufacturers evaluate suppliers on 'overall cost of ownership', that the spares business competes with third-party spare parts providers, and that the customer list is a handful of very large buyers (Micron, Samsung, SK hynix and TSMC named as the most significant customers). |
| 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'. | Lam sells etch, deposition and clean tools into a per-node, per-application qualification process that its own 10-K says customers generally do not revisit once a supplier is qualified. The result is two linked economics, and the FY2026 filing splits them: systems revenue of 14,885,488 thousand dollars and customer-support-related revenue and other of 8,347,202 thousand, on total revenue of 23,232,690 thousand. The second line is the installed-base annuity - services, spares, upgrades and refurbished Reliant tools sold wherever Lam already holds the process step. The 10-K names Applied Materials as the primary competitor in dielectric and metals deposition, ASM International and Wonik IPS in ALD/PECVD, and Applied Materials, Hitachi and Tokyo Electron in etch, so this is shared rather than sole leadership. The live erosion risk is policy, not a rival product: China was 34% of revenue in both fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2025 (7,859,811 thousand dollars in FY2026, the largest single region), and the filing states that U.S. export controls on sales to customers in China, including entity listings of multiple customers, restrict sales of equipment and spare parts by U.S. suppliers and thereby 'provides an advantage to our international competitors that are not subject to these restrictions'. |
| 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. | Upstream wafer-fabrication-equipment supplier; the 10-K names Micron, Samsung, SK hynix and TSMC as its most significant customers across FY2024-FY2026, so Lam sits one step above the memory and foundry capacity that AI compute depends on. |
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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. | +0.30 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |