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.
| MediaTek | Equinix | Walmart | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow Counterpoint's public quarterly AP-SoC table, published 8 September 2026, shows MediaTek first in all ten quarters it covers (Q1 2024 through Q2 2026), never below 31%, with the nearest rival never above 30% -- a sustained position, not one good quarter. What the same table does not show is a widening one: the share oscillates inside a 31% to 41% band, the Q1 readings step down 41% (2024), 38% (2025), 33% (2026), and the 31% of Q2 2026 matches the lows already set in Q4 2024 and Q4 2025 rather than breaking them; Q2-on-Q2 the series runs 34%, 36%, 31%. Counterpoint also records MediaTek's shipments down more than 30% year-over-year in the quarter, the mainstream and entry tiers hit by the memory shortage and the premium tier by a 'slowdown in sales of Dimensity 9000 series powered devices.' MediaTek's own 2Q26 remarks show the gross line holding and the operating line not: gross margin 46.2%, down only 0.1 percentage points sequentially and guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 for Q3, while operating income fell 22.2% year-over-year on revenue up 1.2% as operating expenses rose to NT$47.4 billion from NT$44.5 billion. A first place held for ten quarters without extending it, and earning less on it, is defensible rather than compounding. | wide The FY2025 10-K (filed 2026-02-11) grounds the advantage in an asset that took 27 years to assemble and that a competitor cannot buy: "Over our 27-year history, we have curated a diverse, industry-leading ecosystem of more than 500,000 interconnections", "over 10,500 customers, including 2,000+ network service providers and a leading market share of cloud-on ramps", across "280 data centers, in 77 markets in 36 countries", with "99.9999%+ operational uptime" delivered in 2025 and no single customer at 10% of revenue. Because the value of each IBX rises with who else is already inside it, incumbency compounds rather than decays. The counterweight is real and disclosed: Item 1A says "The global multi-tenant data center market is highly fragmented. It is estimated that we are one of more than 2,400 companies that provide these offerings around the world", and warns that competitors "may adopt aggressive pricing policies". That caps the pricing that the moat converts into, not its durability — the fragmentation sits in commodity space-and-power, while the interconnection density the filing describes has no comparable substitute. FY2025 revenue of $9.217B with operating margin recovering to 20.0% from 15.2% in FY2024 is consistent with the incumbency holding. | narrow Graded on the Item 1A text this run could read from the FY2026 10-K, which is where the filing argues hardest against a wide band. It says "each of our segments competes for customers, employees, digital prominence, products and services" with local, regional, national and global physical, eCommerce and omnichannel retailers, social commerce platforms, wholesale club operators, retail intermediaries "and emerging agentic shopping tools and platforms," that "the omnichannel retail landscape is highly competitive and rapidly evolving, and the entry of new, well-funded competitors, or more rapid development of AI capabilities and agentic tools by these competitors ... may increase competitive pressures," and concedes that "for eCommerce and other internet-based businesses, newer or smaller businesses may be better able to innovate and compete with us" and that there "can be no assurance" Walmart can adopt AI "as quickly or effectively as our competitors." It also warns of retail consolidation producing rivals with "improved financial resources, improved access to merchandise, greater market penetration." The filing claims no market share, rank or scale advantage anywhere in the text available here, and its own competitive-landscape discussion sits in Item 1, which the cached read-through returned only as a cross-reference; a wider band would not be sourced. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip MediaTek manufactures nothing itself -- its 2Q26 remarks describe 'deep design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) with TSMC' and close collaboration with advanced-packaging partners -- so the durable asset cannot be plant scale, and the remarks do not claim customer lock-in either. They locate it in a reusable design library: 'Building on our industry-leading IP portfolio, we offer best-in-class, pre-validated subsystems solutions for memory, I/O, and connectivity' -- which, the company says, 'largely reduces design complexity and shortens time to market for our data center customers'. The same remarks itemise 448G SerDes with a Co-Package Copper system solution, CPO development on TSMC's COUPE platform, and an end-to-end 3.5D platform with 'best-in-class 3.5D IP, packaging, and design flows,' and say design wins come 'backed by our industry-leading IPs, deep ecosystem partnerships, and proven execution capabilities'. The spending behind that library shows in the cost line: operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion in the quarter against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier, with the Q3 operating expense ratio guided at 31% plus or minus 2 points. It is the same library MediaTek re-amortises across mobile, edge and now data-center ASIC. | network effects The 10-K names the mechanism itself, twice and unprompted: "As more customers choose Equinix for high connectivity and performance reliability at the metro edge, it benefits their suppliers and business partners to colocate in the same data centers and connect directly with each other. This adjacency creates a network effect that attracts new customers while continuously enhancing our value proposition to existing customers", and in the Competitive Landscape section, "This ecosystem creates a network effect that improves performance and lowers the cost for our customers". The evidence is the count of participants rather than any patent or unit-cost claim — 500,000+ interconnections, 2,000+ network service providers, a leading share of cloud on-ramps, an Internet Exchange the filing calls "the largest global peering solution". Switching costs are a genuine second layer (fixed-duration contracts billed on space and power, physical cross connects into resident counterparties), but they are what holds a customer already inside the ecosystem; the reason to enter in the first place is who is already there. | cost scale What the readable text does describe as durable is physical and logistical scale rather than lock-in or IP. It says Walmart sources "from a wide variety of domestic and international suppliers," that global sourcing is "an important factor in our financial performance," and that finding suppliers able to supply "in the large volumes we may demand" is itself a challenge; it describes a network of stores, clubs and distribution and fulfillment centers in which "many products available for purchase online can be picked up by the customer or member at a local Walmart store or Sam's Club, which provides additional customer traffic at such stores and clubs"; and it lists "supply chain automation and enhancements" among the investments backing the strategy. The first competitive lever it names is "the prices at which we sell our merchandise." The filing offers no intangibles or switching-cost claim beyond noting that protection of its trademarks, copyrights, domain names, patents and trade secrets "may not be available in every jurisdiction." |
| Leadership | co leader Counterpoint has MediaTek ahead of every rival in all ten quarters of its public table -- 31% against Qualcomm's 23% and Apple's 19% in Q2 2026 -- but that count covers smartphone application processors only, and MediaTek's 2Q26 remarks put mobile phone at 41% of group revenue, no longer its largest business. Smart Edge Platforms is larger at 53%, and while the remarks claim 'continued market share gains across connectivity, computing and automotive products', no independent count of those positions appears in the sources used here. In data center MediaTek holds nothing yet: production of its first AI accelerator ASIC is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026, and 15% to 20% is a 2027 target raised from 10% to 15% a quarter earlier. Inside its core market the flagship tier is a stated plan rather than a claimed position -- a 2nm SoC launching in the third quarter and, 'together with ongoing engagements with global players, we will increase our presence continuously in the flagship smartphone market in 2027' -- while Counterpoint records MediaTek's premium-tier shipments declining on a 'slowdown in sales of Dimensity 9000 series powered devices.' | clear leader Leadership is claimed on interconnection, not on square footage, and the filing's own evidence is about density: "our position is unmatched in the industry" is supported by 2,000+ resident network service providers, "a leading market share of cloud-on ramps", 500,000+ interconnections and an Internet Exchange described as "the largest global peering solution", across 36 countries. The band is read against neutral, ecosystem-dense colocation, where that footprint has no direct analogue. It is deliberately not read against total data centre capacity: the same 10-K puts Equinix among "more than 2,400 companies" in a "highly fragmented" MTDC market, and Item 1A concedes the company must compete for land and power against "new market entrants" drawn in by AI. | co leader The 10-K text available this run asserts no rank or share for Walmart. The band reflects two things the filing does say: that its strategy is meant to let it "maintain or grow our overall market position" across segments that already compete at global scale, and that it does not describe itself as ahead in the channels that matter most to it - "for eCommerce and other internet-based businesses, newer or smaller businesses may be better able to innovate and compete with us," and on AI adoption "there can be no assurance that these investments will deliver the anticipated benefits, or that we will be able to adopt and leverage these technologies as quickly or effectively as our competitors." Treat this band as bounded by the missing Item 1 competition discussion, not as a measured position. |
| Pricing power | moderate The 2Q26 remarks describe price as cost pass-through rather than capture: 'As rising costs across the supply chain have become an industry-wide reality, we are taking pricing actions to ensure these increases are appropriately reflected in our product pricing', with the full-year aim, 'through our disciplined pricing strategy', to 'deliver our full year gross margin within the current quarter guidance range' -- holding a band, not widening it. The realised figures show that defence working: gross margin 46.2%, down 0.1 percentage points sequentially, with Q3 guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 points. The 2.9-point year-over-year decline is not an erosion rate; the company states it 'was mainly due to a one-time benefit in the year-ago quarter.' Holding a mid-40s gross margin through a market the company expects to decline 'by about 15% in units this year' is genuine discipline, but passing rising costs through to defend a guided band is not the ability to price above it. | moderate Contract structure supports price: fixed-duration agreements billed on space and power plus per-connection interconnection fees, an installed base too physically entangled to move cheaply, and 99.9999%+ uptime in 2025 as the thing being paid for. FY2025 revenue of $9.217B grew about 5% on FY2024's $8.748B while operating margin recovered to 20.0% from 15.2%, so pricing and cost were at least held. But the filing itself refuses the strong band: competitors "may adopt aggressive pricing policies, especially if they are not highly leveraged or have lower return thresholds than we do. As a result, we may suffer from pricing pressure that would adversely affect our ability to generate revenues", and some rivals bundle communications or cloud services against bare colocation. Power procurement is a further pass-through risk the filing flags. Price is defended, not dictated. | weak The filing names price first among the ways it competes - "we compete in a variety of ways, including the prices at which we sell our merchandise" - and states that higher supplier labour and material costs may "adversely impact product margins ... that we are unable, or choose not, to pass on to our customers." It adds that macro conditions can "change the mix of products we sell to any one or more markets with a lower average gross margin" and "result in slower inventory turnover and greater markdowns of inventory." In health and wellness the price is set by counterparties, not by Walmart: "a large majority of our retail pharmacy net sales are generated by filling prescriptions for which we receive payment through established contractual relationships with third-party payers and payment administrators, such as private insurers, governmental agencies and pharmacy benefit managers," exposing it to "reductions in the third-party reimbursement rates for drugs." |
| Summary | MediaTek is the largest supplier of smartphone application processors by units and has been for as long as Counterpoint's public quarterly table runs. Across all ten quarters it covers, Q1 2024 through Q2 2026, MediaTek is first every time and never below 31%, while the nearest rival never clears 30%; in Q2 2026 it holds 31% against Qualcomm's 23%, Apple's 19%, UNISOC's 13%, Samsung's 9% and HiSilicon's 5%. That is a real, independently counted position, and it is the only part of MediaTek's business for which such a count exists in the sources used here. The same table is the clearest evidence that the position is being defended rather than extended. MediaTek's share moves inside a 31% to 41% band across the ten quarters, and the top of that band has come down -- 41% in Q1 2024, 38% in Q1 2025, 33% in Q1 2026 -- while the 31% of Q2 2026 matches the lows already set in Q4 2024 and Q4 2025 rather than breaking them; measured like for like against the same quarter a year earlier the series runs 34%, 36%, 31%. Counterpoint records MediaTek's shipments falling more than 30% year-over-year in the quarter -- hit in the mainstream and entry tiers by the memory shortage, and in the premium tier by a slowdown in Dimensity 9000 series devices -- while Samsung's Exynos climbed to 9% on Galaxy S26 base variants and mid-tier A-series wins. MediaTek's own 2Q26 remarks show the gross line holding and the operating line not: gross margin of 46.2%, down 0.1 percentage points sequentially and guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 for the third quarter, against operating income down 22.2% year-over-year on revenue up 1.2%, with operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier. Unit leadership held while the return on it did not. What MediaTek re-uses is design IP. It manufactures nothing itself -- the remarks describe deep design-technology co-optimization with TSMC and close work with advanced-packaging partners -- and they locate the durable asset in a pre-validated library of memory, I/O and connectivity subsystems, 448G SerDes with a Co-Package Copper system solution, CPO development on TSMC's COUPE platform, and an end-to-end 3.5D platform. The spending behind that library is visible in the cost line: operating expenses of NT$47.4 billion in the quarter against NT$44.5 billion a year earlier, with the Q3 operating expense ratio guided at 31% plus or minus 2 points against a gross margin guided at 46% plus or minus 1.5 -- an operating cost base running near a third of revenue. That library is now pointed at two adjacencies. Smart Edge Platforms -- connectivity, computing, automotive and TV SoCs -- is now the larger business, at 53% of revenue in Q2 against mobile's 41%, and grew 26% year-over-year while mobile fell 20%. And the company says it has built its first AI accelerator ASIC for a major US cloud customer, with production scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. One adjacency is a target and one is a contribution, and this profile treats them as exactly that. The data center share figure of 15% to 20% is a 2027 target against a served market MediaTek itself sizes at US$80 billion, raised from 10% to 15% only one quarter earlier, and production of the first ASIC was still scheduled for the fourth quarter at the date of the remarks. The RTX Spark AI PC work is corroborated by NVIDIA's own announcement, which credits MediaTek with collaborating on the custom CPU design and contributing to its power efficiency, performance and connectivity -- but the superchip, its Grace CPU, its NVLink-C2C interconnect and its software stack are NVIDIA's, and the systems ship from PC makers, so what MediaTek holds is a design contribution rather than a franchise with a share to count. The claimed share gains in connectivity, computing and automotive carry no number and no third-party count. The honest reading is a company with one durable, independently verified franchise it is holding rather than extending, funding a credible but still unproven move into higher-value silicon on the strength of its IP portfolio. | Equinix is a network-neutral, multi-tenant colocation and interconnection REIT: it does not sell compute, it sells the metro-edge real estate where networks, clouds and enterprises physically meet. The FY2025 10-K describes the platform as "280 data centers, in 77 markets in 36 countries" serving "over 10,500 customers, including 2,000+ network service providers and a leading market share of cloud-on ramps", carrying "more than 500,000 interconnections" curated over 27 years, with 61% of 2025 revenue recognised outside the U.S. Revenue is structurally recurring — infrastructure offerings are "billed based on the space and power a customer consumes" under fixed-duration contracts generating MRR, interconnection is "billed based on the outbound connections from a customer" — and no customer reached 10% of 2025 revenue. AI enters the story as demand rather than as a product: the filing positions Equinix as the interconnect point for "model providers, data platforms, neoclouds and gateways", and pushes core hyperscale capacity into xScale, which is "developed and operated through our joint venture partnership arrangements". The bear case is in the company's own Item 1A. The MTDC market is "highly fragmented", Equinix being "one of more than 2,400 companies"; competitors "may adopt aggressive pricing policies"; the AI build-out invites "significant investments in the data center industry by both current competitors and new investors", after which "we could lose market share" and must "compete against certain of these competitors to secure the land and power needed for our expansion plans". Product extension has also failed before — the filing notes past offerings "have been or are being discontinued, including the Equinix Metal product". The honest reading: the interconnection ecosystem is close to unreplicable and the moat sits there; the capacity business around it is a capital race Equinix enters with scale but no immunity. | In the FY2026 10-K text readable this run, Walmart describes an "enterprise strategy, which combines traditional retail, membership models, marketplaces, financial services, health and wellness and other customer and business services into a series of interconnected assets to make it seamless for customers to interact with us," carried by stores, clubs and distribution and fulfillment centers that double as pickup and delivery nodes and by continuing investment in eCommerce, AI and supply chain automation. The filing sets its own limits on that: it calls the omnichannel landscape "highly competitive and rapidly evolving," warns that well-funded entrants and faster AI or agentic tooling by rivals may increase pressure, that smaller businesses may out-innovate it online, and that "a greater concentration of eCommerce sales, including increasing online grocery sales and the increasing role of AI-enabled platforms in product search, discovery, advertising and purchasing, could result in a reduction in the amount of traffic in our stores and clubs." On economics it concedes supplier cost increases it may be "unable, or choose not, to pass on to our customers," and it points investors to "advertising and other higher-margin initiatives (which are expected to help drive our operating income growth at a rate faster than net sales over the long term)" rather than to price. |
| Chain position | A fabless designer sitting between its customers and the TSMC-centred manufacturing chain. The 2Q26 remarks describe 'deep design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) with TSMC' and close work with advanced-packaging partners to build 'high-performance ASICs across a broad range of very-large chip sizes using CoWoS and EMIB-T technologies' at nodes down to 2nm, and say MediaTek creates 'significant value beyond semiconductor by orchestrating other key components throughout the supply chain such as memory and substrate' -- a coordinator role as much as a design one. | Equinix is the neutral meeting point of the AI and cloud supply chain rather than a link in its manufacturing path: it houses other companies' compute and sells the adjacency between them. The 10-K places it between the network layer (2,000+ service providers), the cloud layer ("a leading market share of cloud-on ramps") and enterprise consumers who "assemble these capabilities into operational stacks", and describes an AI ecosystem "of model providers, data platforms, neoclouds and gateways" curated for enterprise AI demand. Core hyperscale training capacity sits beside that, not inside it, in xScale, built with JV partners so hyperscalers "add to their core hyperscale data center deployments and existing customer access points at Equinix". The revenue is therefore levered to AI's distribution and inference edge more than to training-cluster buildout. | A retailer that also intermediates: it sells its own sourced merchandise, hosts third-party marketplace sellers for whom it may provide "fulfillment, inventory management, tax collection, payment processing, content," sells digital advertising against that traffic, dispenses prescriptions under PBM and payer contracts, and offers financial services "including through our digital channels, stores and clubs, as well as our OnePay fintech venture." |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.38 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.05 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |