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.
| Modine Manufacturing | Core Scientific | Flex | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | none Modine's FY2026 Form 10-K (fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, filed 2026-05-27 as EDGAR accession 0001104659-26-066795; read from the copy on Modine's investor-relations site) describes competitive markets and no structural protection. It says "Most of our products are sold in competitive markets", that "pricing pressures from our customers and pricing actions of our competitors" may "require us to adjust the prices of products to stay competitive", that it experiences "competition from companies in other parts of the world that enjoy economic advantages, such as lower labor costs", and that if it cannot differentiate with technology "we may experience price erosion, lower sales, and lower profit margins." Stored fundamentals from Modine's 10-Ks show gross profit of $365.5 million on $2,212.7 million of revenue in fiscal 2019 and $389.4 million on $2,297.9 million in fiscal 2023; the FY2026 10-K reports gross margin of 24.9 percent for fiscal 2025 and 23.0 percent for fiscal 2026, and the Q1 fiscal 2027 release (2026-07-29) reports 20.8 percent. Customers are concentrated: the ten largest were 49 percent of fiscal 2026 net sales and "one global technology customer" about 11 percent. The strongest counter-evidence is in data centres, where on the Q4 fiscal 2026 call (https://s205.q4cdn.com/270741342/files/doc_financials/2026/q4/Modine_Transcript-Q4-FY26.pdf) the CEO announced an agreement under which "we will guarantee capacity to supply more than 4 billion of data center cooling products during calendar years 2027 through 2029"; but that is a capacity commitment to one existing customer, and the CFO added "Short of an LTA, we don't have multiyear POs. And what this one did is it gave us a really high confidence in a big portion of our two-, three-year outlook." Fast growth in a capacity-short market, without a protected position or a durable margin premium, is not shown to be a moat, so the band is none. | narrow Core Scientific's position rests on long-dated, take-or-pay leases of energized capacity, not on a protected market. Its 2025 Form 10-K (filed 2026-03-02) says wholesale colocation "typically involves large, long-term agreements with a limited number of customers, often with initial terms of 10 years or more". It adds that such leases are frequently paired with take-or-pay commitments "under which the customer is obligated to pay for leased customer power capacity regardless of utilization, providing operators with revenue visibility over the contract term." On the Q2 2026 call (2026-07-28, https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_fda3a1f2f1890adaa7ac6c4d9d310971/corescientific/db/1085/11280/prepared_remarks/2Q26+Prepared+Remarks+Transcript+PDF.pdf) management said the company "now has approximately 1.1 gigawatts of total contracted billable capacity, representing more than $24 billion of base contracted revenue". That total combines CoreWeave's 590 MW, on what the CFO called "the 12-year lease terms", with AMD agreements for 530 MW that carry "more than $14 billion of base contracted revenue across the 15-year agreements with 2.5% annual escalators". Management also said it was "currently billing for 437 megawatts of capacity". The limits are just as clear. The 10-K says "Competitors compete on price, facility location, reputation and perceived skill with respect to performance" and that many rivals "are more established, have better brand recognition, are well capitalized". It also says "One customer, CoreWeave, currently accounts for 100% of our Colocation segment revenue." The Q2 2026 10-Q says a material weakness tied to converting mining facilities to HPC "has not been remediated". Long take-or-pay terms are the norm in wholesale colocation, so the contracts alone are contracted revenue, not an edge over rivals. What supports narrow is capacity already billing and a tenant that has expanded in place, and even that is bound to those contracts and to one customer today, so the band is narrow, not wide. | none The FY2026 10-K (fiscal year ended March 31, 2026) concedes the core business is contested on every side: "Our industry is extremely competitive, many of our competitors have achieved substantial market share, and some may have lower cost structures or greater design, manufacturing, financial or other resources than we do." Customers "could in the future decide to in-source, dual-source, regionalize, or otherwise reallocate manufacturing volumes among suppliers", certain contracts "permit the customer to terminate the agreement for convenience upon prior written notice", and hyperscale customers "typically have substantial purchasing power and negotiating leverage". TradingPilot's stored fundamentals (SEC XBRL) show gross profit of $1,976 million on net sales of $28,502 million in fiscal 2023 and $2,567 million on $27,914 million in fiscal 2026: a thin margin, even after widening. The Cloud and Power Infrastructure (CPI) segment sells its own power and cooling products, but the 10-K says it must keep offering "significant price and/or performance advantages over competitive products", and Flex intends to separate it into an independent company targeted for the first quarter of calendar 2027. A large contract manufacturer whose own filing describes no protected position: no moat is claimable. |
| Moat type | none No moat source is demonstrated in the filings. The 10-K says "our business as a whole is not materially dependent upon any particular patent or license, or any particular group of patents or licenses", although Item 1A says intellectual property "plays an important role in maintaining our competitive position in a number of the markets we serve." Switching costs are the closest candidate: the 10-K says customers ask Modine, "as well as their other primary suppliers", for R&D, design and validation support, and on the Q1 fiscal 2027 call (https://s205.q4cdn.com/270741342/files/doc_financials/2027/q1/Modine_-Transcript-Q1-FY27.pdf) the CEO described a product designed with a specific hyperscaler "in probably the third iteration of the design cycle". But the same 10-K says "Generally, we supply products to our customers on the basis of individual purchase orders received from them", that long-term sales agreements are "typically three to five years in duration", and that its 80/20 pricing strategy "may result in a lower overall win rate for new business", which describes contestable rather than locked-in business. Scale is not claimed as an advantage either: the company competes with "many manufacturers of heat transfer and HVAC&R solutions, some of which are divisions of larger companies". The type is none. | switching costs The lock-in is contractual and physical. The 10-K's description of colocation is that "Customers deploy and manage their own hardware, while the operator designs, builds and operates the underlying infrastructure", under take-or-pay leases "often with initial terms of 10 years or more". On the Q2 2026 call the COO described the AMD program as "an integrated colocation platform engineered to support AMD's Helios Rack-Scale systems" with a "close-coupled AMD design framework". Leaving would mean rebuilding that power, cooling and fit-out elsewhere. The relationship with CoreWeave shows the stickiness: it "began with a 16-megawatt lease at our Austin campus in 2024 and has since expanded to 590 megawatts of total contracted capacity". Intellectual property is not the source. The 10-K says the company has "filed over 130 patent applications" but that these laws and procedures "provide only limited protection". Scale is not the source either: the 10-K says rivals are "well capitalized" and some are organized to lower "their external cost of capital". | none The 10-K's competitive strengths are operating capabilities, not a durable barrier: "Global Scale and Regional Strength" (more than 100 facilities across approximately 30 countries, staffed by approximately 150,000 employees), "Long-Standing, Diverse Customer Relationships", "Cross-Industry Synergies" and cost-efficient industrial parks. On intellectual property it says "we do not consider any single patent, trademark, or license to be material to our business as a whole" and that the carrying value of its intellectual property "was not material". Switching costs are limited by short commitments: "We generally do not obtain firm, long-term purchase commitments from our customers", and termination-for-convenience notice periods "may be relatively short". |
| Leadership | fast follower The 10-K gives no share or rank and names no competitor; it says only "We compete with many manufacturers of heat transfer and HVAC&R solutions, some of which are divisions of larger companies." The independent view is Dell'Oro Group's 3Q 2025 data center physical infrastructure release (2025-12-10, https://www.delloro.com/news/data-center-physical-infrastructure-market-expands-18-percent-y-y-in-3q-2025/), which grouped Modine with rising entrants: "Emerging competitors continued to gain momentum, with Aaon scaling its data center thermal business by an order of magnitude within a few quarters, supported by a very healthy backlog as hyperscalers broaden their supplier base. Modine also strengthened its position, securing notable hyperscale wins that reinforce its rising relevance in large AI campus deployments." On the Q4 fiscal 2026 call the CEO said "From a market demand standpoint, we're in a great competitive position", which is the company's own view. A supplier gaining ground with hyperscalers, described by a tracker as of rising relevance rather than as a leader, is a fast follower. | fast follower No independent share or rank was found. The 10-K lists Aligned Data Centers, Compass Datacenters, Equinix, Digital Realty Trust, NTT, QTS, Switch, Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne as HDC competitors and says "Many of these competitors are more established, have better brand recognition, are well capitalized". It separately names Applied Digital, Cipher Mining, Galaxy Digital, Hut 8, IREN and TeraWulf as miners converting facilities for AI and HPC customers. Against that field Core Scientific is scaling quickly from a small base: 437 MW billing and about 1.1 GW contracted at the Q2 2026 call. That makes it a fast follower behind larger incumbents. Its press releases describe the company as "a leader in designing, building and operating large scale, purpose-built data centers", but that is the company's own claim and is not counted. | at parity EMSNOW/in4ma's "EMS&ODM Global 100" (2026-03-06, https://www.emsnow.com/?p=53535) says Wistron, Quanta and Wiwynn "plus Foxconn together account for nearly 57% of global EMS/ODM production", and groups Flex with Jabil, Celestica and Sanmina as the US "big four", "representing about 85% of the revenue base among ~20 US headquartered EMS/ODM". The FY2026 10-K claims no rank and says "many of our competitors have achieved substantial market share". One of a handful of large Western contract manufacturers, behind the Taiwanese leaders in scale: at parity with its peer group, not a leader. |
| Pricing power | weak The filing describes price as something Modine defends rather than sets. Item 1A says "Our sales levels and margins could be adversely affected by pricing pressures from our customers and pricing actions of our competitors", and that its 80/20 pricing strategy, with "clear, strategic profit margin targets for new sales", "may result in a lower overall win rate for new business." Cost recovery is mechanical and lagged: contract adjustments are "limited to the underlying cost of the material", "typically do not include related metals premiums or fabrication costs", and can take "a three-month to one-year lag"; on the Q4 fiscal 2026 call the CFO said "we'll recover tariffs through surcharges and mitigate increasing metals prices with pricing mechanisms in our customer contracts." The fiscal 2025 margin gain in Climate Solutions came "primarily due to favorable sales mix and the favorable impact of commercial pricing settlements"; company gross margin then fell 190 basis points to 23.0 percent in fiscal 2026 and was 20.8 percent in Q1 fiscal 2027 (https://s205.q4cdn.com/270741342/files/doc_financials/2027/q1/Modine-Reports-First-Quarter-Fiscal-2027-Results.pdf). On the Q1 fiscal 2027 call the CEO said the company is "taking decisive pricing actions to offset inflationary cost increases, including materials and tariffs", which is cost recovery, not evidence of a price premium. | moderate Price is set competitively at signing and then locked in. The 10-K says "Competitors compete on price" and warns that "If we fail to accurately estimate the factors upon which we base our contract pricing, we may generate less profit than expected or incur losses on those contracts". Once signed, the AMD agreements carry "2.5% annual escalators" (Q2 2026 call), and the Q2 2026 10-Q says "power costs are passed through to our customer without markup". To win AMD, the company also gave AMD "market-priced warrants to purchase Core Scientific's common stock, subject to certain commercial conditions" (AMD release, 2026-07-28, https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/138/core-scientific-and-amd-announce-infrastructure-partnership). In Q2 2026, colocation revenue was $136,669 thousand and the cost of colocation services was $56,686 thousand, including $35,073 thousand of power fees passed through to the customer (10-Q). Contracted escalators protect price over a 12- to 15-year term, but nothing shows a premium over rivals, so pricing power is moderate. | weak Stored fundamentals show gross profit of $1,976 million on $28,502 million of net sales in fiscal 2023 and $2,567 million on $27,914 million in fiscal 2026; on the Q1 FY2027 call (https://earningswhispers.com/transcript/FLEX/Q12027) the CFO said adjusted gross margin "improved to 9.6%, up 50 basis points from the prior year". The 10-K sets the limits: hyperscale customers have "substantial purchasing power and negotiating leverage, which they may use to obtain favorable pricing, extended payment terms, volume flexibility, or other concessions that could reduce our margins", and if CPI's competitors "adopt innovations more quickly or develop superior products, our win rates, pricing, and margins may suffer". |
| Summary | Modine makes thermal management products in two groups, per its FY2026 10-K: Climate Solutions (data centre cooling, heat transfer coils and coatings, refrigeration and power-generation coolers, and HVAC heating and indoor-air-quality products) and Performance Technologies (heat exchangers and cooling modules for vehicles, off-highway equipment and generator sets). Data centre products rose to 35 percent of fiscal 2026 net sales from 25 percent; they include chillers, dry coolers, precision air handling units, CRAC and CRAH units, fan walls, rear-door heat exchangers, coolant distribution units and immersion solutions, sold to hyperscale, colocation, NeoCloud and edge customers. Fiscal 2026 net sales were $3.2 billion, up 23 percent, and on the Q4 fiscal 2026 call the CEO said data centre sales "increased 73% to 1.1 billion" and announced a capacity agreement covering "more than 4 billion of data center cooling products during calendar years 2027 through 2029" with an existing customer. Modine plans to spin off Performance Technologies and combine it with Gentherm, which it expects to close by the end of calendar 2026, leaving a data centre and commercial HVAC company. An independent tracker, Dell'Oro Group (2025-12-10), described Modine among "emerging competitors" that "strengthened its position, securing notable hyperscale wins". The limits are in the 10-K and recent results: most products are sold "in competitive markets" under customer pricing pressure, the ten largest customers were 49 percent of sales, no single patent is material, and gross margin was 23.0 percent in fiscal 2026 and 20.8 percent in Q1 fiscal 2027, when the Data Centers segment's gross margin fell 960 basis points to 20.2 percent on capacity expansion costs and supply shortages. Strong demand and customer co-design are real, but the filings show no protected position or margin premium, so Modine is rated as having no moat. | Core Scientific began as a bitcoin miner and is turning its sites into high-density colocation (HDC) data centres for AI and HPC tenants. At 31 December 2025 it owned or leased ten data centres across seven U.S. states, with "approximately 1.4 gigawatts ("GW") of gross utility power capacity, or approximately 920 megawatts ("MW") of total leasable customer power capacity", and it intends "to convert every megawatt in our portfolio to high-density colocation infrastructure over the next three years" (2025 10-K). The transition is now visible in the numbers: colocation revenue "represented 77% of total revenue" in the first half of 2026, against 12% a year earlier (Q2 2026 10-Q). By July 2026 the company was billing for 437 MW. It had about 1.1 GW contracted with two anchor customers, CoreWeave at 590 MW and AMD at 530 MW (about 380 MW leased directly to AMD and about 150 MW for a neocloud that AMD backs), and AMD holds an exclusive right, under specified conditions, to lease as much as 2 additional gigawatts (Q2 2026 call). Those long take-or-pay contracts, plus energized power at a time when the 10-K says utilities demand "significant collateral postings at contract execution" and large builds take "18 to 24 months, or longer", are the source of a narrow advantage. They do not make a protected franchise. The 10-K names nine established colocation providers and six converted miners as competitors, says competitors "compete on price", and reports that CoreWeave was 100 percent of colocation revenue. The Q2 2026 10-Q says colocation revenue "is concentrated with a single customer" and that the conversion-related material weakness is still unremediated. Build costs are "approximately $11 million to $12 million per megawatt" (Q2 2026 call), and the company expects to finance the AMD build-out through project-level bonds. Core Scientific is rated as having a narrow moat: contract-bound switching costs, with no evidence of a price premium or a scale advantage. | Flex designs, builds and manages products for other companies through, per its FY2026 10-K, three segments: Integrated Technology Solutions (communications, enterprise and lifestyle products), Regulated Manufacturing Solutions (industrial, automotive and healthcare) and Cloud and Power Infrastructure (integrated compute systems, liquid cooling, and utility-, facility-, rack- and board-level power). It runs more than 100 facilities in approximately 30 countries; its ten largest customers were 45% of fiscal 2026 net sales and none exceeded 10%. The data-centre business is the growth engine: on the Q1 FY2027 call (2026-07-29) the CFO said CPI revenue "totaled $2.2 billion, up 35% from the prior year, driven by strong growth in power", at a 9.7% adjusted operating margin, against 5.2% for ITS and 6.6% for RMS. Flex plans to spin CPI off as Axiom in the first quarter of calendar 2027, after funds affiliated with General Catalyst, Koch Equity Development and co-investors agreed a $2.0 billion convertible preferred investment "at an initial enterprise value for Axiom of $37.5 billion" (Flex release, 2026-10-05: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/866374/000119312526413173/d123485dex991.htm). The filing itself describes no durable barrier: the industry is "extremely competitive", rivals including Taiwanese ODM suppliers "in some cases, have a substantial share of global information technology hardware and related infrastructure production", customers can in-source or reallocate volume, and hyperscalers can use their leverage "to obtain favorable pricing". An independent tally (EMSNOW/in4ma, 2026-03-06) puts Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta and Wiwynn at "nearly 57% of global EMS/ODM production" and counts Flex among the US "big four". Scale plus a fast-growing power franchise that is about to leave the group, but no moat. |
| Chain position | Modine supplies facility-level cooling for AI data centres, chiefly chillers and air handling units with a smaller CDU line; on the Q1 fiscal 2027 call the CEO said order growth came from "the three largest customers that we have that are hyperscaler and Neocloud", and the 10-K names one global technology customer at about 11 percent of fiscal 2026 sales. | Core Scientific leases powered, liquid-cooled data-centre capacity to AI compute providers: CoreWeave (590 MW) and AMD, including a neocloud that AMD backs (about 530 MW), per the Q2 2026 call. It sits between utilities and GPU cloud operators while it winds down bitcoin self-mining. | Contract designer-manufacturer across many end markets and, through CPI, a supplier of power, cooling and rack-level compute infrastructure to "a limited number of hyperscale cloud providers, colocation companies, and large enterprise data center operators" (10-K), which Flex plans to separate as Axiom in the first quarter of calendar 2027. |
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| Long-horizon vote | -0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |