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.
| NetApp | Apple | EMCOR Group | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow The FY2026 10-K shows a real, durable lock but not an unassailable one. On the durable side: "Our cloud storage services are based on the same ONTAP data management software that underpins our on-premises ONTAP storage infrastructure offerings", and the same filing's income statement shows the company holding a gross margin near 71% across all three reported years - $4,433M on $6,268M in FY2024, $4,613M on $6,572M in FY2025 and $4,899M on $6,925M in FY2026 - while revenue grew from $6,268M to $6,925M and income from operations widened from 19% to 24% of net revenues. Holding that margin through the memory-cost shock the same filing discloses is the commercial evidence the lock is worth something. On the limiting side, the filing says competition "is intense", that in public cloud "customers may choose native cloud services that are consumed as operating expenses", and that "New competitors or alliances among existing competitors could emerge and quickly gain significant market share" - and IDC's 1Q26 external-storage tracker (Blocks & Files, 2026-06-16, cited on the AFF/ASA product row below) ranks NetApp second behind Dell, not first. | narrow Argued, not assumed. The FY2025 10-K does evidence a real moat in margin: total gross margin percentage rose 44.1% (2023) to 46.2% (2024) to 46.9% (2025) in markets the same filing describes as characterised by 'aggressive price competition, downward pressure on gross margins.' But the filing bounds the claim itself: it concedes 'a minority market share in the global smartphone, personal computer, tablet and wearables markets,' it discloses no retention, active-device or installed-base figure anywhere (its only 'large installed bases of active devices' reference describes competitors), and it discloses that both of the highest-margin layers are already being cut down by force -- Apple is 'currently subject to a court order preventing it from imposing any commission or fee on certain purchases' on the U.S. App Store storefront, has had to open 'alternative methods of distribution for iOS and iPadOS apps, alternative payment processing' in the EU, and warns that a reversal on appeal in the Google search case could impose remedies 'prohibiting Google from offering the Company commercial terms for search distribution.' A moat that earns 46.9% gross margin but whose most profitable layer is being narrowed by two courts and a regulator is narrow, not wide. | narrow The FY2025 Form 10-K describes an edge that holds on large, complex work but not across the trade. On the advantage side, it says an invitation to bid "is often conditioned upon prior experience, technical capability, and financial strength", that its largest projects "typically require significant technical and management skills and the financial strength to obtain performance bonds, which are often a condition to bidding for and winning these projects", and that those projects "represented approximately 58% of our electrical and mechanical construction services revenues in 2025". It adds: "We believe our financial position, operating results, access to bank credit and surety bonding, technical expertise including prefabrication, VDC, and BIM capabilities, and safety record, among other factors, give us an advantage over many of our competitors." Operating margin was 10.1% in 2025 against 9.2% in 2024, and the filing notes the 2025 figure includes a $144.9 million gain on the sale of the United Kingdom operations that "positively impacted operating margin by 85 basis points". On the limiting side, the same Competition section says "relatively few barriers exist to prevent entry into the electrical and mechanical construction services industry" and "there are relatively few barriers to entry into the building services industry". Item 1A adds that "Certain of our competitors have lower overhead cost structures and, therefore, are able to provide their services at lower rates than we are currently able to provide" and that work "is frequently awarded through a competitive bidding process". An advantage confined to bonded, technically demanding projects, in a trade the company itself calls easy to enter, is a narrow moat, not a wide one. |
| Moat type | switching costs The FY2026 10-K makes the source of the advantage explicit and it is the cost of leaving the data-management layer, not a network or a patent estate. The same ONTAP software runs the on-premises arrays and the cloud services ("Our cloud storage services are based on the same ONTAP data management software that underpins our on-premises ONTAP storage infrastructure offerings"), and the AFF family "allows customers to connect to clouds for more data services, data tiering, caching, and disaster recovery". A customer's volume layout, snapshot and replication workflow and operating tools therefore carry from the array into Azure, AWS and Google rather than being abandoned at the cloud boundary — the filing describes NetApp as "the only provider of enterprise-grade storage services natively embedded in the world's largest public cloud providers", so the usual moment of escape is instead the moment the relationship renews. | switching costs The 10-K locates the durable advantage in an integrated stack and its third-party ecosystem, not in patents: it names 'a strong third-party software and accessories ecosystem' among the principal competitive factors and states the Company 'designs and develops nearly the entire solution for its products, including the hardware, operating system, numerous software applications and related services,' while explicitly disclaiming IP as the source -- 'No single intellectual property right is solely responsible for protecting the Company's products and services' and the Company 'relies primarily on the innovative skills, technical competence and marketing abilities of its personnel.' The remedies now in force confirm the diagnosis negatively: the same filing describes being required to permit alternative distribution and alternative payment processing in the EU and being barred from charging commission on certain linked-out purchases in the U.S. -- remedies aimed squarely at lowering the cost of leaving Apple's rails, which is what a switching-cost moat is. | cost scale The 10-K places the advantage in capabilities that come with size rather than in customer lock-in or protected technology. The edge it names is "financial position, operating results, access to bank credit and surety bonding, technical expertise including prefabrication, VDC, and BIM capabilities, and safety record", delivered through "approximately 100 operating subsidiaries" and approximately 44,000 employees. MD&A credits the mechanical construction segment's 2025 result to "a more favorable mix of work and better project execution, including enhanced productivity, due in part to investments in virtual design and construction, prefabrication, and automation". Item 1A makes bonding a scale matter: "if we were to experience an interruption or reduction in the availability of bonding, we may be unable to compete for or work on certain projects." The filing cites no patents as a source of advantage, and switching costs are thin by its own account: "Many of our contracts, especially our building and industrial services contracts, may be canceled or delayed on short notice". |
| Leadership | co leader IDC's 1Q26 external enterprise storage systems tracker, as reported by Blocks & Files on 2026-06-16 (cited in full on the AFF/ASA product row below), ranks NetApp second worldwide behind Dell and ahead of Everpure, Huawei and HPE, attributing the placing to "its growing all-flash business and cloud-integrated data management". Second of five ranked vendors, in a market whose leader is someone else, is a shared front rank rather than an owned one - and the distinct claim NetApp makes in the FY2026 10-K is positional rather than volumetric: being "the only provider of enterprise-grade storage services natively embedded in the world's largest public cloud providers". | fast follower Apple leads on integration and margin rather than on units, and the filing says so: it 'has a minority market share in the global smartphone, personal computer, tablet and wearables markets,' while competitors have 'broad product lines, low-priced products, large installed bases of active devices, and large customer bases.' On the AI axis that defines this graph, Apple is following rather than leading -- it now licenses a rival's frontier models to power Siri (see the Apple Intelligence / Siri row and its citation) while pushing its own advantage down into silicon. | co leader The 10-K gives no market share. It calls the field "highly fragmented" with "thousands of small companies across the United States", adds that "there are a number of larger companies focused on providing electrical and/or mechanical construction services, such as APi Group Corporation, Comfort Systems USA, Inc., Dycom Industries, Inc., Everus Construction Group, Inc., IES Holdings, Inc., MasTec, Inc., MYR Group Inc., Quanta Services, Inc., and Tutor Perini Corporation", and describes EMCOR as "one of the largest specialty contractors in the United States", which is the company's own account. Outside the filing: Wikipedia's EMCOR article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emcor) states that "In 2025, the company was ranked 2nd by Engineering News-Record on its list of the largest 600 specialty contractors by revenue"; its footnote links ENR's 2025 Top 600 preview page, which refused this fetch with HTTP 403, so the rank was not read at ENR itself (the footnote's title also reads 2024 while its link is the 2025 page). Statista's summary of the ENR survey for 2018 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/467307/leading-us-firms-in-mechanical-based-on-revenue, published Oct 21, 2019) says "EMCOR Group was ranked as the leading mechanical contractor based in the United States in 2018" and that the overall survey was "topped by electrical contractor Quanta Services and closely followed by EMCOR Group". A filing-based check agrees on scale against one named rival: stored fundamentals from the FY2025 10-Ks show EMCOR revenue of $16,986,422 thousand against $9,101,641 thousand for Comfort Systems USA (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1035983/000110465926017530/0001104659-26-017530-index.htm). Second place on a revenue ranking of 600 specialty contractors, in a field the 10-K says has thousands of firms, is co-leadership rather than clear leadership; the ranking evidence is second-hand or dated, so the band is held at co-leader and no higher. |
| Pricing power | moderate It holds price rather than raising it. On the figures filed with the FY2026 10-K, gross margin was 70.7% of revenue in FY2024 ($4,433M on $6,268M), 70.2% in FY2025 ($4,613M on $6,572M) and 70.7% in FY2026 ($4,899M on $6,925M) - flat across three years in which revenue grew from $6,268M to $6,925M - and it held that level while absorbing a component-cost shock. It is no stronger than that because the filing's own risk factor lists "competitive pricing, customer price sensitivity" and "pricing and discounting pressures" among the drivers of gross margin, and discloses that the company "experienced inflationary pressure and supply chain constraints beginning in the second half of fiscal 2026, resulting in increased costs for memory and other components, which have affected our gross margins" - a cost shock it is absorbing rather than fully passing on. | strong The 10-K's own gross-margin table: total gross margin percentage 44.1% (2023) to 46.2% (2024) to 46.9% (2025), with Services at 75.4% versus Products at 36.8%, and iPhone net sales rising 'due to higher net sales of Pro models' -- mix moving up, not down. Held against the filing's own hedge that 'gross margins will be subject to volatility and downward pressure,' the realised trend is the stronger evidence. | moderate Margins have widened, but the filing says most work is bid. The 2025 Annual Report's five-year highlights show gross profit of $1,501,737 thousand on revenues of $9,903,580 thousand in 2021, $2,089,339 thousand on $12,582,873 thousand in 2023 and $3,282,988 thousand on $16,986,422 thousand in 2025; MD&A gives gross profit margin of 19.3% in 2025 against 19.0% in 2024. The Q2 2026 release (https://emcorgroup.com/application/files/3517/8535/6062/2Q26_Earnings_Release_Final.pdf) reports operating margin of 10.6% against 9.6% a year earlier, and the chief executive said "We remain focused on maintaining pricing discipline, carefully selecting project opportunities, and executing at a high level across our operations." The limits are in the 10-K: "Competition can place downward pressure on our contract prices and profit margins"; on commodities, "While we believe we can increase our prices to adjust for some price increases in commodities, there can be no assurance that price increases of commodities, if they were to occur, would be recoverable", and "certain of our contracts do not allow us to adjust our prices"; and Note 3 shows projects whose profitability was revised down by more than $1.0 million each reduced operating results by $85,941 thousand in 2025, against $66,319 thousand in 2024. |
| Summary | NetApp sells storage hardware but the asset is ONTAP, the data-management software that has run its arrays for over three decades and now also runs inside the three largest public clouds as a first-party service. The FY2026 10-K organises the company into two segments, Hybrid Cloud (AFF and ASA all-flash arrays, AFX for AI workloads, FAS hybrid-flash, E/EF-Series, StorageGRID object storage) and Public Cloud (Azure NetApp Files, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Cloud Volumes ONTAP), and states that both rest on the same ONTAP software. That is the whole argument: an enterprise that has standardised its snapshots, replication and multiprotocol access on ONTAP carries those habits with it when it moves workloads to a hyperscaler, and NetApp is paid on both sides of the move. The evidence that the lock has commercial value is the margin's steadiness: across the three years the FY2026 10-K reports, gross margin sat at 70.7%, 70.2% and 70.7% of revenue ($4,433M on $6,268M, $4,613M on $6,572M, $4,899M on $6,925M) while revenue grew, and the filing's own percentage-of-revenue table shows no mix shift doing that work - product and services held near 46% and 54% of revenue throughout. The limits are equally in the filing. NetApp is second, not first: IDC's 1Q26 tracker puts it behind Dell in external enterprise storage, and the 10-K's competition section concedes that cloud providers are simultaneously partners and rivals, that consumption models "may reduce overall demand for our traditional on-premises offerings sold through a capital expenditure (capex) model", and that alternative architectures "may reduce or eliminate demand for some of our offerings". Component exposure is real too: the filing discloses "inflationary pressure and supply chain constraints beginning in the second half of fiscal 2026, resulting in increased costs for memory and other components, which have affected our gross margins", and names NAND among the components whose supply can tighten. This is a durable second place built on software stickiness, not a structural monopoly. | Apple's moat is usually asserted through the ecosystem; the FY2025 10-K neither quantifies nor claims retention, so the evidence has to be read elsewhere in the filing. Where it does show is mix and margin: Services reached $109.2B of $416.2B net sales (+14%) at a 75.4% gross margin against 36.8% on Products, so 26% of revenue delivered $82.3B of the $195.2B total gross margin, and iPhone grew 'due to higher net sales of Pro models.' That profit concentration is also the vulnerability the filing itself flags: Apple 'earns revenue from licensing arrangements with Google LLC and other companies to offer their search services on the Company's platforms,' arrangements 'currently subject to government investigations and legal proceedings' after Google was found to have violated U.S. antitrust laws on August 5, 2024 and the D.C. District Court ordered remedies on September 2, 2025 -- with the 10-K warning that a reversal on appeal could impose DOJ's proposed remedies 'prohibiting Google from offering the Company commercial terms for search distribution,' which 'could materially adversely affect the Company's ability to earn revenue from such licensing arrangements.' Apple never discloses the size of that payment in the filing -- the concentration is admitted but not measured. Alongside it, the App Store toll has already been reduced in both jurisdictions. What is not in dispute is the vertical integration: Apple designs the silicon and now the cellular modem, and uses 'custom components available from only one source.' Read together: a genuine, margin-visible switching-cost moat around an integrated stack, with its two most profitable layers under active legal reduction. | EMCOR Group installs and services electrical and mechanical systems in non-residential buildings and plants. Its FY2025 10-K reports revenues of $16.99 billion, approximately 72% from construction operations, approximately 21% from building services and approximately 7% from industrial services, through "approximately 100 operating subsidiaries"; the United Kingdom operations were sold on December 1, 2025. Data centres now drive the construction book: the network and communications market sector was $2,461,883 thousand, or 48%, of electrical construction segment revenue in 2025, against 34% in 2023, and $1,670,355 thousand, or 23%, of mechanical construction segment revenue, against 8% in 2023. Remaining performance obligations were $13.25 billion at the end of 2025, and the Q2 2026 results release (2026-07-30) put them at "a record $17.14 billion, compared to $11.91 billion as of June 30, 2025", with revenue guidance for 2026 raised to $20.00 billion - $20.50 billion. The 10-K's case for an edge is that bids for large work are "often conditioned upon prior experience, technical capability, and financial strength" and require performance bonds, and that EMCOR's balance sheet, bonding, prefabrication and VDC capabilities and safety record "give us an advantage over many of our competitors". The same filing sets the limits: the industry is "highly fragmented and our competition includes thousands of small companies across the United States", "relatively few barriers exist to prevent entry", most revenue comes from "projects requiring competitive bids", some rivals can price "at lower rates than we are currently able to provide", customers' in-house staff compete for building services, and the 10-K warns that if data centre spending "were to decrease, demand for our services could decline as we transition our resources to other sectors". Gross margin rose to 19.3% in 2025 from 19.0% in 2024, which MD&A attributes to "improved revenue mix and excellent project execution". A scale and execution edge on large, bonded projects, re-tested at every bid in an industry with low entry barriers, is a narrow moat. |
| Chain position | NetApp sits between the memory supply and the enterprise data centre. Upstream, the FY2026 10-K says "Third-party component costs make up a significant portion of our product costs" and singles out NAND as hard to manage "if supplies of certain components, including NAND, become limited relative to demand". Downstream, the hyperscalers are channel, partner and rival at once: the filing states "We both partner with and compete against cloud service providers through our cloud-based software and services offerings", while Azure NetApp Files, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes are delivered as those clouds' own natively embedded services. Distribution is a mix of direct sales and "an ecosystem of partners, including the leading cloud providers". | Applications-layer name in the AI chain: the 10-K describes designing 'nearly the entire solution' and using custom components 'available from only one source,' making Apple a large, concentrated buyer of leading-edge silicon rather than a supplier of AI compute to anyone else. | EMCOR builds the electrical and mechanical plant inside facilities, increasingly data centres: the 10-K says capital spending on data center infrastructure "is rapidly expanding, which has increased demand for our services in recent years". It works directly for owners and "indirectly by acting as a subcontractor to general contractors, systems suppliers, construction managers, developers, property managers, and other subcontractors". Upstream, "we rely on third-party vendors and manufacturers to supply much of the materials and equipment necessary for our operations", with commodity exposure to "copper and steel" and fuel for a fleet of approximately 14,400 vehicles. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.11 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |