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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.

source: sec.gov

The FY2025 10-K's own Competition section undercuts any claim of insulation: 'The industries in which we operate are highly competitive, and we compete with thousands of companies that range from large multinational corporations to local manufacturers', competition is 'generally based on breadth of product offering, product innovation, price, quality, delivery, and service', and TE has 'experienced, and expect[s] to continue to experience, downward pressure on prices'. The same filing explicitly disclaims IP as the basis of its position: 'we do not believe that our competitive position or our operations are dependent upon or would be materially impacted by any single patent or group of related patents.' What TE does hold is durable rather than absolute — it calls itself 'one of the leading providers of advanced automobile connectivity solutions', its Industrial segment 'a leading supplier', and it converted that position into rising profitability across the same filing's three income statements (gross margin 31.5% of net sales in FY2023, 34.4% in FY2024, 35.2% in FY2025). A position that earns expanding margins into admitted price pressure is an advantage; one held against thousands of competitors and no decisive patent is not a wide one.

source: sec.gov

The FY2025 10-K asserts a durable competitive position across essentially all of the revenue base: for Electrical Americas and Electrical Global it states 'Eaton has a strong competitive position in these segments and, with respect to many products, is considered among the market leaders'; it repeats that language verbatim for Aerospace ('industry-leading portfolio', 'considered among the market leaders'); and for Vehicle it states 'Eaton is considered among the market leaders in this segment.' That is a claimed leadership position in four of the five reported segments, on a base of $27.4 billion of 2025 revenue, ~97,000 employees and customers in 180 countries, from a company founded in 1911. The rating is tempered rather than lifted higher by the filing's own admissions - price is named among the principal methods of competition in the Electrical, Vehicle and eMobility segments, and the risk factors flag 'newly competitive market players' and that 'our positions may also be impacted by new entrants into our product or regional markets.'

source: sec.gov

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.

source: sec.gov

The FY2025 10-K locates the advantage at the customer, not in patents. It describes 'close working relationships with many of our customers' whose 'relationships with them typically date back many years', and co-development as the mechanism: 'By working with our customers in developing new products and technologies, we believe we can identify and act on trends and leverage knowledge about next-generation technology across our products.' Roughly 75% of fiscal 2025 net sales were direct to manufacturers rather than through distribution, and the Transportation segment's products 'must withstand harsh conditions' — parts engineered in with the customer and built to survive the application, so the position sits inside the customer's design rather than in a purchase order. The filing rules the alternative out in its own words on intellectual property, so intangibles_ip is not the source; the 'thousands of companies' in Competition rules out efficient_scale.

source: sec.gov

The filing's own description of how it competes points at designed-in and qualified positions rather than IP or pure scale. In Aerospace the principal methods of competition are listed as 'total cost of ownership, product and system performance, quality, design engineering capabilities, and timely delivery' - price is conspicuously absent, and 20% of segment sales go to three large aircraft OEMs, i.e. platform-level content that is qualified in and hard to displace mid-programme. In the Electrical segments 'customer service and support' sits alongside performance and technology as a method of competition, and 22% of sales go to six large customers. Intangibles_ip is explicitly ruled out as the primary source by the company itself: 'management believes that the loss or expiration of any single intellectual property right would not in and of itself have a material effect on Eaton's consolidated financial statements or its business segments.' Scale is real but secondary - the filing notes raw materials are bought 'from many suppliers' and 'under normal circumstances, the Company has no difficulty obtaining its raw materials,' which reads as supply resilience rather than a cost advantage claim.

source: sec.gov

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".

source: sec.gov

The FY2025 10-K claims leadership in qualified form and then names the peers who contest it. Transportation Solutions 'is a leader in connectivity and sensor technologies' and TE is 'one of the leading providers of advanced automobile connectivity solutions' — one of, not the — while the segment's 'major competitors include Yazaki, Aptiv, Sumitomo, Sensata, Honeywell, Molex, and Amphenol'. Industrial Solutions 'is a leading supplier of products that connect and distribute power, data, and signals' and 'competes primarily against Amphenol, Hubbell, Carlisle Companies, Integer Holdings, Molex, Omron, JST, and Korea Electric Terminal (KET)'. Amphenol and Molex appear on both lists, so TE shares the top of the interconnect market rather than owning it.

source: sec.gov

The filing's leadership language is plural and hedged, not exclusive: 'considered among the market leaders' for the Electrical segments (qualified further by 'with respect to many products'), 'among the market leaders' for Aerospace, and 'Eaton is considered among the market leaders' for Vehicle. Nowhere does the 10-K claim to be the single leader in any market, and it never names a competitor or cites a market-share figure. 'Among the market leaders' maps to co_leader, not clear_leader.

source: sec.gov

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.

source: sec.gov

The FY2025 10-K states both halves plainly: TE has 'experienced, and expect[s] to continue to experience, downward pressure on prices. However, as a result of increased costs and tariffs, certain of our businesses implemented price increases in recent years.' Pass-through, not price-setting. The realised result is margin expansion rather than erosion — gross margin of 31.5% of net sales in FY2023, 34.4% in FY2024 and 35.2% in FY2025 per the same filing's income statements, and 36.5% ($5,319M on $14,573M) for the nine months to 26 June 2026 versus 35.3% a year earlier, with Q3 FY2026 GAAP operating margin of 19%, per the 22 July 2026 results release (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1385157/000110465926085589/tel-20260722xex99d1.htm). Strong would require pricing that leads rather than follows cost; weak is contradicted by three years of expanding gross margin.

source: sec.gov

The filing describes pass-through ability that is real but bounded. On input costs: 'While we strive to recoup these increased costs through our pricing, product modifications or other mediating responses, if we are unable to do so without compromising the competitive position of our products and services, our results could continue to be impacted by this trend.' On macro conditions: 'our responses to mitigate the impact of these conditions, such as potential price increases, could negatively impact our market share or relationships with distributors or customers.' On tariffs: 'potential price increases or other mitigating efforts could negatively impact market share or otherwise increase the risk of customer disputes.' Price is also listed as a principal method of competition in Electrical Americas, Electrical Global, Vehicle and eMobility - so raising price is described by the company as costing share. Aerospace is the exception, where price is not among the listed methods of competition. The filing states no gross-margin trend in Item 1 or Item 1A.

source: sec.gov

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".

TE is an upstream component supplier to the AI build-out, not a participant in compute. It sells 'connectivity and sensor solutions [that] enable the distribution of power, signal, and data to advance next-generation transportation, energy networks, automated factories, data centers enabling artificial intelligence', about 75% of it direct to manufacturers across roughly 130 countries. AI exposure runs through one end market: digital data networks was 28% of Industrial Solutions, and Industrial Solutions was 46% of fiscal 2025 net sales — so the datacenter line is a minority of a company still 54% transportation. That minority is where the growth now is: digital data networks net sales rose 34.2% in Q3 FY2026 and 48.8% over the nine months, and energy rose 34.4% in the quarter, the CEO tying both to AI momentum 'in both the data center and across the broader energy infrastructure' (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1385157/000110465926085589/tel-20260722xex99d1.htm).

Upstream electrical infrastructure into AI compute: Eaton supplies the power path from grid to rack, and the 10-K makes that link itself - data center is the first market it names, it cites 'momentum in the data center and utility end markets,' and its 2025-26 acquisitions target hyperscale/colocation modular buildings, solid-state transformers and liquid cooling 'from the chip to the grid.' Its exposure to AI is as a supplier to AI buildout, not as an AI technology vendor; the filing's only AI discussion of its own products is a risk factor about keeping pace with AI internally and about generative-AI compliance risk, which is incidental to the thesis.

• AFF and ASA all-flash storage arrays Top 3 · Moderate source: blocksandfiles.com
• Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Leader · Deep source: docs.aws.amazon.com
• Azure NetApp Files Leader · Deep source: learn.microsoft.com
• NetApp AFX and AI Data Engine Challenger · Moderate source: sec.gov
• NetApp Keystone Challenger · Moderate source: sec.gov
• NetApp StorageGRID Niche · Low source: sec.gov

• Aerospace, defense, and marine interconnect Challenger · Deep source: sec.gov
• Automotive terminals and connector systems Top 3 · Deep source: sec.gov
• Digital data networks connectivity Top 3 · Moderate source: sec.gov
• Energy connection and protection products Challenger · Moderate source: sec.gov
• Sensors Challenger · Moderate source: sec.gov

• Aerospace Top 3 · Deep source: sec.gov
• Electrical Americas Top 3 · Moderate source: sec.gov
• Electrical Global Top 3 · Moderate source: sec.gov
• Vehicle Top 3 · Moderate source: sec.gov
• eMobility Unknown · Low source: sec.gov

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