AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC.

Pricing power scores 72. That's ADP's lowest filter. The registry grounds the number in Median gross margin 42.9% over 10y, very stable. — stable, which is both the compliment and the ceiling. Stable at a mid-forties gross margin isn't stable at sixty.

The reason a stable margin doesn't score higher is competition ADP itself discloses without naming names. The company's fiscal 2025 Form 10-K describes the industries in which it operates as "highly competitive" (ADP Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2025, sec.gov, accessed August 15, 2026), with competitors spanning business outsourcing companies, enterprise-resource-planning providers, software companies, and financial institutions per the competition disclosures in its filings. None of that appears on this page — the score is computed from filings alone — but it's the market structure that keeps a mid-forties gross margin from becoming a sixty. ADP can raise prices. It can't raise them carelessly.

Balance-sheet safety scores 82, the next rung up. The registry's reading is: Net debt/EBITDA 0.1x, interest coverage 13x. The asset base looks alarming against the equity line until you ask what fills it: ADP holds client money in transit, collected from employers before it goes out as wages and payroll taxes, and that float carries a rate dial. Per ADP's fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results release of July 29, 2026, interest on funds held for clients rose 15% to $355 million for the quarter, with average client funds balances up 8% to $41 billion and the average yield up 20 basis points to 3.5%. Rates cut either way. That 15% growth arrived because yields rose; an easing cycle runs the same arithmetic in reverse, and nothing in the balance-sheet sub-score prices that swing. It measures the debt. It doesn't measure the dial.

Above that sits a blank. Returns on capital didn't score at all: the registry abstained, reporting not enough years of data — Not enough years of ROIC data to score returns on capital. The metric isn't disclosed in ADP's filings for these years, and this site's stated policy is that it doesn't estimate what isn't filed. The remaining weights were renormalized over the filters that did score. The model doesn't guess. The honest translation is that one fifth of the framework has no opinion on ADP, and the headline rests on the other four fifths.

Revenue and EPS trend scores 95: 2022–2026 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue 16498300000.00 to 21947400000.00, increasing; diluted EPS 7.00 to 10.94, increasing. The current year keeps the line going: the July 29, 2026 release reported fourth-quarter revenue of $5.47 billion, up 7%, adjusted EPS of $2.64, and Employer Services client revenue retention flat at 92.1% for fiscal 2026. That retention figure is the trend score's real foundation — at 92.1%, per the release, more than nine of every ten dollars of Employer Services revenue stayed with ADP through the fiscal year.

Capital allocation scores 95, the top filter: Owner earnings +10.6%/yr, share count shrinking (buybacks). The distribution side has a longer record than the registry tracks: on November 12, 2025 ADP announced its 51st consecutive annual dividend increase — a streak that began in 1975 — lifting the annual rate to $6.80 per share. Fifty-one Novembers, one decision.

Stack the scored filters — pricing power 72, balance-sheet safety 82, revenue & eps trend 95, capital allocation 95 — and ADP lands at 86.0 out of 100, a wide moat. Then the same page turns around and prices it. The zero-growth estimate is $104.80 per share; the recent price is $279.61. The expectations lens on this page is blunter still: it solves for owner earnings growing about 22% a year for 5 years. The capital-allocation note above records what the business has actually delivered; the two numbers are printed here so a reader can set them side by side rather than take a comparison on trust. The moat is real. The price already knows.