2022–2026 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $16.5B to $21.9B, increasing; diluted EPS 7.00 to 10.94, increasing.
72
Median gross margin 42.9% over 10y, very stable.
—
Not enough years of ROIC data to score returns on capital.
82
Net debt/EBITDA 0.1x, interest coverage 13x.
95
Owner earnings changed +10.6%/yr over up to the ten most recent annual observations.
The returnsOnCapital component abstained: Not enough years of ROIC data to score returns on capital. The other four 20% weights were renormalized over the scored 80%.
Price vs. value if growth stopped today
A cautious baseline, not a price target: what the shares may support if normalized owner earnings simply hold steady.
Above value if growth stopped todayBelow value if growth stopped today
165% above value if growth stopped today
$3.8B
$104.80
$169.77
$277.62
165% above value if growth stopped today
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~22%/yr over 5 years. The zero-growth estimate assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
How to read this
We solve for the constant annual change in owner earnings that would make the five-year zero-growth estimate equal today’s price. This keeps the existing model inputs and calculation unchanged; it is an expectations lens, not a forecast.
This zero-growth estimate assumes trailing owner earnings persist — unreliable for declining businesses. The recent FY revenue series does not trigger the three-consecutive-declines flag.
Among the current top-score group, the median current price is 235% above the zero-growth estimate across 49 of the current top 50 companies by Moat Score with both values.
Missing a usable price or zero-growth estimate: ANF.
Model details under moat-index@3.0.0: zero-growth multiple 11.1×, capped-growth comparison at no more than 18×; 9% discount rate; high-end growth 4% (capped at 4%) using min(5y revenue CAGR, 5y diluted-EPS CAGR), clamped to 0%–4%; maintenance capex uses min(capex, D&A); abstain when D&A is unavailable. This is a disclosed model range, not intrinsic value as fact.
20 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC. booked $21.9B of revenue in FY2026 in the Technology sector and kept 46.4% of it as gross profit — a solid-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 20.1% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $8.7B (FY2008) to $21.9B (FY2026) — about 5.3% a year compounded over 18 years.
The balance sheet carried $5.0B of total debt in FY2026 against $4.4B of owner earnings — roughly 1.1 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 82/100.
This breakdown is generated from the filed numbers and sub-scores above — no outside narrative, no estimates. Where a filing doesn’t disclose an input, the sentence that would need it is omitted instead of guessed.
FY2007–FY2026 · 20 fiscal years, normalized from ADP’s SEC filings
Sales, as filed$21.9B FY2026Revenue kept after cost of goods46.4% FY2026Standard ROIC or separately labeled Operating ROIC
Exact FY and FY-1 financing invested-capital inputs are required.. Current-year EBIT, tax expense, and non-zero pretax income are required for standard ROIC.
Exact FY and FY-1 financing invested-capital inputs are required.. Current-year EBIT, tax expense, and non-zero pretax income are required for standard ROIC.
Cash an owner could take out$4.4B FY2026
The explained ROIC gaps have filed inputs but no meaningful positive invested-capital denominator. Other gaps mean the item is not in the filings for that year. The series is never interpolated or estimated. The Table view lists every filed value, including operating and net margins, total debt, and share count.
The weakest filter speaks first
An editorial reading of AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC.’s filed financial history. Scores, sub-scores, rank and valuation figures are read from this page’s own score card as you loaded it rather than written into the text, so they move when the filings do. Figures quoted from company releases and filings carry the document and its date in the sentence that uses them.
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 $277.62. 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.
Four documents stand behind every external number here: this registry page for ADP, read as you loaded it (scores, sub-scores, owner earnings and the valuation figures) · ADP's fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results release (July 29, 2026, furnished as an exhibit to Form 8-K at sec.gov, accessed August 15, 2026) · ADP's dividend-increase announcement (November 12, 2025, mediacenter.adp.com, accessed August 15, 2026) · ADP's Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, year ended June 30, 2025 (sec.gov).
Registry figures as of Sep 7, 2026, from filings through FY2026 under moat-index@3.0.0. Educational only — not a recommendation to buy or sell ADP. See the disclaimer.
Flagship explainer
How AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC. makes its money
AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC.'s filing does not supply enough comparable lines for a truthful flow chart — here's what is filed:
Position size uses shares and filed value from each manager’s 13F. Portfolio weight uses the eligible long-share filing denominator. Changes compare only with the immediately preceding calendar quarter.
Scores are logged append-only and never overwritten — this record cannot be reconstructed retroactively, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Insider activity
Form 4 reports mix P/S market or private transactions with compensation-plan mechanics. Activity casually described as “insider selling” can include compensation mechanics; awards, tax withholding, and option exercises are shown by their exact filed class here, never collapsed into “Bought” or “Sold.”
These are disclosed filing facts and arithmetic aggregates, not a signal or verdict.
The insider-filing service is temporarily unavailable, so no partial or guessed answer is shown for ADP.
Track record
How AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC.’s moat rated in each of the years we can reconstruct from its filings — scored only on what was knowable at the time — and what its price and returns did afterward. The score never saw a price; the two are joined only in hindsight, for education, not as a signal.
Point-in-time scores 2011–2025, one methodology version · reconstructed from filings on file each Dec 31 — never with hindsight
Point-in-time Moat Score (dot colored by tier)Indexed price (total-return (dividends reinvested))Rated Wide-moat that year
How to read this: each dot is what the engine would have scored ADP on that December 31; the line below is its total-return price path (dividends reinvested) in the years since.
Two tracks, one timeline: the score has its own 0–100 scale (top), the price its own 100-based scale (bottom) — never a shared axis. The indexed price path isn't available for this company yet; gaps in the score line are years with no reconstructed rating (see the table for why). The Table view carries every value.
What followed, in the years it rated Wide
In the reconstructed history shown, ADP did not rate Wide-moat in any year, so there is no wide-moat track record to report. That absence is itself the honest answer — we don’t manufacture a comparison where the rating never earned one.
Technology context
#35 of 749 scored Technology companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Does AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC. have an economic moat?
Based on its FY2026 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING, INC. (ADP) 86.0 out of 100 — a Wide moat. The five questions behind that score begin at 20% each; if exactly one genuinely lacks data, the other four weights are renormalized and disclosed. revenue and EPS trend 95, pricing power 72, returns on capital not measurable from the filings, balance-sheet safety 82, capital allocation 95.
Is ADP trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $104.80 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $277.62, that is 165% above value if growth stopped today. The model also publishes a capped-growth comparison, but the zero-growth estimate is the cautious baseline. It assumes trailing owner earnings persist and is unreliable for declining businesses. This is an educational estimate from primary SEC filings, not intrinsic value as a fact or investment advice.
How has ADP's Moat Score changed over time?
The record logs 18 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 86.0 out of 100 (wide moat). No tier changes on record yet. (Methodology or normalizer upgrades on Jul 20, 2026, Jul 23, 2026, Jul 26, 2026 re-based the score; readings across versions aren't compared.) The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.
Scored from primary SEC filings via the public methodology. Educational only — not a recommendation to buy or sell ADP. See the disclaimer.