ALTO INGREDIENTS, INC.
ALTO · Materials · $281M mkt cap · FY2025 filings · · No moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $1.2B to $918M, decreasing; diluted EPS 0.61 to 0.16, decreasing. Latest-filed diluted EPS remains usable for Business Trend, but an integer share-count change lacks enough evidence to confirm a comparable EPS basis; valuation growth therefore stays at 0%.
Median gross margin 1.1% over 10y, variable.
Median ROIC -4.7%, above the 12% hurdle in 0% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 1.7x, interest coverage 1x.
Owner earnings changed +7.5%/yr over up to the ten most recent annual observations.
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.
- Not reported
- Unavailable — insufficient owner-earnings data
- Unavailable — insufficient growth-model data
- $3.63
- No price data
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 216% above the zero-growth estimate across 49 of the current top 50 companies by Moat Score with both values.
Score records captured Sep 29, 2026 through Sep 30, 2026.
Exactly which 50 companies?
FTNT, IBEX, META, MEDP, MSFT, GOOG, LULU, ANF, IDXX, TXRH, FHI, QLYS, FFIV, ADBE, LLY, MANH, CPRT, VEEV, RMD, GRMN, PCTY, EAT, UI, SSD, MNST, DOCS, LRCX, MCO, NTAP, NVDA, CORT, SFM, MPTI, ULTA, SN, ROL, CTAS, PAYC, IRMD, DECK, MORN, INTU, JKHY, TPR, LGCY, DAL, GWW, ISRG, MPWR, LOPE
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 0% (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.
17 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
ALTO INGREDIENTS, INC. booked $918M of revenue in FY2025 in the Materials sector and kept 3.8% of it as gross profit — a thin-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 1.5% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $328M (FY2010) to $918M (FY2025) — about 7.1% a year compounded over 15 years.
It earned 2.4% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 16-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was −2.9%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was −4.7%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 0/100.
The balance sheet carried $79.6M of total debt in FY2025 against $34M of owner earnings — roughly 2.3 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 31/100.
Put together: Capital Allocation is the strongest of the five filters (44/100) and Pricing Power the weakest (0/100), which is how ALTO lands at 19/100 — a None moat.
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.
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.
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.
Visual explainers
The filing-backed explainer service is temporarily unavailable, so no partial or guessed chart is shown.
Moat Score history
Breaks in the line mark methodology or normalizer upgrades — readings across versions aren’t compared, so a level shift there isn’t a change in the business.
Tier changesSame-methodology and same-normalizer crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
- Normalizer upgraded unstamped (version unknown)tomoat-xbrl-normalizer@1.1.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 26, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@2.0.0tomoat-index@3.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 23, 2026
- Methodology upgraded moat-index@1.2.0tomoat-index@2.0.0 — readings across versions aren’t comparedJul 20, 2026
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 ALTO.
Materials context
#294 of 310 scored Materials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #292DWSN DAWSON GEOPHYSICAL COMPANY20.1 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #293HYMC HYCROFT MINING HOLDING CORPORATION19.8 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #295GORO GOLD RESOURCE CORP17.9 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #296DUNXF TRILLION ENERGY INTERNATIONAL INC.17.9 out of 100, No moatNo moat
Compare ALTO with its nearest peers →All Materials companies on the Index →
Common questions about ALTO
- Does ALTO INGREDIENTS, INC. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores ALTO INGREDIENTS, INC. (ALTO) 19.1 out of 100 — below the Shallow-moat bar, so no 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 20, pricing power 0, returns on capital 0, balance-sheet safety 31, capital allocation 44.
- How has ALTO's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 20 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 19.1 out of 100 (no 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.