2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $3.5B to $3.8B, increasing; diluted EPS 3.02 to 3.85, increasing.
65
Median gross margin 38.7% over 10y, very stable.
100
Median ROIC 28.6%, above the 12% hurdle in 100% of years.
100
Net cash position — no leverage risk.
79
Owner earnings changed +6.2%/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.
Above value if growth stopped todayBelow value if growth stopped today
38% above value if growth stopped today
$534M
$41.78
$67.68
$57.83
38% above value if growth stopped today
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~7%/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 240% 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.
19 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
A. O. Smith Corporation booked $3.8B of revenue in FY2025 in the Industrials sector and kept 38.8% of it as gross profit — a solid-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 14.3% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $1.5B (FY2008) to $3.8B (FY2025) — about 5.9% a year compounded over 17 years.
It earned 30.3% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 16-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 23.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 28.6%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 100/100.
The balance sheet carried $155M of total debt in FY2025 against $561M of owner earnings — roughly 0.3 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 100/100.
Put together: Returns on Capital is the strongest of the five filters (100/100) and Pricing Power the weakest (65/100), which is how AOS lands at 83/100 — a Wide 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.
FY2007–FY2025 · 19 fiscal years, normalized from AOS’s SEC filings
Sales, as filed$3.8B FY2025Revenue kept after cost of goods38.8% FY2025Standard ROIC or separately labeled Operating ROICStandard ROIC 30.3% FY2025
Exact FY and FY-1 financing invested-capital inputs are required.
Cash an owner could take out$561M FY2025
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 moat the filings show, and the segment that argues back
An editorial reading of A. O. Smith Corporation’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.
The Buy Like Buffett registry scores A. O. Smith 83.1 out of 100 — wide moat, #9 of 448 scored Industrials companies — on filings through FY2025. The strongest of the five filters is returns on capital, at 100: Median ROIC 28.6%, above the 12% hurdle in 100% of years. The balance sheet scores 100 — $155M of total debt against $534M of owner earnings, roughly 3 months of cash generation to retire it all. Those two scores are the moat's fingerprint. A company earning a median 28 cents per invested dollar across 10 filed years is being protected by something. The latest normalized year reports $155M of total debt, so the strength here is not a debt-free balance sheet.
The something is visible in the business, not just the ratios. Morningstar's company report (accessed August 15, 2026) puts A. O. Smith's North American water heater share at 36% of residential and 52% of commercial, positions cemented by the consolidation of the market in the 2000s and the 2011 Lochinvar boiler acquisition. Water heaters fail, and when they fail the replacement is bought within days through whichever plumber and wholesaler is standing there — a distribution relationship AOS has spent decades occupying. In its January 29, 2026 release titled “A. O. Smith Reports Record 2025 Diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $3.85 and Introduces 2026 Guidance,” the company reported North America segment sales of $2.98 billion with segment margin of 24.4%, and record diluted EPS of $3.85 for 2025, up 6%. The board's October 13, 2025 dividend increase of 6% extended the payment record to 86 consecutive years, per the January 15, 2026 declaration.
Every paragraph above has a counterparty. It's China. A. O. Smith built a premium consumer brand there over two decades, and that business has been shrinking: the company's third-quarter 2025 release reported China sales down 12% in local currency, and the January 29, 2026 full-year release describes China weakness persisting through the year, offset by North America. This isn't a side note to the score — it's the main reason the growth-facing filters lag the capital-facing ones. Revenue and EPS trend scores 72 and pricing power 65 against returns on capital at 100 and the balance sheet at 100, because the North American business ran at full margin while the top line barely moved. The moat, in other words, is a North American moat; the score is carrying a Chinese consumer business that currently subtracts growth. Whether China stabilizes into a cheap option or keeps eroding the top line is the single question the filed financial history can't answer, and the honest reading of a score with this shape is "fortress economics, stalled expansion."
Price is where that reading gets tested. The registry's zero-growth baseline values the shares at $41.78 against a recent price of $57.83 — the market is paying 38% above what the business supports if owner earnings never grow again. Against the filed owner-earnings trend the capital allocation filter reads at 79 (Owner earnings +6.2%/yr, share count shrinking (buybacks).), that assumption isn't outlandish, and it isn't conservative either: it requires North America to keep compounding and China to stop subtracting. The score card says wide moat and means it. The price already agrees. That's its own kind of risk.
Every figure above, sourced: this registry page for AOS, read as you loaded it (Moat Score, sub-scores, ROIC, owner earnings, normalized debt, zero-growth baseline) · A. O. Smith release “A. O. Smith Reports Record 2025 Diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $3.85 and Introduces 2026 Guidance,” January 29, 2026 (2025 revenue $3.8 billion, NA segment $2.98 billion at 24.4%, record diluted EPS $3.85) · A. O. Smith Q3 2025 release (China −12% local currency) · A. O. Smith board actions of October 13, 2025 (dividend +6%) and January 15, 2026 (86 consecutive years of payments) · Morningstar company report on A. O. Smith, accessed August 15, 2026 (36% residential / 52% commercial NA share) · A. O. Smith 10-K record for the Lochinvar acquisition (2011).
Registry figures as of Oct 15, 2026, from filings through FY2025 under moat-index@3.0.0. Educational only — not a recommendation to buy or sell AOS. See the disclaimer.
Flagship explainer
How A. O. Smith Corporation makes its money
Start with a dollar of revenue and follow what the filing says remains.
Honest partial: the filing did not provide a normalized tag for Research and development, Selling, general and administrative; those components are omitted, not plugged.
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.
Records still being gathered — partial as of retrieval Oct 15, 2026.
Partial coverage: the incomplete Form 4 walk cannot establish no activity, an activity date, or zero counts.
Moat Score history
28 logged readings since Jul 17, 2026 · append-only, never rewritten
Moat Score over timeLast scored reading of each day, on the 0–100 scale83.1 / 100
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
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.
This machine-readable surface covers SEC ownership filings from 2003; it does not represent earlier paper-era records.
Records still being gathered — partial as of retrieval Oct 15, 2026.
Trailing-12-month totals and the 90-day cluster result are withheld because this issuer walk is incomplete.
No reported Form 4 rows were captured for AOS; the incomplete walk cannot establish zero activity, zero counts, or a negative cluster result.
A filing source-event date will appear when a Form 4 row is captured.
Retrieved .
Track record
How A. O. Smith Corporation’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 AOS 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 price path is a total-return (dividends reinvested) index built from the same data the forward returns use; 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 5 years AOS rated Wide-moat (2019, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025), the median forward total return that followed — measured only after each year’s filings were public — was:
1 year28%vs the S&P 500’s 20% (price basis)· median over 4 years
3 years30%vs the S&P 500’s 28% (price basis)· median over 3 years
5 years46%vs the S&P 500’s 83% (price basis)· median over 2 years
These are medians computed from the data, not a claim about any one year. The company figures are total returns (dividends reinvested); the S&P 500 is the price-only ^GSPC index, which excludes dividends and so understates the index — the gap flatters the company. A quality rating is not a return forecast, and past returns don’t predict future ones. Educational only, not investment advice.
Industrials context
#9 of 448 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Does A. O. Smith Corporation have an economic moat?
Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores A. O. Smith Corporation (AOS) 83.1 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 72, pricing power 65, returns on capital 100, balance-sheet safety 100, capital allocation 79.
Is AOS trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $41.78 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $57.83, that is 38% 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 AOS's Moat Score changed over time?
The record logs 28 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 83.1 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 AOS. See the disclaimer.