Appian Corporation
APPN · Technology · $1.8B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · · not refreshed in 35 days · Shallow moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $369M to $727M, increasing; diluted EPS -1.25 to 0.02, increasing.
Median gross margin 70.7% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC -49.8%, above the 12% hurdle in 0% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 10.2x, interest coverage 0x.
Owner earnings changed trend unclear over up to the ten most recent annual observations, share count n/a.
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
- $23.75
- 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 239% above the zero-growth estimate across 48 of the current top 50 companies by Moat Score with both values.
Score records captured Jul 26, 2026.
Exactly which 50 companies?
FTNT, META, MEDP, IBEX, MSFT, GOOGL, LULU, ANF, IDXX, TXRH, FHI, QLYS, FFIV, ADBE, LLY, MANH, VEEV, GRMN, SSD, MNST, DOCS, MCO, CPRT, NTAP, LRCX, NVDA, CORT, SFM, MPTI, ULTA, SN, RMD, ROL, PAYC, IRMD, INTU, DECK, MORN, LGCY, DAL, GWW, ISRG, MPWR, CTAS, LOPE, MRK, CMG, FAST, BKNG, ORLY
Missing a usable price or zero-growth estimate: ANF, BKNG.
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.
12 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Appian Corporation booked $727M of revenue in FY2025 in the Technology sector and kept 72.5% of it as gross profit — a high-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 0.2% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $111M (FY2015) to $727M (FY2025) — about 20.7% a year compounded over 10 years.
It earned 0.7% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 7-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was −49.8%. Over the v3 recent window (7 measurable filed years), median ROIC was −49.8%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 0/100.
The balance sheet carried $241M of total debt in FY2025 against $7.6M of owner earnings — roughly 31.6 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 0/100.
Put together: Pricing Power is the strongest of the five filters (96/100) and Returns on Capital the weakest (0/100), which is how APPN lands at 44/100 — a Shallow 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.
Not meaningful FY2016–2017: invested capital is negative (cash exceeds debt + equity)
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 APPN.
Track record
How Appian 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.
How to read this: each dot is what the engine would have scored APPN 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 reconstructed history shown, APPN 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
#390 of 744 scored Technology companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #388INTZ Intrusion Inc.44.3 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #389SKKY SKKYNET CLOUD SYSTEMS, INC.44.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #391IPDN Professional Diversity Network, Inc.43.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #392FLUT Flutter Entertainment plc43.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare APPN with its nearest peers →All Technology companies on the Index →
Common questions about APPN
- Does Appian Corporation have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Appian Corporation (APPN) 44.0 out of 100 — a Shallow 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 80, pricing power 96, returns on capital 0, balance-sheet safety 0, capital allocation 44.
- How has APPN's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 44.0 out of 100 (shallow 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.