BUILD-A-BEAR WORKSHOP INC
BBW · Consumer Discretionary · $435.9M mkt cap · FY2026 filings · Narrow moat ·
Wonderful & reasonably priced
The five investor questions
2009–2026: revenue 395906000.00 to 529832000.00, increasing; diluted EPS -0.66 to 3.99, increasing. 1 fiscal year was not jointly reported; CAGR uses the full 17-year elapsed span.
Median gross margin 52.5% over 9y, stable.
Not enough years of ROIC data to score returns on capital.
Net cash position — no leverage risk.
Owner earnings +23.3%/yr, share count shrinking (buybacks).
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. owner-earnings value range
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- $51.8M
- Value range / share
- $44.92–$44.92
- Conservative high estimate / share
- $44.92
- Recent price
- $34.03
- Price vs. high estimate
- 24% below high estimate
Conservative range under moat-index@2.0.0: low end 11.1×, high end capped at 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.
19 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
BUILD-A-BEAR WORKSHOP INC booked $529.8M of revenue in FY2026 in the Consumer Discretionary sector and kept 55.8% of it as gross profit — a high-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 9.9% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $395.9M (FY2009) to $529.8M (FY2026) — about 1.7% a year compounded over 17 years.
BBW's filings don't disclose total debt in a form the methodology can use, so leverage is treated as unmeasured — never assumed to be zero.
The share count fell 37.4% between FY2009 and FY2026 — management has been retiring shares, which concentrates each remaining owner's claim. Capital Discipline scores it 100/100.
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.
Not disclosed in BBW’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in BBW’s 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.
Moat Score history
Tier changesSame-methodology crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
- 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 can’t be backfilled, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Track record
How BUILD-A-BEAR WORKSHOP 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.
How to read this: each dot is what the engine would have scored BBW 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, BBW 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.
Consumer Discretionary context
#49 of 482 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #47GCT GIGACLOUD TECHNOLOGY INC79.1 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #48BKE BUCKLE, INC78.8 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #50FIGS FIGS, Inc.78.5 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #51COLM COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR COMPANY78.3 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare BBW with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about BBW
- Does BUILD-A-BEAR WORKSHOP INC have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2026 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores BUILD-A-BEAR WORKSHOP INC (BBW) 78.6 out of 100 — a Narrow 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 60, pricing power 77, returns on capital not measurable from the filings, balance-sheet safety 78, capital discipline 100.
- Is BBW trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The owner-earnings value range is $44.92–$44.92 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate; the low end assumes 0% growth and the high end uses 0% growth, capped at 4% and 18×. Versus a recent price of $34.03, that is 24% below high estimate relative to the high estimate. This is a conservative educational estimate from primary SEC filings, not intrinsic value as a fact or investment advice.
- How has BBW's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 8 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 78.6 out of 100 (narrow moat). No tier changes on record yet. (A methodology upgrade on Jul 20, 2026 re-based the score; readings across engine versions aren't compared.) The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.