Century Aluminum Company
CENX · Industrials · $4.1B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · No moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The four filters
Median gross margin 2.8% over 10y, variable.
Median ROIC -0.9%, above the 9% hurdle in 30% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 1.7x, no material interest expense disclosed.
Owner earnings trend unclear, share count growing (dilution).
Margin of safety
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- —
- Est. intrinsic value / share
- —
- Recent price
- $41.50
- Discount to value
- No price data
Conservative model: 9% discount rate, 0% assumed growth (capped at 4%), maintenance capex ≈ min(capex, D&A).
18 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Century Aluminum Company booked $2.5B of revenue in FY2025 in the Industrials sector and kept 10.1% of it as gross profit — a thin-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 1.7% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $899.3M (FY2009) to $2.5B (FY2025) — about 6.7% a year compounded over 16 years.
It earned 13.0% on invested capital in FY2025, with a median of −0.5% across 17 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 11/100.
The balance sheet carried $548.3M of total debt in FY2025 against $41.8M of owner earnings — roughly 13.1 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 77/100.
The share count rose 6.7% between FY2010 and FY2025 — existing owners have been diluted over the record. Capital Discipline scores it 24/100.
Put together: Balance-Sheet Safety is the strongest of the four filters (77/100) and Pricing Power the weakest (0/100), which is how CENX lands at 23/100 — 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.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in CENX’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
Score history begins Jul 17, 2026 — the record builds from here and can’t be backfilled.
Tier changesSame-methodology crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
None yet — CENX has read No moat for every logged capture since Jul 17, 2026.
Scores are logged append-only and never overwritten — this record can’t be backfilled, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Industrials context
#241 of 309 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #239PFGC Performance Food Group Company24.2 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #240CAPC CAPSTONE COMPANIES, INC.23.4 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #242NTRP NEXTTRIP, INC.23.1 out of 100, No moatNo moat
- #243CAPS CAPSTONE HOLDING CORP.23.1 out of 100, No moatNo moat
Compare CENX with its nearest peers →All Industrials companies on the Index →
Common questions about CENX
- Does Century Aluminum Company have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Century Aluminum Company (CENX) 23.4 out of 100 — below the Shallow-moat bar, so no moat. The four filters behind that score (each 0–100): pricing power 0, returns on capital 11, balance-sheet safety 77, capital discipline 24.
- How has CENX's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 3 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 23.4 out of 100 (no moat). No tier changes on record yet. The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.