Carter's, Inc.
CRI · Consumer Discretionary · $1.4B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · · not refreshed in 36 days · Shallow moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $3.5B to $2.9B, decreasing; diluted EPS 7.81 to 2.53, decreasing.
Median gross margin 44.5% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC 24.5%, above the 12% hurdle in 90% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 0.4x, interest coverage 4x.
Owner earnings changed -10.8%/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.
- $233M
- $71.09
- $71.09
- $38.75
- 45% below value if growth stopped today
A discount this large is often a warning rather than a bargain — the market may expect earnings to keep falling. See the revenue trend above.
How to read this
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings shrinking ~11%/yr over 5 years. The estimate assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
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 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.
19 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Carter's, Inc. booked $2.9B of revenue in FY2025 in the Consumer Discretionary sector and kept 45.4% of it as gross profit — a solid-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 3.2% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $1.5B (FY2008) to $2.9B (FY2025) — about 4.0% a year compounded over 17 years.
It earned 11.5% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 18-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 23.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 24.5%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 97/100.
The balance sheet carried $567M of total debt in FY2025 against $91.8M of owner earnings — roughly 6.2 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 55/100.
Put together: Returns on Capital is the strongest of the five filters (97/100) and Business Trend the weakest (16/100), which is how CRI lands at 56/100 — 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.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in CRI’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.
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.
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 Aug 31, 2026.
57 filings were skipped because the SEC primary document returned 404; the omission is disclosed and aggregates are withheld.
Among the rows shown, A/F/M acquisition, payment or withholding, and exercise or conversion rows outnumber S sale rows (4 versus 0). The filing codes alone do not establish that every such row arose from a compensation plan.
Trailing-12-month totals and the 90-day cluster result are withheld because this issuer walk is incomplete.
| Insider | Shares owned after | Date | Filing detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smith Karen MarieChief Supply Chain Officer | Payment of exercise price or tax liability (F)Table I · Disposed · Common Stock | 1,124 | $39.06 | $43,903 | 54,451 | Aug 12, 2026 | 1 filed lot
|
| Peterson AllisonChf. Retail & Digital Ofc. | Payment of exercise price or tax liability (F)Table I · Disposed · Common Stock | 4,426 | $39.96 | $176,863 | 63,297 | Aug 9, 2026 | 1 filed lot
|
| Scanlon Emily DeHaven EvertChief Strategy Officer | Payment of exercise price or tax liability (F)Table I · Disposed · Common Stock | 8,743 | $39.96 | $349,370 | 88,725 | Aug 8, 2026 | 1 filed lot
|
| Crockett SarahChief Marketing Officer | Payment of exercise price or tax liability (F)Table I · Disposed · Common Stock | 2,842 | $39.96 | $113,566 | 41,390 | Aug 8, 2026 | 1 filed lot
|
Source-event as of . Retrieved .
Track record
How Carter's, 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 CRI 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 8 years CRI rated Wide-moat (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018), the median forward total return that followed — measured only after each year’s filings were public — was:
- 1 year 24% vs the S&P 500’s 13% (price basis) · median over 8 years
- 3 years 32% vs the S&P 500’s 37% (price basis) · median over 8 years
- 5 years 23% vs the S&P 500’s 80% (price basis) · median over 8 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.
Consumer Discretionary context
#147 of 487 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #145JAKK JAKKS Pacific, Inc.56.3 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #146SAH SONIC AUTOMOTIVE, INC.56.3 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #148BLMN BLOOMIN’ BRANDS, INC.56.3 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #149TGT TARGET CORPORATION56.1 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare CRI with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about CRI
- Does Carter's, Inc. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Carter's, Inc. (CRI) 56.3 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 16, pricing power 74, returns on capital 97, balance-sheet safety 55, capital allocation 40.
- Is CRI trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $71.09 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $38.75, that is 45% below 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 CRI's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 56.3 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.