CITI TRENDS, INC.
CTRN · Consumer Discretionary · $547.9M mkt cap · FY2026 filings · Shallow moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2010–2026: revenue 551869000.00 to 819962000.00, increasing; diluted EPS 1.36 to 0.63, decreasing.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 9.7%, above the 12% hurdle in 40% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA n/ax, interest coverage 11x.
Owner earnings -9.9%/yr, share count shrinking (buybacks).
The pricingPower component abstained: Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power. The other four 20% weights were renormalized over the scored 80%.
Price vs. owner-earnings value range
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- $5.2M
- Value range / share
- $6.93–$6.93
- Conservative high estimate / share
- $6.93
- Recent price
- $65.65
- Price vs. high estimate
- 847% above 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.
18 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $551.9M (FY2010) to $820.0M (FY2026) — about 2.5% a year compounded over 16 years.
It earned 7.3% on invested capital in FY2026, with a median of 9.1% across 17 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 34/100.
CTRN'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 43.7% between FY2011 and FY2026 — management has been retiring shares, which concentrates each remaining owner's claim. Capital Discipline scores it 40/100.
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.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in CTRN’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 CITI TRENDS, 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 CTRN 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, CTRN 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
#277 of 482 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #275PKE PARK AEROSPACE CORP.42.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #276WGO WINNEBAGO INDUSTRIES, INC.42.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #278SNBH SENTIENT BRANDS HOLDINGS INC.42.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #279DLTI DLT RESOLUTION, INC42.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare CTRN with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about CTRN
- Does CITI TRENDS, INC. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2026 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores CITI TRENDS, INC. (CTRN) 42.9 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 47, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 34, balance-sheet safety 51, capital discipline 40.
- Is CTRN trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The owner-earnings value range is $6.93–$6.93 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 $65.65, that is 847% above 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 CTRN's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 8 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 42.9 out of 100 (shallow 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.