Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc.
DFIN · Technology · $1.3B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Shallow moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2014–2025: revenue 1080100000.00 to 767000000.00, decreasing; diluted EPS 1.77 to 1.15, decreasing.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 16.8%, above the 12% hurdle in 60% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 0.7x, interest coverage 11x.
Owner earnings -8.4%/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)
- $92.4M
- Value range / share
- $40.10–$40.10
- Conservative high estimate / share
- $40.10
- Recent price
- $49.03
- Price vs. high estimate
- 22% 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.
13 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue shrank from $1.1B (FY2014) to $767.0M (FY2025) — about −3.1% a year compounded over 11 years.
It earned 20.2% on invested capital in FY2025, with a median of 17.8% across 12 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 72/100.
The balance sheet carried $171.3M of total debt in FY2025 against $34.6M of owner earnings — roughly 5.0 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 67/100.
The share count fell 24.9% between FY2018 and FY2025 — 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.
Not disclosed in DFIN’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in DFIN’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 Donnelley Financial Solutions, 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 DFIN 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, DFIN 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
#275 of 745 scored Technology companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #273ATDS DATA443 RISK MITIGATION, INC.51.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #274PENG PENGUIN SOLUTIONS, INC.51.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #276GTLB GITLAB INC.51.8 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #277GWRE Guidewire Software, Inc.51.7 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare DFIN with its nearest peers →All Technology companies on the Index →
Common questions about DFIN
- Does Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc. (DFIN) 51.9 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 28, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 72, balance-sheet safety 67, capital discipline 40.
- Is DFIN trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The owner-earnings value range is $40.10–$40.10 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 $49.03, that is 22% 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 DFIN's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 9 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 51.9 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.