Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.
HLT · Consumer Discretionary · $74.5B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Narrow moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2012–2025: revenue 9276000000.00 to 12039000000.00, increasing; diluted EPS 1.14 to 6.12, increasing.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 18.1%, above the 12% hurdle in 60% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 4.0x, interest coverage 4x.
Owner earnings +17.0%/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)
- $1.4B
- Value range / share
- $66.44–$66.44
- Conservative high estimate / share
- $66.44
- Recent price
- $323.43
- Price vs. high estimate
- 387% 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.
15 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $9.3B (FY2012) to $12.0B (FY2025) — about 2.0% a year compounded over 13 years.
It earned 31.4% on invested capital in FY2025, with a median of 14.1% across 14 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 78/100.
The balance sheet carried $12.4B of total debt in FY2025 against $1.5B of owner earnings — roughly 8.1 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 6/100.
The share count fell 76.6% between FY2013 and FY2025 — 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 HLT’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in HLT’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 Hilton Worldwide Holdings 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 HLT 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, HLT 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
#107 of 482 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #105KTB KONTOOR BRANDS, INC.65.5 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #106LEAT LEATT CORPORATION65.1 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #108WMT WALMART INC.64.0 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #109PSMT PriceSmart, Inc.64.0 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare HLT with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about HLT
- Does Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (HLT) 64.7 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 75, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 78, balance-sheet safety 6, capital discipline 100.
- Is HLT trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The owner-earnings value range is $66.44–$66.44 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 $323.43, that is 387% 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 HLT's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 9 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 64.7 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.