Knowles Corporation
KN · Industrials · $3.2B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Shallow moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $868M to $593M, decreasing; diluted EPS 1.59 to 0.50, decreasing.
Median gross margin 40.3% over 10y, stable.
Median ROIC 4.2%, above the 12% hurdle in 0% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 0.6x, interest coverage 17x.
Owner earnings changed trend unclear 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.
- $48.4M
- $6.34
- $6.34
- $37.58
- 493% above value if growth stopped today
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~43%/yr over 5 years. The zero-growth estimate assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
How to read this
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.
15 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Knowles Corporation booked $593M of revenue in FY2025 in the Industrials sector and kept 43.2% of it as gross profit — a solid-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 7.5% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue shrank from $1.1B (FY2012) to $593M (FY2025) — about −4.8% a year compounded over 13 years.
It earned 6.7% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 14-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 5.2%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 4.2%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 0/100.
The balance sheet carried $114M of total debt in FY2025 against $48.4M of owner earnings — roughly 2.4 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 84/100.
Put together: Balance-Sheet Safety is the strongest of the five filters (84/100) and Returns on Capital the weakest (0/100), which is how KN lands at 46/100 — 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 KN’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 11, 2026.
Trailing-12-month totals and the 90-day cluster result are withheld because this issuer walk is incomplete.
No reported Form 4 rows were captured for KN; the incomplete walk cannot establish zero activity, zero counts, or a negative cluster result.
A filing source-event date will appear when a Form 4 row is captured.
Retrieved .
Track record
How Knowles Corporation’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 KN 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, KN 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.
Industrials context
#190 of 428 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #188BKR Baker Hughes Co46.8 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #189PPIH PERMA-PIPE INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS, INC.46.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #191ROAD Construction Partners, Inc.46.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #192KMT KENNAMETAL INC45.9 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare KN with its nearest peers →All Industrials companies on the Index →
Common questions about KN
- Does Knowles Corporation have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Knowles Corporation (KN) 46.2 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 25, pricing power 63, returns on capital 0, balance-sheet safety 84, capital allocation 59.
- Is KN trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $6.34 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $37.58, that is 493% above 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 KN's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 46.2 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.