LINDE PLC
LIN · Materials · FY2025 filings · Narrow moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2016–2025: revenue 10534000000.00 to 33986000000.00, increasing; diluted EPS 5.21 to 14.61, increasing.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 9.3%, above the 12% hurdle in 20% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 1.7x, interest coverage 35x.
Owner earnings +18.5%/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)
- $6.2B
- Value range / share
- —
- Conservative high estimate / share
- —
- Recent price
- $512.05
- Price vs. high estimate
- No price data
Conservative range under moat-index@2.0.0: low end 11.1×, high end capped at 18×; 9% discount rate; high-end growth 4% (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.
11 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $10.5B (FY2016) to $34.0B (FY2025) — about 13.9% a year compounded over 9 years.
It earned 11.5% on invested capital in FY2025, with a median of 9.3% across 10 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 26/100.
The balance sheet carried $27.0B of total debt in FY2025 against $6.9B of owner earnings — roughly 3.9 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 76/100.
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 LIN’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in LIN’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 LINDE PLC’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 LIN 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, LIN 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.
Materials context
#25 of 304 scored Materials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #23CHD CHURCH & DWIGHT CO., INC.73.1 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #24TGLS TECNOGLASS INC.72.9 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #26PNRG PrimeEnergy Resources Corporation72.3 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #27EOG EOG RESOURCES, INC.70.8 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare LIN with its nearest peers →All Materials companies on the Index →
Common questions about LIN
- Does LINDE PLC have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores LINDE PLC (LIN) 72.9 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 96, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 26, balance-sheet safety 76, capital discipline 94.
- How has LIN's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 9 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 72.9 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.