LKQ CORPORATION
LKQ · Industrials · $6.6B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Narrow moat ·
Wonderful & reasonably priced
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $13.1B to $13.7B, increasing; diluted EPS 3.66 to 2.35, decreasing.
Median gross margin 39.0% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC 14.8%, above the 12% hurdle in 90% of years.
Net cash position — no leverage risk.
Owner earnings changed +6.4%/yr 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.
- $938M
- $40.87
- $55.50
- $25.82
- 37% below value if growth stopped today
A discount this large is often a warning rather than a bargain — the market may expect earnings to keep falling. See the revenue trend above.
How to read this
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings shrinking ~9%/yr over 5 years. The estimate assumes owner earnings stay flat (0% growth).
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.
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 2% (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.
19 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
LKQ CORPORATION booked $13.7B of revenue in FY2025 in the Industrials sector and kept 38.6% of it as gross profit — a solid-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 4.5% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $1.9B (FY2008) to $13.7B (FY2025) — about 12.3% a year compounded over 17 years.
It earned 11.9% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 18-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 13.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 14.8%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 74/100.
LKQ's latest filed year, FY2025, doesn't disclose total debt in a form the methodology can use, so current leverage is treated as unmeasured — never assumed to be zero.
Put together: Balance-Sheet Safety is the strongest of the five filters (100/100) and Business Trend the weakest (37/100), which is how LKQ lands at 72/100 — a Narrow 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 LKQ’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.
55 filings were skipped because the SEC primary document returned 404; the omission is disclosed and aggregates are withheld.
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 LKQ; 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 .
Industrials context
#52 of 428 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #50CAT CATERPILLAR INC72.3 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #51KBH KB HOME72.3 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #53RAVE RAVE RESTAURANT GROUP, INC.71.6 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #54COR CENCORA, INC.71.6 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare LKQ with its nearest peers →All Industrials companies on the Index →
Common questions about LKQ
- Does LKQ CORPORATION have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores LKQ CORPORATION (LKQ) 71.8 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 37, pricing power 67, returns on capital 74, balance-sheet safety 100, capital allocation 80.
- Is LKQ trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $40.87 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $25.82, that is 37% below 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 LKQ's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 71.8 out of 100 (narrow 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.