LPL Financial Holdings Inc.
LPLA · Other · $26.3B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Not rated ·
Not rated
We don't have enough comparable filing data to score at least four of the five filters for LPLA, so we don't publish a composite. Missing: pricingPower, returnsOnCapital, balanceSheet. No composite: 3 components abstained (pricingPower: Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.; returnsOnCapital: Not enough years of ROIC data to score returns on capital.; balanceSheet: Insufficient leverage/coverage inputs to score the balance sheet.).
18 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $2.7B (FY2009) to $17.0B (FY2025) — about 12.1% a year compounded over 16 years.
The balance sheet carried $7.3B of total debt in FY2025 against $863.0M of owner earnings — roughly 8.4 years of owner earnings to retire it all.
The share count fell 27.7% between FY2011 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 LPLA’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Not disclosed in LPLA’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in LPLA’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
No composite readings yet — LPLA’s filings don’t give the engine enough comparable data to score, and we log that honestly instead of guessing a number.
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 LPL Financial 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 LPLA 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 indexed price path isn't available for this company yet; 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, LPLA 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.
Other context
Not ranked — LPLA doesn’t have enough comparable filing data for a composite score, so we don’t place it on the board.
Other leaders by Moat Score
- #1MKTX MARKETAXESS HOLDINGS INC.94.6 out of 100, Wide moatWide moat
- #2MORN MORNINGSTAR, INC.89.8 out of 100, Wide moatWide moat
- #3FHI Federated Hermes, Inc.87.1 out of 100, Wide moatWide moat
Common questions about LPLA
- Does LPL Financial Holdings Inc. have an economic moat?
- We don't publish a Moat Score for LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (LPLA): its SEC filings don't provide enough comparable data to score at least four of the five filters, and the Index records each gap rather than a guessed number. Missing inputs: pricing power, returns on capital, balance-sheet safety.
- Is LPLA trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The owner-earnings value range is $119.74–$193.99 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate; the low end assumes 0% growth and the high end uses 4% growth, capped at 4% and 18×. Versus a recent price of $328.23, that is 69% 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 LPLA's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 10 readings since Jul 17, 2026, none with a composite — LPLA hasn't had enough comparable filing data to score. 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.