Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc.
NGVC · Consumer Discretionary · $689M mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Narrow moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $1.1B to $1.3B, increasing; diluted EPS 0.91 to 2.00, increasing.
Median gross margin 27.8% over 10y, very stable.
Median ROIC 14.7%, above the 12% hurdle in 60% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA n/ax, interest coverage 20x.
Owner earnings changed +17.0%/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.
- $23.9M
- $11.55
- $18.71
- $30.01
- 160% above value if growth stopped today
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~21%/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 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.
16 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. booked $1.3B of revenue in FY2025 in the Consumer Discretionary sector and kept 29.9% of it as gross profit — a moderate-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 3.5% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $265M (FY2011) to $1.3B (FY2025) — about 12.2% a year compounded over 14 years.
It earned 25.0% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 15-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 15.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 14.7%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 63/100.
NGVC'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: Business Trend is the strongest of the five filters (92/100) and Pricing Power the weakest (49/100), which is how NGVC lands at 70/100 — 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 NGVC’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 14, 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 NGVC; 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 .
Consumer Discretionary context
#75 of 487 scored Consumer Discretionary companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #73HLT Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.70.9 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #74GAP GAP, INC70.7 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #76MCD McDONALD’S CORPORATION69.9 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #77COLM COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR COMPANY69.4 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare NGVC with its nearest peers →All Consumer Discretionary companies on the Index →
Common questions about NGVC
- Does Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. (NGVC) 70.4 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 92, pricing power 49, returns on capital 63, balance-sheet safety 73, capital allocation 76.
- Is NGVC trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The value if growth stopped today — a zero-growth baseline — is $11.55 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $30.01, that is 160% 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 NGVC's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 15 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 70.4 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.