NerdWallet, Inc.
NRDS · Technology · $660.1M mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Shallow moat ·
Doesn't clear the bar
The four filters
Median gross margin 92.4% over 7y, very stable.
Median ROIC 2.0%, above the 9% hurdle in 17% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA n/ax, interest coverage 109x.
Owner earnings +19.1%/yr, share count growing (dilution).
Margin of safety
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- $35.7M
- Est. intrinsic value / share
- $5.56
- Recent price
- $9.26
- Discount to value
- 66% above value
Conservative model: 9% discount rate, 0% assumed growth (capped at 4%), maintenance capex ≈ min(capex, D&A).
8 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
NerdWallet, Inc. booked $836.6M of revenue in FY2025 in the Technology sector and kept 92.4% of it as gross profit — a high-margin business by that measure. After every other cost, 5.8% of each revenue dollar reached the bottom line.
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $228.3M (FY2019) to $836.6M (FY2025) — about 24.2% a year compounded over 6 years.
It earned 16.9% on invested capital in FY2025, with a median of 2.0% across 6 filed years. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 6/100.
The balance sheet carried $0 of total debt in FY2021. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 73/100.
The share count rose 45.9% between FY2020 and FY2025 — existing owners have been diluted over the record. Capital Discipline scores it 60/100.
Put together: Pricing Power is the strongest of the four filters (100/100) and Returns on Capital the weakest (6/100), which is how NRDS lands at 58/100 — 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 NRDS’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
Score history begins Jul 18, 2026 — the record builds from here and can’t be backfilled.
Tier changesSame-methodology crossings of the Wide / Narrow / Shallow bars
None yet — NRDS has read Shallow moat for every logged capture since Jul 18, 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 NerdWallet, 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 NRDS 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, NRDS 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.
Technology context
#148 of 579 scored Technology companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #146STGW Stagwell Inc58.6 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #147PINS Pinterest, Inc.58.5 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #149AMKR AMKOR TECHNOLOGY, INC.58.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #150DELL Dell Technologies Inc.58.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare NRDS with its nearest peers →All Technology companies on the Index →
Common questions about NRDS
- Does NerdWallet, Inc. have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores NerdWallet, Inc. (NRDS) 58.3 out of 100 — a Shallow moat. The four filters behind that score (each 0–100): pricing power 100, returns on capital 6, balance-sheet safety 73, capital discipline 60.
- Is NRDS stock trading below its intrinsic value?
- Against a deliberately conservative owner-earnings model (9% discount rate, 0% assumed growth, capped at 4%), estimated intrinsic value is $5.56 per share versus a recent price of $9.26 — 66% above value. This is an educational estimate computed from primary SEC filings, not investment advice.
- How has NRDS's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 1 reading since Jul 18, 2026; the latest reads 58.3 out of 100 (shallow moat). No tier changes on record yet. The history is append-only — readings are only ever added, never rewritten.