CSX CORPORATION
CSX · Industrials · $99.0B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Shallow moat ·
Price verdict withheld — owner-earnings floor unreliable
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $12.5B to $14.1B, increasing; diluted EPS 1.68 to 1.54, decreasing. Latest-filed diluted EPS remains usable for Business Trend, but an integer share-count change lacks enough evidence to confirm a comparable EPS basis; valuation growth therefore stays at 0%.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 14.1%, above the 12% hurdle in 80% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA 2.9x, interest coverage 5x.
Owner earnings +6.0%/yr.
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. conservative owner-earnings floor
A cautious baseline, not a price target: what the shares may support if normalized owner earnings simply hold steady.
- Owner earnings (normalized)
- $3.7B
- Owner-earnings floor / share
- $21.91
- Capped-growth comparison / share
- $21.91
- Recent price
- $53.23
- Price vs. owner-earnings floor
- 143% above owner-earnings floor
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~19%/yr over 5 years. The floor 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 floor equal today’s price. This keeps the existing model inputs and calculation unchanged; it is an expectations lens, not a forecast.
This floor assumes trailing owner earnings persist — unreliable for declining businesses. CSX revenue fell in each of the three most recent year-over-year FY comparisons, so this floor is flagged as unreliable for this company.
Among the current top-score group, the median current price is 239% above the floor 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 floor: ANF, BKNG.
Model details under moat-index@3.0.0: zero-growth floor 11.1×, capped-growth comparison at no more than 18×; 9% discount rate; high-end growth 0% (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.
20 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $10.0B (FY2007) to $14.1B (FY2025) — about 1.9% a year compounded over 18 years.
It earned 11.0% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 19-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 12.5%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 14.1%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 68/100.
The balance sheet carried $18.9B of total debt in FY2025 against $2.9B of owner earnings — roughly 6.5 years of owner earnings to retire it all. Balance-Sheet Safety scores it 23/100.
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 CSX’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in CSX’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
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.
Track record
How CSX CORPORATION’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 CSX 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, CSX 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.
Industrials context
#130 of 428 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #128LMB LIMBACH HOLDINGS, INC.55.5 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #129CXT CRANE NXT, CO.55.2 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #131CAH Cardinal Health, Inc.55.1 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
- #132HAYW Hayward Holdings, Inc.55.0 out of 100, Shallow moatShallow moat
Compare CSX with its nearest peers →All Industrials companies on the Index →
Common questions about CSX
- Does CSX CORPORATION have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores CSX CORPORATION (CSX) 55.2 out of 100 — a Shallow 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 52, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 68, balance-sheet safety 23, capital discipline 79.
- Is CSX trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The conservative owner-earnings floor is $21.91 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $53.23, that is 143% above owner-earnings floor. The model also publishes a capped-growth comparison, but the floor 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 CSX's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 55.2 out of 100 (shallow 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.