NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP
NSC · Industrials · $78.7B mkt cap · FY2025 filings · Narrow moat ·
On the watchlist
The five investor questions
2021–2025 (latest 5 aligned FYs; v3 window cap 5): revenue $11.1B to $12.2B, increasing; diluted EPS 12.11 to 12.75, increasing.
Not enough years of gross-margin data to score pricing power.
Median ROIC 20.7%, above the 12% hurdle in 80% of years.
Net debt/EBITDA n/ax, interest coverage 6x.
Owner earnings +6.2%/yr, share count shrinking (buybacks).
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)
- $2.9B
- Owner-earnings floor / share
- $142.24
- Capped-growth comparison / share
- $230.43
- Recent price
- $350.66
- Price vs. owner-earnings floor
- 147% above owner-earnings floor
What today’s price assumes: owner earnings growing ~20%/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. The recent FY revenue series does not trigger the three-consecutive-declines flag.
Cohort context: 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 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.
20 years of fundamentals
The business, in plain English
Across the filed record, revenue grew from $9.4B (FY2007) to $12.2B (FY2025) — about 1.4% a year compounded over 18 years.
It earned 24.4% on invested capital in the latest filed year, FY2025. Across the full 19-year measurable filed record, median ROIC was 17.7%. Over the v3 recent window (10 measurable filed years), median ROIC was 20.7%. The Returns on Capital filter above scores it 93/100.
NSC'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.
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 NSC’s filings for these years — we don’t estimate it.
Gaps in a line mean that item isn’t in NSC’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 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 can’t be backfilled, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping.
Track record
How NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP’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 NSC 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, NSC 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
#70 of 428 scored Industrials companies, ranked by Moat Score.
Nearest peers by Moat Score
- #68GIC Global Industrial Company68.3 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #69LSTR LANDSTAR SYSTEM, INC.68.2 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #71XYL Xylem Inc.67.4 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
- #72PRIM Primoris Services Corporation67.2 out of 100, Narrow moatNarrow moat
Compare NSC with its nearest peers →All Industrials companies on the Index →
Common questions about NSC
- Does NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP have an economic moat?
- Based on its FY2025 SEC filings, the Moat Index scores NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP (NSC) 67.7 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 62, pricing power not measurable from the filings, returns on capital 93, balance-sheet safety 36, capital discipline 80.
- Is NSC trading below the conservative owner-earnings estimate?
- The conservative owner-earnings floor is $142.24 per share. It capitalizes normalized owner earnings at a 9% rate and assumes 0% growth. Versus a recent price of $350.66, that is 147% 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 NSC's Moat Score changed over time?
- The record logs 16 readings since Jul 17, 2026; the latest reads 67.7 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.