Essential Properties Realty Trust, Inc.
Moat Score — Essential Properties Realty Trust, Inc.
Total Moat Score
14 / 30
| Moat Factor | Score | Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Intangible Assets Patents, trademarks, brand strength, or regulatory licenses that protect a company's products or services from being freely copied by competitors. | 2 / 5 | A repeatable, data-driven underwriting platform built around mandatory unit-level tenant financial reporting (99.2% of leases) represents real institutional know-how, though it is not legally protected or easily licensed. |
| Cost Advantage A durable ability to produce goods or services more cheaply than competitors — through scale, unique access to cheap inputs, location, or process — that lets a company undercut rivals or out-earn them at the same price. | 3 / 5 | Internal management avoids external advisory fee drag, and diversified scale (2,300 properties, 659 concepts) supports a lower cost of capital than smaller, less diversified middle-market net-lease competitors and local banks. |
| Pricing Power The ability to raise prices without losing meaningful business, because the product or service is differentiated, mission-critical, or has few good substitutes. | 2 / 5 | Fixed annual rent escalators (97.9% of leases, ~1.8% average) provide steady contractual pricing power, though the rate is modest and may lag inflation in high-inflation periods. |
| Network Effect The product or service becomes more valuable to every user as more people or organizations use it, making an established leader harder to displace. | 1 / 5 | A growing base of repeat tenant relationships and reputation as a preferred sale-leaseback financing partner creates a mild flywheel effect in deal sourcing, though it falls short of a true network effect. |
| Switching Costs The money, time, or operational disruption a customer would face switching to a competitor, which locks in existing customers and supports renewals. | 3 / 5 | Long weighted-average lease terms (14.4 years) and extensive use of master leases (66.8% of ABR, cross-defaulted across multiple properties) create high switching costs and strong tenant retention once a sale-leaseback is executed. |
| Efficient Scale A market that can only profitably support a small number of players, so incumbents face limited threat from new entrants even without other defenses. | 3 / 5 | Granular diversification across 48 states, 659 tenant concepts, and no tenant above 3.4% of rent gives EPRT scale and risk-pooling advantages that smaller middle-market net-lease competitors cannot easily replicate. |