FTI Consulting, Inc.
Moat Score — FTI Consulting, Inc.
Total Moat Score
12 / 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. | 4 / 5 | FTI's reputation and subsidiary brands like Compass Lexecon in antitrust/competition economics carry decades of built credibility with courts, regulators, and Fortune 500 clients that a new entrant cannot replicate quickly, even though this value rests heavily on individual expert reputations rather than patents. |
| 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. | 1 / 5 | FTI competes on expertise and reputation rather than price in most segments, and explicitly notes that only its Technology segment faces meaningful price-based competition, meaning the firm has no broad structural cost advantage over peer consultancies. |
| 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. | 3 / 5 | High-stakes litigation, antitrust, and restructuring engagements where FTI's experts are viewed as best-in-class support premium billing rates, though large accounting firms and investment banks with comparable expertise constrain how far that pricing power extends. |
| 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. | 0 / 5 | Expert consulting and litigation advisory services carry no network effect; the value of FTI's advice to one client does not increase because the firm serves more unrelated clients. |
| Switching Costs The money, time, or operational disruption a customer would face switching to a competitor, which locks in existing customers and supports renewals. | 2 / 5 | Once a client has engaged FTI experts deep into a multi-year restructuring, litigation, or antitrust matter, switching advisors mid-engagement is costly and risky, creating real but engagement-specific switching costs rather than a durable, firm-wide lock-in. |
| 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. | 2 / 5 | The market for elite expert consulting in restructuring, antitrust, and forensic litigation is concentrated among a relatively small number of globally scaled firms and specialty boutiques, giving FTI some efficient-scale advantage, though global accounting firms and investment banks remain credible competitors at the high end. |