Published: 16 May 2026 · ChartsView Research
There is a tiny, often-ignored corner of the stock market where companies are so efficient that for every £1 they spend running the business, they earn £2 of operating profit. Less than 0.5% of listed shares qualify. Most of the names are not the ones you see splashed across the financial press. This screener is built to find them — on both the FTSE 350 and the US market.
1. Why this number matters
An operating margin of 66.7% means that out of every £3 of sales, £2 stays as operating profit and only £1 is consumed by all the running costs combined — staff, premises, marketing, technology, the lot. Most "good" companies sit around 15–25%. Even premium businesses like Microsoft (~42%) and Apple (~30%) do not get close.
When a business sustains margins this high year after year, it is almost always because it owns something other companies must pay to use:
- A near-monopoly piece of infrastructure (a domain registry, a property portal, a derivatives exchange)
- An asset-light royalty stream where someone else takes the operational risk
- A network effect that compounds the more people use it
These are the businesses Warren Buffett, Terry Smith (Fundsmith) and Joel Greenblatt actually buy — not the flashy growth stories that dominate headlines. They are the boring, durable cash machines that compound quietly in the background.
2. The six companies that pass the screen today
Each name below has published an operating margin of 66.7% or higher in its most recent annual report. All figures sourced from official company filings and cross-verified against secondary databases (Macrotrends, Simply Wall St, Companies Market Cap).
| Ticker | Company | Market | Op. Margin | Business Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TPL | Texas Pacific Land | NYSE | ~76% | Permian Basin land + oil & water royalties |
| WPM | Wheaton Precious Metals | NYSE | ~73% | Gold/silver streaming — pays miners upfront, takes a slice |
| FNV | Franco-Nevada | NYSE | ~73% | Gold/oil royalties — debt-free, 25 years of dividend growth |
| RMV | Rightmove | LSE | 70% | UK property portal — every estate agent must list here |
| AUTO | Auto Trader Group | LSE | 70% (core) | UK car classifieds — dealers cannot afford to ignore it |
| VRSN | VeriSign | NASDAQ | ~67% | Sole operator of every .com and .net domain on Earth |
Texas Pacific Land Corporation (NYSE: TPL) PASS
Born from a bankrupt 19th-century railroad, TPL simply owns the dirt that sits on top of the Permian oil basin — roughly 880,000 acres of Texas. Oil producers pay TPL royalties to drill, easements to lay pipe, and water-disposal fees on the produced water. Total revenues for 2025 were $798 million against operating costs of just $206 million — almost every dollar of new revenue drops straight to profit.
Why people miss it: The phrase "land company" makes most investors switch off. TPL is actually a Permian toll-booth that benefits from rising oil activity without taking any drilling risk itself.
Wheaton Precious Metals (NYSE: WPM) PASS
Wheaton does not mine anything. It pays gold and silver miners cash upfront in exchange for the right to buy a fixed percentage of their future production at a low pre-agreed price — typically around $400 per ounce of gold. When gold trades at $3,000+, the margin on each ounce is enormous. 2025 operating margin: 73.36%. No labour, no diesel, no drilling risk — just a contract.
Why people miss it: "Royalty/streaming" is a niche category most retail investors skip past. It also looks like a gold stock from the outside, so generalist investors avoid it.
Franco-Nevada (NYSE: FNV) PASS
Same streaming model as Wheaton but larger and more diversified across gold, oil and base metals. Zero debt. A 25-year track record of consecutive dividend increases. Operating margin currently sits at 72.7% (trailing twelve months), and the 2025 EBITDA margin was 91%.
Why people miss it: It tracks the gold price loosely, so investors looking at it during gold-bullish moments price it as a gold proxy and miss the structural compounding underneath.
Rightmove (LSE: RMV) PASS
Roughly 80% market share of UK property search. About 19,000 estate-agency branches pay Rightmove monthly subscriptions of £1,500–£3,000 each. The platform was built years ago, so costs barely move while subscription prices creep up annually. FY2025 revenue: £425m. Operating profit: £298m. Operating margin: 70%.
Why people miss it: The "boring ad website" stigma masks one of the cleanest economic moats on the LSE. It has compounded earnings at double digits for over a decade with hardly any UK retail attention.
Auto Trader Group (LSE: AUTO) PASS
Britain's dominant used-car marketplace. The core classifieds business runs at 70% operating margin because dealers know that if they are not on Auto Trader, they are not being found. The 63% group margin is dragged down by a smaller Autorama division that is being restructured — the underlying business comfortably clears the threshold.
Why people miss it: Investors lump it in with cyclical auto names. It is in fact a high-margin software/data business with car dealers as customers.
VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) PASS
VeriSign holds the US government contract to operate the .com and .net domain registry. Every single .com domain on Earth — 158 million of them — pays VeriSign approximately $10.26 per year. The contract permits scheduled annual price rises. Q4 2025 operating margin: ~67%. Berkshire Hathaway owns 13% and has been quietly buying more.
Why people miss it: It is boring infrastructure. Nobody talks about it on social media. It just compounds.
3. The under-the-radar pick — Baltic Classifieds Group
If you only take away one stock from this screener that most readers will never have heard of, look at Baltic Classifieds Group (LSE: BCG).
BCG is effectively the Rightmove of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — for property, cars, jobs and general classifieds. FY2025 operating margin: 65% (just shy of the threshold). EBITDA margin: 78%. Revenue growth: 15% per year. Market cap under £1bn.
The business model is identical to Rightmove and Auto Trader — dominant local marketplace with subscription pricing and almost no ability for buyers or sellers to operate outside it — but because it operates in a region most UK retail investors do not follow, it gets nothing like the attention it deserves. One more year of margin expansion and it will pass the full screen.
4. The "nearly there" list — watch these
| Ticker | Company | Op. Margin | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| BCG | Baltic Classifieds Group (LSE) | ~65% | WATCH Tiny, growing, on track |
| V | Visa (NYSE) | 56–66% | WATCH Passed in FY24, dipped on one-offs in FY25 |
| CME | CME Group (NYSE) | ~62% | WATCH Derivatives exchange monopoly |
| MA | Mastercard (NYSE) | ~59% | WATCH Similar moat to Visa, slightly thinner margins |
5. Commonly assumed to pass — but do not
These names are often labelled "high-margin" online but do not actually clear the 66.7% threshold when you check the latest filings. Useful to know, so you are not misled by old data.
| Ticker | Company | Op. Margin | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCO | Moody's Corporation | ~41% | FAIL |
| MSCI | MSCI Inc. | ~55% | FAIL (Index segment passes, group does not) |
| ICE | Intercontinental Exchange | ~49% | FAIL |
| SPGI | S&P Global | ~45% | FAIL |
| TW | Tradeweb Markets | ~43% | FAIL Growing into it |
| ARM | ARM Holdings | ~22% | FAIL Huge R&D burn despite 97% gross margin |
6. How to actually use this screen
This is a starting point, not a buy list. Companies that earn £2 for every £1 spent are always premium-priced — the market knows they are good. The job for the patient investor is to wait for them to be cheap relative to their own history.
Before considering an entry on any of the six names, check the following:
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Valuation | Is the P/E meaningfully below the 5-year average? |
| Trend | Is the share above its rising 30-week / 200-day moving average? |
| Earnings momentum | Are the last two quarters' EPS growing faster than the trailing year? |
| Catalyst | Earnings beat, analyst upgrade, sector rotation, or a temporary scare creating the dip |
| Position sizing | Treat these as long-term holdings, not trades — size accordingly |
7. Re-running this screen yourself
Operating margins drift — what passes today may not pass next year, and new candidates always emerge. To rebuild this list quarterly, use any of these free screeners with the following filters:
| Market | Tool | Filter |
|---|---|---|
| US | Finviz.com | Operating Margin > 60%, Market Cap > $1bn, EPS growth past 5 years positive, Debt/Equity < 1 |
| UK | Stockopedia / SharePad | FTSE 350, Operating Margin TTM > 60%, sort by ROCE descending |
| Global | StockAnalysis.com | Operating Margin > 60%, sort by 5-year revenue CAGR |
Then verify each name's most recent annual report directly — never trust a screener result without reading the source filing. Operating margin can be one-off inflated by an asset sale or one-off depressed by an impairment.
8. The bigger lesson
The companies that compound wealth most reliably over decades almost never look exciting from the outside. They are usually boring infrastructure, royalty contracts, or platforms that became indispensable to an industry years ago. The flashy names that dominate financial news typically have margins half this level — or worse.
If you want to find genuinely valuable hidden compounders, learn to love a 66.7%+ operating margin and the unglamorous business models behind them. They are the closest thing to a permanent edge that retail investors have access to.
Sources: Company annual reports (Rightmove FY2025, Auto Trader FY2025, VeriSign FY2025, Texas Pacific Land FY2025, Franco-Nevada 2024 Annual Report, Wheaton Precious Metals FY2025, Baltic Classifieds Group FY2025), Macrotrends, Simply Wall St, Companies Market Cap. Margins quoted are based on each company's most recently published audited or interim results.