S&P Global Inc. — Call Transcript 2026

Okay, welcome everyone. I have the pleasure of hosting Mark Grant, SVP Investor Relations and Treasurer at S&P Global. Mark, thanks for coming today. Thank you for having me, Sean. It's great to be here. I'm going to kick things off and dive into Market Intelligence and GenAI, which is the vast majority of the questions I get on S&P these days, because the rest of the business is so resilient and strong. My first question is, how do you distinguish between cyclical headwinds, like end market softness in the financial sector, and any structural AI substitution risk to Capital IQ and all the similar workflow tools within Market Intelligence? Yeah. I think this is a really important question, and to your point, we get this a lot on our side as well. Right. I'm glad that you started with how resilient the rest of the business is, right? As most folks understand, we're primarily a benchmarks business. Right. Two-thirds of our revenue, roughly three-quarters of our profit comes from benchmarks, right? The ratings, the index, the Platts commodities prices. These are fantastic, very resilient businesses where we are the only source on planet Earth for that information. Right. We do get a lot of questions around, well, what's this small pocket in Market Intelligence that could potentially be at risk here, and how do we assess that? Right. When we look at the Market Intelligence performance, most of the questions we get are specifically around Capital IQ. Right? Cap IQ is the product that most of our investors are most familiar with because they either use it or they use one of the competitor solutions almost every day. Right. Cap IQ is less than 6% of our total revenue, an even smaller percentage of our profits. Right. When we look at this, they're very important questions about a very, very small part of our business. When we look at the Market Intelligence business broadly, you've got incredible data sets in there like Compustat and SNL. That's the distribution platform for much of our ratings content through RatingsDirect and RatingsXpress. We've got these incredible workflow tools that are highly moated and have great network externalities that create a great deal of value for our customers. We have a lot of data that gets distributed through these platforms that customers consume in various ways, whether that's through a desktop or through data feeds, or through Databricks and Snowflake, or more recently, through MCP connectors, which I'm sure we'll get into as well. When we look at the performance of that business, it's actually fairly easy to differentiate between what are cyclical tailwinds, what are secular tailwinds, what are the themes that we're seeing in the market that really drive performance there. One of the themes that we've seen is vendor consolidation. More and more of the customers that we talk to, primarily through our Chief Client Office, our large, sophisticated strategic customers, they want fewer vendors in their ecosystem. They know that there are huge swaths of information and value that they can only get from S&P Global, and they come to us very regularly and say, "All right, what else could we be getting from you, and how can we eliminate some point solutions in our ecosystem?" That's something that we would consider as a secular tailwind theme. Right? The cyclicality piece impacts us a little bit less than you would expect for some other folks in the space because we haven't had seat-based pricing in five, six years, right? Longer than that. Having the enterprise contracts that we do allows us to look through a lot of the cyclical stuff without it actually impacting the financial performance of Market Intelligence materially at all. Got it. I guess from a high level, what are you hearing from your customers for demand for S&P's data? Look, I think the general theme is your data is great. For most of what we're consuming, you're the only source we have, and all of the tools that we're looking at using or starting to deploy now require us to consume more data at higher volumes, at higher velocity. Our customers are telling us, "We need to do more. We want to consolidate more. We view S&P Global as a very powerful strategic partner for us and an incredibly important vendor. How can we structure things such that we can consume this data and make sure that there's the value recognition on the economics?" Right. When we look at the deployment of MCP connections- right, we've talked about this a little bit in our most recent earnings call. We've seen volumes of API calls through those MCP connections increase 500% quarter-over-quarter, 100% month-over-month. Right. The value that our customers are getting from S&P Global data through all of these platforms is only increasing, right? I think over time, you see that show up in the economics as well. Yeah, that was my next question, was about just the demand for data within this GenAI world, right? Yeah, it was 5x quarter-over-quarter, right, for the API call volumes, and I think there was renewal uplifts as well. 35%-45%, I think maybe a few clients, but very promising. I guess, taking a step back, can you help us frame that, I guess, the revenue opportunity there from AI over the next two to three years? Yeah. I think this is another important point because the reality is nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out. Right? When we look at the financial services end market or the energy end market or non-financial corporates, whatever customer base that we're serving, you have to start with the realization that customers don't have infinite budget. The value that we are creating for customers, we have to also help them understand not just how we're creating more value, but we can also help facilitate freeing up budget for them. And that goes back to the point on vendor consolidation. If you can eliminate point solutions in your ecosystem and do more through S&P Global, yes, your contract value with us is going to go up, but your total cost of ownership across that portfolio of products actually goes down. When we look at customers who are looking to invest more in their AI solutions, looking to invest more in data, looking to really scale out some of these strategic initiatives, S&P Global is probably as well-positioned as any company in the world to facilitate that. I think as we look at revenue growth over time, you do see that show up in customer retention. You see it show up in wallet retention. You see it show up in sales cycles. You see it show up in competitive win rates. Ultimately, you see it show up in pricing power, too. As we increase the value we're creating for our customers, we ask them, of course, to share the economics of some of that value with us through price. Yeah, I was just going to touch on, I guess, the competitive environment with AI. Market Intelligence growth, I think you said last quarter is running 30% higher for AI customers versus non-AI customers. You touched on it that the net renewal rates increased 100 basis points last quarter, which is great to see. Are you seeing any share gains from competitors like Bloomberg or FactSet specifically because of these AI features that you're rolling out? Or is this primarily just wallet share expansion within existing clients? Yeah. It's a fair question. This is a space that's been competitive for a very long time. We have scaled competitors in Market Intelligence. We've got a great deal of respect for our competitors in that space. I think when we look at the investments that we've made over time in adding AI functionality to our products, if you look at features like ChatIQ, Chart Explainer, Document Intelligence all sit within Cap IQ Pro, it increases the functionality of that platform for the people that are using that as their daily tool. That absolutely creates value. That shows up in renewal rates, and it certainly shows up in competitive win rates. It's a much broader conversation with most of our larger customers. It's not just about what are you doing with Cap IQ, it's about what are you doing with MCP? What are you doing with the Kensho Grounding Agent? What are you doing with the Kensho LLM-ready APIs, and how are you looking at making the full data estate available? These are initiatives that we have internally as well about how we can meet the evolving needs of our customers faster than anyone else and delivering value, frankly, that they could only get from us anyway. I do think this shows up in competitive win rates, look, our competitors aren't still either. Like I said, we've got a great deal of respect for the competitors that we have in this space. It goes back to the iron sharpens iron analogy. Look, I think if you go back to what we said at Investor Day, the financial targets that we put out, we admitted on stage, that's going to require us to take market share because the end market's not growing 6%-8% on an organic constant currency basis. We're confident we'll be able to do that. I guess when you look across your competitors, whether it be Bloomberg, FactSet, Thomson Reuters, how do you feel like company's positioned versus those competitors? What specific advantages does S&P have versus them? The single greatest advantage that S&P Global has is that we are the single source for the vast majority of what we do. You look across the entire ecosystem, and we do have conversations where folks want to focus just on Market Intelligence, but our customers don't. Our customers come to us for a broad array of products across all of our divisions. The Ratings division sits a bit siloed just from a regulatory standpoint. We don't really package Ratings with anything else. When you look at customers, a large global investment bank is likely buying data through the index business. They may very well have portfolios on the asset management side that are benchmarked against our indices. They are likely buying pricing data from our energy business because their energy traders would have a really hard time actually managing their workflows without knowing Dated Brent crude prices. You've got all the content that we distribute through Market Intelligence. The single greatest advantage that I think we have is just this massive holistic set of solutions that power the entire global market, whether that's the equity markets, the fixed income markets, or the commodities markets. As we can demonstrate to our customers across that swath of products, we are adding more value for you. Every year, every quarter, we're launching new products, we're launching new features, we're launching new data sets, making more of our data available through LLMs, through the Kensho LLM-ready API. All of that makes this conversation with customers about so much more than just the desktop. The Chief Client Office is a huge part of it. It is. It's been up and running for probably a little over a year now. Yeah. Can you just talk about, I guess, over the course of the last year, I guess what learnings you have, kind of where is it on its kind of maturation curve? Yeah. I think we're in very, very good shape. Sally Moore is our Chief Client Office. I think she's one of the most brilliant commercial minds I've ever seen in my career. Having her in that position really does solidify that customer focus across the entire organization. She's done a phenomenal job, and the team that works for her has done a phenomenal job orchestrating our commercial initiatives. You go back a few years, you may have had a team from Market Intelligence come and visit you as a customer, and the next week somebody from Energy may have come and visited you, and they might not even have known that the other team was there because that coordinated effort wasn't necessarily as robust as it is now. Under the Chief Client Office and with Sally in there in particular, we've really created this ecosystem where the divisions focus on serving clients holistically, particularly those large strategic customers. We're talking about 150 of our largest customers or so in the Chief Client Office. It really does allow those customers to have a greater sense of the value we create for them holistically, but it's also been a huge driver of just product awareness. Like so many times, we've gone into a customer who's bought one or two products from us for years and years and didn't even realize that we did so many other things. When you go back to that point on vendor consolidation, the Chief Client Office facilitates that as well, elevating those conversations up into the C-suite and making more strategic decisions around just how much value we can create for a customer across the entire organization. That's been a huge driver for us, not just in Market Intelligence, but everywhere. You mentioned, I think it was a few quarters ago, but just about sales incentives and kind of restructuring them and maybe consolidating them from- You know. I think that tears down silos just internally, but can you just talk about how the sales incentives, you don't have to be specific, but just how you kind of thought about them and changed them over the past year or so? Yeah. I will probably forever be grateful to Saugata Saha for the transformation that he helped orchestrate inside of Market Intelligence. The simplification of the commercial teams and what we called publicly the revenue transformation in Market Intelligence was a big part of what Saugata was able to deliver in his first year there as the President of Market Intelligence. Simplifying the incentive structure, making sure that it aligns with the best possible economic outcome for not just our customers, but for us as a company, and ultimately for our shareholders as well, going from 60 plus different commission plans in Market Intelligence down to 10, and making sure that it was very clear to our commercial teams how their incentives aligned with the incentives of the broader enterprise, our customers, and our shareholders. That was a very, very heavy lift. When we have this leadership transition in Market Intelligence now, whoever comes in and runs that Market Intelligence business will be in a very, very good position to execute and to deliver results because of what Saugata was able to do in his year and a half there. Got it. Maybe just touch on the leadership transition a little bit more, and also the Data Office, because Saugata was the head of that as well. Yeah, could you just touch a little bit more about kind of what's happening and how you guys are thinking internally? I think for those that may not know, Saugata Saha was the President, still is the President of Market Intelligence and our Chief Enterprise Data Officer. When Martina established the EDO or the Enterprise Data Office, Saugata was put in place as the head of that when that was created. He wore two hats simultaneously. They weren't necessarily one because of the other. Right? He was just the best person to wear both of those hats. When he announced that he'd be leaving to go take a CEO role at a tech company, one of the things that Martina did immediately was take that Enterprise Data Office and roll that up under our Chief Technology & Transformation Officer, Firdaus, who's a phenomenal leader. Right? I think if we had had somebody like Firdaus a year and a half ago, we may very well have structured this differently from the beginning. I don't know. Firdaus joined just a few weeks ago, brilliant technologist, successful entrepreneur in his own right, knows how to manage businesses, is deeply steeped in the technology, it makes perfect sense for us to have the individual leading our technology and transformation be also the same person who's leading our Enterprise Data Office. This is one that just made perfect sense immediately to Martina and to everybody else. When we look at the Market Intelligence transformation there or that transition from the leadership standpoint, all we've really said at this point is that we're going to move quickly and thoughtfully. Right? We want to make sure that we're able to execute, that we're able to deliver the results that we've talked about for this year and for the forecast from our Investor Day. We'll have more to say about that at the appropriate time. Great. Makes sense. We touched, I mean, we talked a lot about, I guess, GenAI from the revenue side. Just from running a information data analytics business, just I guess from the internal cost workflow side on S&P, what has GenAI, I guess one, for Market Intelligence, what kind of learnings there have you had about cost takeout and efficiency? Also maybe about like ratings, and I know it's a little bit different in terms of the regulatory environment. You have to move a little bit slower, more pragmatically. If you could also touch on ratings and the other businesses as well. Yeah. I'll start with ratings. I think there's a great opportunity for technology deployment inside the ratings agency. That's been true for a long time. We've gone through multiple generations of deploying technology inside the ratings business, whether that was traditional machine learning and deep learning to multiple rounds of deploying robotic process automation and RPA. Right. That is an organization that is very used to adopting and moving quickly as technology has evolved. GenAI is no different. Right? We've created specific tools that sit inside of the ratings agency that are actually separate from the rest of S&P Global, just because we have to manage data silos, and there's information barriers that can't be crossed. Spark Assist is our internal kind of copilot tool that we've built. Most of the organization gets access to that. There's a separate version of it that is just for the ratings agency, right, so that they can leverage data that only they have access to. There's no commingling of that. I think when we look at AI and its potential to drive further growth and opportunities in the ratings agency, we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is a significant degree of human judgment that is required to create a rating. That's not just true from a practical standpoint, but it's true from a regulatory standpoint. Right. The credit analysts that publish these ratings are taking personal liability. Similar to when you publish a note, you've got a Reg AC certification at the bottom of it certifying that it matches your personal views. Right. You're taking personal liability by publishing that note. Our ratings analysts are the same. An AI can't do that, can't comply with that regulation. We want to make sure that that degree of human judgment and expertise stays there, stays robust, and stays celebrated. What we can do is leverage new technologies and tools to make those people more productive, and in fact, we can hire more credit analysts at the covering level and give them the support that they need through staff and through technology augmentation to make sure that they can provide the attestations that they have to, that they have the bandwidth to surveil all of the ratings that they've published, that they can effectively manage the workload. You've seen that show up in our margins in the ratings business for several years. Right. If you go back to our margin targets from the 2022 Investor Day, our 2025 margins and ratings were well above the high end of what we thought they would be in 2022. Part of that is through technology, part of that is through cross-training and making sure that we've got the scale and scope in our population of analysts who are, in my opinion, the best in the world. Right. Outside of ratings, I think there are huge opportunities because you don't have the same regulatory constraints or attestations and requirements that you have in ratings. We said at our Investor Day, we actually think the greatest opportunity for margin expansion in any of our divisions sits within Market Intelligence. Roughly half of our global headcount sits within Market Intelligence, I think there are huge opportunities there to help make those people more productive and help them dedicate more of their time to more fulfilling work. I think arguably continue to scale that business on the top line much, much faster than we'll have to scale it at the headcount level. Got it. I want to touch on Kensho Link for a little bit. Please Which I think is a great asset within S&P. Last quarter you said there was 300+ customers under contract or trial for the Kensho LLM-ready API. Can you walk us through the product roadmap from here, and specifically how you plan to evolve from API delivery to agentic workflows, and what that means for the pricing architecture? Yeah. I think this is one that we very closely watch. This ecosystem is evolving very, very quickly. When we first started talking about the Kensho Grounding Agent, the number of times that I had to explain, and frankly, the number of times they had to explain to me, if I'm honest, just what a grounding agent is. We were so early in MCP, so early with getting grounding agents out there, data retrieval agents. This is an ecosystem where we've been comfortably working for quite some time. When we look at how that ecosystem evolves from our customer perspective, our partners' perspective, there are a lot of moving pieces. We've seen significant evolution just in the last seven months since we had our Investor Day with the launch of new products, new platforms, new models. I think when we look at agentic workflows, I think most people would look at that and say, all right, truly automated agentic workflows, straight-through processing, either moving from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop, or from no human involvement whatsoever. People are exploring conceptually what that might look like. We have to make sure that we're moving quickly enough to facilitate that where our customers want it. Making more and more of our data available through LLM-ready APIs, which means attaching machine-readable metadata and contextualizing that data so that it can be consumed and used in an LLM ecosystem. We've been very early to that. We continue to scale out. Every quarter, we introduce new data sets available through those LLM-ready APIs. We're also seeing the evolution of things like skills and applications, where we can actually create something like a skill that sits almost like if you look at the software space years ago, the phenomenon of containerization. Skills kind of serve that same purpose, where we can build skills which function like a collection of prompts or pre-written instructions, and you can put these skills together in stacks that can create truly value-driven workflows, leveraging S&P Global data through an MCP connector in an ecosystem like Claude or ChatGPT. More and more, we're leaning on these, not just the Kensho engineers, but other engineers and technologists like Firdaus and the people in his organization to really scale out these initiatives and make sure that by the time our customers really want to be there, we're already comfortable operating. Got it. Then just moving on to ratings. We were just talking before that it seems like there's so many kind of structural tailwinds to that business right now, in 1Q, billed issuance rose 14% year-over-year. You were citing the hyperscaler IG bond issuance for AI infrastructure as a primary driver there. Just how large is this AI-driven issuance opportunity? You see all these $7 trillion stats and huge demand there. Are you seeing it outside just the hyperscalers in other areas like energy or industrial end markets that are supporting you know, the AI build-out across the world? I think this is a phenomenon that impacts a lot of industries, right? People don't realize just how much energy consumption goes into something like a data center. They also don't fully appreciate how much concrete goes into that, right? There are so many different industries that are impacted by this level of CapEx investment, but at the end of the day, it's funded, right? Predominantly, thus far, it's been funded by debt. When we look at our issuance forecast for 2026, we've said publicly our issuance forecast really only assumes that less than half of the announced CapEx from the hyperscalers actually comes to the market funded by debt, right? We've seen a mix of funding this year between, predominantly it's been debt, but there's been significant slugs of equity announced as well, right? Our guidance and our billed issuance forecast does not assume that even half of what's been announced actually comes and is funded by debt. If it were to come, that meaning half of it were to come, that'd be a point or two of upside to our billed issuance forecast. I think that's an important distinction as well, because we get this question a lot, right? The hyperscalers are not in our frequent issuer program, right? Otherwise, they couldn't impact billed issuance at all. Frequent issuer is excluded from our billed issuance calculation. When they come to the market and we're rating that debt, that isn't something where they've paid us a flat rate, and we're just going to rate whatever they do. They're paying us every time they come to the market, and we rate that debt. That's been an important driver of results for us, as you saw in the first quarter. I think if we were to see the pace of debt issuance in the first quarter continue through the rest of the year, that's more than we're assuming in our forecast, for sure. I think we do stand to benefit from that very well. Like, we know that through all the data that we have internally and the expertise that we've built out over years, we have a fantastic offering for rating the data center debt. I think market participants understand and appreciate that as well. We're frequently tapped to do those deals. Could that change over time if one of the hyperscalers has some roadmap when they're gonna tap the debt markets over the next five years continuously. Could they come to you guys and say, "Hey, can you work with us with a frequent issuer program," or things like that? Or not really? I mean, it's always possible. At the end of the day, that's really not what the frequent issuer program is designed to do, right? It's not for customers that come to the market with big slugs of debt every once in a while. Right? It's for market participants that are very frequently in the market all throughout the year in generally very predictable ways. Right. Okay. That program has been structured to facilitate that part of the market. The hyperscalers really don't fall into that bucket for us. Got it. What, I guess what other kind of deep funding currents are out there over the next year, but also the next few years? I know there's the large maturity walls and things like that. That's exactly where I was going, Sean. When we look at the maturity walls over the next few years, they're very, very strong. I mean, the three-year forward cumulative maturity wall is still up double digits from where it was last year. When we look at particularly the 2027 and 2028 maturity walls, a lot of this is debt that was issued in 2020 or 2021 at very low rates. We don't necessarily think there's a lot of incentive for those issuers to pull forward the refinancing of that. That's why we don't include any kind of material impact from pull forward out of those maturity walls in 2026 guidance. Eventually that debt comes, right? What we've seen historically is that debt tends to get refinanced. We typically don't see large corporates paying off debt at scale. We would expect those to benefit from those maturity walls as they come through. It's just very difficult for us to predict what quarter or even what year sometimes that issuance will come through. We know that if you've got a three-year kind of horizon, you'll capture all of it. Moving on to private markets revenue. S&P's focus there. It ended 2025 north of $600 million at the enterprise level. I believe in the first quarter, private credit was up 25% for ratings year-over-year. Like, how would you think about, like, S&P's, like, penetration today, I guess in ratings, but then I guess overall? What are the biggest challenges looking forward, keeping that competitive edge? Is it, like, data sourcing, client adoption, competition to sustaining kind of this growth rate as high level? You're right. Our total private markets initiative across the entire organization was north of $600 million last year. We've said just within the Ratings business, it's hundreds of millions. To your point, growing 25% in the first quarter. It's been a very strong growth driver for us off of a decent base, right? This is not a sub-scale business for us by any means. Certainly smaller than the public markets of course, but a meaningful growth driver. I think as we've seen the evolution of that private market space really over the last four or five years, we've seen more debt that could be done in the public markets actually getting done in the private markets, and for the most part, we rate that, right? If it is debt that could be in the public markets, I think we've got a great chance at rating that debt. As more focus has been spent on the potential risk in private markets, I think that actually generates more demand for ratings generally, but it also generates more demand for our ratings specifically because we're a large global institution. The brand recognition is very strong. Our methodologies are exactly the same in the public markets and the private markets, so there's no differentiation there. If you are used to trading public market bonds and you're used to seeing an S&P Global rating saying it's investment grade, it's that exact same methodology that gets deployed in the private markets. That instills a great deal of confidence in the investment community because they know exactly how to interpret an S&P Global rating. Importantly, that also means that our rating travels. If debt that's issued in the private markets and that issuer wants to refinance that in the public markets, they don't have to worry about a degradation in their rating, all else equal, right? Because our methodologies, the risk factors, the criteria, they're all the same. Our pricing is the same. Right? For us, I think over the long run, we're largely ambivalent over whether the debt gets issued in the private markets or the public markets. We think our opportunity to rate that debt and create value in the ecosystem is the same, and our economics are the same. I've gotten questions just about kind of the private credit headwinds that have been all over the headlines the last few months. Are you seeing any of those headwinds in your, more, I guess, the ratings private credit business versus this time a year ago? I think if you go back to some of the numbers that you pointed to, billed issuance in the first quarter grew 14% overall. Private markets grew 25%. It's still a much faster-growing piece of our business. I do think to the point that I was making earlier, as we've seen the ecosystem evolve and as we've seen the risk environment evolve a little bit, there is more demand for ratings generally, more demand for our ratings specifically. I think that likely continues, right? I don't know that there's necessarily anything that I would point to and say, "Hey, this is something that's structural that we're paying attention to. Yeah. Right? Like I mentioned before, I think in the long run, we're going to be fairly ambivalent whether it's public or private. Moving on to Indices business, maybe some would argue the crown jewel of S&P's businesses. It is a beautiful business. Around a 74% operating margin, I believe, last quarter. Revenue's up 17%, mostly because of the asset-linked fee business. When we look at the business, what are the most exciting investment opportunities in Indices today? How should we think about margins over the next few years? One of the reasons that I love the Index business so much is not only does it create a great deal of shareholder value, but it's also perfectly aligned with our customer interests. When you think about the way we've structured that business, to your point, the majority of the revenue is asset-linked fees, which means when our customers thrive, we thrive with them. When the markets go up, we grow, all else equal. When fund flows benefit our customers, they benefit us as well, right? The flip side of that's also true, right? When our customers feel pain, we share it with them, right? We're directly tied to the interests of those customers, which makes that a very resilient business model for us that grows quite well. As you know, markets tend to go up over time, right? That business tends to grow automatically. We look at the investment opportunities, we've talked about some really exciting opportunities in digital wealth, in direct indexing, right, on the custom index and data subscription side, which has been growing double digits for us for the last several quarters. Like, these are all great opportunities for us to grow that business. There is a bit of a double-edged sword there because you've got the S&P 500. That's a phenomenal product. It's in an incredibly powerful ecosystem built around that, these liquid ecosystems. That piece of the business will continue to grow for a very long time, right? That's our view. For a new product to come in and potentially accelerate the growth when you've got a big product like the S&P 500 ecosystem that has $15 trillion-$20 trillion of AUM behind it, you've got to launch a lot of new products in order to dramatically move the needle. There are some really exciting opportunities. Got it. The Energy division had some strategic repositioning that was announced last quarter. Just looking at that, what does the ideal revenue mix look like for this division over the next few years, and maybe some of the motivations behind the repositioning you did last quarter? Yeah. The Energy division is predominantly subscription as you know. Price assessments, energy and resources, data and insights. Upstream, the vast majority of that is going to be subscription revenue for us. I think that's always going to be the case. There are pockets of that business that are event driven. As you know, the first quarter of every year, we host CERAWeek, which is the world's premier energy conference. When the world wants to talk about energy, they do it at CERAWeek. You see that every first quarter in the advisory and transaction services revenue, right? You also have this great business around global trading services, which is somewhat event driven. That's the derivative instruments against our Platts benchmark prices, right? That can fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter based on what we're seeing in the markets. It's a great business. I think over time, that business will continue to be predominantly subscription, continue to have a really great market position. When we talk about upstream specifically, the divestiture that we announced of the upstream software business, that software piece is really something that's better owned by somebody like SLB who's buying that, right? Where they're scaling out an offering. That wasn't necessarily an area where we wanted to go in and say, "We're going to make a big investment to scale this out and make it a globally competitive software business." Really, the value that we see for our customers across the entire estate is in the truly proprietary data that's in the three-quarters of upstream that we're keeping. I guess the larger kind of strategic action that you've been taking and planning for the last year or so was the mobility spin, effective July 1st, and the $2 billion of debt placed at Mobility Global. I was just wondering, how should investors think about the capital strategy at S&P? Does the bias shift towards buybacks with the stock price at these levels? More tuck-in M&A, maybe. I was thinking like kind of unique data sets and things like that, or de-leveraging at these levels. Yeah. With the completion of the mobility spin, which we expect to take place on July 1st, you're right, we've raised $2 billion of debt financing that gets dividended out to S&P Global. We've said publicly the intended use of proceeds there is share repurchases and some debt reduction as well. We want to make sure that the spin's leverage neutral for us. We're very comfortable with where we are in the balance sheet. We've managed that very well over time. I think from a capital allocation standpoint, we have a publicly stated target of returning at least 85% of free cash flow every year to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. With the proceeds from mobility, we're raising that in 2026 to 100%. Right. That's going to be roughly $4.5 Billion of share repurchases this year. That's really the focus, particularly given where the valuation is right now. The return that we get on buying back stock, I think, is very high, and that increases or elevates, rather, the bar that we would need to clear, even for something like tuck-in M&A. We've said publicly there's no appetite for anything transformational, and even the appetite for tuck-ins has diminished a little bit, just given the bar that they'd have to clear, given where the share price is. At your Investor Day, the medium-term target's 7%-9% organic constant currency growth, annual margin expansion of 50-75 basis points. Given the strong 1Q, right. 9% organic growth and 100 basis points of margin expansion. Looking at this year, I guess what would need to go wrong to track towards the low end of those ranges, and I guess where do you see the most upside in the business this year, but also over the next two to three years? This is the kind of question that we typically get at the end of almost every meeting we have, right. Like, what's going to drive upside? What's going to drive potential downside? For us, the answer is always going to be the market-driven businesses, because they're the hardest to predict, and they're the ones where you can see fluctuation and have seen that historically, right. That's Ratings and Indices primarily. In periods where we see very strong issuance, you're going to see potential upside even to the targets we gave out at Investor Day. In periods where you see dramatic outperformance in an index like the S&P 500, that'll benefit us as well, and the flip side to that's also true. Okay. I think that's it. Thanks, Mark. You bet. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Sean.

Speaker 2: Okay, welcome everyone. I have the pleasure of hosting Mark Grant, SVP Investor Relations and Treasurer at S&P Global. Mark, thanks for coming today. Okay, welcome everyone. okay welcome everyone I have the pleasure of hosting Mark Grant, SVP Investor Relations and Treasurer at S&P Global. i have the pleasure of hosting mark grant svp investor relations and treasurer at s&p global Mark, thanks for coming today. mark thanks for coming today

Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Sean. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me, Sean. thank you for having me sean It's great to be here. it's great to be here

Speaker 2: I'm going to kick things off and dive into Market Intelligence and GenAI, which is the vast majority of the questions I get on S&P these days, because the rest of the business is so resilient and strong. My first question is, how do you distinguish between cyclical headwinds, like end market softness in the financial sector, and any structural AI substitution risk to Capital IQ and all the similar workflow tools within Market Intelligence? I'm going to kick things off and dive into Market Intelligence and GenAI, which is the vast majority of the questions I get on S&P these days, because the rest of the business is so resilient and strong. i'm going to kick things off and dive into market intelligence and genai which is the vast majority of the questions i get on s&p these days because the rest of the business is so resilient and strong My first question is, how do you distinguish between cyclical headwinds, like end market softness in the financial sector, and any structural AI substitution risk to Capital IQ and all the similar workflow tools within Market Intelligence? my first question is how do you distinguish between cyclical headwinds like end market softness in the financial sector and any structural ai substitution risk to capital iq and all the similar workflow tools within market intelligence

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is a really important question, and to your point, we get this a lot on our side as well. Right. I'm glad that you started with how resilient the rest of the business is, right? As most folks understand, we're primarily a benchmarks business. Right. Two-thirds of our revenue, roughly three-quarters of our profit comes from benchmarks, right? The ratings, the index, the Platts commodities prices. These are fantastic, very resilient businesses where we are the only source on planet Earth for that information. Right. We do get a lot of questions around, well, what's this small pocket in Market Intelligence that could potentially be at risk here, and how do we assess that? Right. When we look at the Market Intelligence performance, most of the questions we get are specifically around Capital IQ. Yeah. yeah I think this is a really important question, and to your point, we get this a lot on our side as well. i think this is a really important question and to your point we get this a lot on our side as well Right. right I'm glad that you started with how resilient the rest of the business is, right? i'm glad that you started with how resilient the rest of the business is right As most folks understand, we're primarily a benchmarks business. as most folks understand we're primarily a benchmarks business Right. right Two-thirds of our revenue, roughly three-quarters of our profit comes from benchmarks, right? two-thirds of our revenue roughly three-quarters of our profit comes from benchmarks right The ratings, the index, the Platts commodities prices. the ratings the index the platts commodities prices These are fantastic, very resilient businesses where we are the only source on planet Earth for that information. these are fantastic very resilient businesses where we are the only source on planet earth for that information Right. right We do get a lot of questions around, well, what's this small pocket in Market Intelligence that could potentially be at risk here, and how do we assess that? we do get a lot of questions around well what's this small pocket in market intelligence that could potentially be at risk here and how do we assess that Right. right When we look at the Market Intelligence performance, most of the questions we get are specifically around Capital IQ. when we look at the market intelligence performance most of the questions we get are specifically around capital iq Right? Cap IQ is the product that most of our investors are most familiar with because they either use it or they use one of the competitor solutions almost every day. Right. Cap IQ is less than 6% of our total revenue, an even smaller percentage of our profits. Right. When we look at this, they're very important questions about a very, very small part of our business. When we look at the Market Intelligence business broadly, you've got incredible data sets in there like Compustat and SNL. That's the distribution platform for much of our ratings content through RatingsDirect and RatingsXpress. We've got these incredible workflow tools that are highly moated and have great network externalities that create a great deal of value for our customers. Right? right Cap IQ is the product that most of our investors are most familiar with because they either use it or they use one of the competitor solutions almost every day. cap iq is the product that most of our investors are most familiar with because they either use it or they use one of the competitor solutions almost every day Right. right Cap IQ is less than 6% of our total revenue, an even smaller percentage of our profits. cap iq is less than 6% of our total revenue an even smaller percentage of our profits Right. right When we look at this, they're very important questions about a very, very small part of our business. when we look at this they're very important questions about a very very small part of our business When we look at the Market Intelligence business broadly, you've got incredible data sets in there like Compustat and SNL. when we look at the market intelligence business broadly you've got incredible data sets in there like compustat and snl That's the distribution platform for much of our ratings content through RatingsDirect and RatingsXpress. that's the distribution platform for much of our ratings content through ratingsdirect and ratingsxpress We've got these incredible workflow tools that are highly moated and have great network externalities that create a great deal of value for our customers. we've got these incredible workflow tools that are highly moated and have great network externalities that create a great deal of value for our customers We have a lot of data that gets distributed through these platforms that customers consume in various ways, whether that's through a desktop or through data feeds, or through Databricks and Snowflake, or more recently, through MCP connectors, which I'm sure we'll get into as well. When we look at the performance of that business, it's actually fairly easy to differentiate between what are cyclical tailwinds, what are secular tailwinds, what are the themes that we're seeing in the market that really drive performance there. One of the themes that we've seen is vendor consolidation. More and more of the customers that we talk to, primarily through our Chief Client Office, our large, sophisticated strategic customers, they want fewer vendors in their ecosystem. We have a lot of data that gets distributed through these platforms that customers consume in various ways, whether that's through a desktop or through data feeds, or through Databricks and Snowflake, or more recently, through MCP connectors, which I'm sure we'll get into as well. we have a lot of data that gets distributed through these platforms that customers consume in various ways whether that's through a desktop or through data feeds or through databricks and snowflake or more recently through mcp connectors which i'm sure we'll get into as well When we look at the performance of that business, it's actually fairly easy to differentiate between what are cyclical tailwinds, what are secular tailwinds, what are the themes that we're seeing in the market that really drive performance there. when we look at the performance of that business it's actually fairly easy to differentiate between what are cyclical tailwinds what are secular tailwinds what are the themes that we're seeing in the market that really drive performance there One of the themes that we've seen is vendor consolidation. one of the themes that we've seen is vendor consolidation More and more of the customers that we talk to, primarily through our Chief Client Office, our large, sophisticated strategic customers, they want fewer vendors in their ecosystem. more and more of the customers that we talk to primarily through our chief client office our large sophisticated strategic customers they want fewer vendors in their ecosystem They know that there are huge swaths of information and value that they can only get from S&P Global, and they come to us very regularly and say, "All right, what else could we be getting from you, and how can we eliminate some point solutions in our ecosystem?" That's something that we would consider as a secular tailwind theme. Right? The cyclicality piece impacts us a little bit less than you would expect for some other folks in the space because we haven't had seat-based pricing in five, six years, right? Longer than that. Having the enterprise contracts that we do allows us to look through a lot of the cyclical stuff without it actually impacting the financial performance of Market Intelligence materially at all. They know that there are huge swaths of information and value that they can only get from S&P Global, and they come to us very regularly and say, "All right, what else could we be getting from you, and how can we eliminate some point solutions in our ecosystem?" That's something that we would consider as a secular tailwind theme. they know that there are huge swaths of information and value that they can only get from s&p global and they come to us very regularly and say "all right what else could we be getting from you and how can we eliminate some point solutions in our ecosystem?" that's something that we would consider as a secular tailwind theme Right? right The cyclicality piece impacts us a little bit less than you would expect for some other folks in the space because we haven't had seat-based pricing in five, six years, right? the cyclicality piece impacts us a little bit less than you would expect for some other folks in the space because we haven't had seat-based pricing in five six years right Longer than that. longer than that Having the enterprise contracts that we do allows us to look through a lot of the cyclical stuff without it actually impacting the financial performance of Market Intelligence materially at all. having the enterprise contracts that we do allows us to look through a lot of the cyclical stuff without it actually impacting the financial performance of market intelligence materially at all

Speaker 2: Got it. I guess from a high level, what are you hearing from your customers for demand for S&P's data? Got it. got it I guess from a high level, what are you hearing from your customers for demand for S&P's data? i guess from a high level what are you hearing from your customers for demand for s&p's data

Speaker 1: Look, I think the general theme is your data is great. For most of what we're consuming, you're the only source we have, and all of the tools that we're looking at using or starting to deploy now require us to consume more data at higher volumes, at higher velocity. Our customers are telling us, "We need to do more. We want to consolidate more. We view S&P Global as a very powerful strategic partner for us and an incredibly important vendor. How can we structure things such that we can consume this data and make sure that there's the value recognition on the economics?" Right. When we look at the deployment of MCP connections- Look, I think the general theme is your data is great. look i think the general theme is your data is great For most of what we're consuming, you're the only source we have, and all of the tools that we're looking at using or starting to deploy now require us to consume more data at higher volumes, at higher velocity. for most of what we're consuming you're the only source we have and all of the tools that we're looking at using or starting to deploy now require us to consume more data at higher volumes at higher velocity Our customers are telling us, "We need to do more. our customers are telling us "we need to do more We want to consolidate more. we want to consolidate more We view S&P Global as a very powerful strategic partner for us and an incredibly important vendor. we view s&p global as a very powerful strategic partner for us and an incredibly important vendor How can we structure things such that we can consume this data and make sure that there's the value recognition on the economics?" Right. how can we structure things such that we can consume this data and make sure that there's the value recognition on the economics?" right When we look at the deployment of MCP connections- when we look at the deployment of mcp connections- right, we've talked about this a little bit in our most recent earnings call. We've seen volumes of API calls through those MCP connections increase 500% quarter-over-quarter, 100% month-over-month. Right. The value that our customers are getting from S&P Global data through all of these platforms is only increasing, right? I think over time, you see that show up in the economics as well. right, we've talked about this a little bit in our most recent earnings call. right we've talked about this a little bit in our most recent earnings call We've seen volumes of API calls through those MCP connections increase 500% quarter-over-quarter, 100% month-over-month. we've seen volumes of api calls through those mcp connections increase 500% quarter-over-quarter 100% month-over-month Right. right The value that our customers are getting from S&P Global data through all of these platforms is only increasing, right? the value that our customers are getting from s&p global data through all of these platforms is only increasing right I think over time, you see that show up in the economics as well. i think over time you see that show up in the economics as well

Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my next question, was about just the demand for data within this GenAI world, right? Yeah, it was 5x quarter-over-quarter, right, for the API call volumes, and I think there was renewal uplifts as well. Yeah, that was my next question, was about just the demand for data within this GenAI world, right? yeah that was my next question was about just the demand for data within this genai world right Yeah, it was 5x quarter-over-quarter, right, for the API call volumes, and I think there was renewal uplifts as well. yeah it was 5x quarter-over-quarter right for the api call volumes and i think there was renewal uplifts as well 35%-45%, I think maybe a few clients, but very promising. I guess, taking a step back, can you help us frame that, I guess, the revenue opportunity there from AI over the next two to three years? 35%-45%, I think maybe a few clients, but very promising. 35%-45% i think maybe a few clients but very promising I guess, taking a step back, can you help us frame that, I guess, the revenue opportunity there from AI over the next two to three years? i guess taking a step back can you help us frame that i guess the revenue opportunity there from ai over the next two to three years

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is another important point because the reality is nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out. Right? When we look at the financial services end market or the energy end market or non-financial corporates, whatever customer base that we're serving, you have to start with the realization that customers don't have infinite budget. Yeah. yeah I think this is another important point because the reality is nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out. i think this is another important point because the reality is nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out Right? right When we look at the financial services end market or the energy end market or non-financial corporates, whatever customer base that we're serving, you have to start with the realization that customers don't have infinite budget. when we look at the financial services end market or the energy end market or non-financial corporates whatever customer base that we're serving you have to start with the realization that customers don't have infinite budget The value that we are creating for customers, we have to also help them understand not just how we're creating more value, but we can also help facilitate freeing up budget for them. And that goes back to the point on vendor consolidation. If you can eliminate point solutions in your ecosystem and do more through S&P Global, yes, your contract value with us is going to go up, but your total cost of ownership across that portfolio of products actually goes down. When we look at customers who are looking to invest more in their AI solutions, looking to invest more in data, looking to really scale out some of these strategic initiatives, S&P Global is probably as well-positioned as any company in the world to facilitate that. The value that we are creating for customers, we have to also help them understand not just how we're creating more value, but we can also help facilitate freeing up budget for them. And that goes back to the point on vendor consolidation. the value that we are creating for customers we have to also help them understand not just how we're creating more value but we can also help facilitate freeing up budget for them. and that goes back to the point on vendor consolidation If you can eliminate point solutions in your ecosystem and do more through S&P Global, yes, your contract value with us is going to go up, but your total cost of ownership across that portfolio of products actually goes down. if you can eliminate point solutions in your ecosystem and do more through s&p global yes your contract value with us is going to go up but your total cost of ownership across that portfolio of products actually goes down When we look at customers who are looking to invest more in their AI solutions, looking to invest more in data, looking to really scale out some of these strategic initiatives, S&P Global is probably as well-positioned as any company in the world to facilitate that. when we look at customers who are looking to invest more in their ai solutions looking to invest more in data looking to really scale out some of these strategic initiatives s&p global is probably as well-positioned as any company in the world to facilitate that I think as we look at revenue growth over time, you do see that show up in customer retention. You see it show up in wallet retention. You see it show up in sales cycles. You see it show up in competitive win rates. Ultimately, you see it show up in pricing power, too. As we increase the value we're creating for our customers, we ask them, of course, to share the economics of some of that value with us through price. I think as we look at revenue growth over time, you do see that show up in customer retention. i think as we look at revenue growth over time you do see that show up in customer retention You see it show up in wallet retention. you see it show up in wallet retention You see it show up in sales cycles. you see it show up in sales cycles You see it show up in competitive win rates. you see it show up in competitive win rates Ultimately, you see it show up in pricing power, too. ultimately you see it show up in pricing power too As we increase the value we're creating for our customers, we ask them, of course, to share the economics of some of that value with us through price. as we increase the value we're creating for our customers we ask them of course to share the economics of some of that value with us through price

Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just going to touch on, I guess, the competitive environment with AI. Market Intelligence growth, I think you said last quarter is running 30% higher for AI customers versus non-AI customers. You touched on it that the net renewal rates increased 100 basis points last quarter, which is great to see. Are you seeing any share gains from competitors like Bloomberg or FactSet specifically because of these AI features that you're rolling out? Or is this primarily just wallet share expansion within existing clients? Yeah, I was just going to touch on, I guess, the competitive environment with AI. yeah i was just going to touch on i guess the competitive environment with ai Market Intelligence growth, I think you said last quarter is running 30% higher for AI customers versus non-AI customers. market intelligence growth i think you said last quarter is running 30% higher for ai customers versus non-ai customers You touched on it that the net renewal rates increased 100 basis points last quarter, which is great to see. you touched on it that the net renewal rates increased 100 basis points last quarter which is great to see Are you seeing any share gains from competitors like Bloomberg or FactSet specifically because of these AI features that you're rolling out? are you seeing any share gains from competitors like bloomberg or factset specifically because of these ai features that you're rolling out Or is this primarily just wallet share expansion within existing clients? or is this primarily just wallet share expansion within existing clients

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a fair question. This is a space that's been competitive for a very long time. We have scaled competitors in Market Intelligence. We've got a great deal of respect for our competitors in that space. I think when we look at the investments that we've made over time in adding AI functionality to our products, if you look at features like ChatIQ, Chart Explainer, Document Intelligence all sit within Cap IQ Pro, it increases the functionality of that platform for the people that are using that as their daily tool. That absolutely creates value. That shows up in renewal rates, and it certainly shows up in competitive win rates. It's a much broader conversation with most of our larger customers. It's not just about what are you doing with Cap IQ, it's about what are you doing with MCP? Yeah. yeah It's a fair question. it's a fair question This is a space that's been competitive for a very long time. this is a space that's been competitive for a very long time We have scaled competitors in Market Intelligence. we have scaled competitors in market intelligence We've got a great deal of respect for our competitors in that space. we've got a great deal of respect for our competitors in that space I think when we look at the investments that we've made over time in adding AI functionality to our products, if you look at features like ChatIQ, Chart Explainer, Document Intelligence all sit within Cap IQ Pro, it increases the functionality of that platform for the people that are using that as their daily tool. i think when we look at the investments that we've made over time in adding ai functionality to our products if you look at features like chatiq chart explainer document intelligence all sit within cap iq pro it increases the functionality of that platform for the people that are using that as their daily tool That absolutely creates value. that absolutely creates value That shows up in renewal rates, and it certainly shows up in competitive win rates. that shows up in renewal rates and it certainly shows up in competitive win rates It's a much broader conversation with most of our larger customers. it's a much broader conversation with most of our larger customers It's not just about what are you doing with Cap IQ, it's about what are you doing with MCP? it's not just about what are you doing with cap iq it's about what are you doing with mcp What are you doing with the Kensho Grounding Agent? What are you doing with the Kensho LLM-ready APIs, and how are you looking at making the full data estate available? These are initiatives that we have internally as well about how we can meet the evolving needs of our customers faster than anyone else and delivering value, frankly, that they could only get from us anyway. I do think this shows up in competitive win rates, look, our competitors aren't still either. Like I said, we've got a great deal of respect for the competitors that we have in this space. It goes back to the iron sharpens iron analogy. What are you doing with the Kensho Grounding Agent? what are you doing with the kensho grounding agent What are you doing with the Kensho LLM-ready APIs, and how are you looking at making the full data estate available? what are you doing with the kensho llm-ready apis and how are you looking at making the full data estate available These are initiatives that we have internally as well about how we can meet the evolving needs of our customers faster than anyone else and delivering value, frankly, that they could only get from us anyway. these are initiatives that we have internally as well about how we can meet the evolving needs of our customers faster than anyone else and delivering value frankly that they could only get from us anyway I do think this shows up in competitive win rates, look, our competitors aren't still either. i do think this shows up in competitive win rates look our competitors aren't still either Like I said, we've got a great deal of respect for the competitors that we have in this space. like i said we've got a great deal of respect for the competitors that we have in this space It goes back to the iron sharpens iron analogy. it goes back to the iron sharpens iron analogy Look, I think if you go back to what we said at Investor Day, the financial targets that we put out, we admitted on stage, that's going to require us to take market share because the end market's not growing 6%-8% on an organic constant currency basis. We're confident we'll be able to do that. Look, I think if you go back to what we said at Investor Day, the financial targets that we put out, we admitted on stage, that's going to require us to take market share because the end market's not growing 6%-8% on an organic constant currency basis. look i think if you go back to what we said at investor day the financial targets that we put out we admitted on stage that's going to require us to take market share because the end market's not growing 6%-8% on an organic constant currency basis We're confident we'll be able to do that. we're confident we'll be able to do that

Speaker 2: I guess when you look across your competitors, whether it be Bloomberg, FactSet, Thomson Reuters, how do you feel like company's positioned versus those competitors? What specific advantages does S&P have versus them? I guess when you look across your competitors, whether it be Bloomberg, FactSet, Thomson Reuters, how do you feel like company's positioned versus those competitors? i guess when you look across your competitors whether it be bloomberg factset thomson reuters how do you feel like company's positioned versus those competitors What specific advantages does S&P have versus them? what specific advantages does s&p have versus them

Speaker 1: The single greatest advantage that S&P Global has is that we are the single source for the vast majority of what we do. You look across the entire ecosystem, and we do have conversations where folks want to focus just on Market Intelligence, but our customers don't. The single greatest advantage that S&P Global has is that we are the single source for the vast majority of what we do. the single greatest advantage that s&p global has is that we are the single source for the vast majority of what we do You look across the entire ecosystem, and we do have conversations where folks want to focus just on Market Intelligence, but our customers don't. you look across the entire ecosystem and we do have conversations where folks want to focus just on market intelligence but our customers don't Our customers come to us for a broad array of products across all of our divisions. The Ratings division sits a bit siloed just from a regulatory standpoint. We don't really package Ratings with anything else. When you look at customers, a large global investment bank is likely buying data through the index business. They may very well have portfolios on the asset management side that are benchmarked against our indices. They are likely buying pricing data from our energy business because their energy traders would have a really hard time actually managing their workflows without knowing Dated Brent crude prices. You've got all the content that we distribute through Market Intelligence. Our customers come to us for a broad array of products across all of our divisions. our customers come to us for a broad array of products across all of our divisions The Ratings division sits a bit siloed just from a regulatory standpoint. the ratings division sits a bit siloed just from a regulatory standpoint We don't really package Ratings with anything else. we don't really package ratings with anything else When you look at customers, a large global investment bank is likely buying data through the index business. when you look at customers a large global investment bank is likely buying data through the index business They may very well have portfolios on the asset management side that are benchmarked against our indices. they may very well have portfolios on the asset management side that are benchmarked against our indices They are likely buying pricing data from our energy business because their energy traders would have a really hard time actually managing their workflows without knowing Dated Brent crude prices. they are likely buying pricing data from our energy business because their energy traders would have a really hard time actually managing their workflows without knowing dated brent crude prices You've got all the content that we distribute through Market Intelligence. you've got all the content that we distribute through market intelligence The single greatest advantage that I think we have is just this massive holistic set of solutions that power the entire global market, whether that's the equity markets, the fixed income markets, or the commodities markets. As we can demonstrate to our customers across that swath of products, we are adding more value for you. Every year, every quarter, we're launching new products, we're launching new features, we're launching new data sets, making more of our data available through LLMs, through the Kensho LLM-ready API. All of that makes this conversation with customers about so much more than just the desktop. The single greatest advantage that I think we have is just this massive holistic set of solutions that power the entire global market, whether that's the equity markets, the fixed income markets, or the commodities markets. the single greatest advantage that i think we have is just this massive holistic set of solutions that power the entire global market whether that's the equity markets the fixed income markets or the commodities markets As we can demonstrate to our customers across that swath of products, we are adding more value for you. as we can demonstrate to our customers across that swath of products we are adding more value for you Every year, every quarter, we're launching new products, we're launching new features, we're launching new data sets, making more of our data available through LLMs, through the Kensho LLM-ready API. every year every quarter we're launching new products we're launching new features we're launching new data sets making more of our data available through llms through the kensho llm-ready api All of that makes this conversation with customers about so much more than just the desktop. all of that makes this conversation with customers about so much more than just the desktop

Speaker 2: The Chief Client Office is a huge part of it. The Chief Client Office is a huge part of it. the chief client office is a huge part of it

Speaker 1: It is. It is. it is

Speaker 2: It's been up and running for probably a little over a year now. It's been up and running for probably a little over a year now. it's been up and running for probably a little over a year now

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. yeah

Speaker 2: Can you just talk about, I guess, over the course of the last year, I guess what learnings you have, kind of where is it on its kind of maturation curve? Can you just talk about, I guess, over the course of the last year, I guess what learnings you have, kind of where is it on its kind of maturation curve? can you just talk about i guess over the course of the last year i guess what learnings you have kind of where is it on its kind of maturation curve

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we're in very, very good shape. Sally Moore is our Chief Client Office. I think she's one of the most brilliant commercial minds I've ever seen in my career. Having her in that position really does solidify that customer focus across the entire organization. She's done a phenomenal job, and the team that works for her has done a phenomenal job orchestrating our commercial initiatives. You go back a few years, you may have had a team from Market Intelligence come and visit you as a customer, and the next week somebody from Energy may have come and visited you, and they might not even have known that the other team was there because that coordinated effort wasn't necessarily as robust as it is now. Yeah. yeah I think we're in very, very good shape. i think we're in very very good shape Sally Moore is our Chief Client Office. sally moore is our chief client office I think she's one of the most brilliant commercial minds I've ever seen in my career. i think she's one of the most brilliant commercial minds i've ever seen in my career Having her in that position really does solidify that customer focus across the entire organization. having her in that position really does solidify that customer focus across the entire organization She's done a phenomenal job, and the team that works for her has done a phenomenal job orchestrating our commercial initiatives. she's done a phenomenal job and the team that works for her has done a phenomenal job orchestrating our commercial initiatives You go back a few years, you may have had a team from Market Intelligence come and visit you as a customer, and the next week somebody from Energy may have come and visited you, and they might not even have known that the other team was there because that coordinated effort wasn't necessarily as robust as it is now. you go back a few years you may have had a team from market intelligence come and visit you as a customer and the next week somebody from energy may have come and visited you and they might not even have known that the other team was there because that coordinated effort wasn't necessarily as robust as it is now Under the Chief Client Office and with Sally in there in particular, we've really created this ecosystem where the divisions focus on serving clients holistically, particularly those large strategic customers. We're talking about 150 of our largest customers or so in the Chief Client Office. It really does allow those customers to have a greater sense of the value we create for them holistically, but it's also been a huge driver of just product awareness. Like so many times, we've gone into a customer who's bought one or two products from us for years and years and didn't even realize that we did so many other things. Under the Chief Client Office and with Sally in there in particular, we've really created this ecosystem where the divisions focus on serving clients holistically, particularly those large strategic customers. under the chief client office and with sally in there in particular, we've really created this ecosystem where the divisions focus on serving clients holistically particularly those large strategic customers We're talking about 150 of our largest customers or so in the Chief Client Office. we're talking about 150 of our largest customers or so in the chief client office It really does allow those customers to have a greater sense of the value we create for them holistically, but it's also been a huge driver of just product awareness. it really does allow those customers to have a greater sense of the value we create for them holistically but it's also been a huge driver of just product awareness Like so many times, we've gone into a customer who's bought one or two products from us for years and years and didn't even realize that we did so many other things. like so many times we've gone into a customer who's bought one or two products from us for years and years and didn't even realize that we did so many other things When you go back to that point on vendor consolidation, the Chief Client Office facilitates that as well, elevating those conversations up into the C-suite and making more strategic decisions around just how much value we can create for a customer across the entire organization. That's been a huge driver for us, not just in Market Intelligence, but everywhere. When you go back to that point on vendor consolidation, the Chief Client Office facilitates that as well, elevating those conversations up into the C-suite and making more strategic decisions around just how much value we can create for a customer across the entire organization. when you go back to that point on vendor consolidation the chief client office facilitates that as well elevating those conversations up into the c-suite and making more strategic decisions around just how much value we can create for a customer across the entire organization That's been a huge driver for us, not just in Market Intelligence, but everywhere. that's been a huge driver for us not just in market intelligence but everywhere

Speaker 2: You mentioned, I think it was a few quarters ago, but just about sales incentives and kind of restructuring them and maybe consolidating them from- You mentioned, I think it was a few quarters ago, but just about sales incentives and kind of restructuring them and maybe consolidating them from- you mentioned i think it was a few quarters ago but just about sales incentives and kind of restructuring them and maybe consolidating them from- You know. I think that tears down silos just internally, but can you just talk about how the sales incentives, you don't have to be specific, but just how you kind of thought about them and changed them over the past year or so? You know. you know I think that tears down silos just internally, but can you just talk about how the sales incentives, you don't have to be specific, but just how you kind of thought about them and changed them over the past year or so? i think that tears down silos just internally but can you just talk about how the sales incentives you don't have to be specific but just how you kind of thought about them and changed them over the past year or so

Speaker 1: Yeah. I will probably forever be grateful to Saugata Saha for the transformation that he helped orchestrate inside of Market Intelligence. The simplification of the commercial teams and what we called publicly the revenue transformation in Market Intelligence was a big part of what Saugata was able to deliver in his first year there as the President of Market Intelligence. Simplifying the incentive structure, making sure that it aligns with the best possible economic outcome for not just our customers, but for us as a company, and ultimately for our shareholders as well, going from 60 plus different commission plans in Market Intelligence down to 10, and making sure that it was very clear to our commercial teams how their incentives aligned with the incentives of the broader enterprise, our customers, and our shareholders. That was a very, very heavy lift. Yeah. yeah I will probably forever be grateful to Saugata Saha for the transformation that he helped orchestrate inside of Market Intelligence. i will probably forever be grateful to saugata saha for the transformation that he helped orchestrate inside of market intelligence The simplification of the commercial teams and what we called publicly the revenue transformation in Market Intelligence was a big part of what Saugata was able to deliver in his first year there as the President of Market Intelligence. the simplification of the commercial teams and what we called publicly the revenue transformation in market intelligence was a big part of what saugata was able to deliver in his first year there as the president of market intelligence Simplifying the incentive structure, making sure that it aligns with the best possible economic outcome for not just our customers, but for us as a company, and ultimately for our shareholders as well, going from 60 plus different commission plans in Market Intelligence down to 10, and making sure that it was very clear to our commercial teams how their incentives aligned with the incentives of the broader enterprise, our customers, and our shareholders. simplifying the incentive structure making sure that it aligns with the best possible economic outcome for not just our customers but for us as a company and ultimately for our shareholders as well going from 60 plus different commission plans in market intelligence down to 10 and making sure that it was very clear to our commercial teams how their incentives aligned with the incentives of the broader enterprise our customers and our shareholders That was a very, very heavy lift. that was a very very heavy lift When we have this leadership transition in Market Intelligence now, whoever comes in and runs that Market Intelligence business will be in a very, very good position to execute and to deliver results because of what Saugata was able to do in his year and a half there. When we have this leadership transition in Market Intelligence now, whoever comes in and runs that Market Intelligence business will be in a very, very good position to execute and to deliver results because of what Saugata was able to do in his year and a half there. when we have this leadership transition in market intelligence now whoever comes in and runs that market intelligence business will be in a very very good position to execute and to deliver results because of what saugata was able to do in his year and a half there

Speaker 2: Got it. Maybe just touch on the leadership transition a little bit more, and also the Data Office, because Saugata was the head of that as well. Got it. got it Maybe just touch on the leadership transition a little bit more, and also the Data Office, because Saugata was the head of that as well. maybe just touch on the leadership transition a little bit more and also the data office because saugata was the head of that as well Yeah, could you just touch a little bit more about kind of what's happening and how you guys are thinking internally? Yeah, could you just touch a little bit more about kind of what's happening and how you guys are thinking internally? yeah could you just touch a little bit more about kind of what's happening and how you guys are thinking internally

Speaker 1: I think for those that may not know, Saugata Saha was the President, still is the President of Market Intelligence and our Chief Enterprise Data Officer. When Martina established the EDO or the Enterprise Data Office, Saugata was put in place as the head of that when that was created. He wore two hats simultaneously. They weren't necessarily one because of the other. Right? He was just the best person to wear both of those hats. When he announced that he'd be leaving to go take a CEO role at a tech company, one of the things that Martina did immediately was take that Enterprise Data Office and roll that up under our Chief Technology & Transformation Officer, Firdaus, who's a phenomenal leader. Right? I think for those that may not know, Saugata Saha was the President, still is the President of Market Intelligence and our Chief Enterprise Data Officer. i think for those that may not know saugata saha was the president still is the president of market intelligence and our chief enterprise data officer When Martina established the EDO or the Enterprise Data Office, Saugata was put in place as the head of that when that was created. when martina established the edo or the enterprise data office saugata was put in place as the head of that when that was created He wore two hats simultaneously. he wore two hats simultaneously They weren't necessarily one because of the other. they weren't necessarily one because of the other Right? right He was just the best person to wear both of those hats. he was just the best person to wear both of those hats When he announced that he'd be leaving to go take a CEO role at a tech company, one of the things that Martina did immediately was take that Enterprise Data Office and roll that up under our Chief Technology & Transformation Officer, Firdaus, who's a phenomenal leader. when he announced that he'd be leaving to go take a ceo role at a tech company one of the things that martina did immediately was take that enterprise data office and roll that up under our chief technology & transformation officer firdaus who's a phenomenal leader Right? right I think if we had had somebody like Firdaus a year and a half ago, we may very well have structured this differently from the beginning. I don't know. Firdaus joined just a few weeks ago, brilliant technologist, successful entrepreneur in his own right, knows how to manage businesses, is deeply steeped in the technology, it makes perfect sense for us to have the individual leading our technology and transformation be also the same person who's leading our Enterprise Data Office. This is one that just made perfect sense immediately to Martina and to everybody else. When we look at the Market Intelligence transformation there or that transition from the leadership standpoint, all we've really said at this point is that we're going to move quickly and thoughtfully. Right? I think if we had had somebody like Firdaus a year and a half ago, we may very well have structured this differently from the beginning. i think if we had had somebody like firdaus a year and a half ago we may very well have structured this differently from the beginning I don't know. i don't know Firdaus joined just a few weeks ago, brilliant technologist, successful entrepreneur in his own right, knows how to manage businesses, is deeply steeped in the technology, it makes perfect sense for us to have the individual leading our technology and transformation be also the same person who's leading our Enterprise Data Office. firdaus joined just a few weeks ago brilliant technologist successful entrepreneur in his own right knows how to manage businesses is deeply steeped in the technology it makes perfect sense for us to have the individual leading our technology and transformation be also the same person who's leading our enterprise data office This is one that just made perfect sense immediately to Martina and to everybody else. this is one that just made perfect sense immediately to martina and to everybody else When we look at the Market Intelligence transformation there or that transition from the leadership standpoint, all we've really said at this point is that we're going to move quickly and thoughtfully. when we look at the market intelligence transformation there or that transition from the leadership standpoint all we've really said at this point is that we're going to move quickly and thoughtfully Right? right We want to make sure that we're able to execute, that we're able to deliver the results that we've talked about for this year and for the forecast from our Investor Day. We'll have more to say about that at the appropriate time. We want to make sure that we're able to execute, that we're able to deliver the results that we've talked about for this year and for the forecast from our Investor Day. we want to make sure that we're able to execute that we're able to deliver the results that we've talked about for this year and for the forecast from our investor day We'll have more to say about that at the appropriate time. we'll have more to say about that at the appropriate time

Speaker 2: Great. Makes sense. We touched, I mean, we talked a lot about, I guess, GenAI from the revenue side. Great. great Makes sense. makes sense We touched, I mean, we talked a lot about, I guess, GenAI from the revenue side. we touched i mean we talked a lot about i guess genai from the revenue side Just from running a information data analytics business, just I guess from the internal cost workflow side on S&P, what has GenAI, I guess one, for Market Intelligence, what kind of learnings there have you had about cost takeout and efficiency? Also maybe about like ratings, and I know it's a little bit different in terms of the regulatory environment. Just from running a information data analytics business, just I guess from the internal cost workflow side on S&P, what has GenAI, I guess one, for Market Intelligence, what kind of learnings there have you had about cost takeout and efficiency? just from running a information data analytics business just i guess from the internal cost workflow side on s&p what has genai i guess one for market intelligence what kind of learnings there have you had about cost takeout and efficiency Also maybe about like ratings, and I know it's a little bit different in terms of the regulatory environment. also maybe about like ratings and i know it's a little bit different in terms of the regulatory environment You have to move a little bit slower, more pragmatically. If you could also touch on ratings and the other businesses as well. You have to move a little bit slower, more pragmatically. you have to move a little bit slower more pragmatically If you could also touch on ratings and the other businesses as well. if you could also touch on ratings and the other businesses as well

Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll start with ratings. I think there's a great opportunity for technology deployment inside the ratings agency. That's been true for a long time. We've gone through multiple generations of deploying technology inside the ratings business, whether that was traditional machine learning and deep learning to multiple rounds of deploying robotic process automation and RPA. Right. That is an organization that is very used to adopting and moving quickly as technology has evolved. GenAI is no different. Right? We've created specific tools that sit inside of the ratings agency that are actually separate from the rest of S&P Global, just because we have to manage data silos, and there's information barriers that can't be crossed. Spark Assist is our internal kind of copilot tool that we've built. Most of the organization gets access to that. Yeah. yeah I'll start with ratings. i'll start with ratings I think there's a great opportunity for technology deployment inside the ratings agency. i think there's a great opportunity for technology deployment inside the ratings agency That's been true for a long time. that's been true for a long time We've gone through multiple generations of deploying technology inside the ratings business, whether that was traditional machine learning and deep learning to multiple rounds of deploying robotic process automation and RPA. we've gone through multiple generations of deploying technology inside the ratings business whether that was traditional machine learning and deep learning to multiple rounds of deploying robotic process automation and rpa Right. right That is an organization that is very used to adopting and moving quickly as technology has evolved. that is an organization that is very used to adopting and moving quickly as technology has evolved GenAI is no different. genai is no different Right? right We've created specific tools that sit inside of the ratings agency that are actually separate from the rest of S&P Global, just because we have to manage data silos, and there's information barriers that can't be crossed. we've created specific tools that sit inside of the ratings agency that are actually separate from the rest of s&p global just because we have to manage data silos and there's information barriers that can't be crossed Spark Assist is our internal kind of copilot tool that we've built. spark assist is our internal kind of copilot tool that we've built Most of the organization gets access to that. most of the organization gets access to that There's a separate version of it that is just for the ratings agency, right, so that they can leverage data that only they have access to. There's no commingling of that. I think when we look at AI and its potential to drive further growth and opportunities in the ratings agency, we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is a significant degree of human judgment that is required to create a rating. That's not just true from a practical standpoint, but it's true from a regulatory standpoint. Right. The credit analysts that publish these ratings are taking personal liability. Similar to when you publish a note, you've got a Reg AC certification at the bottom of it certifying that it matches your personal views. There's a separate version of it that is just for the ratings agency, right, so that they can leverage data that only they have access to. there's a separate version of it that is just for the ratings agency right so that they can leverage data that only they have access to There's no commingling of that. there's no commingling of that I think when we look at AI and its potential to drive further growth and opportunities in the ratings agency, we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is a significant degree of human judgment that is required to create a rating. i think when we look at ai and its potential to drive further growth and opportunities in the ratings agency we have to be cognizant of the fact that there is a significant degree of human judgment that is required to create a rating That's not just true from a practical standpoint, but it's true from a regulatory standpoint. that's not just true from a practical standpoint but it's true from a regulatory standpoint Right. right The credit analysts that publish these ratings are taking personal liability. the credit analysts that publish these ratings are taking personal liability Similar to when you publish a note, you've got a Reg AC certification at the bottom of it certifying that it matches your personal views. similar to when you publish a note you've got a reg ac certification at the bottom of it certifying that it matches your personal views Right. You're taking personal liability by publishing that note. Our ratings analysts are the same. An AI can't do that, can't comply with that regulation. We want to make sure that that degree of human judgment and expertise stays there, stays robust, and stays celebrated. What we can do is leverage new technologies and tools to make those people more productive, and in fact, we can hire more credit analysts at the covering level and give them the support that they need through staff and through technology augmentation to make sure that they can provide the attestations that they have to, that they have the bandwidth to surveil all of the ratings that they've published, that they can effectively manage the workload. You've seen that show up in our margins in the ratings business for several years. Right. right You're taking personal liability by publishing that note. you're taking personal liability by publishing that note Our ratings analysts are the same. our ratings analysts are the same An AI can't do that, can't comply with that regulation. an ai can't do that can't comply with that regulation We want to make sure that that degree of human judgment and expertise stays there, stays robust, and stays celebrated. we want to make sure that that degree of human judgment and expertise stays there stays robust and stays celebrated What we can do is leverage new technologies and tools to make those people more productive, and in fact, we can hire more credit analysts at the covering level and give them the support that they need through staff and through technology augmentation to make sure that they can provide the attestations that they have to, that they have the bandwidth to surveil all of the ratings that they've published, that they can effectively manage the workload. what we can do is leverage new technologies and tools to make those people more productive and in fact we can hire more credit analysts at the covering level and give them the support that they need through staff and through technology augmentation to make sure that they can provide the attestations that they have to that they have the bandwidth to surveil all of the ratings that they've published that they can effectively manage the workload You've seen that show up in our margins in the ratings business for several years. you've seen that show up in our margins in the ratings business for several years Right. If you go back to our margin targets from the 2022 Investor Day, our 2025 margins and ratings were well above the high end of what we thought they would be in 2022. Part of that is through technology, part of that is through cross-training and making sure that we've got the scale and scope in our population of analysts who are, in my opinion, the best in the world. Right. Outside of ratings, I think there are huge opportunities because you don't have the same regulatory constraints or attestations and requirements that you have in ratings. We said at our Investor Day, we actually think the greatest opportunity for margin expansion in any of our divisions sits within Market Intelligence. Right. right If you go back to our margin targets from the 2022 Investor Day, our 2025 margins and ratings were well above the high end of what we thought they would be in 2022. if you go back to our margin targets from the 2022 investor day our 2025 margins and ratings were well above the high end of what we thought they would be in 2022 Part of that is through technology, part of that is through cross-training and making sure that we've got the scale and scope in our population of analysts who are, in my opinion, the best in the world. part of that is through technology part of that is through cross-training and making sure that we've got the scale and scope in our population of analysts who are in my opinion the best in the world Right. right Outside of ratings, I think there are huge opportunities because you don't have the same regulatory constraints or attestations and requirements that you have in ratings. outside of ratings i think there are huge opportunities because you don't have the same regulatory constraints or attestations and requirements that you have in ratings We said at our Investor Day, we actually think the greatest opportunity for margin expansion in any of our divisions sits within Market Intelligence. we said at our investor day we actually think the greatest opportunity for margin expansion in any of our divisions sits within market intelligence Roughly half of our global headcount sits within Market Intelligence, I think there are huge opportunities there to help make those people more productive and help them dedicate more of their time to more fulfilling work. I think arguably continue to scale that business on the top line much, much faster than we'll have to scale it at the headcount level. Roughly half of our global headcount sits within Market Intelligence, I think there are huge opportunities there to help make those people more productive and help them dedicate more of their time to more fulfilling work. roughly half of our global headcount sits within market intelligence i think there are huge opportunities there to help make those people more productive and help them dedicate more of their time to more fulfilling work I think arguably continue to scale that business on the top line much, much faster than we'll have to scale it at the headcount level. i think arguably continue to scale that business on the top line much much faster than we'll have to scale it at the headcount level

Speaker 2: Got it. I want to touch on Kensho Link for a little bit. Got it. got it I want to touch on Kensho Link for a little bit. i want to touch on kensho link for a little bit

Speaker 1: Please Please please

Speaker 2: Which I think is a great asset within S&P. Last quarter you said there was 300+ customers under contract or trial for the Kensho LLM-ready API. Can you walk us through the product roadmap from here, and specifically how you plan to evolve from API delivery to agentic workflows, and what that means for the pricing architecture? Which I think is a great asset within S&P. which i think is a great asset within s&p Last quarter you said there was 300+ customers under contract or trial for the Kensho LLM-ready API. last quarter you said there was 300+ customers under contract or trial for the kensho llm-ready api Can you walk us through the product roadmap from here, and specifically how you plan to evolve from API delivery to agentic workflows, and what that means for the pricing architecture? can you walk us through the product roadmap from here and specifically how you plan to evolve from api delivery to agentic workflows and what that means for the pricing architecture

Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is one that we very closely watch. This ecosystem is evolving very, very quickly. When we first started talking about the Kensho Grounding Agent, the number of times that I had to explain, and frankly, the number of times they had to explain to me, if I'm honest, just what a grounding agent is. We were so early in MCP, so early with getting grounding agents out there, data retrieval agents. This is an ecosystem where we've been comfortably working for quite some time. When we look at how that ecosystem evolves from our customer perspective, our partners' perspective, there are a lot of moving pieces. We've seen significant evolution just in the last seven months since we had our Investor Day with the launch of new products, new platforms, new models. Yeah. yeah I think this is one that we very closely watch. i think this is one that we very closely watch This ecosystem is evolving very, very quickly. this ecosystem is evolving very very quickly When we first started talking about the Kensho Grounding Agent, the number of times that I had to explain, and frankly, the number of times they had to explain to me, if I'm honest, just what a grounding agent is. when we first started talking about the kensho grounding agent the number of times that i had to explain and frankly the number of times they had to explain to me if i'm honest just what a grounding agent is We were so early in MCP, so early with getting grounding agents out there, data retrieval agents. we were so early in mcp so early with getting grounding agents out there data retrieval agents This is an ecosystem where we've been comfortably working for quite some time. this is an ecosystem where we've been comfortably working for quite some time When we look at how that ecosystem evolves from our customer perspective, our partners' perspective, there are a lot of moving pieces. when we look at how that ecosystem evolves from our customer perspective our partners' perspective there are a lot of moving pieces We've seen significant evolution just in the last seven months since we had our Investor Day with the launch of new products, new platforms, new models. we've seen significant evolution just in the last seven months since we had our investor day with the launch of new products new platforms new models I think when we look at agentic workflows, I think most people would look at that and say, all right, truly automated agentic workflows, straight-through processing, either moving from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop, or from no human involvement whatsoever. People are exploring conceptually what that might look like. We have to make sure that we're moving quickly enough to facilitate that where our customers want it. Making more and more of our data available through LLM-ready APIs, which means attaching machine-readable metadata and contextualizing that data so that it can be consumed and used in an LLM ecosystem. We've been very early to that. We continue to scale out. Every quarter, we introduce new data sets available through those LLM-ready APIs. I think when we look at agentic workflows, I think most people would look at that and say, all right, truly automated agentic workflows, straight-through processing, either moving from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop, or from no human involvement whatsoever. i think when we look at agentic workflows i think most people would look at that and say all right truly automated agentic workflows straight-through processing either moving from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop or from no human involvement whatsoever People are exploring conceptually what that might look like. people are exploring conceptually what that might look like We have to make sure that we're moving quickly enough to facilitate that where our customers want it. we have to make sure that we're moving quickly enough to facilitate that where our customers want it Making more and more of our data available through LLM-ready APIs, which means attaching machine-readable metadata and contextualizing that data so that it can be consumed and used in an LLM ecosystem. making more and more of our data available through llm-ready apis which means attaching machine-readable metadata and contextualizing that data so that it can be consumed and used in an llm ecosystem We've been very early to that. we've been very early to that We continue to scale out. we continue to scale out Every quarter, we introduce new data sets available through those LLM-ready APIs. every quarter we introduce new data sets available through those llm-ready apis We're also seeing the evolution of things like skills and applications, where we can actually create something like a skill that sits almost like if you look at the software space years ago, the phenomenon of containerization. Skills kind of serve that same purpose, where we can build skills which function like a collection of prompts or pre-written instructions, and you can put these skills together in stacks that can create truly value-driven workflows, leveraging S&P Global data through an MCP connector in an ecosystem like Claude or ChatGPT. More and more, we're leaning on these, not just the Kensho engineers, but other engineers and technologists like Firdaus and the people in his organization to really scale out these initiatives and make sure that by the time our customers really want to be there, we're already comfortable operating. We're also seeing the evolution of things like skills and applications, where we can actually create something like a skill that sits almost like if you look at the software space years ago, the phenomenon of containerization. we're also seeing the evolution of things like skills and applications where we can actually create something like a skill that sits almost like if you look at the software space years ago the phenomenon of containerization Skills kind of serve that same purpose, where we can build skills which function like a collection of prompts or pre-written instructions, and you can put these skills together in stacks that can create truly value-driven workflows, leveraging S&P Global data through an MCP connector in an ecosystem like Claude or ChatGPT. skills kind of serve that same purpose where we can build skills which function like a collection of prompts or pre-written instructions and you can put these skills together in stacks that can create truly value-driven workflows leveraging s&p global data through an mcp connector in an ecosystem like claude or chatgpt More and more, we're leaning on these, not just the Kensho engineers, but other engineers and technologists like Firdaus and the people in his organization to really scale out these initiatives and make sure that by the time our customers really want to be there, we're already comfortable operating. more and more we're leaning on these not just the kensho engineers but other engineers and technologists like firdaus and the people in his organization to really scale out these initiatives and make sure that by the time our customers really want to be there we're already comfortable operating

Speaker 2: Got it. Then just moving on to ratings. We were just talking before that it seems like there's so many kind of structural tailwinds to that business right now, in 1Q, billed issuance rose 14% year-over-year. You were citing the hyperscaler IG bond issuance for AI infrastructure as a primary driver there. Just how large is this AI-driven issuance opportunity? You see all these $7 trillion stats and huge demand there. Are you seeing it outside just the hyperscalers in other areas like energy or industrial end markets that are supporting you know, the AI build-out across the world? Got it. got it Then just moving on to ratings. then just moving on to ratings We were just talking before that it seems like there's so many kind of structural tailwinds to that business right now, in 1Q, billed issuance rose 14% year-over-year. we were just talking before that it seems like there's so many kind of structural tailwinds to that business right now in 1q billed issuance rose 14% year-over-year You were citing the hyperscaler IG bond issuance for AI infrastructure as a primary driver there. you were citing the hyperscaler ig bond issuance for ai infrastructure as a primary driver there Just how large is this AI-driven issuance opportunity? just how large is this ai-driven issuance opportunity You see all these $7 trillion stats and huge demand there. you see all these $7 trillion stats and huge demand there Are you seeing it outside just the hyperscalers in other areas like energy or industrial end markets that are supporting you know, the AI build-out across the world? are you seeing it outside just the hyperscalers in other areas like energy or industrial end markets that are supporting you know the ai build-out across the world

Speaker 1: I think this is a phenomenon that impacts a lot of industries, right? People don't realize just how much energy consumption goes into something like a data center. They also don't fully appreciate how much concrete goes into that, right? There are so many different industries that are impacted by this level of CapEx investment, but at the end of the day, it's funded, right? Predominantly, thus far, it's been funded by debt. When we look at our issuance forecast for 2026, we've said publicly our issuance forecast really only assumes that less than half of the announced CapEx from the hyperscalers actually comes to the market funded by debt, right? We've seen a mix of funding this year between, predominantly it's been debt, but there's been significant slugs of equity announced as well, right? I think this is a phenomenon that impacts a lot of industries, right? i think this is a phenomenon that impacts a lot of industries right People don't realize just how much energy consumption goes into something like a data center. people don't realize just how much energy consumption goes into something like a data center They also don't fully appreciate how much concrete goes into that, right? they also don't fully appreciate how much concrete goes into that right There are so many different industries that are impacted by this level of CapEx investment, but at the end of the day, it's funded, right? there are so many different industries that are impacted by this level of capex investment but at the end of the day it's funded right Predominantly, thus far, it's been funded by debt. predominantly thus far it's been funded by debt When we look at our issuance forecast for 2026, we've said publicly our issuance forecast really only assumes that less than half of the announced CapEx from the hyperscalers actually comes to the market funded by debt, right? when we look at our issuance forecast for 2026 we've said publicly our issuance forecast really only assumes that less than half of the announced capex from the hyperscalers actually comes to the market funded by debt right We've seen a mix of funding this year between, predominantly it's been debt, but there's been significant slugs of equity announced as well, right? we've seen a mix of funding this year between predominantly it's been debt but there's been significant slugs of equity announced as well right Our guidance and our billed issuance forecast does not assume that even half of what's been announced actually comes and is funded by debt. If it were to come, that meaning half of it were to come, that'd be a point or two of upside to our billed issuance forecast. I think that's an important distinction as well, because we get this question a lot, right? The hyperscalers are not in our frequent issuer program, right? Otherwise, they couldn't impact billed issuance at all. Frequent issuer is excluded from our billed issuance calculation. Our guidance and our billed issuance forecast does not assume that even half of what's been announced actually comes and is funded by debt. our guidance and our billed issuance forecast does not assume that even half of what's been announced actually comes and is funded by debt If it were to come, that meaning half of it were to come, that'd be a point or two of upside to our billed issuance forecast. if it were to come that meaning half of it were to come that'd be a point or two of upside to our billed issuance forecast I think that's an important distinction as well, because we get this question a lot, right? i think that's an important distinction as well because we get this question a lot right The hyperscalers are not in our frequent issuer program, right? the hyperscalers are not in our frequent issuer program right Otherwise, they couldn't impact billed issuance at all. otherwise they couldn't impact billed issuance at all Frequent issuer is excluded from our billed issuance calculation. frequent issuer is excluded from our billed issuance calculation When they come to the market and we're rating that debt, that isn't something where they've paid us a flat rate, and we're just going to rate whatever they do. They're paying us every time they come to the market, and we rate that debt. That's been an important driver of results for us, as you saw in the first quarter. I think if we were to see the pace of debt issuance in the first quarter continue through the rest of the year, that's more than we're assuming in our forecast, for sure. I think we do stand to benefit from that very well. Like, we know that through all the data that we have internally and the expertise that we've built out over years, we have a fantastic offering for rating the data center debt. When they come to the market and we're rating that debt, that isn't something where they've paid us a flat rate, and we're just going to rate whatever they do. when they come to the market and we're rating that debt that isn't something where they've paid us a flat rate and we're just going to rate whatever they do They're paying us every time they come to the market, and we rate that debt. they're paying us every time they come to the market and we rate that debt That's been an important driver of results for us, as you saw in the first quarter. that's been an important driver of results for us as you saw in the first quarter I think if we were to see the pace of debt issuance in the first quarter continue through the rest of the year, that's more than we're assuming in our forecast, for sure. i think if we were to see the pace of debt issuance in the first quarter continue through the rest of the year that's more than we're assuming in our forecast for sure I think we do stand to benefit from that very well. i think we do stand to benefit from that very well Like, we know that through all the data that we have internally and the expertise that we've built out over years, we have a fantastic offering for rating the data center debt. like we know that through all the data that we have internally and the expertise that we've built out over years we have a fantastic offering for rating the data center debt I think market participants understand and appreciate that as well. We're frequently tapped to do those deals. I think market participants understand and appreciate that as well. i think market participants understand and appreciate that as well We're frequently tapped to do those deals. we're frequently tapped to do those deals

Speaker 2: Could that change over time if one of the hyperscalers has some roadmap when they're gonna tap the debt markets over the next five years continuously. Could they come to you guys and say, "Hey, can you work with us with a frequent issuer program," or things like that? Or not really? Could that change over time if one of the hyperscalers has some roadmap when they're gonna tap the debt markets over the next five years continuously. could that change over time if one of the hyperscalers has some roadmap when they're gonna tap the debt markets over the next five years continuously Could they come to you guys and say, "Hey, can you work with us with a frequent issuer program," or things like that? could they come to you guys and say "hey can you work with us with a frequent issuer program," or things like that Or not really? or not really

Speaker 1: I mean, it's always possible. I mean, it's always possible. i mean it's always possible At the end of the day, that's really not what the frequent issuer program is designed to do, right? It's not for customers that come to the market with big slugs of debt every once in a while. At the end of the day, that's really not what the frequent issuer program is designed to do, right? at the end of the day that's really not what the frequent issuer program is designed to do right It's not for customers that come to the market with big slugs of debt every once in a while. it's not for customers that come to the market with big slugs of debt every once in a while Right? It's for market participants that are very frequently in the market all throughout the year in generally very predictable ways. Right. Right? right It's for market participants that are very frequently in the market all throughout the year in generally very predictable ways. it's for market participants that are very frequently in the market all throughout the year in generally very predictable ways Right. right

Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. okay

Speaker 1: That program has been structured to facilitate that part of the market. The hyperscalers really don't fall into that bucket for us. That program has been structured to facilitate that part of the market. that program has been structured to facilitate that part of the market The hyperscalers really don't fall into that bucket for us. the hyperscalers really don't fall into that bucket for us

Speaker 2: Got it. What, I guess what other kind of deep funding currents are out there over the next year, but also the next few years? I know there's the large maturity walls and things like that. Got it. got it What, I guess what other kind of deep funding currents are out there over the next year, but also the next few years? what i guess what other kind of deep funding currents are out there over the next year but also the next few years I know there's the large maturity walls and things like that. i know there's the large maturity walls and things like that

Speaker 1: That's exactly where I was going, Sean. When we look at the maturity walls over the next few years, they're very, very strong. I mean, the three-year forward cumulative maturity wall is still up double digits from where it was last year. When we look at particularly the 2027 and 2028 maturity walls, a lot of this is debt that was issued in 2020 or 2021 at very low rates. We don't necessarily think there's a lot of incentive for those issuers to pull forward the refinancing of that. That's why we don't include any kind of material impact from pull forward out of those maturity walls in 2026 guidance. Eventually that debt comes, right? What we've seen historically is that debt tends to get refinanced. We typically don't see large corporates paying off debt at scale. That's exactly where I was going, Sean. that's exactly where i was going sean When we look at the maturity walls over the next few years, they're very, very strong. when we look at the maturity walls over the next few years they're very very strong I mean, the three-year forward cumulative maturity wall is still up double digits from where it was last year. i mean the three-year forward cumulative maturity wall is still up double digits from where it was last year When we look at particularly the 2027 and 2028 maturity walls, a lot of this is debt that was issued in 2020 or 2021 at very low rates. when we look at particularly the 2027 and 2028 maturity walls a lot of this is debt that was issued in 2020 or 2021 at very low rates We don't necessarily think there's a lot of incentive for those issuers to pull forward the refinancing of that. we don't necessarily think there's a lot of incentive for those issuers to pull forward the refinancing of that That's why we don't include any kind of material impact from pull forward out of those maturity walls in 2026 guidance. that's why we don't include any kind of material impact from pull forward out of those maturity walls in 2026 guidance Eventually that debt comes, right? eventually that debt comes right What we've seen historically is that debt tends to get refinanced. what we've seen historically is that debt tends to get refinanced We typically don't see large corporates paying off debt at scale. we typically don't see large corporates paying off debt at scale We would expect those to benefit from those maturity walls as they come through. It's just very difficult for us to predict what quarter or even what year sometimes that issuance will come through. We know that if you've got a three-year kind of horizon, you'll capture all of it. We would expect those to benefit from those maturity walls as they come through. we would expect those to benefit from those maturity walls as they come through It's just very difficult for us to predict what quarter or even what year sometimes that issuance will come through. it's just very difficult for us to predict what quarter or even what year sometimes that issuance will come through We know that if you've got a three-year kind of horizon, you'll capture all of it. we know that if you've got a three-year kind of horizon you'll capture all of it

Speaker 2: Moving on to private markets revenue. Moving on to private markets revenue. moving on to private markets revenue S&P's focus there. It ended 2025 north of $600 million at the enterprise level. I believe in the first quarter, private credit was up 25% for ratings year-over-year. Like, how would you think about, like, S&P's, like, penetration today, I guess in ratings, but then I guess overall? What are the biggest challenges looking forward, keeping that competitive edge? Is it, like, data sourcing, client adoption, competition to sustaining kind of this growth rate as high level? S&P's focus there. s&p's focus there It ended 2025 north of $600 million at the enterprise level. it ended 2025 north of $600 million at the enterprise level I believe in the first quarter, private credit was up 25% for ratings year-over-year. i believe in the first quarter private credit was up 25% for ratings year-over-year Like, how would you think about, like, S&P's, like, penetration today, I guess in ratings, but then I guess overall? like how would you think about like s&p's like penetration today i guess in ratings but then i guess overall What are the biggest challenges looking forward, keeping that competitive edge? what are the biggest challenges looking forward keeping that competitive edge Is it, like, data sourcing, client adoption, competition to sustaining kind of this growth rate as high level? is it like data sourcing client adoption competition to sustaining kind of this growth rate as high level

Speaker 1: You're right. Our total private markets initiative across the entire organization was north of $600 million last year. We've said just within the Ratings business, it's hundreds of millions. You're right. you're right Our total private markets initiative across the entire organization was north of $600 million last year. our total private markets initiative across the entire organization was north of $600 million last year We've said just within the Ratings business, it's hundreds of millions. we've said just within the ratings business it's hundreds of millions To your point, growing 25% in the first quarter. It's been a very strong growth driver for us off of a decent base, right? This is not a sub-scale business for us by any means. Certainly smaller than the public markets of course, but a meaningful growth driver. I think as we've seen the evolution of that private market space really over the last four or five years, we've seen more debt that could be done in the public markets actually getting done in the private markets, and for the most part, we rate that, right? If it is debt that could be in the public markets, I think we've got a great chance at rating that debt. To your point, growing 25% in the first quarter. to your point growing 25% in the first quarter It's been a very strong growth driver for us off of a decent base, right? it's been a very strong growth driver for us off of a decent base right This is not a sub-scale business for us by any means. this is not a sub-scale business for us by any means Certainly smaller than the public markets of course, but a meaningful growth driver. certainly smaller than the public markets of course but a meaningful growth driver I think as we've seen the evolution of that private market space really over the last four or five years, we've seen more debt that could be done in the public markets actually getting done in the private markets, and for the most part, we rate that, right? i think as we've seen the evolution of that private market space really over the last four or five years we've seen more debt that could be done in the public markets actually getting done in the private markets and for the most part we rate that right If it is debt that could be in the public markets, I think we've got a great chance at rating that debt. if it is debt that could be in the public markets i think we've got a great chance at rating that debt As more focus has been spent on the potential risk in private markets, I think that actually generates more demand for ratings generally, but it also generates more demand for our ratings specifically because we're a large global institution. The brand recognition is very strong. Our methodologies are exactly the same in the public markets and the private markets, so there's no differentiation there. If you are used to trading public market bonds and you're used to seeing an S&P Global rating saying it's investment grade, it's that exact same methodology that gets deployed in the private markets. That instills a great deal of confidence in the investment community because they know exactly how to interpret an S&P Global rating. Importantly, that also means that our rating travels. As more focus has been spent on the potential risk in private markets, I think that actually generates more demand for ratings generally, but it also generates more demand for our ratings specifically because we're a large global institution. as more focus has been spent on the potential risk in private markets i think that actually generates more demand for ratings generally but it also generates more demand for our ratings specifically because we're a large global institution The brand recognition is very strong. Our methodologies are exactly the same in the public markets and the private markets, so there's no differentiation there. the brand recognition is very strong. our methodologies are exactly the same in the public markets and the private markets so there's no differentiation there If you are used to trading public market bonds and you're used to seeing an S&P Global rating saying it's investment grade, it's that exact same methodology that gets deployed in the private markets. if you are used to trading public market bonds and you're used to seeing an s&p global rating saying it's investment grade it's that exact same methodology that gets deployed in the private markets That instills a great deal of confidence in the investment community because they know exactly how to interpret an S&P Global rating. that instills a great deal of confidence in the investment community because they know exactly how to interpret an s&p global rating Importantly, that also means that our rating travels. importantly that also means that our rating travels If debt that's issued in the private markets and that issuer wants to refinance that in the public markets, they don't have to worry about a degradation in their rating, all else equal, right? Because our methodologies, the risk factors, the criteria, they're all the same. Our pricing is the same. Right? For us, I think over the long run, we're largely ambivalent over whether the debt gets issued in the private markets or the public markets. We think our opportunity to rate that debt and create value in the ecosystem is the same, and our economics are the same. If debt that's issued in the private markets and that issuer wants to refinance that in the public markets, they don't have to worry about a degradation in their rating, all else equal, right? if debt that's issued in the private markets and that issuer wants to refinance that in the public markets they don't have to worry about a degradation in their rating all else equal right Because our methodologies, the risk factors, the criteria, they're all the same. because our methodologies the risk factors the criteria they're all the same Our pricing is the same. our pricing is the same Right? right For us, I think over the long run, we're largely ambivalent over whether the debt gets issued in the private markets or the public markets. for us i think over the long run we're largely ambivalent over whether the debt gets issued in the private markets or the public markets We think our opportunity to rate that debt and create value in the ecosystem is the same, and our economics are the same. we think our opportunity to rate that debt and create value in the ecosystem is the same and our economics are the same

Speaker 2: I've gotten questions just about kind of the private credit headwinds that have been all over the headlines the last few months. Are you seeing any of those headwinds in your, more, I guess, the ratings private credit business versus this time a year ago? I've gotten questions just about kind of the private credit headwinds that have been all over the headlines the last few months. i've gotten questions just about kind of the private credit headwinds that have been all over the headlines the last few months Are you seeing any of those headwinds in your, more, I guess, the ratings private credit business versus this time a year ago? are you seeing any of those headwinds in your more i guess the ratings private credit business versus this time a year ago

Speaker 1: I think if you go back to some of the numbers that you pointed to, billed issuance in the first quarter grew 14% overall. Private markets grew 25%. It's still a much faster-growing piece of our business. I do think to the point that I was making earlier, as we've seen the ecosystem evolve and as we've seen the risk environment evolve a little bit, there is more demand for ratings generally, more demand for our ratings specifically. I think that likely continues, right? I don't know that there's necessarily anything that I would point to and say, "Hey, this is something that's structural that we're paying attention to. I think if you go back to some of the numbers that you pointed to, billed issuance in the first quarter grew 14% overall. i think if you go back to some of the numbers that you pointed to billed issuance in the first quarter grew 14% overall Private markets grew 25%. private markets grew 25% It's still a much faster-growing piece of our business. it's still a much faster-growing piece of our business I do think to the point that I was making earlier, as we've seen the ecosystem evolve and as we've seen the risk environment evolve a little bit, there is more demand for ratings generally, more demand for our ratings specifically. i do think to the point that i was making earlier as we've seen the ecosystem evolve and as we've seen the risk environment evolve a little bit there is more demand for ratings generally more demand for our ratings specifically I think that likely continues, right? i think that likely continues right I don't know that there's necessarily anything that I would point to and say, "Hey, this is something that's structural that we're paying attention to. i don't know that there's necessarily anything that i would point to and say "hey this is something that's structural that we're paying attention to

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. yeah

Speaker 1: Right? Like I mentioned before, I think in the long run, we're going to be fairly ambivalent whether it's public or private. Right? right Like I mentioned before, I think in the long run, we're going to be fairly ambivalent whether it's public or private. like i mentioned before i think in the long run we're going to be fairly ambivalent whether it's public or private

Speaker 2: Moving on to Indices business, maybe some would argue the crown jewel of S&P's businesses. Moving on to Indices business, maybe some would argue the crown jewel of S&P's businesses. moving on to indices business maybe some would argue the crown jewel of s&p's businesses

Speaker 1: It is a beautiful business. It is a beautiful business. it is a beautiful business

Speaker 2: Around a 74% operating margin, I believe, last quarter. Revenue's up 17%, mostly because of the asset-linked fee business. Around a 74% operating margin, I believe, last quarter. around a 74% operating margin i believe last quarter Revenue's up 17%, mostly because of the asset-linked fee business. revenue's up 17% mostly because of the asset-linked fee business When we look at the business, what are the most exciting investment opportunities in Indices today? How should we think about margins over the next few years? When we look at the business, what are the most exciting investment opportunities in Indices today? when we look at the business what are the most exciting investment opportunities in indices today How should we think about margins over the next few years? how should we think about margins over the next few years

Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I love the Index business so much is not only does it create a great deal of shareholder value, but it's also perfectly aligned with our customer interests. When you think about the way we've structured that business, to your point, the majority of the revenue is asset-linked fees, which means when our customers thrive, we thrive with them. When the markets go up, we grow, all else equal. When fund flows benefit our customers, they benefit us as well, right? The flip side of that's also true, right? When our customers feel pain, we share it with them, right? We're directly tied to the interests of those customers, which makes that a very resilient business model for us that grows quite well. As you know, markets tend to go up over time, right? That business tends to grow automatically. One of the reasons that I love the Index business so much is not only does it create a great deal of shareholder value, but it's also perfectly aligned with our customer interests. one of the reasons that i love the index business so much is not only does it create a great deal of shareholder value but it's also perfectly aligned with our customer interests When you think about the way we've structured that business, to your point, the majority of the revenue is asset-linked fees, which means when our customers thrive, we thrive with them. when you think about the way we've structured that business to your point the majority of the revenue is asset-linked fees which means when our customers thrive we thrive with them When the markets go up, we grow, all else equal. when the markets go up we grow all else equal When fund flows benefit our customers, they benefit us as well, right? when fund flows benefit our customers they benefit us as well right The flip side of that's also true, right? the flip side of that's also true right When our customers feel pain, we share it with them, right? when our customers feel pain we share it with them right We're directly tied to the interests of those customers, which makes that a very resilient business model for us that grows quite well. we're directly tied to the interests of those customers which makes that a very resilient business model for us that grows quite well As you know, markets tend to go up over time, right? as you know markets tend to go up over time right That business tends to grow automatically. that business tends to grow automatically We look at the investment opportunities, we've talked about some really exciting opportunities in digital wealth, in direct indexing, right, on the custom index and data subscription side, which has been growing double digits for us for the last several quarters. Like, these are all great opportunities for us to grow that business. There is a bit of a double-edged sword there because you've got the S&P 500. That's a phenomenal product. It's in an incredibly powerful ecosystem built around that, these liquid ecosystems. That piece of the business will continue to grow for a very long time, right? That's our view. We look at the investment opportunities, we've talked about some really exciting opportunities in digital wealth, in direct indexing, right, on the custom index and data subscription side, which has been growing double digits for us for the last several quarters. we look at the investment opportunities we've talked about some really exciting opportunities in digital wealth in direct indexing right on the custom index and data subscription side which has been growing double digits for us for the last several quarters Like, these are all great opportunities for us to grow that business. like these are all great opportunities for us to grow that business There is a bit of a double-edged sword there because you've got the S&P 500. there is a bit of a double-edged sword there because you've got the s&p 500 That's a phenomenal product. that's a phenomenal product It's in an incredibly powerful ecosystem built around that, these liquid ecosystems. it's in an incredibly powerful ecosystem built around that these liquid ecosystems That piece of the business will continue to grow for a very long time, right? that piece of the business will continue to grow for a very long time right That's our view. that's our view For a new product to come in and potentially accelerate the growth when you've got a big product like the S&P 500 ecosystem that has $15 trillion-$20 trillion of AUM behind it, you've got to launch a lot of new products in order to dramatically move the needle. There are some really exciting opportunities. For a new product to come in and potentially accelerate the growth when you've got a big product like the S&P 500 ecosystem that has $15 trillion-$20 trillion of AUM behind it, you've got to launch a lot of new products in order to dramatically move the needle. for a new product to come in and potentially accelerate the growth when you've got a big product like the s&p 500 ecosystem that has $15 trillion-$20 trillion of aum behind it you've got to launch a lot of new products in order to dramatically move the needle There are some really exciting opportunities. there are some really exciting opportunities

Speaker 2: Got it. The Energy division had some strategic repositioning that was announced last quarter. Just looking at that, what does the ideal revenue mix look like for this division over the next few years, and maybe some of the motivations behind the repositioning you did last quarter? Got it. got it The Energy division had some strategic repositioning that was announced last quarter. the energy division had some strategic repositioning that was announced last quarter Just looking at that, what does the ideal revenue mix look like for this division over the next few years, and maybe some of the motivations behind the repositioning you did last quarter? just looking at that what does the ideal revenue mix look like for this division over the next few years and maybe some of the motivations behind the repositioning you did last quarter

Speaker 1: Yeah. The Energy division is predominantly subscription as you know. Price assessments, energy and resources, data and insights. Upstream, the vast majority of that is going to be subscription revenue for us. I think that's always going to be the case. There are pockets of that business that are event driven. As you know, the first quarter of every year, we host CERAWeek, which is the world's premier energy conference. When the world wants to talk about energy, they do it at CERAWeek. You see that every first quarter in the advisory and transaction services revenue, right? You also have this great business around global trading services, which is somewhat event driven. That's the derivative instruments against our Platts benchmark prices, right? That can fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter based on what we're seeing in the markets. It's a great business. Yeah. yeah The Energy division is predominantly subscription as you know. the energy division is predominantly subscription as you know Price assessments, energy and resources, data and insights. price assessments energy and resources data and insights Upstream, the vast majority of that is going to be subscription revenue for us. upstream the vast majority of that is going to be subscription revenue for us I think that's always going to be the case. i think that's always going to be the case There are pockets of that business that are event driven. there are pockets of that business that are event driven As you know, the first quarter of every year, we host CERAWeek, which is the world's premier energy conference. as you know the first quarter of every year we host ceraweek which is the world's premier energy conference When the world wants to talk about energy, they do it at CERAWeek. when the world wants to talk about energy they do it at ceraweek You see that every first quarter in the advisory and transaction services revenue, right? you see that every first quarter in the advisory and transaction services revenue right You also have this great business around global trading services, which is somewhat event driven. you also have this great business around global trading services which is somewhat event driven That's the derivative instruments against our Platts benchmark prices, right? that's the derivative instruments against our platts benchmark prices right That can fluctuate from quarter- to- quarter based on what we're seeing in the markets. that can fluctuate from quarter- to- quarter based on what we're seeing in the markets It's a great business. it's a great business I think over time, that business will continue to be predominantly subscription, continue to have a really great market position. When we talk about upstream specifically, the divestiture that we announced of the upstream software business, that software piece is really something that's better owned by somebody like SLB who's buying that, right? Where they're scaling out an offering. That wasn't necessarily an area where we wanted to go in and say, "We're going to make a big investment to scale this out and make it a globally competitive software business." Really, the value that we see for our customers across the entire estate is in the truly proprietary data that's in the three-quarters of upstream that we're keeping. I think over time, that business will continue to be predominantly subscription, continue to have a really great market position. i think over time that business will continue to be predominantly subscription continue to have a really great market position When we talk about upstream specifically, the divestiture that we announced of the upstream software business, that software piece is really something that's better owned by somebody like SLB who's buying that, right? when we talk about upstream specifically the divestiture that we announced of the upstream software business that software piece is really something that's better owned by somebody like slb who's buying that right Where they're scaling out an offering. where they're scaling out an offering That wasn't necessarily an area where we wanted to go in and say, "We're going to make a big investment to scale this out and make it a globally competitive software business." Really, the value that we see for our customers across the entire estate is in the truly proprietary data that's in the three-quarters of upstream that we're keeping. that wasn't necessarily an area where we wanted to go in and say "we're going to make a big investment to scale this out and make it a globally competitive software business." really the value that we see for our customers across the entire estate is in the truly proprietary data that's in the three-quarters of upstream that we're keeping

Speaker 2: I guess the larger kind of strategic action that you've been taking and planning for the last year or so was the mobility spin, effective July 1st, and the $2 billion of debt placed at Mobility Global. I was just wondering, how should investors think about the capital strategy at S&P? Does the bias shift towards buybacks with the stock price at these levels? More tuck-in M&A, maybe. I was thinking like kind of unique data sets and things like that, or de-leveraging at these levels. I guess the larger kind of strategic action that you've been taking and planning for the last year or so was the mobility spin, effective July 1st, and the $2 billion of debt placed at Mobility Global. i guess the larger kind of strategic action that you've been taking and planning for the last year or so was the mobility spin effective july 1st and the $2 billion of debt placed at mobility global I was just wondering, how should investors think about the capital strategy at S&P? i was just wondering how should investors think about the capital strategy at s&p Does the bias shift towards buybacks with the stock price at these levels? does the bias shift towards buybacks with the stock price at these levels More tuck-in M&A, maybe. more tuck-in m&a maybe I was thinking like kind of unique data sets and things like that, or de-leveraging at these levels. i was thinking like kind of unique data sets and things like that or de-leveraging at these levels

Speaker 1: Yeah. With the completion of the mobility spin, which we expect to take place on July 1st, you're right, we've raised $2 billion of debt financing that gets dividended out to S&P Global. We've said publicly the intended use of proceeds there is share repurchases and some debt reduction as well. We want to make sure that the spin's leverage neutral for us. We're very comfortable with where we are in the balance sheet. We've managed that very well over time. I think from a capital allocation standpoint, we have a publicly stated target of returning at least 85% of free cash flow every year to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. With the proceeds from mobility, we're raising that in 2026 to 100%. Yeah. yeah With the completion of the mobility spin, which we expect to take place on July 1st, you're right, we've raised $2 billion of debt financing that gets dividended out to S&P Global. with the completion of the mobility spin which we expect to take place on july 1st you're right we've raised $2 billion of debt financing that gets dividended out to s&p global We've said publicly the intended use of proceeds there is share repurchases and some debt reduction as well. we've said publicly the intended use of proceeds there is share repurchases and some debt reduction as well We want to make sure that the spin's leverage neutral for us. we want to make sure that the spin's leverage neutral for us We're very comfortable with where we are in the balance sheet. we're very comfortable with where we are in the balance sheet We've managed that very well over time. we've managed that very well over time I think from a capital allocation standpoint, we have a publicly stated target of returning at least 85% of free cash flow every year to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. i think from a capital allocation standpoint we have a publicly stated target of returning at least 85% of free cash flow every year to shareholders through dividends and buybacks With the proceeds from mobility, we're raising that in 2026 to 100%. with the proceeds from mobility we're raising that in 2026 to 100% Right. That's going to be roughly $4.5 Billion of share repurchases this year. That's really the focus, particularly given where the valuation is right now. The return that we get on buying back stock, I think, is very high, and that increases or elevates, rather, the bar that we would need to clear, even for something like tuck-in M&A. We've said publicly there's no appetite for anything transformational, and even the appetite for tuck-ins has diminished a little bit, just given the bar that they'd have to clear, given where the share price is. Right. right That's going to be roughly $4.5 Billion of share repurchases this year. that's going to be roughly $4.5 billion of share repurchases this year That's really the focus, particularly given where the valuation is right now. that's really the focus particularly given where the valuation is right now The return that we get on buying back stock, I think, is very high, and that increases or elevates, rather, the bar that we would need to clear, even for something like tuck-in M&A. the return that we get on buying back stock i think is very high and that increases or elevates rather the bar that we would need to clear even for something like tuck-in m&a We've said publicly there's no appetite for anything transformational, and even the appetite for tuck-ins has diminished a little bit, just given the bar that they'd have to clear, given where the share price is. we've said publicly there's no appetite for anything transformational and even the appetite for tuck-ins has diminished a little bit just given the bar that they'd have to clear given where the share price is

Speaker 2: At your Investor Day, the medium-term target's 7%-9% organic constant currency growth, annual margin expansion of 50-75 basis points. Given the strong 1Q, right. 9% organic growth and 100 basis points of margin expansion. Looking at this year, I guess what would need to go wrong to track towards the low end of those ranges, and I guess where do you see the most upside in the business this year, but also over the next two to three years? At your Investor Day, the medium-term target's 7%-9% organic constant currency growth, annual margin expansion of 50-75 basis points. at your investor day the medium-term target's 7%-9% organic constant currency growth annual margin expansion of 50-75 basis points Given the strong 1Q, right. 9% organic growth and 100 basis points of margin expansion. given the strong 1q right 9% organic growth and 100 basis points of margin expansion Looking at this year, I guess what would need to go wrong to track towards the low end of those ranges, and I guess where do you see the most upside in the business this year, but also over the next two to three years? looking at this year i guess what would need to go wrong to track towards the low end of those ranges and i guess where do you see the most upside in the business this year but also over the next two to three years

Speaker 1: This is the kind of question that we typically get at the end of almost every meeting we have, right. Like, what's going to drive upside? What's going to drive potential downside? For us, the answer is always going to be the market-driven businesses, because they're the hardest to predict, and they're the ones where you can see fluctuation and have seen that historically, right. That's Ratings and Indices primarily. In periods where we see very strong issuance, you're going to see potential upside even to the targets we gave out at Investor Day. In periods where you see dramatic outperformance in an index like the S&P 500, that'll benefit us as well, and the flip side to that's also true. This is the kind of question that we typically get at the end of almost every meeting we have, right. this is the kind of question that we typically get at the end of almost every meeting we have right Like, what's going to drive upside? like what's going to drive upside What's going to drive potential downside? what's going to drive potential downside For us, the answer is always going to be the market-driven businesses, because they're the hardest to predict, and they're the ones where you can see fluctuation and have seen that historically, right. for us the answer is always going to be the market-driven businesses because they're the hardest to predict and they're the ones where you can see fluctuation and have seen that historically right That's Ratings and Indices primarily. that's ratings and indices primarily In periods where we see very strong issuance, you're going to see potential upside even to the targets we gave out at Investor Day. in periods where we see very strong issuance you're going to see potential upside even to the targets we gave out at investor day In periods where you see dramatic outperformance in an index like the S&P 500, that'll benefit us as well, and the flip side to that's also true. in periods where you see dramatic outperformance in an index like the s&p 500 that'll benefit us as well and the flip side to that's also true

Speaker 2: Okay. I think that's it. Thanks, Mark. Okay. okay I think that's it. i think that's it Thanks, Mark. thanks mark

Speaker 1: You bet. You bet. you bet

Speaker 2: Really appreciate it. Really appreciate it. really appreciate it

Speaker 1: Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Sean. thank you sean