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spk04: Good day everyone and welcome to the Moody's Corporation Third Quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded and that all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the request of the company we will open the conference up for question and answers following the presentation. I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk15: Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'm Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. This morning Moody's released its results for the Third Quarter 2024 as well as our revised outlook for select metrics for full year 2024. The earnings press release and the presentation to accompany this teleconference are both available on our website at .Moody's.com. During this call we will also be presenting non-GAAP or adjusted figures. Please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings press release file this morning for conciliations between all adjusted measures referenced during this call in U.S. GAAP. I call your attention to the safe harbor language which can be found towards the end of our earnings release. Today's remarks may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In accordance with the Act I also direct your attention to the management's discussion and analysis section and the risk factors discussed in our annual report on Form 10K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and in other SEC filings made by the company which are available on our website and on the SEC's website. These together with the safe harbor statement set forth important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such forward-looking statements. I'd also like to point out that members of the media may be on the call this morning in a listen-only mode. I'll now turn the call over to Rob.
spk22: Thanks, Shivani. Good morning or good afternoon. Thanks everybody for joining today's call. I'm really looking forward to discussing our third quarter results with you. And we again delivered some impressive results with a 23% increase in revenue, an adjusted operating margin of approximately 48% and 32% growth and adjusted diluted EPS. And one of the key drivers of these great results was our rating business with a remarkable 41% increase in revenue versus the prior year period. September was a particularly strong month for issuance. It included a new record for weekly investment grade activity with over 85 billion issued across 61 deals in the first week of September. Strength in first time and infrequent issuers drove transactional revenue up 70% for the quarter and that outpaced global rated issuance growth of 51%. And this growth combined with ongoing cost discipline delivered over 600 basis points in adjusted operating margin expansion compared to last year. So this year has obviously been a very strong issuance environment. In fact, it's likely to be the second strongest on record. And amidst that strength, we see both cyclical and secular tailwinds that are going to drive future growth. And that includes refunding walls, M&A, and other market trends that give us confidence in the medium term outlook for our ratings business. In MA, we delivered 7% overall revenue growth and 9% growth for both ARR and recurring revenue, both of which exclude one-time revenue that we're intentionally de-emphasizing. -to-date customer attention is at 93% and our adjusted operating margin for the quarter was in line with our expectations at 30.3%. Now our decision solutions line of business, and that is banking, insurance, and KYC, that continues to lead MA with almost $1.4 billion of ARR and that's growing at 12%. And last month, we marked the third anniversary of our RMS acquisition. So I'm going to spend a few minutes on today's call recapping our progress and performance there. When I finish, I'll turn it over to Noemi to provide more color on our numbers, including raises to several of our full-year guidance metrics, including our outlook for adjusted diluted EPS. But before I move to MIS, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge our third consecutive number one ranking in the Chartist RiskTech 100. We're number one in 12 categories and that's a testament to the breadth and depth of our solutions, to the strength of our competitive positioning, and to the trust that our customers place in us. So a big shout out to all my colleagues who contributed to this fantastic recognition. Now, moving to ratings. As I mentioned, we feel really good about the durable drivers of MIS growth as we look into the future and those are both cyclical and structural. So looking at the market drivers, as you all know very well, the refunding walls are a key source of built-in growth. And last week, our analytical teams published their analytical report on the non-financial corporate refi walls in both the US and the MEA. And that data shows an 11% growth in the upcoming four-year maturity walls, which amount to almost $5 trillion and that represents a record high. Now, the majority of this growth is actually coming from spec-grade issuers where for the first time, forward maturity walls exceeded $2 trillion and that's up 19% from our last study. That's particularly true for the US market where forward maturities are up 17% and spec-grade refi walls are up approximately 27% for the upcoming four years. And that bodes very well for future issuance and as I think many of you know, spec-grade is obviously a positive to our revenue mix. Now, for any of you that want to dive deeper and I'm sure there are many on this call, just check out the four reports that we've made available on our website at mooties.com or contact our IR team. Now, another significant historical driver of ratings revenue growth is M&A. And activity in recent years has been well below historical levels as you can see on this chart. But we don't see that subdued level as sustainable given the needs for private equity sponsors to both exit as well as deploy huge amounts of capital along with a more benign rate environment and improve macroeconomic conditions. Now, along with these market factors, there are also some structural trends that we believe will drive both credit supply and the need for independent third party ratings and assessments. The first is private credit. That's been a consistent theme on our recent calls. And this sector is experiencing some significant growth. We expect that to continue. Last week we published estimates that private credit assets under management will reach up to $3 trillion by 2028. And as this market grows, the need for transparency, data, and rigorous independent credit assessment is likely to become more important than ever. And as Apollo highlighted in their recent investor day, rating agencies have an important role to play in this ecosystem. I completely agree with that. And we're gearing up to ensure that we meet the needs of this market. Now, the second is sustainable and transition finance. And to put this opportunity into context, currently, countries and companies that have net zero commitments that cover something like 93% of global GDP. And our analysts estimate that in order to meet these targets, global clean energy investment needs are going to rise by two and a half times by 2030 to around $4.5 trillion annually. So that means huge amounts of debt capital are going to be raised. And there's going to be increasing demand to understand how these investments are translating to organizations' progress on their decarbonization efforts. So we're investing to provide the insights, the analysis, and the products to meet this demand. Now, the third growth driver is emerging in domestic debt markets. And many of you have heard me say before that domestic debt market issuers are the cross-border issuers of tomorrow. And while smaller than developed economies, emerging market countries typically average higher economic growth rates than more developed markets. So we've been investing to build out our footprint and market leadership across Asia, Africa, and Latin America so that we are poised to capitalize on this growth. Finally, we're positioning our ratings business for a world of digital finance, and that includes blockchain and tokenization. And while the issuance volumes are relatively modest at present, there are a number of public and private sector initiatives and pilots in this space. And we want our ratings to play just as important a role in a digital issuance world as they do in today's analog world. So as I said, a number of factors that give us confidence about our growth both in the near term and over the medium term for MIS. Now as I mentioned earlier, we've just hit the third anniversary of our RMS acquisition. So I thought it made sense to take stock of our progress on today's call. And some of you may remember the financial profile of RMS before we acquired it. Low single digit revenue growth, EBITDA margins in the high teens. And it was also early in its second cloud platform launch. And our investment thesis at the time was twofold. First, we thought there was much more that we could do for the insurance industry as we expanded our TAM to the property and casualty sector. And second, we believe that RMS's really rich climate and cap modeling capabilities would be increasingly important to a wide range of finance and risk applications and also for a broader range of customers. We also thought that Moody's represented a natural home for RMS after years of ownership by DMGT. So three years later, how have we done? Well, first, RMS is now fully integrated into our insurance solutions business. Its growth has improved significantly over the last three years and now is growing inline with the mid teens ARR growth of our broader insurance business. It's also now operating at MA like margins. Since we acquired RMS, we've also grown the number of customers on the cloud based intelligent risk platform fivefold to over 250. And these customers are using our next generation of high definition models, enabling them to get more granular insights, leveraging the power of cloud computing and also offering a great upsell pathway and competitive differentiator. Now, as part of Moody's RMS has also expanded the ways that it partners with the insurance industry. That includes last year's partnership with NASDAQ, where we're hosting third party and in-house models on the IRP, our creation of a cyber industry steering group with the largest players in the cyber insurance market to develop tools to help this market grow. And our recent collaboration with Lloyd's to build a greenhouse gas emission platform for the Lloyd's insurance market. And three years later, together with Moody's RMS has solidified its blue chip customer base with all 10 of the top 10 global reinsurance brokers, nine of the top 10 commercial lines insurers and 28 of the top 30 global reinsurers. That really is market validation of RMS as the gold standard in the industry. We continue to invest to extend the solutions that we deliver for the insurance sector and beyond. And in early September, we announced the acquisition of Predacat to expand into casualty analytics. And that's an area of growing interest for insurers. And as I've talked about in past calls, we've leveraged RMS platform technology and engineering teams across all of Moody's analytics. And we've integrated their climate capabilities into solutions for banks and corporates. So we feel really good about the progress with RMS. And earlier this year, we merged RMS and our legacy life business into a broader Moody's insurance solutions unit. So I feel even more confident about how this positions us for the future, both across the insurance industry, but also with respect to our ability to serve the needs of organizations to better understand physical risks from extreme weather and a changing climate. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Amy to provide more details on our numbers.
spk14: Thank you, Rob. And good morning, everyone. Q3 was a record quarter, the highest third quarter revenue performance in Moody's history with strong growth across revenue and profitability metrics, driving 32% adjusted diluted EPS growth and a free cash flow conversion rate of over 100% of net income. We delivered $1.8 billion of revenue, a 23% increase compared to last year with Moody's ratings growing transactional revenue by 70%, well above the 51% growth in global issuance. And that truly demonstrates the impressive strength of our ratings franchise. We executed very well across all sectors with the most notable contributions from corporate finance. Investment grade transaction revenue growth of 137% exceeded 84% growth in issuance, and that was driven by sustained levels of infrequent issuer activity as well as large jumbo deals over the summer. In addition, leverage finance transaction revenue grew 67%, that's approximately $80 million, supported by the favorable spread environment. Collectively, these drove the largest third quarter for corporate finance revenue on record. The level of infrequent issuance activity, which was the strongest in over a decade, also drove a favorable revenue mix in FIG, where transaction revenue grew 77%, well above issuance growth of 18%. Turning to Moody's analytics, revenue grew 7%, including one point of growth from FX. Recurring revenue, which is now 95% of the segment revenue, grew 9%, which was in line with our AR growth. As Rob mentioned earlier, our year to date retention rate is 93%, illustrating the stickiness of our solution. Consistent with recent quarters, revenue growth was driven by recurring revenue in decision solutions, which is over 40% of our total revenue, which, as Rob said, delivered 12% year on year AR growth. Let me provide some color on each of the main businesses in this segment. Banking revenue grew 3%. What's happening here is we have the effect of two opposite dynamics. On the one hand, we had double digit decline in low margin transactional revenue and flat growth in on-prem sales year over year. On the other hand, we continue to invest in our banking platform and focus our sales efforts to drive recurring revenue growth, which was 10% in Q3, aligned with AR growth, and aligned with the first half of 24. We observed similar trends in our insurance business, where revenue grew 7%, driven by recurring revenue growth of 11%, and our insurance AR grew 13%. KYC delivered 19% recurring revenue growth. We've continued to deliver higher levels of growth from the non-financial corporate and government sectors, and we're actively investing to scale and sustain this level of growth as we expand our capabilities to deliver integrated solutions for a number of key customer workflows, including compliance, supply chain, and trade credit. Outside of decision solutions, our research and insights and data and information businesses grew reported revenue by 6% and 7%, respectively, which is broadly in line with AR growth. Data and information AR growth was a bit lower this quarter at 8%, as a couple of large federal government contracts, which contributed to higher growth in 2023, were renewed at a lower value this quarter. Overall, it was an exceptionally strong quarter. MIS revenue performance translated into a 320 basis point improvement in the total company adjusted operating margin, a 32% growth in adjusted diluted EPS, and over 100% of net income to free cash flow conversion near to date. MIS achieved .6% adjusted operating margin, and that includes the adjustments to reflect the impact of increased incentive compensation of rules, while MA delivered .3% adjusted operating margin, a sequential improvement of 180 bits from Q2. With a record third quarter and continued strength in the market, we're updating guidance to our four-year ratings revenue underpinned by revised global issuance growth assumptions for the four-year across all asset classes, as you can see on this slide. We expect issuance will continue to be supported by opportunistic activity in the fourth quarter, as issuers take advantage of lower rates, high spreads, and strong investor demand. We also expect sustained levels of activity within first-time mandates, which we forecast will revert close to pre-pandemic levels. Our revised guidance of mid-30s percentage range issuance growth for the four-year now implied a mid-single digit decline in global issuance for the fourth quarter, which is an improvement from an expected decline in the mid-teens back in July. Now with that backdrop, we're raising our guidance for MIS revenue growth to high 20 percentage range, which at the higher end of the range would translate into an increase in Q4 ratings revenue expectation versus prior guidance. We are raising MIS adjusted operating margin to a range of 59 to 60 percent, up 100 basis points from prior guidance. The upward revision to our guidance range accounts for the adjustment to our incentive compensation, as well what's included in the four-year range is approximately 50 basis points of head weight from the settlement of a regulatory matter, which we recorded and close in Q2. For MA, we're maintaining our guidance across all metrics. Taking all this into consideration, we are now expecting Moody's revenue to grow in the high teens percentage range, expenses to increase by approximately 10 percent, and adjusted operating margin in the range of 47 to 48 percent. Consistent with last year, the revised expense outlook primarily reflects increases to incentive compensation, the majority of which will be in MIS as a result of the upward revisions to the four-year ratings revenue outlook. We are also updating our free cash flow guidance to approximately 2.3 billion dollars, and in addition, we are increasing and lowering our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range to $11.90 to $12.10, an 80 cent increase at the midpoint, and a growth of approximately 21 percent versus the prior year. Before we go into Q&A, I want to say I'm very proud of our team's performance this quarter, and Rob and I cannot thank our colleagues enough for their hard work and dedication. That concludes our prepared remarks, and operator, will you please open the line for Q&A.
spk04: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please dial star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset and make sure your mute function is turned off so that your signal reaches our equipment. We will ask that you please limit yourself to one question. You will have a chance to rejoin the queue for a follow-up. Again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question comes from Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk12: Thanks so much. I wanted to pick up on the data and information ARR slowdown from last quarter. I think, Noemi, you mentioned the government contracts renewing at a lower value. Was this a reduction in number of products that were being purchased, or was it pricing or something else, and maybe just what percentage of revenues related to government? Was this federal government, and are there any more renewals with government coming up? Thanks.
spk14: Thanks. Actually, this is something we've kind of signaled in the last earnings call where we had some large federal government contracts up for renewal in the second half of the year. So what you saw here in data and information, we had a lower renewal with one of our large federal government contracts. That's associated pretty much with their spending patterns. As you know, we're in election year, so they are looking at their overall contract space, and we expect to see some renewals being a little bit more challenged this year, but we've accounted for those in the third quarter, and we don't expect any largest one affecting the remainder of the year. In addition to that, in data and information, the thing that affected a bit the ARR growth this quarter is the transition of some of our customers into the MSCI, and we also signaled that earlier in July when we were on this call, some of our customers are transitioning and sourcing their sustainability content directly from MSCI, so that's affected a bit the pipeline and the existing renewals of those customers as well.
spk03: Thanks.
spk04: Your next question comes from a line of Ashish Sabhadra from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
spk17: Thanks for taking my question. Rob, thanks for flagging both the near and midterm secular and cyclical ailments for issuance, but it was also, as you mentioned, the second strongest issuance year. So what we want to understand is can these near-term issuance ailments help offset the headwinds from tougher comps and the forward as well as the revenue payments from the infrequent issuance, or do we need to normalize before we can start to grow off those levels?
spk22: Thanks. Ashish, are we talking about 4Q? Are you talking, are you starting to look towards 2025?
spk17: More 2025. Thanks.
spk22: All right. So maybe what I'll do here, Ashish, is just kind of tackle early, very early, you know, too early thoughts on 2025 and, you know, maybe what some of the headwinds and tailwinds might be. And I guess, you know, I have to do the health warning of, you know, we're not introducing guidance for fiscal 25 yet. We'll do that on the next earnings call. So I'll just talk about kind of what we know now. Certainly, we don't know exactly how the year is going to finish up. But I would say that I think the balance of tailwinds to headwinds for issuance for next year is probably in favor of the tailwinds. So we all know that this has been a huge issuance year. Yes, there has been some pull forward. I imagine we'll talk about that later on the call. This is probably, you know, you heard me say, probably going to be the second biggest year for issuance on record. So it does create some tough comps for sure. And how the year end finishes up definitely factors into that. But I would say that we've got some very constructive issuance conditions absent, of course, exogenous events that can create uncertainty and volatility. But but that should support issuance. So let's take through what those are first. The spec rate default rate has actually been declining, and we expect that to climb further into next year. That means that spreads should remain tight. They are very, very tight right now. Spreads are near their all time lows. The expectation of lower interest rates and combine that with tight spreads. That's going to give a very, I think, favorable environment for new issuance and also for some refi. Then we've got the refunding walls that, you know, I talked about the nearly five billion over the next four years, but in particular, the real strength around and growth in the spec grade maturity walls. M&A has picked up, I would say, kind of modestly this year versus the last two years, but I certainly would expect that recovery to continue into 2025. I mentioned that there's just there's a more and more of a need for both sponsors to exit, but also sponsors to put a lot of dry powder to work. And that is going to happen at some point. And then we've got some of those medium term tailwinds. And again, I'm sure I'll get asked about private credit and transition finance. Both of those are going to be, I think, catalyst for demand for ratings and credit assessment, but also for issuance of debt as we transition to a cleaner energy economy. Now, thinking about the headwinds for a moment, I would say the market is still very data dependent. So you've got macroeconomic factors, whether it's jobs or inflation or or growth that could signal either a harder landing or softer landing or higher for longer. That could impact issuance. And we've seen a little bit of that throughout the year. It's you know, we've got an election coming up in a few weeks and, you know, we'll see what that means for, you know, the antitrust environment and whether that is favorable or not favorable for M&A. And of course, geopolitical events. You know, we've basically got two wars going on around the world. I think a third event would be, you know, the global economy has been surprisingly resilient so far, but I think that could really be tested if there was something, another shoe to drop. And when I talk to companies, they all say that geopolitical events are kind of at the top of their risk register. So hopefully that gives you a sense. But like I said, on balance, I think modestly skewed to the positive from where we sit right now in terms of
spk03: issuance for the year.
spk17: That's great, Kulak. Thanks,
spk03: Bob. Your next question comes from a line of
spk04: Scott Wurzel from Wolf Research. Your line is open.
spk02: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to stick on the topic of issuance here. Rob, maybe wondering if you can share just where we are with debt velocity right now. Obviously, I know it's a strong corner for issuance, but just on the balance of things where we are with debt velocity and how you're thinking about that. Thanks.
spk22: Yeah, so obviously, debt velocity has generally been improving just given the strength of the, you know, the issuance environment. And so it's interesting if you actually go back and look at, you know, kind of take a historical look at issuance. So this year, we're going to be, you know, probably just under six trillion. And if you go back to say 2012, and I know a CAGR is not a perfect thing to do in this, you know, in this situation, but, you know, you'd have a CAGR of something like three and a half percent in terms of the growth of issuance from 2012. I understand it's not linear, but, you know, growing a little bit more than GDP growth. But if you look at the stock, the total stock of non-financial corporate debt outstanding, that's grown by something more like seven percent over that period of time. So, you know, it's interesting that the debt that means, therefore, that debt velocity has been below kind of the historical averages just because there's so much more debt outstanding. And so we've gotten close to that, closer to that, you know, historical average. You know, we look at that as about 14 percent. We look at, you know, non-financial corporate debt. Other people look at look at it different ways. We're still underneath that, probably something like 12 percent for fiscal 24. But I think that indicates, you know, just where we are with debt velocity still below historical, you know, historical averages to me actually indicates that that's actually a tailwind when you think about the, you know, the potential for issuance growth in the future.
spk03: Great, very helpful. Thank you.
spk04: Your next question comes from a line of Andrew Nicholas from William Blair. Your line is open.
spk08: Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask a question on research and insights. I think last quarter you talked about your expectation that ARR growth would accelerate in the back half of the year. I think you cited the research assistant tool and some of the release of some private credit oriented products supporting that. Doesn't look like we saw that in the third quarter. I'm just wondering if there's anything else to unpack in that line particularly and maybe that that's an excuse to ask about the broader monetization of the gen AI related tools so far this year. Thank you.
spk14: Yeah, I'm happy to take that. So research and insight for the third quarter grew 6 percent ARR, which is aligned with the first half. It's also a little lower than the 9 percent we saw prior to the attrition events that we've talked about in the previous calls. So there continues to be a bit of pressure induced by the stress in the broader banking sector. But as you said, we're investing in research assistant. We have a strong pipeline of research assistant as we are entering the largest quarter of the year. We also have very interesting usage stats and customer satisfaction scores for research assistant that are very encouraging. Actually, the satisfaction the NPS score for credit view users who are using research assistant significantly higher than the credit users who aren't using it. So that thing that's a very strong driver for pipeline growth. We continue to see a little bit longer than sales cycle that we had expected during the year with we have very rapid adoption with the early adopters and the smaller asset management players. But when it comes to large financial institutions, the adoption of GNI capabilities has maybe been a little slower than we had expected at the beginning of the year, simply because they're going through their own GNI utilization framework and governance. So to your point, there's a lot of pipeline and we're working very hard to close that in the fourth quarter. And I think on the overall MA and ARR outlook for the four year, we also have some interesting pipeline growth in KYC, which we expect would contribute to continue growth in the fourth quarter and beyond.
spk22: And Noemi, I think we had expected some acceleration in the second half of the year. I think we still expect to continue to see some modest acceleration, but we'll probably see ARR in the lower end of high single digit growth rather than our previous expectation of at the higher end of high single digit growth for the fourth quarter, just based
spk03: on some of the things that Noemi just talked about. And Rob, research and insights or MA as a whole, just to be clear? Well, I was specifically referring to research and insights in that case. Okay, understood. Thank you.
spk04: Your next question comes from a line of men of Patnick from Berkeley's. Your line is open.
spk19: Thank you. Just to stick on MA, the revenue versus ARR growth keeps widening. So I was just hoping you could just help level set why that is today. And then thinking about how that flows into 2025 would be helpful as well.
spk14: Yeah. So on the revenue, we have focused on recurring revenue. If you look at recurring revenue for decision solutions, research and insights and data and information, it's very close moving closely to the ARR growth. So let me unpack a little bit the revenue growth dynamic for Q3 and the different components of it. Revenue grew 7% on a reported basis in Q3. Recurring revenue, which is 95% of the total revenue in the quarter grew 9%, which is very much in line with the pace of ARR. What's going on there is you have our training and other services revenue that are declining double digits. And our revenue for multi-year on-prem software remains stable, but fluctuates throughout the year based on timing of renewals. So there's a couple of dynamics that I want to call out that are beyond the 9% growth in recurring revenue that should help tie that back to the ARR growth in the longer term profile of the business. If you look at banking, recurring revenue, banking and insurance and KYC workflows, what we call decision solutions grew 13% in the third quarter. And that's pretty much aligned with what we saw in the first half of the year. There's 19% growth in our KYC solution. And banking and insurance grew about 10 and 11% recurring, which is again very much aligned with ARR. On the research and insight, again, we saw that's about 30% of our business, we saw recurring revenue growth of 6% in the third quarter. That's actually improved slightly from the 4% we saw in the first half. We've talked about the nutrition events and some of the pressure with asset managers and banks previously. So that's been a bit of a headwind to growth in this business since this year. But again, the recurring revenue growth is very much aligned with ARR. And on data and information revenue, we grew 7% in the third quarter. I talked about the effects of some of the large renewals with our federal government contract that's now behind us. And we have very significant prospects in the pipeline that should get that growth rate a little bit higher up in the upcoming quarters. So hopefully that gives you a sense of the revenue growth dynamics in the third quarter. It's again very much broadly aligned with the first half, except for decision solution where we had a bit of a tough comp and the large renewals of the government contract that renewed at a low rate this year.
spk22: Yeah, no, I mean, maybe, I mean, you touched on it just the, you know, there's the transactional one-time revenue and recurring revenue and actually for fiscal 23, actually that one-time revenue actually grew. And this year, obviously, we're seeing a decline. So that would contribute to mount up some of what you might think
spk03: of as a little bit of a widening. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line
spk04: of Olin Lau from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
spk20: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. And I know we have touched on private credit in the past, but the narrative of public-private market convergence is expanding. And Rob, you talked about Apollo Investor Day, and I think one idea they threw out was so-called standardized credit ratings. So could you please talk about how much appetite for investment-grade issuers to raise debt directly from these PE firms and bypass the rating process done by Moody's? Or the credit rating is so valuable that they will still need it. Thanks.
spk22: Yeah, Olin, thanks. So, you know, I've had a lot of engagement with many of the most senior players in this market over the last, I don't know, call it, you know, over the course of this year. And, you know, while I think, you know, maybe two years ago, we kind of talked about this defensively, there's a real opportunity here and a real need. There's a real need for independent third-party credit assessment, whether it's through ratings or other tools. And it's interesting because when we engage with the big players, like the Apollos and the Blackstones, one of the things that we hear, and again, I referenced, if you look at their investor day, they talk about credit rating agencies being an important part of the ecosystem because we have the ability to provide the data, the analytics, and the ratings that will help people understand the comparability of whether it's public or private credit. And, you know, as they are, you know, looking at the growth of that market, and if you start to think about private credit, not just as leveraged direct lending, but you start to think about, oh, and you mentioned investment grade, in many cases, asset-backed finance, the numbers are much bigger than the three trillion that I talked about. But there is going to be, I believe, a need for ratings and third-party credit assessment. And so we have a great dialogue, actually, with many of the largest players in the market about ways that we can serve those needs. So for instance, Owen, we've got a lot of growth in our ratings of BDCs and credit estimates for the exposures in the BDCs. I think we probably have the leading coverage of BDCs in the market. That's contributing to the growth in our FIG franchise. We've got a growing pipeline of fund finance ratings, whether it's feeder fund, credit link notes, sublines, all of that. There's a lot of demand for that and a lot of demand for ratings. So again, you're going to see that come through the FIG line in ratings. And then all the asset-backed finance, because remember, Owen, where's a lot of that going to? A lot of that is going and sitting on insurance balance sheets, and those insurers are rating sensitive. So as this market grows, I think ratings are going to play a really key role. And I think you're going to see, actually, a lot of that revenue come through the ratings business. So hopefully that gives you a sense of why we feel optimistic about this. And Owen, the last thing I would say is, look, the key for us is to make sure we understand where's the flow coming from. Do we have the methodologies in place, rigorous methodologies so that we can rate this stuff? Do we have the people, the resources to be able to do this and play that role in the market?
spk03: Thanks a lot for the comment, Rob. Your next question comes
spk04: from a line of Fiza Aoui from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
spk13: Yes. Hi. Thank you so much. So I wanted to ask about Moody's Analytics again, just in context of your medium-term targets. I know you've referred to them previously as aspirational. I'm curious if you have an update on that, just given that there has been a little bit of deceleration this year. Maybe if you could highlight what are some of the areas that you're most excited about, and if you expect an acceleration as we think about, you know, 25 and beyond.
spk22: Yeah. Hey, thanks. Great question. So I think, you know, absolutely a real catalyst, you know, we would update those medium-term targets annually. And so I think we'd be prepared to talk about the targets in the February earnings call. But maybe just to give you a sense of, you know, we've talked about those targets serving as kind of our north star to drive, you know, innovation, product development. Let me maybe talk to you about where I think the big opportunities are that we're going after to be able to, you know, achieve those medium-term targets. So I would say it's really around kind of a land and an expand strategy. So if you think about, we've got relationships with several thousand banks, probably close to a thousand insurers. We have a really good customer footprint in financial services, and we have an opportunity to do more for those customers. So that is really an expand strategy in financial services. You know, if you look at the number of products and solutions that, you know, many of the customers take, there's still a big opportunity for us to do more for them. We've actually provided that, you know, some of that data on prior calls when we've done the spotlight on insurance and banking. And then with corporates, it's really an expand, really a land strategy. And so I think Noemi just touched on it briefly, but, you know, we've got one of the world's largest databases on companies, and that then supports a range of interconnected use cases, including things like trade credit, you know, customer onboarding and monitoring and supplier risk. And so we see a pretty big opportunity to go after that, and that means probably a lot more new logos in the corporate space and a lot more cross-sell and upsell in the, you know, in the financial services space. So we've still got some things to do to be able to better enable the cross-sell and to be able, you know, we talked about earlier this year about the investments we're making and building out that platform to serve corporates. But, you know, those are the things we're doing to try to get after
spk03: those medium-term targets. Thanks, Rob. Your next question
spk04: comes from a line of David Moe Madden from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
spk09: Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. Rob, could you just give us an updated view on the pull forward that has taken place this year and in 3Q specifically, and if that's lowered your expectations for issuance growth at all in 2025?
spk22: Yeah, hey, first of all, welcome to the call. It's good to have you on. So it's actually interesting when you look at pull forward, it's a little bit of a of a tale of two cities between investment grade and spec grade. And if you get a chance to dig into those refunding studies that we published, you know, you'll see a lot of this in there. But if you look at investment grade, so 2025 investment grade maturities actually grown by about 9%. They're 18% higher than the one-year forward maturities were last year. So, you know, starting the year, the maturities are actually higher than they were last year. But we've seen a good bit of pull forward in spec grade. And if you think about it, that's pretty typical, right? If you're an investment grade issuer, you generally have market access throughout market cycles. Spec grade issuers are more sensitive to risk on, risk off, and market, you know, market windows. So you'll see more pull forward typically from spec grade issuers who don't want to get to a quarter before their maturity. I will say that when we look at the data, it does look like there has been a bit more pull forward in spec grade than would, you know, what would be typical, than kind of historical averages this year. That's not surprising. You know, I think we had, you know, had been seeing that. But it's also interesting, again, if you look at just the maturities one year forward, right now, they're about the same level as they were, you know, this time last year. And so the other thing I would say is, if you actually go to the, drill down into the US, so some of these, some of these refi walls are a little bit more back end loaded, particularly around spec grade. But about 25 to 30% of spec grade loan and bond maturities in 2028 were actually issued in 23 and 24 when rates were elevated. So, I mean, that tells us if we have a declining rate environment going forward, we may actually start to see some pull forward from those very elevated maturity walls, you know, a little bit out in the future. So, when you actually combine investment grade and spec grade maturities, so as I said, we've had less pull forward investment grade, more pull forward in spec grade, actually on an aggregate basis, the pull forward, the one year, the pull forward from one year forward maturity walls is almost exactly aligned with historical averages. And the forward maturities one year out are 15% higher than this time last year. So, I think net-net, despite the fact that we've had heavier spec grade pull forward this year, I actually think this is still a tailwind
spk03: for us in the near term. Your next question comes from a line of Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners. Your line is open. Thank you.
spk11: Did you just talk a little bit about the spread that you had between the 70% transaction revenue growth and ratings versus the 51% global issuance in the quarter, and then maybe Noemi, just throw in there with the incentive comp once in the third quarter, in the fourth quarter outlook. Thank you.
spk22: Yeah, Craig. So, we had, you know, favorable mix. We certainly, and Noemi talked about, we had very strong investment grade issuance, but there was a lot of opportunistic issuance. So, you know, if you think about investment grade issuers, we have two kinds of commercial constructs. We have frequent issuers and we have infrequent issuers. We saw a lot of volume coming from infrequent issuers just tapping the market. Then we had, you know, very strong leverage finance growth. Leverage finance is typically revenue mix friendly. That was certainly the case. And then, of course, you know, we also have, we had a real pickup in first time mandates. And so, they have, you know, oftentimes there's, you know, fees associated with onboarding, you know, first time issuers. And we had, you know, the benefit, you know, kind of our consistent pricing initiatives, which all contributed to, you know, favorable, you know, revenue mix relative to issuance.
spk14: And then on the incentive compensation for the third quarter of 2024, we actually recorded an adjustment to the accruals to reflect the updated four-year revenue outlook in MIS specifically. So, the incentive compensation accruals were about 150 million in the third quarter, which is higher than our year by 54%. Just for the four-year, we expect incentive compensation overall to be approximately 490 million. And that translates into about 120 million for the fourth quarter.
spk03: Great. Thank you. Your next
spk04: question comes from the line of George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
spk10: Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. I wanted to dive more into your ratings outlook. You mentioned on a net basis the pull forward of IG and spec rate is exactly in line with historical averages and the Ford maturities one year out is about 15% higher. And yet, your updated guide implies about mid-single digit MIS revenue growth in 4Q, even though comps don't really get any tougher in the fourth quarter. Can you talk about what leads you to think 4Q issuance growth will moderate meaningfully? And to what extent do you think 4Q MIS growth will serve as a proxy for 2025 MIS growth?
spk22: Hey, George. So, we've talked about on each of the earnings calls this year that we believe that issuance is going to decline in the fourth quarter versus the prior year quarter because there's been intra-year pull forward. So, that's within the calendar year and that's just banks telling issuers, hey, in the event there's any election volatility, why don't you just get ahead of that? And so, you know, we're also looking at the strength of the issuance to date. So, we actually have lifted our outlook for Q4 issuance versus our prior forecast. So, now expect the fourth quarter issuance to decline in something like the mid-single digit range and it was mid-teens percent decline in our prior guidance. So, we've actually lifted the view for the fourth quarter and, you know, that lift combined with the beat in the third quarter led us to up our full year issuance outlook to mid-30s. And then, you know, you triangulate that, you know, to revenue where we're looking at something like low single digit percent growth in revenue over the prior year quarter. And, you know, that's just, again, what contributes to that favorable issuance mix, you know, some of the things I just talked about with Craig's question. 2025, I think, could be a different ball game. Again, there's just been a we believe calendar year pull forward and I think you are going to know in early November, if we don't see a slowdown in issuance, then there would potentially be some upside to
spk03: our guidance.
spk10: Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.
spk04: Your next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum from your line is open.
spk07: Hi, thank you very much. Rob, can you give us a little bit of an update on some of the progress for the various AI products? So, you had like navigator skills assistance. Can you talk about where you are in both in development and then also in kind of adoption? I know Noemi talked about a little bit of a, you know, not as fast of an adoption because the clients were setting up their own frameworks. Maybe you could talk about is there anything that, you know, leads you to believe that the pacing is going to be dramatically different from what you thought or the adoption will be very different from what you thought?
spk22: Hey, Shlomo, thanks for the question. So, you know, let me just kind of tick these off here. So, you know, we talked a little bit about research assistant, which was our first product in the market. So, I'm not going to spend too much time on that. Since then, we've rolled out a suite of what we call navigators. So, this is, you know, think of AI enablement of the existing products allowing you to kind of get the most out of the products. We've rolled that out across a number of products and that's going to be helpful to both, you know, well, Noemi mentioned some of the things, you know, customer satisfaction. It's going to be helpful to retention. It's going to be helpful to our ability to, you know, to price behind those enhancements. We've also started to roll out other AI enabled products. So, research assistant was the first. The second was an AI early warning system leveraging, you know, a number of our different data sets. We started with a focus on commercial real estate. We've got a very nice pipeline for that. That's focused primarily on banks. And then we started early in the year, we did a very small like aqua hire of a company called Able AI. And that brought over a small engineering team that was working on AI enablement for banking workflow. And so, when we brought them over, that then accelerated our product roadmap for banking. And so, we've rolled out an automated credit memo offering an automated covenant. So, you're going to see more and more AI enablement of our banking workflow, of our insurance workflow. That's one of the benefits of, you know, having the IRP as well and insurance very easy to, you know, to do the AI enablement. So, just in terms of adoption, you know, it's a mixed bag. You know, and we talked a little bit about it. You've got, in some cases, your smaller firms, the asset managers and others are able to adopt more quickly. When it comes to the big banks, they've all got, you know, risk frameworks and regulators and other things that they have to make sure before they're deploying these AI enabled solutions that they've got a risk and control framework that's going to pass regulatory musters. So, while those conversations are very encouraging, because we've elevated the dialogue we're having, having at many of our customers, they're taking longer.
spk03: So, hopefully, that gives you a sense. Thank you.
spk04: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Silver from VMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
spk06: Thank you so much. In looking at your guidance for the year, and if I try to back into the implied guidance for 4Q adjusted EPS, it looks like you're guiding to be flat, potentially down. Are you just being overly conservative, or is there something specifically going on? Thanks.
spk14: So, we're guiding for, we've updated the adjusted diluted EPS guidance range based on the updated Q4 implied outlook. So, just to give you numbers, we're raising our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range and we're narrowing it to, for the four years, $11.90 to $12.10. That's still 21% at the midpoint, which is driven by MIS performance. So, what we've done here is we flow through the Q3 Bs through our four-year guide and we've increased our ratings revenue outlook for Q4 versus the prior forecast at the high end. So, the midpoint of our updated guidance now implies Q4 PS growth will be relatively flat, to slightly down in the Q4 versus the prior period, and down approximately 30% sequentially from Q3, which is aligned with what we see in the top line for MIS.
spk22: Yeah, and I guess,
spk06: sorry,
spk22: go ahead.
spk06: No, I was just going to ask if there's something specifically going on with margins in the fourth quarter we should focus on.
spk14: So, for the fourth quarter margin, as I said earlier in my prepared remarks, we've accounted for the incentive compensation adjustments in the third quarter reflect the updated Q4, to reflect the updated top line outlook. So, that's already been accounted for. If you look at the margins for the Q4, that's really the effect of the incentive compensation, but there's nothing else that we should,
spk22: you know. Yeah, I mean, the MIS margin, I mean, I think primarily it's just, you know, revenues are going to be lower, that we'd expect that margin to, you know, to be a bit lower.
spk18: And
spk22: so, as I said, you know, let's watch kind of the, you know, starting around the second week of November and see what's going on with issuance and that'll give you a sense of how to think about our guidance.
spk06: All right, fair enough. Thanks so much.
spk04: Your next question comes from a line of Jason Haas from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
spk05: Hey, good afternoon and thanks for taking my question. I appreciate the comments earlier on MA ARR. It sounds like the data and information and research and insights is maybe not as strong as expected, but there was no change to the FOIA guidance there. So, I was curious, if you're now expecting closer to the high single digits than the low double digits, and then it's not, you talk about what other areas have been coming in stronger than expected to offset that and then maybe also any color on what would drive acceleration from 3-2 into 4-Q.
spk14: Yeah, so on ARR growth in the third quarter was 9%. It was a bit lower than our recent sustained performance of 10% that was affected by some of the factors we've highlighted on last quarter's call. Stepping back and looking at our performance today, we've had more attrition events in the first quarter as we said. We had a bit of a lower sales than expected with our banks and asset manager customer segment as they continue to face tight purchasing pattern. And we also had a couple of headwinds from the other factors we've talked about in the last call. That's customer transitioning to MSCI for sustainability solution and large federal government contracts that renewed lower value in Q3. We also want to acknowledge that the new business growth has been a little bit more back-end loaded than we initially thought with 50% more pipeline entering the fourth quarter this year than the year ago. Looking out to the remainder of the year, we're maintaining our outlook of a high single digit revenue growth in ARR of high single to low double digits with a midpoint still in the higher end of the high single digits. That's the guidance for the four-year and we have as I said a strong new business pipeline going into the fourth quarter. We have a very large book of renewals for the month of December which we expect to renew at 93% plus rate in light with what you've seen here to date. So again the good pipeline creation that we saw in the third quarter which was driven by I think an increase of 35% in meeting activity, a lot of those in person, that's very significantly up from a year ago. And so as we're in the quarter of the year, our new business pipeline is very healthy. We have a good mix of large few deals in our KYC and data and information businesses and we also have a large volume of new business and renewals which is what underpins our outlook.
spk22: Yeah maybe just to double click and by the way welcome to the call Jason. It's good to have you on. Just to double click on maybe an area where and there are plenty that you know that that we're encouraged by it as relative to this time last year. But in KYC we've got a really good set of product launches. So we've got a new digital investigations product that we've just launched in September. We've got a lot of customer engagement around that. We've got our entity verification offering which has got a really nice and growing pipeline and also there's a really interesting emerging opportunity here to leverage AI to build screening agents. And if you think about how much of what is going on around KYC diligence is done by armies of people oftentimes in offshore centers, there's a real opportunity to leverage our both our data as well as AI to be able to not only be more efficient but actually be even more effective and have a great you know a great you know audit trail for the regulators. So some very interesting stuff there I think in our our product you know recent product pipeline around KYC that you know leads us to continue to be you know very you know optimistic
spk03: around that business. Good to hear. Thank you. Your
spk04: next question comes from a line of Jeff Moiler from Baird. Your line is open.
spk21: Yeah thank you. So this kind of runs counter to that last answer but can you just comment on KYC ARR in the quarter? 14% growth is great but it decelerated from what your KYC business has historically done. I don't know if there's any hold back of customers waiting for the new product launches or just any comments on why KYC growth was a little softer for ARR in quarter?
spk14: The KYC ARR growth was 14% in the third quarter that was lower than the 19% we saw in Q3 last year. In Q3 last year we had large transactions with federal government as I said earlier some of those renewed at a little bit lower rate so that's what explained the lower number for the third quarter. Having said that we have a strong pipeline as Rob said heading into the fourth quarter so we expect this to be more of an air pocket than a new run rate.
spk03: Thank you. Your next
spk04: question comes from a line of Andrew Steinerman from JP Morgan. Your line is open.
spk01: Hi Noemi. I wanted to ask about Predicat. I think it was the only acquisition that Moody's has done with revenues closed in the last 12 months. Just tell me if I'm correct about that. Specifically about Predicat I'd like to know the dollar contribution both to revenues in ARR in the third quarter just reported and in the fourth quarter guide.
spk22: Hey Andrew. It's Rob. We did maybe you're talking about MA. We did acquire the remaining interest in GCR which is the African rating agency and that closed in the very beginning of the quarter and that had revenues and operating income. I guess I would say it's just this is immaterial to our overall financial results and I know you're looking for an organic number I might steer you to ARR so I would say first of all Predicat is not in our organic number so that would give you a sense of excluding acquisition.
spk01: Okay. Thank you.
spk22: Yeah. The one other since we're on the topic of Predicat I mean it was a really nice bolt on for us to move into the casualty space. ARR Mass you know very, very strong in the property space and this allowed us to move into the casualty space and we announced that acquisition right before a huge industry conference in Europe that I went to and we did literally north of 100 customer meetings and there was some very strong interest in Predicat's capabilities and really understanding emerging and long tailed casualty and mass tort risks. In fact I think it's something we're going to be able to use across not only analytics but also even it'll help inform some of our work and ratings so we're really excited to have you know Predicat as part of the Moody's family. Thank you.
spk04: Your next question comes from a line of Russell Quelch from Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open.
spk16: Yeah thanks for squeezing me in. Rob I wondered if you could be a bit more specific about the levels of growth you're seeing in private credit assessments and how much that's contributing to the revenue today. You mentioned being an early leader perhaps in the rating the BDCs. I wondered what else you're doing to position yourself to capture this opportunity? You mentioned conversations with Apollo and Blackstone. I wonder if you could add a bit more flavor to those conversations if that's leading to immediate revenue opportunities or if this is more stuff for the future?
spk22: Yeah so Russell thanks for the question. I actually I would say we're going to see revenue so we are already seeing revenue from private credit flowing through the rating agency and analytics. That's already happening so it's interesting I had a conversation with my team the other day and I said you know AI is a fantastic opportunity for us. So is private credit but private credit is going to manifest itself in the financials faster than AI is going to because of some of the dynamics I just talked about in terms of adoption curves. So we've got some work to do to start to break out for you all and give you a better sense of how we're capturing private credit revenue coming through both the rating agency and the analytics business and you know we know we in some ways kind of owe that to you all but what I would say is again back to a few of my comments earlier we're already seeing it come through FIG ratings and that is through the ratings of BDCs and fund finance instruments and while those numbers are small relative to things like what we're doing the total revenues that we're getting from rating insurance and banking issuance it's growing quite fast. In fact in many cases growing faster so what we're doing with BDCs that's growing faster than for instance our revenue line for banking. Right so you're going to see it and you're already seeing it in FIG. We're already seeing it in structured finance and the rating of asset backed finance and you know we talked a little bit about that earlier and there's quite a pipeline for that. We're starting to see it in our even in our project finance area where there's more and more demand for private ratings that for loans that investors are investing in and actually want a third party you know a third party view of risk and so it's interesting as you think about what's going on with the banks and this kind of originate to distribute model that they're more and more moving to you know that they're all saying hey look in order to distribute this credit to a wide you know broader range of potential investors including everything from insurers pension funds high net worth you name it we need a third party you know assessment of credit risk. In some cases in many cases that's a rating for the instruments that I talked about but there's also demand from the investors who say hey look I'm invested in these private credit funds and I want to have more visibility into the credit risk in these funds and I want that to come from an independent source rather than from the GP themselves. So we are seeing demand for that. In fact you know when we announced our partnership with MSCI and ESG we said that we're you know working to explore opportunities to leverage their distribution into the LP and GP community and to be able to provide you know solutions around private credit. In fact we just had a fantastic meeting with the teams and we're working to do exactly that. So I think you know again I know that we need to do probably a little better job of helping you understand how that's starting to materialize across both parts of of our business but we're already seeing that you
spk03: know in both P&Ls. Okay thanks. Your next
spk04: question comes from the line of Alex Cramp from UBS. Your line is open.
spk18: Yes hey hello everyone. I know it's late in the call so just a quick cleanup here on on on MA margin can you just talk about what you're expecting in the fourth quarter? I think if I do my math right I think margin is supposed to pick up in the four Q but generally speaking from a seasonal perspective costs go up after the three Q and margin goes down so I don't know if that's part of the incentive comp you talked about or anything else and obviously Predicat is coming in as well I think so just maybe flesh out why this year may be a little bit different and sorry related to that you talked about investing a lot in MA earlier on the call so just wondering if you have any updated thoughts on the margin expansion that you're looking at for that business in the next couple years thanks.
spk14: Yeah thanks so for the to get on the Q4 question this is the seasonality of revenue driven so as you know our fourth quarter in MA is the largest quarter in terms of revenue so given the typical strengths in the fourth quarter we expect the adjusted operating margin in MA to pick up in the fourth quarter to slightly above the range of our guide. There's a little bit of headwinds from Predicat but as Rob said not materially affecting the guide and we're maintaining our 31 percent margin for the full year so that's for Q4. Now looking at in the outer years as Rob said we'll update you later in February but we've been investing, we've invested in our J&I capabilities, platforming, new product development. I say we're mostly through that investment cycle and we'll be really focusing on expanding the margin and continuing to migrate some of those customers from the legacy platforms into the banking and IRP that will drive our margin expansion in the long run and we're also you know making sure we're very disciplined in the management of discretionary spend. Actually you saw that materializing in the expansion in operating margin MA in the third quarter despite the fact that revenue kind of remained consistent with the second quarter. So that's really what I can say about the MA margin and still reiterating our guidance range for the full year.
spk22: Yeah so to underscore that we're definitely committed to the medium term targets for margin for MA. I'm also reflecting on one thing I said earlier about positive mix on leverage finance and I lumped bank loans and high yield together in that. Actually I think because of all the refi and reset activity we had going on all the refi with loans that wasn't a favorable mix but high yield was so I just want to make sure that was that was clear but on balance we had a favorable mix from
spk03: our corporate finance issuance. And that concludes our
spk04: question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Rob and Noemi for some final closing remarks.
spk22: All right well thank you everybody for the questions and we look forward to talking with you on the fourth quarter earnings call. Until then take care.
spk04: This concludes Moody's Corporation third quarter 2024 earnings call. As a reminder immediately following this call the company will post the MIS revenue breakdown under the investor resources section of the Moody's IR homepage. Additionally a replay will be made available after the call on the Moody's IR website. Thank you.
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