Moody's Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Moody's Corporation first quarter 2026 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 questions and answers following the presentation. The call is scheduled to last approximately one hour. I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kok, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Shivani Kark, Head of Investor Relations at Moody's. This morning, we reported our first quarter 2026 results. The press release and today's presentation are posted at ir.moody's.com. For reference non-GAAP or adjusted measures, please see the tables in our earnings release for reconciliations to U.S. GAAP. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Listigation Reform Act of 1995. Please see the safe harbor language in our earnings release and the risk factors and MD&A in our most recent form 10-K and other SEC filings available on our website and the SEC's website. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Members of the media may be listening in a listen-only mode. With that, I'll turn it over to Rob.

Hey, everybody, and thanks for joining us. Q1 was a strong start to the year, despite a volatile geopolitical backdrop, and Moody's again delivered sustained revenue growth across both businesses and powerful operating leverage as we continue to capitalize on the deep currents driving demand for our ratings and solutions. Now, there are three takeaways for the first quarter. First, we delivered strong financial performance. Both MIS and MA grew revenues by 8%, and discipline cost management drove 150 basis points of adjusted operating margin to 53.2%. Together, this contributed to adjusted diluted EPS of $4.33, and that was up 13%. We returned $1.7 billion through buybacks and dividends in the quarter, and we increased full-year buyback guidance by $500 million to approximately $2.5 billion. Second, demand remains healthy across both businesses. In ratings, issuance continues to reflect long-term funding needs tied to infrastructure, technology, private credit, and energy transition, even as volatility may affect timing. In analytics, engagement is strongest in our largest, most strategic relationships, which continue to grow materially faster than the broader MA base, and we have a growing pipeline of some of the world's largest financial institutions to consume our agent-ready intelligence, and that's supported by further expansion with our hyperscaler and AI partners. Third, we're executing on our strategic priorities. And when our intelligence is embedded directly into customer decision-making, we see tangible outcomes, higher retention, expanding relationships, and more durable recurring revenue. And like last quarter, we'll share some specific examples of meaningful customer wins. So now let me turn to what's driving performance. In ratings, as I said, issuance remains anchored in long-term funding needs tied to AI-driven infrastructure, private credit, energy transition, and emerging markets. And these are multi-year funding needs. They're not short-term cycles. And as I said, volatility may affect timing, but the underlying demand is structural. And that showed up clearly in Q1. In fact, in the first quarter, rated issuance surpassed $2 trillion for the first time, and that was led by near-record investment-grade volumes, including several jumbo AI-related financings totaling more than $100 billion. Private credit activity remained durable this quarter despite increasing credit concerns. As private markets scale and come under greater scrutiny, demand for our independent credit assessment continues to increase. And that dynamic contributed to private credit-related revenue in ratings growing more than 80% year over year. In Moody's Analytics, we're embedding our intelligence into mission-critical workflows, particularly lending, underwriting, and compliance, where accuracy and auditability and trust are essential. And to support that shift, we're expanding how and where customers access Moody's Intelligence. In fact, over the last several weeks, we announced a set of partnerships that significantly extend our distribution without compromising governance or independence. And through model context protocol integrations, Moody's licensed intelligence can now be accessed directly within enterprise AI environments, such as ChatGPT Enterprise and Cloud. And this allows customers to bring trusted Moody's content into their own AI workflows rather than relying on generic or unverified data. With Anthropic, for licensed users, our agentic credit and compliance workflows are now available natively inside the cloud interface through something called an MCP application. And that's the first of its kind as far as we're aware. And it enables users to access Moody's agents to perform analysis, generate outputs, and trace sources without leaving the cloud environment. And by making our agentic solutions available through the AWS marketplace, We're meeting customers inside their existing cloud and procurement ecosystems, reducing friction by allowing customers to burn down their AWS commit when consuming Moody's agents and intelligence. And Moody's is scaling workflow embedded distribution by launching a dedicated Moody's agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot and making Moody's intelligence available as a grounding data source across Copilot experiences. That's Copilot Chat, Researcher, Copilot, and Excel. And this brings trusted decision grade context directly into everyday Microsoft tools, extending access beyond specialist teams and enabling faster, more consistent, explainable, and auditable decisions. And importantly, these are bring your own license models. They expand reach and usage, but preserve our direct relationship with our customer. And all of this sets up what I'm going to turn to next, which is how customers are using these capabilities today, and how that's translating into growth and differentiation across analytics and ratings. So I'll start with lending and credit decisioning. And our AI-enabled lending suite continues to gain traction as banks modernize end-to-end credit workflows. ARR for our lending suite grew 18% year over year. It was driven by customers upgrading to an integrated platform that spans origination, decisioning, and monitoring. And what's driving adoption is workflow integration and AI enablement. So that's faster decisions, greater consistency, clear auditability. We're also seeing demand for credit assessment and workflow beyond banks with asset managers and even corporates. In the first quarter, we expanded relationships with two of the world's five largest asset managers representing nearly $20 trillion of assets under management. The first signed an approximately $6 million multi-year deal with to bring our decision-grade intelligence to both public and private credit workflows, supporting risk and investment decision-making at a global scale. And the second asset manager signed a multi-year contract of over $2.5 million and adopted multiple Moody's modules to support front, middle, and back office credit and compliance workflows. It also represented our first structured finance software win with a trustee, which provides a strong reference for future opportunities. And in the corporate space, a global athleisure brand tripled its relationship with us and signed a multi-year contract for an automated credit decisioning solution that accelerates decisions from days to minutes. And these are all ways that customers are accessing what we believe are the best set of commercial credit scoring capabilities in the world. In insurance, growth was sustained from continued demand for digitization via our intelligent risk platform. That included adoption by one of the top three reinsurers in the world in the first quarter, as well as adoption of our high-definition models. In fact, IRP cross-selling and up-selling accounted for almost half of our insurance net growth in the first quarter. And net growth was also supported by our trailing 12-month retention rate of 97%, which reflects how embedded we are in customers' workflows and as what they call their primary view of risk. In KYC and compliance, growth continues to be driven by scale, complexity, and regulatory expectations. And I've talked before how these needs go beyond regulated financial institutions, and a good example is our first Moody's for Compliance customer. In the first quarter, a global real estate firm spanning approximately 275,000 sites operating in more than 80 countries selected our enterprise-wide solution for counterparty screening and monitoring covering millions of entities annually. And we replaced a fragmented region-specific approach with a single governed platform integrating ownership, sanctions, politically exposed people, and adverse media, representing both a competitive displacement and a meaningful expansion of our relationship. And finally, let me turn to ratings and digital finance. And as capital markets evolve, We're extending the same rigor and governance and independence that define our ratings franchise into new asset classes and new forms of market infrastructure. In fact, during the first quarter, we were the first rating agency to publish a methodology for stable coins. And that's an asset class that's expected to reach north of $2 trillion by 2030. And I'm excited to share that we already have a number of deals in the pipeline. We were also the first rating agency with blockchain agnostic capabilities to ingest data and publish ratings directly on-chain. We're now live on the Canton network, making Moody's the first rating agency operating a node in the privacy-enabled blockchain ecosystem. And during the quarter, we were the first rating agency to rate an innovative inaugural Bitcoin-backed bond where repayment is secured by Bitcoin collateral. So these are not pilots or proofs of concept, they represent and reflect real customer demand for trusted comparable risk assessment as finance evolves, whether assets are traditional or digital. And taken together, this is what differentiates Moody's across analytics and ratings. We're embedding decision-grade intelligence directly into the workflows and decisions that matter most, driving durable growth today and reinforcing the long-term strength of the franchise. Now, finally, before I close, I want to highlight an important leadership milestone. And I am absolutely thrilled that Christina Kosmowski will become Moody's Analytics CEO in June. And she brings a blue-chip Silicon Valley pedigree. She's been a pioneer in customer success and brings a track record of delivering high growth at scale. And her leadership materially strengthens our ability to accelerate execution in an increasingly AI-driven world. And I'm very excited about having her join us in June. I also want to thank Andy Frepp for stepping up to serve as the interim president and for his steady and effective leadership. And Andy's had a fantastic career with us for almost 15 years. He is deeply respected across Moody's. And in a brief period of time, he provided some real focus and business direction, and he's ensured continuity and momentum during a critical period. and we are tremendously grateful for his leadership and continued support through the transition. And with that, I'll turn it over to Noemi to walk through the financials in more detail.