S&P Global combines recurring data, ratings, and index revenue with strong AI product adoption and elite margins. The stock looks attractive on pullbacks, but valuation keeps the upside measured.
S&P Global(SPGI) is one of the stronger compounders in financial data, benchmarks, and ratings because it combines high-margin recurring revenue with selective exposure to cyclical market activity. In 2025, revenue reached $15.34B, up 8% YoY, while net income rose to $4.47B and free cash flow reached $5.46B. That mix matters. The subscription and workflow businesses provide ballast, while Ratings and Indices add torque when issuance, trading, and passive flows are healthy.
The current investment case rests on three hard facts. First, the business is still growing at scale: trailing revenue growth was 10.4% and earnings growth was 32.5%, with 1Q26 revenue up 10% YoY and adjusted diluted EPS up 14% YoY. Second, profitability remains elite: gross margin was 70.5%, operating margin was 44.3%, and profit margin was 30.4%. Third, management is pushing AI from concept into product usage, with more than one-third of CapIQ Pro users engaging with AI features and more than 300 customers under contract or trial for Kensho-LLM-ready APIs.
The main debate is not business quality. It is price. SPGI trades at 26.25x trailing earnings, 21.14x forward earnings, and 1.46x PEG. That is not cheap, but it is also not extreme for a company with 50%+ adjusted operating margin in 2025, a 4.76% free cash flow yield, and durable positions in ratings, indices, and proprietary data. For a balanced, moderate-risk investor with a medium-term horizon, the stock still looks attractive on pullbacks rather than a screaming bargain at any price.
S&P Global(SPGI) is a New York-based financial information and market infrastructure company founded in 1860. It operates across financial services, with businesses in credit ratings, market data and analytics, energy and commodity intelligence, automotive data, and index licensing. The company had 44,500 employees and a market capitalization of $122.83B.
Segment mix shows where the economic engine sits. For 2025, Market Intelligence generated $4.92B of revenue, or 37.1% of total segment revenue. Ratings contributed $4.72B, or 35.7%. Indices added $1.85B, or 14.0%, and Mobility contributed $1.75B, or 13.2%. In 2024, Commodity Insights generated $2.14B before the 2025 segment presentation changed. The broad point is clear: SPGI is not a one-product company. It is a portfolio of data and benchmark franchises with shared distribution and brand power.
Management is also reshaping the portfolio. On the 1Q26 call, CFO Eric Aboaf said the company remained on track for a planned separation of the Mobility business in mid-2026. That matters because it would leave a cleaner four-part core focused on ratings, indices, market intelligence, and commodity insights, which are the highest-margin and most strategically linked businesses.
Market Intelligence is the largest segment by 2025 revenue at $4.92B. In 1Q26, the segment generated $1.296B of revenue, up 8% YoY, with adjusted operating profit of $436M, up 11%, and margin of 33.6%, up from 32.8%. Subscription revenue rose 6%, while non-subscription revenue rose 35%. Management tied that performance to strong renewals, net sales, CapIQ Pro, Visible Alpha, and the first full quarter of revenue from the With Intelligence acquisition.
Ratings is the second pillar and one of the most profitable. In 2025, segment revenue was $4.72B. In 1Q26, Ratings revenue rose 13% to $1.302B, adjusted operating profit rose 16% to $882M, and operating margin expanded to 67.8% from 66.2%. Transactional revenue increased 15% and non-transactional revenue increased 11%. Management said billed issuance increased 14% YoY in the quarter, driven primarily by strength in investment grade issuance.
Indices is smaller in revenue but enormous in economics. In 2025, it produced $1.85B of revenue. In 1Q26, revenue increased 17% to $519M, adjusted operating profit increased 18% to $383M, and operating margin reached 73.8%. Asset-linked fees rose 18%, exchange-traded derivatives revenue rose 18%, and data and custom subscriptions rose 12%. This is the kind of business investors pay up for: capital-light, brand-driven, and deeply embedded in global portfolios.
Energy, presented as S&P Global Energy in the 1Q26 deck, remains a meaningful franchise tied to commodity pricing, analytics, and events. In 1Q26, revenue rose 7% to $652M, adjusted operating profit rose 9% to $322M, and margin expanded to 49.3%. Subscription revenue rose 4%, non-subscription revenue rose 13%, and sales usage-based royalties rose 27%. The quarter also showed the segment’s sensitivity to geopolitical shocks, with management citing the conflict in Iran as both a source of volatility-driven demand and a headwind for some customers.
Mobility generated $1.75B in 2025 and posted 1Q26 revenue growth of 8%, with operating margin expanding to 40%. Dealer revenue rose 9%, manufacturing rose 5%, and financials and other rose 8%. The business appears healthy, but the strategic direction is separation, not reinvestment inside the current SPGI perimeter.
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Capital IQ Pro sits near the center of SPGI’s product ecosystem. Management spent unusual time on the 1Q26 call explaining that the value of CapIQ Pro extends beyond the desktop into data, business logic, workflow tools, and distribution of ratings content through RatingsDirect and RatingsXpress. That is a useful tell. When management defends a product this specifically, it usually means the product is both strategically important and competitively contested.
The usage data is strong. Martina Cheung said more than one-third of CapIQ Pro users engage with AI features including ChatIQ and Document Intelligence. She also said API call volume by customers in 1Q26 was more than 5x the level seen one quarter earlier, with volumes doubling month over month from February to March. Those are not abstract AI talking points. They are product-consumption metrics.
CapIQ Pro also benefits from product layering. Management said workflow tools account for about 37% of Market Intelligence revenue, while advisory, consulting, and events account for about 11%. It also said less than 5% of total company revenue comes from undifferentiated data, and undifferentiated data is only 12% of Market Intelligence revenue. In plain English, SPGI is arguing that its flagship platform is not a commodity feed business. It is a workflow-and-intelligence stack with pricing power.
That matters because the market increasingly worries that AI will flatten data vendors into interchangeable pipes. SPGI’s answer is that the moat sits in proprietary data, curated datasets, calculation engines, benchmarks, and embedded workflows. If that claim holds, CapIQ Pro becomes more valuable in an AI world, not less.
SPGI’s competitive advantage starts with trust and embeddedness. In ratings, it is one of the dominant global agencies. In indices, it controls one of the most recognized benchmark brands in the world. In market intelligence and energy, it owns proprietary datasets and benchmarks that customers use in critical workflows. Management said over 95% of company revenue comes from proprietary benchmarks, data, and tools. That is the kind of statistic that separates a premium information franchise from a generic software reseller.
AI is the next layer of the moat, and SPGI has more evidence than many peers. Management said more than 300 customers were under contract or in trial for Kensho-LLM-ready APIs, and 25% of Chief Client Office customers were engaged with Kensho Labs Technologies. It also said ACV growth among AI customers in Market Intelligence was 30% higher than among other customers, while growth among AI customers in Energy was double the rate of other customers.
The company is also innovating across segments. In Energy, it unveiled the AI-native CERA Titan upstream product and said 70 customers demoed the platform with overwhelmingly positive feedback. In Indices, it launched the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index as a native digital asset on blockchain and added a tokenized S&P 500 Index in partnership with Centrifuge. These are not yet the core earnings engine, but they show management is using the brand to extend into new distribution formats.
Acquisitions support the same strategy. In 2025, SPGI acquired With Intelligence for $1.8B, AIS data services from ORBCOMM, McKinsey PriceMetrix through CRISIL, ARC Research, and TeraHelix. In 2024, it acquired ProntoNLP and Visible Alpha. None were individually material to consolidated financials, but together they sharpen private markets, AI tooling, entity linkage, and differentiated research. That is disciplined bolt-on strategy, not empire building.
SPGI is not a traditional manufacturer, so its operational backbone is data acquisition, content creation, software delivery, and client support rather than physical supply chains. That makes the business structurally attractive. In 2025, capital expenditures were only $195M against operating cash flow of $5.65B, which helps explain free cash flow of $5.46B. This is a model where the heavy lifting sits in intellectual property, technology, and distribution.
Still, the company is not immune to real-world disruption. On the 1Q26 call, management said the conflict in Iran had shocked energy markets and supply chains, leading to higher energy and commodity prices and broader uncertainty for customers. In Energy, some Middle East customers experienced direct impacts to facilities, while others faced supply chain and distribution disruptions. That pressure weighed on parts of the subscription business even as volatility boosted events and transactional activity.
Operationally, SPGI showed cost discipline in the quarter. Company-wide adjusted expenses rose 8% in 1Q26, slower than 10% revenue growth, supporting 100 bps of margin expansion to 51.8%. In Energy, adjusted expenses rose only 4% against 7% revenue growth. This is the quiet strength of the model: when management manages compensation and investment pacing well, incremental revenue falls through at attractive rates.
The company is also pruning operations where returns look weaker. Management announced an agreement to divest the software portfolio in the Upstream business, with closing expected in 2H26 or early 2027. The stated goal is to focus more tightly on proprietary Data & Insights and return Upstream to sustained positive growth. That is sensible portfolio maintenance. When a company with 70% gross margins says it wants to focus on the better data asset and shed the messier software piece, it is usually following the economics.
SPGI operates inside several favorable markets at once. The broader exchange and data ecosystem is large and mature, while the data and analytics layer is growing faster. Industry context points to mid-single-digit growth in exchange infrastructure and high-single to low-double-digit growth in financial analytics and data monetization. That fits SPGI well because the company straddles both categories: it has benchmark and ratings exposure tied to market activity, plus subscription and workflow products tied to enterprise data spending.
Several structural trends support demand. Passive investing remains a tailwind for index licensing and asset-linked fees. Private markets are becoming a more important data category, which supports products tied to alternatives and private credit. AI is increasing demand for differentiated, governed, machine-readable datasets. Management’s own usage data supports that trend, with API calls up more than 5x quarter over quarter and more than 300 customers under contract or trial for AI-ready APIs.
The cyclical side also looks constructive, though less clean than a year ago. In 1Q26, billed issuance increased 14% YoY, and Ratings revenue rose 13%. At the same time, management said it expected Ratings growth to moderate in 3Q26 and turn negative in 4Q26 as it laps prior-year highs. That is a reminder that part of SPGI’s earnings engine still rides the debt cycle. This is not a flaw. It is simply the price of owning a premium business with some market sensitivity.
For the medium term, the market setup still favors SPGI. It has enough recurring revenue to absorb softer pockets, enough cyclical exposure to benefit when issuance and trading are active, and enough product innovation to keep pricing power alive. That combination is hard to replicate.
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SPGI serves a broad institutional customer base across capital markets, energy, commodities, automotive, and corporate finance. The company description specifically cites global capital, energy and commodity, and automotive markets. In practice, that means issuers, asset managers, banks, insurers, exchanges, corporations, governments, automotive dealers, OEMs, and mobility-related finance and insurance customers.
The customer profile differs by segment. Ratings serves issuers and investors that need access to capital markets and independent credit benchmarks. Market Intelligence serves finance and corporate professionals using data, analytics, research, and enterprise workflow tools. Indices serves asset managers, ETF sponsors, exchanges, and derivatives users. Energy serves commodity producers, traders, refiners, utilities, and market participants that rely on price assessments and industry intelligence. Mobility serves dealers, OEMs, lenders, and insurers.
What ties these customers together is workflow dependence. Management repeatedly emphasized that customers are coming to SPGI with increased urgency for differentiated data and benchmarks. That matters because mission-critical products tend to renew better, price better, and survive budget scrutiny better than nice-to-have dashboards. The 1Q26 Market Intelligence subscription growth of 6% and Credit and Risk Solutions growth of 6% support that point.
Ownership data also hints at how the market views the franchise. Institutional ownership stands at 90.821%, insider ownership is 0.274%, short interest is only 1.65% of float, and the short ratio is 2.34. This is a stock largely held by long-duration institutions, not a battleground name dominated by shorts.
SPGI competes across several arenas rather than one. In ratings, the core peers are Moody’s(MCO) and Fitch. In financial data and workflow, the relevant set includes Bloomberg, LSEG, FactSet(FDS), Morningstar(MORN), Moody’s Analytics, and ICE data services. In indices, MSCI(MSCI), FTSE Russell, and ICE are key rivals. In commodity and energy benchmarks, competition comes from ICE, LSEG-linked data products, and niche pricing agencies.
The strongest part of SPGI’s competitive position is that it is diversified across these categories while many rivals are narrower. Ratings and Indices are especially advantaged. Ratings benefits from regulatory embeddedness and issuer relationships. Indices benefits from brand power, passive asset growth, and exchange-traded derivatives volume. In 1Q26, Indices posted a 73.8% operating margin and Ratings posted 67.8%. Those margins are a blunt but useful scoreboard.
Market Intelligence is the most competitive battlefield because customers can compare platforms more directly. That is where SPGI needs product depth, AI integration, and differentiated datasets to defend share. The company’s answer includes CapIQ Pro, Visible Alpha, RatingsDirect, enterprise solutions, and AI-native features like ChatIQ and Document Intelligence. The fact that Data Analytics & Insights revenue rose 11% in 1Q26, with 5% organic growth excluding the With Intelligence boost, shows the platform is still moving forward in a crowded field.
A peer-multiple comparison is not available in the provided data because the peer screen failed. That limits precision in relative valuation work, but it does not change the competitive conclusion. SPGI is one of the highest-quality franchises in the sector because it owns multiple benchmark businesses with strong margins, recurring revenue, and embedded customer workflows.
Macro and geopolitics matter for SPGI because different segments react differently. Ratings benefits from healthy debt issuance and M&A. Indices benefits from equity market levels, passive flows, and derivatives activity. Energy can benefit from volatility but also suffers when customers face operational disruption. Market Intelligence is steadier but not fully immune to enterprise spending cycles.
Management’s 1Q26 commentary centered on a tougher backdrop. Martina Cheung said the conflict in Iran had shocked energy markets and supply chains, while CFO Eric Aboaf said the company’s outlook assumed the situation stabilized by the end of 2Q26. The guidance framework also assumed 3.2% global GDP growth, 2.2% U.S. growth, 3.2% U.S. CPI growth, and only one U.S. rate cut in 2026.
That backdrop creates both tailwinds and headwinds. Elevated volatility supported record quarterly average daily volumes for S&P 500 indices, close to 30% growth in Global Trading Services in Energy, and strong exchange-traded derivatives activity. At the same time, management cut Energy organic constant-currency revenue growth guidance by 1 point to 4.5% to 6.0% because of the external environment.
For investors, the key macro takeaway is that SPGI is not a pure defensive stock and not a pure cyclical stock. It is an all-weather franchise with a few weather-sensitive windows. That is usually a good place to be.
Net debt stood at 2.0x EBITDA, with $5.46B of free cash flow in 2025 and a 4.76% free cash flow yield supporting a sturdy balance sheet profile.
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Get Full Access →Revenue rose 8% to $15.34B in 2025 while gross margin held at 70.5%, operating margin reached 44.3%, and profit margin came in at 30.4%.
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Get Full Access →1Q26 revenue grew 10% year over year and adjusted diluted EPS rose 14%, while trailing earnings growth reached 32.5% and forward earnings growth remains solid.
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Get Full Access →SPGI trades at 26.25x trailing earnings, 21.14x forward earnings, and a 1.46x PEG, which is reasonable for a business with 50%+ adjusted operating margin.
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Get Full Access →The report’s price framework points to $510 as fair value, with upside above that level requiring either stronger growth or a more attractive entry point.
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Get Full Access →S&P Global(SPGI) remains one of the better businesses in public markets. The numbers back that up: $15.34B of 2025 revenue, $4.47B of net income, $5.46B of free cash flow, 70.5% gross margin, and 1Q26 revenue growth of 10%. The segment mix is also unusually attractive, with Ratings and Indices delivering very high margins while Market Intelligence provides scale and recurring revenue.
The strategic story is getting better, not weaker. AI adoption is showing up in user engagement and API consumption. Bolt-on acquisitions are strengthening private markets and data-linking capabilities. The planned Mobility separation should sharpen the company’s identity around its best franchises. Meanwhile, insider purchases in late April and early May 2026 by CEO Martina Cheung, Indices CEO Catherine Clay, and director Robert Moritz add a useful signal that leadership was willing to buy stock in the low-$430s.
The only real knock is valuation discipline. SPGI is not a bargain-bin stock, and it rarely will be. But high-quality compounders do not need to be cheap to be good investments. They need to be bought at sensible prices. With a fair value estimate of $510, SPGI looks like a Buy on weakness and a solid core holding for investors who want durable cash flow, strong margins, and a business model built to stay useful in a noisier market.
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S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) rises sharply after completing the spin-off of its Mobility business into Mobility Global Inc. The move reflects post-separation repricing as investors reassess the value of SPGI’s core ratings, indices, and data franchises.
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