S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) Earnings & Analysis

Latest quarter

S&P Global reported Q2 FY2026 revenue of $4.1 billion, up 10.4% from $3.8 billion a year earlier, while diluted EPS was $4.08, up 16.6% from $3.50. On the basis used for the consensus comparison, the company reported $3.7 billion of revenue against the consensus of $3.6 billion and adjusted EPS of $4.83 against the consensus of $4.49.

The filing said revenue rose across all reportable segments. It attributed Ratings growth to higher corporate-bond ratings revenue, surveillance revenue, Ratings Evaluation Service activity and Crisil revenue; Market Intelligence growth to subscriptions, lending solutions, RatingsXpress and recurring variable revenue; and Indices growth to asset-linked fees, exchange-traded derivatives and data subscriptions. The filing said Energy revenue benefited from demand for market-data and market-insights products, while Mobility revenue reflected dealer-business growth and contract terms.

S&P Global reported gross margin of 71.9%, compared with 70.2% a year earlier, and operating margin of 43.7%, compared with 41.3%. The company reported free cash flow of $1.4 billion, compared with $1.4 billion a year earlier.

Adjusted EPS is the figure the consensus estimates, not the GAAP EPS above.

What management said on the call

Martina Cheung said the company’s benchmark businesses, including Ratings, Indices, Platts and the distribution of ratings content through Market Intelligence, account for nearly two-thirds of revenue and more than 80% of operating profits. She said Ratings benefited from billed issuance growth, including investment-grade issuance related to AI infrastructure, data-center capital spending and mergers and acquisitions. Cheung said the company now assumes $250 to $300 billion in hyperscaler issuance for the full year and double-digit growth in M&A-related issuance.

In Indices, Cheung said asset-manager switches brought tens of billions of dollars of additional assets under management benchmarked against S&P Dow Jones Indices. For Energy, she said the Iran conflict complicated renewals with some large customers and that the company had chosen flexibility on price increases and other terms. Eric Aboaf said sanctions had a 120-basis-point negative effect on Platts growth and a 30-basis-point negative effect on SARA growth in the second quarter.

Cheung said S&P Global reorganized Market Intelligence into Kensho Data and Platforms and Enterprise Solutions. She said Kensho Data is growing at a high-single-digit to low-double-digit organic rate, while Platforms is growing at a low-single-digit organic rate. Aboaf said Market Intelligence revenue and subscription revenue each grew 6%, while some mature platforms, longer renewal cycles among larger clients, and smaller products affected divisional growth.

Asked about those longer renewals, Cheung said customers were holding more substantial discussions around the use of AI, intellectual property and data, which had extended some contract cycles. She said vendor consolidation remains a tailwind and cited a large renewal covering desktop feeds, Visible Alpha and AI-ready data that produced an over-20% increase over several years.

On AI monetization, Aboaf said the company is using consumption pricing and additional data-set pricing as client usage rises. He said MCP connectors reached 500 clients and data usage was five times the preceding quarter. Cheung said the company intends to fund Market Intelligence investments through productivity and AI-driven cost savings, while Aboaf said the Enterprise Data Office had achieved nearly 60% of its $100 million annualized cost-savings target.

Guidance

S&P Global raised its FY2026 Ratings revenue-growth outlook to 5.00% to 8.00%, up one percentage point from its prior guide, and raised its Indices revenue-growth outlook to 12.0% to 14.0%, up two percentage points. Cheung said the company also increased its FY2026 share-repurchase target by nearly $3 billion to more than $7.0 billion.