Moody's Q3 2024 Earnings Results & Report

Moody's EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $3.21
• Consensus EPS: $2.89
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.32
• One Year Ago EPS: $2.43
• EPS Beat Rate: 7 of last 8 quarters

Moody's Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.81 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.71 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$105.72 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +23.20%

Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO) is a global provider of credit ratings, research, data, analytics and risk-management solutions. Through Moody’s Investors Service, the company assigns credit ratings and publishes research on corporate, government and structured-finance debt issuers, helping investors and other market participants evaluate credit risk.

Through Moody’s Analytics, the company provides financial intelligence, economic research, data, software and advisory services. Its offerings support credit analysis, lending, portfolio management, enterprise risk management, compliance and related functions across financial institutions, corporations, governments and other organizations.

Moody’s traces its origins to 1909, when John Moody established the company that introduced published credit ratings for bonds. Today, Moody’s serves customers across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and other international markets. The company is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Fauber.

Moody's Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Moody’s delivered a record Q3 with revenue up 23% to $1.8 billion, an adjusted operating margin near 48% and 32% growth in adjusted diluted EPS.
• Moody’s Investors Service saw 41% revenue growth and transactional revenue up 70%, outpacing 51% global issuance growth thanks to first-time/infrequent issuers and a record week of investment-grade deals.
• The firm expects durable tailwinds from a record $5 trillion four-year refi wall (up 19% in speculative-grade), a rebound in M&A, expanding private credit, sustainable finance and emerging-market issuance.
• Moody’s Analytics grew revenue 7% and recurring revenue/ARR 9%, led by Decision Solutions’ 12% ARR growth and 93% customer retention, achieving a 30.3% adjusted operating margin.
• The company raised full-year guidance to high-20% MIS revenue growth with a 59–60% margin, consolidated revenue growth in the high teens, adjusted EPS of $11.90–$12.10 and ~$2.3 billion in free cash flow.

Presentation

[Operator]

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.

[Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations at Moody's Corporation]

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 ir.moodys.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, filed this morning, for reconciliations between all adjusted measures referenced during this call in the 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 nineteen ninety-five.

[Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations at Moody's Corporation]

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 10-K for the year ended December thirty-one, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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. We again delivered some impressive results, with a 23% increase in revenue, an adjusted operating margin of approximately 48%, and 32% growth in adjusted diluted EPS. 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%.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

This growth, combined with ongoing cost discipline, delivered over 600 basis points in adjusted operating margin expansion compared to last year. This year has obviously been a very strong issuance environment. In fact, it's likely to be the second strongest on record. Amidst that strength, we see both cyclical and secular tailwinds that are gonna 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. Year-to-date customer retention is at 93%, and our adjusted operating margin for the quarter was in line with our expectations at 30.3%.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 Noémie 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 RiskTech100.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

We're number one in twelve 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 U.S. and EMEA.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 U.S. 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Now, for any of you that want to dive deeper, and I'm sure there are many on this call, just check out the full reports that we've made available on our website at moody's.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 improved 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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. 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. We're investing to provide the insights, the analysis, and the products to meet this demand. Now, a third growth driver is emerging in domestic debt markets. Many of you have heard me say before that domestic debt market issuers are the cross-border issuers of tomorrow. While smaller than developed economies, emerging market countries typically average higher economic growth rates than more developed markets.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 cat modeling capabilities would be increasingly important to a wide range of finance and risk applications, and also for a broader range of customers.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 in line 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 ten of the top ten global reinsurance brokers, nine of the top ten 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 Predicat 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's 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

With that, I'm gonna hand it over to Noémie to provide more details on our numbers.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 contribution 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

In addition, leveraged 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 issuers 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 continued 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 2024.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 values this quarter. Overall, it was an exceptionally strong quarter. MIS revenue performance translated into a 320 basis points 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 year to date. MIS achieved 59.6% adjusted operating margin, and that includes the adjustments to reflect the impact of increased incentive compensation accruals, while MA delivered 30.3% adjusted operating margin, a sequential improvement of 180 basis points from Q2.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

With a record third quarter and continued strength in the market, we're updating guidance to our full-year ratings revenue, underpinned by revised global issuance growth assumptions for the full 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, tight 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-30% range issuance growth for the full 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Now, with that backdrop, we're raising our guidance for MIS revenue growth to high twenties % 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%-60%, 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 full year range is approximately 50 basis points of headwind from the settlement of a regulatory matter, which we recorded and disclosed in Q2. For MA, we're maintaining our guidance across all metrics.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Taking all this into consideration, we are now expecting Moody's revenue to grow in the high teens % range, expenses to increase by approximately 10%, and adjusted operating margin in the range of 47%-48%. 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 full-year ratings revenue outlook. We are also updating our free cash flow guidance to approximately $2.3 billion, and in addition, we are increasing and narrowing our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range to $11.90-$12.10, an $0.80 increase at the midpoint, and a growth of approximately 21% versus the prior year.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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?

[Operator]

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please dial star one 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 Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Toni Kaplan, Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thanks so much. I wanted to pick up on the Data and Information ARR slowdown from last quarter. I think, Noémie, 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, you know, what percentage of revenues related to government, was this federal government, and are there any more renewals with government coming up? Thanks.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, 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 Decision in Data and Information, we had a lower renewal with one of our large federal government contract. That's associated pretty much with their spending patterns. As you know, we're in an election year, so they are, you know, looking at their overall contract space and we expect, you know, 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

In addition to that, in data and information, the thing that affected a bit the AR 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.

[Toni Kaplan, Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Ashish Sabadra, Business, Education and Professional Services Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks for taking my question. Rob, thanks for flagging both the near and midterm secular and cyclical tailwinds for issuance. But it was also the, as you mentioned, the second strongest issuance year. So, what we want to understand is, can these near-term issuance tailwind help offset the headwinds from tougher comps and the pull forward, as well as the revenue tailwinds from the infrequent issuers, or do we need to normalize before we can start to grow off those levels? Thanks.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Ashish, are we talking about Q4? Are you talking... Are you starting to look towards 2025?

[Ashish Sabadra, Business, Education and Professional Services Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

More 2025. Thanks.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

All right. So maybe what I'll do here, Ashish, is just, you know, kind of tackle early, very early, you know, too early thoughts on, 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 2025. We'll do that on the next earnings call. So I'll just, you know, talk about kind of what we know now. Certainly we don't know exactly how the year is gonna 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yes, there has been some pull forward. I imagine we'll talk about that later on the call. This is probably, you heard me say, probably gonna 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. It 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 that should support issuance, so let's tick through what those are. First, the spec grade default rate has actually been declining, and we expect that to decline 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

The expectation of lower interest rates and combine that with tight spreads. That's gonna 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 $5 trillion over the next four years, but in particular, the real strength around in growth in the spec grade maturity walls. M&A has picked up, I would say, you know, kind of modestly this year versus the last two years. But I certainly would expect that recovery to continue into 2025. I mentioned that, you know, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

And then we've got some of those medium-term tailwinds, and again, I'm sure I'll get asked about private credit and, you know, transition finance. Both of those are gonna be, I think, catalysts for demand for ratings and credit assessment, but also for issuance of debt as we, you know, 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, you know, macroeconomic factors, whether it's jobs or inflation 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 then, of course, geopolitical events. You know, we've basically got two wars going on around the world. You 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

But like I said, on balance, I think modestly skewed to the positive from where we sit right now in terms of issuance for the year.

[Ashish Sabadra, Business, Education and Professional Services Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

That's great color. Thanks, Rob.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

[Scott Wurtzel, Director of Equity Research at Wolfe Research]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to stick on the topic of issuance here. And Rob, maybe wondering if you can share just where we are with debt velocity right now. Obviously, I know it's a strong quarter for issuance, but just on the balance of things, where we are with debt velocity and how you're thinking about that. Thanks.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. So obviously, debt velocity has generally been improving, just given the strength of the, you know, the issuance environment. And 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 gonna be, you know, probably just under $6 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 3.5% 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

But if you look at the stock, the total stock of non-financial corporate debt outstanding, that's grown by something more like 7% over that period of time. So, you know, it's interesting. 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%. We look at, you know, non-financial corporate debt. Other people look at it different ways. We're still underneath that, probably something like 12% for fiscal 2024.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Scott Wurtzel, Director of Equity Research at Wolfe Research]

Great. Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas from William Blair. Your line is open.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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. Just wondering if there's anything else to unpack in that line, particularly, and maybe that's an excuse to ask about the broader monetization of the GenAI-related tools so far this year. Thank you.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, I'm happy to take that. So, Research and Insights for the third quarter grew 6% ARR, which is aligned with the first half. It's also a little lower than the 9% 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 in 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 CreditView users who are using Research Assistant, significantly higher than the CreditView users who aren't using it.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

So I think that's a very strong driver for pipeline growth. We continue to see a little bit longer sales cycle than we had expected during the year. We have very rapid adoption with the early adopters and the smaller asset management players. But when it comes to large financial institutions, you know, the adoption of GenAI 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 GenAI 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

And I think on the overall MA and AR outlook for the full year, we also have some interesting pipeline growth in KYC, which we expect would contribute to continued growth in the fourth quarter and beyond.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. And Noémie, I think, you know, 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 on some of the things that Noémie just talked about.

[Andrew Nicholas, Analyst at William Blair]

Rob, is that Research and Insights or MA as a whole, just to be clear?

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

I was specifically referring to Research and Insights in that case.

[Andrew Nicholas, Analyst at William Blair]

Okay, understood. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik from Barclays. Your line is open.

[Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays]

Thank you. Just to stick on MA, you know, the revenue versus ARR growth keeps widening. So I was just hoping you could just, you know, help level set, you know, why that is today, and then, you know, thinking about how that flows into 2025, you know, would be helpful as well.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. So on the revenue, Manav, we're 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's declining, that are declining double digit. And our revenue for multi-year on-prem software remains stable but fluctuates throughout the year based on timing of renewals.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

So there's a couple of dynamics that I wanna call out that are beyond the 9% growth in recurring revenue that should help, you know, tie that back to the ARR growth and 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 Insights, again, we saw that's about 30% of our business. We saw recurring revenue growth of 6% in the third quarter.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

That's actually improved slightly from the 4% we saw in the first half. We've talked about some of the attrition events and some of the pressure in with research with the asset managers and banks previously. So that's been a bit of a headwind to growth in this business this year. But the again, the recurring revenue growth is very much in line with AR. 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 government 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 Solutions, where we had a bit of a tough comp and the large renewals of the government contract that renewed at a lower rate this year.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, no, I mean, maybe. I mean, you touched on it, just the, you know, there's the transactional one-time revenue and the recurring revenue. And actually, for fiscal 2023, actually, that one-time revenue actually grew, and this year, obviously, we're seeing a decline. So that would contribute to mine up some of what you might think of as a little bit of a widening.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Mm-hmm.

[Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

[Owen Lau, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I know we have touched on private credit in the past, but the narrative of a 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, Owen, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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, Owen, you mentioned investment grade, in many cases, asset-backed finance, the numbers are much bigger than the $3 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 funds, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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. Hopefully that gives you a sense of why we feel optimistic about this. Owen, the last thing I would say is, look, the key for us is to make sure we understand where is the flow coming from, right? Do we have the methodologies in place, rigorous methodologies, so that we can rate this stuff? Do we have the people, right, the resources to be able to do this and play that role in the market?

[Owen Lau, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Great. Thanks a lot for the color, Rob.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yep.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[Faiza Alwy, Lead Analyst for U.S. Business & Information Services at Deutsche Bank]

Yes. Hi, thank you so much. So I wanted to ask about Moody's Analytics again, just in context of your, you know, 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, 2025 and beyond.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. Hey, thanks. Great question. So I think, you know, absent 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 a land strategy.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

And so I think Noémie 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 up-sell in the you know, in the financial services space. So again, you know, we've still got some things to do to be able to better enable the cross-sell and to be able...

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

You know, we've, you know, we talked about earlier this year about the investments we're making in building out that platform to serve corporates, but, you know, those are the things we're doing to try to get after those medium-term targets.

[Faiza Alwy, Lead Analyst for U.S. Business & Information Services at Deutsche Bank]

Thanks, Rob.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of David Milman from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

[David Milman, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

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?

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 wanna get to, you know, 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, what would be typical than kind of historical averages, yet this year. That's not surprising. You know, I think we had, you know, been seeing that.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 and drill down into the U.S., so some of these refi walls are a little bit more back-end loaded, particularly around spec grade. But about 25%-30% of spec grade loan and bond maturities in 2028 were actually issued in 2023 and 2024, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 in line with historical averages, and the forward maturities one year out are 15% higher than this time last year. So I think net, despite the fact that we've had heavier spec grade pull forward this year, I actually think this is still a tailwind for us in the near term.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from a line of Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners. Your line is open.

[Craig Huber, Analyst at Huber Research]

Thank you. Can you just talk a little bit about the spread that you had between the 70% transaction revenue growth and ratings versus 51% global issuance in the quarter? And then maybe, Noémie, just throw in there with the incentive comp, what's in the third quarter and fourth quarter outlook. Thank you.

[Craig Huber, Analyst at Huber Research]

Yeah, Craig. So we had, you know, favorable mix. We certainly, and Noémie 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 leveraged finance growth. Leveraged 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.

[Craig Huber, Analyst at Huber Research]

We had, you know, kind of our consistent pricing initiatives, which all contributed to, you know, favorable, you know, revenue mix relative to issuance.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

And then on the incentive compensation for the third quarter of 2024, we actually recorded an adjustment to the accruals to reflect the updated full year revenue outlook in MIS specifically. So the incentive compensation accruals were about $150 million in the third quarter, which is higher than prior year by 54%. Just for the full year, we expect incentive compensation overall to be approximately $490 million, and that translates into about $120 million for the fourth quarter.

[Craig Huber, Analyst at Huber Research]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[George Tong, Business & Information Services Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

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 grade is exactly in line with historical averages, and the forward 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. So 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?

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Hey, George. So you know, we've talked about on each of the earnings calls this year that we believe that issuance is gonna 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?" 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 we 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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, 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, with Craig's, question. 2025, I think, could be a, a different ballgame. Again, there's just been a, a lot of, we, 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 our guidance.

[Jeffrey Silber, Senior Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum from Stifel. Your line is open.

[Shlomo Rosenbaum, Managing Director in Business Services at Stifel]

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, Navigators Research Assistant. Can you talk about where you are in both in development and then also in, in kind of adoption? I know Noémie 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, the pacing is gonna be dramatically different from what you thought or the adoption will be very different from what you thought?

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 gonna 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 gonna be helpful to both, you know, well, Noémie mentioned some of the things, you know, customer satisfaction. It's gonna be helpful to retention. It's gonna be helpful to our ability to, you know, to price behind those enhancements.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 datasets. 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 early in the year, we did a very small, like, acqui-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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

So you're gonna 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, the IRP as well, and insurance is very easy to, you know, to do the AI enablement. So, you know, just in terms of adoption, you know, it's a mixed bag. You know, and we talked a little bit about it. You know, 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, you know, 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 gonna pass regulatory muster.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

So while those conversations are very encouraging, because we've elevated the dialogue we're having at many of our customers, they're taking longer. So hopefully that gives you a sense.

[Shlomo Rosenbaum, Managing Director in Business Services at Stifel]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Jeffrey Silber, Senior Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

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 that to be flat to potentially down. Are you just being overly conservative or is there something specifically going on? Thanks.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

We've updated the adjusted diluted EPS guidance range based on the updated Q4 implied outlook. Just to give you numbers, we're raising our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range, and we're narrowing it to, for the full year, $11.90-$12.10. That's still 21% at the midpoint, which is driven by MIS performance. What we've done here is we've flowed through the Q3 beats through our full year guide, and we've increased our ratings revenue outlook for Q4 versus the prior forecast at the high end.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

The midpoint of our updated guidance now implies Q4 EPS growth will be relatively flat to slightly down into 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, and I guess, you know, back to the. Sorry, go ahead.

[Jeffrey Silber, Senior Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

No, I was just going to ask if there's something specifically going on with margins in the fourth quarter we should focus on?

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 to 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, you know-

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

As I said, you know, let's watch kind of, 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.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Mm-hmm.

[Jeffrey Silber, Senior Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

All right. Fair enough. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Haas from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Jason Haas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Appreciate the comments earlier on MA ARR. It sounds like the data and information and Research and Insights is maybe not as strong as is expected, but there was no change to the full year guidance there. So I was curious, if you're now expecting closer to the high single digits than the low double digits, and then if not, can 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 an acceleration from 3Q into 4Q? Thanks.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. So, on AR, 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 continued 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 at a lower value in Q3.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 a year ago. Looking out to the remainder of the year, we're maintaining our outlook of a high single digit revenue growth in the 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 full 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 rates, in line with what you've seen year to date.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

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 heading into the fourth quarter, which is our busiest month of the year, our busiest quarter of the year, our new business pipeline is very healthy. We have a good mix of a few large 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, and 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 we're encouraged by. As Noémie said, we've got a very nice pipeline 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 is got a really nice, you know, and growing pipeline. And also, there's a really interesting emerging opportunity here to leverage AI to build screening agents.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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, audit trail for the regulator. So some very interesting stuff there, I think, in our product, you know, recent product pipeline around KYC that, you know, leads us to continue to be, you know, very, you know, optimistic around that business.

[Jason Haas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Great to hear. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Meuler from Baird. Your line is open.

[Jeff Meuler, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

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 was any holdback of customers waiting for the new product launches or just any comment on why KYC growth was a little softer-

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah.

[Jeff Meuler, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

- for ARR in the quarter.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, 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.

[Jeff Meuler, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

... Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

[Andrew Steinerman, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Hi, Noémie. I wanted to ask about Predicat. I think it was the only acquisition that Moody's has done with revenues closed in the last twelve months. Just tell me if I'm correct about that. And specifically about Predicat, I'd like to know the dollar contribution, both to revenues and ARR in the third quarter just reported and in the fourth quarter guide.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Hey, Andrew, it's Rob. 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, you know, that had revenues and operating income. I guess I would say, you know, it's just this is immaterial to our overall, you know, 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 third quarter results, and if you look at ARR, ARR is an organic number, so that'll give you a sense of excluding acquisitions.

[Andrew Steinerman, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Okay. Thank you.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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. RMS, 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, you know, literally north of a hundred customer meetings, and there was some very strong interest in, you know, 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, you know, not only analytics, but also even it'll help inform, you know, some of our work in ratings.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

So we're really excited to have, you know, Predicat as, as part of the Moody's family.

[Andrew Steinerman, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Russell Quelch from Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Redburn Atlantic]

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 a leader, early leader, perhaps, in, 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah. So Russell, thanks for the question. I actually 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.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 in FIG. You're already seeing it in FIG. We're already seeing it in structured finance and the rating of asset-backed finance.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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 for loans that investors are investing in, and they actually want a third party, you know, a third-party view of risk.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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, 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 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." Right?

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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, our business. But we're already seeing that, you know, in both P&Ls.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Redburn Atlantic]

Got you. Okay, thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm from UBS. Your line is open.

[Alex Kramm, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Yes. Hey, hello, everyone. I know it's late in the call, so just a quick cleanup here. 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 4Q, but generally speaking, from a seasonal perspective, costs go up after the 3Q, 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 then, sorry, related to that, you talked about investing a lot in MA early on in the call.

[Alex Kramm, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Just wondering if you have any updated thoughts on the margin expansion that you're looking at for that business in the next couple of years. Thanks.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, thanks. So for the Q4 question, this is a 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 tick 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 30%-31% margin for the full year. So that's for Q4.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

Now, looking out in the outer years, as Rob said, we'll update you later in February, but we've been investing, we've invested in our GenAI capabilities, in our platforming, in our new product development. I'd 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 in MA in the third quarter, despite the fact that revenue kind of remained consistent with the second quarter.

[Noémie Heuland, CFO at Moody's Corporation]

So that's really what I can say about the MA margin and still reiterating our guidance range for the full year.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

Yeah, so to, you know, 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 leveraged 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 wanna make sure that was clear. But on balance, we had a favorable mix from our corporate finance issuance.

[Operator]

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Rob and Noémie for some final closing remarks.

[Rob Fauber, President and CEO at Moody's Corporation]

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.

[Operator]

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.

Participants

Executives

• Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations
• Rob Fauber, President and CEO
• Noémie Heuland, CFO

Analysts

• Toni Kaplan, Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Ashish Sabadra, Business, Education and Professional Services Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Scott Wurtzel, Director of Equity Research at Wolfe Research
• Andrew Nicholas, Analyst at William Blair
• Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays
• Owen Lau, Analyst at Oppenheimer
• Faiza Alwy, Lead Analyst for U.S. Business & Information Services at Deutsche Bank
• David Milman, Analyst at Evercore ISI
• Craig Huber, Analyst at Huber Research
• George Tong, Business & Information Services Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Jeffrey Silber, Senior Analyst at BMO Capital Markets
• Shlomo Rosenbaum, Managing Director in Business Services at Stifel
• Jason Haas, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Jeff Meuler, Senior Research Analyst at Baird
• Andrew Steinerman, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Redburn Atlantic
• Alex Kramm, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS