S&P Global Inc.

S&P Global Inc. is an American financial data, analytics, and credit ratings company that operates some of the most deeply embedded information franchises in global capital markets, generating $15.3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. Its five divisions — Market Intelligence, Ratings, Commodity Insights, Mobility, and S&P Dow Jones Indices — collectively serve virtually every institutional investor, corporate treasury, central bank, and commodity trader on the planet, earning their keep through a mix of subscriptions, transaction fees, and asset-linked royalties that together produce operating margins above 40%.

This is a story about bundling, not invention. S&P Global didn't create credit ratings, price benchmarks, or stock indices — it acquired, consolidated, and embedded them so deeply into market infrastructure that they became difficult to replace. The IHS Markit merger, which closed in February 2022, roughly doubled the company's revenue and created a multi-asset data platform whose nearest competitors — Bloomberg, Refinitiv (LSEG), Moody's, MSCI — overlap only partially with the combined entity. The question for an investor today is whether this collection of wide-moat franchises can continue compounding at a rate that justifies its multiple after a 20%+ drawdown from early-2026 highs, and whether the Mobility spin-off and AI adoption represent genuine incremental value or management distractions dressed as catalysts.

The file turns on a single question: can S&P Global's bundle resist disintermediation long enough for AI-enabled pricing power and buyback-driven per-share growth to deliver satisfactory returns, or does the stack begin to unbundle under pressure from AI-native competitors, regulatory reform, and a credit cycle that eventually turns?