Moody’s Corporation (NYSE:MCO) Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call February 13, 2025 11:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Shivani Kak – Head-Investor Relations
Rob Fauber – President and Chief Executive Officer
Noémie Heuland – Chief Financial Officer
Steve Tulenko – President-Moody’s Analytics
Mike West – President-Moody’s Investors Service

Conference Call Participants

Manav Patnaik – Barclays
Ashish Sabadra – RBC Capital Markets
Toni Kaplan – Morgan Stanley
Alex Kramm – UBS
Scott Wurtzel – Wolfe Research
Owen Lau – Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Silber – BMO Capital Markets
David Motemaden – Evercore ISI
George Tong – Goldman Sachs
Peter Christiansen – Citigroup
Craig Huber – Huber Research
Jeff Meuler – Baird
Andrew Steinerman – JPMorgan
Russell Quelch – Redburn Atlantic
Shlomo Rosenbaum – Stifel
Jason Haas – Wells Fargo

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Moody's Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 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 questions and answers following the presentation.

I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Shivani Kak

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 fourth quarter and full year 2024, as well as our outlook for full year 2025 and updates to our medium-term guidance.

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 US 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 1995. 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 31, 2023, and in other SEC filings made by the company. 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 would also like to point out that members of the media may be on call this morning in a listen-only mode. I'll now turn the call over to Rob.

Rob Fauber

Thanks, Shivani, and thanks very much everybody for joining today's call. After our prepared remarks, Steve Talinko, the president of Moody's Analytics, and Mike West, president of Moody's Investor Service, are going to join Noémie and me for the Q&A portion of the call, and that's something that we've done for a few years now. Before I get into our results, I just want to acknowledge that it's been a difficult few weeks for many members of our team following the tragic loss of our dear friends and Moody's colleagues Chris Collins and Melissa McCandry, in the Washington DC plane crash.

They really were cherished members of our team and their loss leaves an immeasurable void and our thoughts are with their families during this incredibly difficult time. Now, on to our results. Moody's delivered a record year in 2024.

We grew revenue by 20% to over $7 billion, with strong growth across both businesses. And through disciplined cost management, we expanded our adjusted operating margin by over 400 basis points, and that translated into a 26% adjusted diluted EPS growth. All while executing on strategic investments across both of our businesses.

So MIS finished the year on a real high note, 18% total revenue growth, powered by 29% transactional revenue growth in the fourth quarter. And our ratings teams were really active, and it wasn't just in the fourth quarter, but throughout the year. Delivering 33% revenue growth for ratings and over 500 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion for the full year.

Moody's Analytics also had a strong finish to the year with 10% recurring revenue growth in the fourth quarter and 9% ARR growth. Decision solutions continue to lead the way with $1.4% billion in ARR growing at 12%. And as we look to the future, we're continuing to invest to deliver market-leading growth and attractive shareholder returns.

There are some very powerful deep currents that are driving demand across our business. And we've been making investments to ensure that we can capitalize on that demand. Thinking about the future as we enter the third year since we introduced our medium-term targets, today, Noémie and I are going to provide an update on our key metrics and what underpins our higher adjusted diluted EPS growth range.

So as we set out this time last year, on last year's fourth quarter call, 2024 was a year in which we really doubled down on our investments in order to help us capitalize on some big opportunities that are in front of us. And we executed on those foundational investments that we called out on that earnings call at the start of last year, and those included platforming and modernizing, it included new products and also Gen AI. And we focused on the accessibility of our data estate, and also enhancements to our risk and resilience posture. We continue to invest in the rating agency and our positioning as the agency of choice for investors and issuers.

And I have to say, I'm really proud that we were named best rating agency an impressive thirteenth year in a row by Extell, formerly institutional investor. It's our experienced analysts, insightful research, and active market engagement that really reinforce our leadership position in the market and that allows us in turn to capitalize on robust periods of issuance like this past year. We've also made investments to address the big shifts that are going on in the capital markets.

The first of those is private credit, and I'm not just talking about direct leveraged lending, which is a roughly $1.5% trillion market and growing but also fund finance, infrastructure debt, and asset-backed finance, to name a few. And with dedicated analytical and commercial focus on private credit, we made really good progress in this space this past year. Rating nearly 400 private credit-related transactions in 2024.

Similarly, we have a product suite to serve transition finance. And we issued over 150 second-party opinions and more than 20 net-zero assessments in 2024. And we have a very strong pipeline there as well.

We also have a coordinated commercial and analytical initiative focused on digital and to ensure that we are the agency of choice in this space for the years to come. Our strong financial performance this year allowed us to accelerate the build-out of MIS' technology applications for analytical, commercial, and operational teams. And these investments are driving improvements in operational efficiency and are allowing us to be increasingly volume agnostic within a range of issuance and you can see this come through in our 60% margins in 2024.

And our guidance for 2025. So I thought I'd just put this in perspective for you for a moment. We rated nearly $6.2% trillion of issuance in 2024.

That's an increase of 42% compared to 2023. And Mike West has given me an interesting statistic that throughout last year, our ratings teams issued a press release related to a credit opinion on average every 20 minutes. And that's without needing to meaningfully increase our analytical staffing levels.

And very importantly, we did this while maintaining the robust controls that the market and our regulators expect from us. And as you've heard me say, we're always looking for ways to invest inorganically in ratings because it's a great business. And if you recall in mid-2024, we invested further in GCR.

That's the leading domestic credit rating agency in Africa taking our ownership up to almost 100%. In November, we expanded Moody's Local again this time into six more countries across Central America. And we're really pleased with the growth that we're seeing in Moody's Local revenues up 16% in 2024, and we signed several hundred first-time mandates.

So that's a great expansion of the rated portfolio across the region and really bodes well for the future. So let me turn to Moody's Analytics for a few moments. We've invested there to enhance our product cloud traditional customer base.

Banks and insurers, we've also expanded our data coverage and workflow solutions to serve large corporates in in-demand third-party risk domains, that includes things like KYC, supplier risk, trade credit, transfer pricing, and master data management. And within the last six months, we also made three important acquisitions that have enhanced our offerings in our banking and insurance businesses and added valuable data and analytics to our risk operating system. And those include Numerated, which extends our loan origination system for banks, CreditCat, which adds to our capabilities in Casualty Underwriting and Analytics, and most recently, in January, Tape Analytics, which enriches our insights on properties and will integrate with our cat risk models.

So just a little bit more on Numerated for a moment. We've been collaborating with their team on joint offerings for some time. And that really highlighted the great fit between our respective lending workflow solutions.

So there was an obvious industrial logic to this and we've had some really encouraging responses from our customers. In fact, we've already had a few noteworthy wins with tier two and tier three banks in the fourth quarter. With our enhanced end-to-end commercial lending offering and it's really resonating with our customers.

Switching over to insurance, over the last several years, we've talked about the foundational investments that we've made in our cloud-based intelligent risk platform. We call that IRP. And these investments are now delivering meaningful ARR growth for our insurance business.

In fact, in 2024, we grew the number of customers on their IRP by almost 20% and migrating to the IRP then enables insurers to reduce sometimes by as much as half the time that they need to model complex scenarios across billions of property locations. And as our platform hosts the most modern sophisticated high-definition models, our customers are able to better measure and quantify their financial exposure as well as monitor the evolving risk in their portfolios at scale. And this is helping to deepen our relationships with our customer base and expanding our strategic relationships with the largest global insurers, reinsurers, and brokers in the world.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that for the third consecutive year, Moody's was ranked number one in the Chartis Risk Tech 100 providing market validation of our best-in-class solutions serving nearly 15,000 analytics customers. So a lot to be proud of in 2024. And while we had a strong 2024, I'm very excited about 2025 and beyond due to a set of deep currents that are changing the way that businesses and markets operate.

And given the investments that we've made over the last several years, we really are well positioned to ride those deep currents. And there are five that we are particularly focused on. First, the ongoing expansion and evolution of the debt capital markets.

Second, the increasing pace of digital transformation and automation across industries. Third, the imperative for businesses to know more about who they're doing business with. Fourth, the growing needs across industries to understand the financial impact of extreme weather events and a changing climate.

And fifth, the transformative power of generative AI and the potential unlock for owners of proprietary data in insights. So let me just double click on the impact of extreme weather for a moment because this has been so much in the headlines lately. And on past calls, we've talked about the need to better understand the physical risk relating to climate change.

And when we announced the acquisition of RMS, a few years ago, some folks asked us why we thought it was important to have these capabilities. Well, after hurricanes Celine and Milton and the LA wildfires, I don't think anyone is questioning the need to better understand this. I really believe we are at an inflection point.

In fact, the issue of insurability of assets both whether insurance is available and what the cost will be over time, has become a very important issue in property and financial markets. And we've witnessed the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events combined with ongoing property development and inflation which have made these events even more costly. And the demand to better understand these risks, not just by insurers, but by banks, investors, companies, governments, is only going up and that's why we acquired Tape Analytics.

Their AI-powered technology delivers address-level risk insights which are a natural complement to our catastrophe models. And these sophisticated models combined with our really rich and deep data and insights on credit and economics and properties means that we are uniquely positioned to be the authoritative voice on quantifying the financial impacts of physical risk. And we see this need continuing for years into the future.

So we feel good about these deep currents as durable demand drivers for our business. And Noémie is gonna walk you through our full year 2025 guidance assumptions in a moment. As we look forward after delivering a remarkable performance in 2024, gonna provide an update on the progress against our medium-term targets.

But let me give you the bottom line. We have fundamentally strengthened the earnings power of this business. And that should support Moody's as a serial compounder in the years ahead.

So with that, Noémie, over to you.

Noémie Heuland

Thank you, Rob, and hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Starting with our Q4 results, we delivered a very strong finish capping a year of remarkable financial performance in 2024. You can see the highlights from our full year results on slide nine.

In Q4, MCO revenues were nearly $1.7% billion, up 13% year on year. And our adjusted diluted EPS was $2.69%, up 20% year over year. MIS delivered its second-highest Q4 revenue on record with growth across all business lines.

The anticipated volatility around the US election didn't materialize, and with spreads at their tightest levels in over a decade, particularly in spec grade, and the robust demand environment continued throughout the quarter until the last days of December. MIS revenue in Q4 was $809 million, up 18% year on year. The growth was driven primarily by three key factors.

First, healthy leveraged loan issuance activity, which was up 134% in Q4. However, with the mix weighted towards refinancing and repricing, transactional revenue for that asset class was up 27%. Second, the continued strength from infrequent issuers in the banking and insurance sectors, and third, strong performance from structured finance particularly in U.S. CLOs and CMBS, reflecting strong demand in a very favorable spread environment.

MIS's fourth-quarter performance and corresponding higher incentive compensation translated into a 51.3% adjusted operating margin, which exceeded our implied guidance. Turning to MA, we also had a strong Q4 with revenue of $863 million, up 8% year on year. Recurring revenue which accounts for 95% of total revenue, grew 10% year on year.

Broadly in line with the 9.4% growth in ARR. As Rob said, Decision Solutions drove the performance with 12% growth year on year. We delivered strong growth across lines of businesses in Decision Solutions with Banking, Insurance, and KYC achieving ARR growth of 9%, 12%, and 17% respectively.

More specifically, KYC ARR grew 17% with strong demand from customer and supplier risk data usage and sales from new customers. Insurance ARR grew 12%, driven by improved customer retention and strong demand for a cat model tool as extreme weather events are becoming more pervasive and impactful across industries. This is generating demand for best-in-class risk modeling solutions with the IRP.

And our Q4 Q1 2025 acquisition of Tape Analytics only builds on this as Rob highlighted. Banking ARR grew 9%, reflecting strong customer retention and expansion of relationships with that are enabling customers lending risk management, and finance workflows. The other two lines of businesses in MA include our more established data and research franchises.

Data and information grew ARR by 8%, driven by demand from Orbis within the corporate sector. Research and insights grew ARR by 6% with the attrition events from the asset manager space, we discussed earlier in the year affecting the growth rate. That said, sales, meaning cross-sell, upsell, or upgrades, grew meaningfully above ARR trends in FY24.

And some of this was from upselling research assistance to our CreditGU customers which accounted for 25% of our overall research and insights ARR growth. We are encouraged by the customer engagement for research assistance, one of our Gen AI offerings, and that's building a healthy pipeline for 2025. And has already reached more than 100 customers in Q4.

MA adjusted operating margin of 33.8% increased 240 basis points versus Q4 last year. Leading to a full-year margin of 30.7% which is towards the high end of our annual guide. Now turning to fiscal year 2025 guidance.

We expect MCO revenue growth in the high single-digit range with an adjusted operating margin expanding by about 200 basis points to approximately 50%. And this is on the back of Exascale 2024 where we increased adjusted operating margin by 420 basis points. Our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range is a range of $14 to $14.50%.

Now for MIS, we expect market conditions will remain constructive this year with tight spreads. Declining high yield default rates, then upticking M&A activity. You'll see our issued outlook for individual asset classes on this slide.

But all in all, we're projecting MIS rated issuance growth to be in the low single-digit range for 2025, with 700 to 800 first-time mandates. For MIS revenue, we expect growth in the mid to high single-digit percent range for the year benefiting from a positive issuance mix. We expect the revenue performance to translate into an adjusted operating margin of 62% to 63% which at the midpoint represents about 250 basis points of margin expansion year over year.

For MA, we expect revenue growth in the high single-digit range with ARR growth in the high single-digit to low double-digit range. We expect MA adjusted operating margin to be between 32% and 33%, which at the midpoint represents 180 basis points of margin expansion year over year. Turning to what underpins MA and DX expected MCO margin expansion.

We took a hard look at our operating model and believe we have an opportunity to simplify our organizational structure. In our analytics business, we are, for the most part, through the integration of the businesses we've acquired over the recent years. We are also gradually reorienting our go-to-market from selling individual products to selling end-to-end solutions to our customers in the banking, insurance, and corporate segments.

This puts us in a position to combine resources in our customer-facing, marketing, product, and data engineering functions and further consolidate our real estate footprint. And also more broadly across the organization, we're starting to reap the benefit of the investments we made in automating our workflows, which translates into expected improvements in operating leverage. So in connection with this, today, we're announcing an efficiency program to simplify the organization allowing us to accelerate profitability expansion and redirect some investment capacity to strategic growth areas.

We plan to incur between $200 and $250 million in restructuring charges over the two-year duration of the plan, primarily in personnel-related costs, for an expected total annualized cost savings in the range of $250 million to $300 million upon completion of the plan. We accrued approximately $45 million already in the fourth quarter, and expect to record an additional charge in the range of $80 million to $100 million in 2025, primarily in Moody's Analytics and to a lesser extent within our corporate functions. I note that we have included a full year 2024 to full year 2025 operating expense bridge in the appendix of this presentation to assist with modeling questions.

And here's some color on how to think about the calendarization of the top line in 2025. We expect MIS revenue in full year 2025 to follow a similar quarterly pattern to 2024, with first-quarter revenue up in the mid-single-digit range from the first quarter of 2024, ramping up in the second quarter, before declining sequentially in our third and fourth quarter. For MA, we expect our year-over-year total revenue growth to be consistent in the high single-digit range throughout the year.

With Q1 revenue being sequentially flat versus Q4 2024 a pattern that's consistent with the prior year. For operating expenses and excluding the impact from restructuring and asset abandonment charges, we expect expenses to follow a normal seasonal pattern. Sequentially, anticipate expenses to increase by about $10 million from Q4 to Q1, and then we anticipate operating expenses to follow a typical seasonal pattern, but to remain relatively stable throughout the remainder of the year.

As savings associated with our efficiency program offset annual salary increases and variable costs associated with revenue. In terms of margin, we expect MIS to be in the mid-sixties in the first half, before declining in the second half in line with revenue. And for MA, we expect approximately 30% in the first quarter sequentially improving in the second half to achieve our full-year guidance of 32% to 33% as revenue ramps, as we start to see the savings from our efficiency plan in the second half.

In terms of how these different dynamics translate into adjusted diluted EPS, we expect this to follow the MIS revenue cadence and more specifically for Q1, expect adjusted diluted EPS to be at the high end of the implied quarterly adjusted diluted EPS range of $3.50% to $3.60%. So finally, looking beyond 2025, I'd like to talk about how we're tracking against our medium-term targets. It's been three years since we published those, and with almost a year in the CFO seat, I'm using this as an opportunity to take stock of how our performance has stacked up.

The headline is this, 2024 adjusted diluted EPS is up 46% from two years ago. And the midpoint of our full-year 2025 guidance implies an 18% adjusted diluted EPS CAGR for the first three years. Significantly above the low double-digit medium-term target growth rate.

Now a lot of this outperformance has been driven by very good execution, during a robust issuance environment, with MIS revenue up 40.5% in the last two years and MIS adjusted margin already exceeding 60% in 2024. We also have delivered strong organic growth in MA, reporting ARR growth consistently in the range of 9% to 10% over the last two years. As we look forward, we expect our retention rate to remain in the low to mid-nineties percent range and to continue to grow our new business at a low to mid-teens percent pace, enabling us to sustain ARR growth in this 9% to 10% range in the coming years.

Of note, what's most notably different now from what we envisioned when we initially published our medium-term guidance is that our recent M&A has been at a smaller scale and focused on enriching our offering to fuel durable growth in our strategic growth areas including lending and casualty underwriting. On profitability, we've invested in Gen AI and process automation more broadly for internal efficiencies, we've invested in the build-out of the MA platform and our data interoperability, all of which are expected to generate increased operating leverage in the coming years. We expect that this coupled with our program to simplify our organizational structure, will translate into MA margin expansion in the mid to high thirty percent range by 2027.

Now bringing this all together, for MTO, we are increasing the range for adjusted diluted EPS growth from the low double-digit percent growth to low to mid-teens percent growth range, reflecting our ongoing effort to improve the earnings power of our business. To wrap up, we believe that demand drivers and the execution of our strategy will deliver attractive and sustainable growth, and profitability expansion across market cycles. We remain committed to executing on our capital allocation strategy and anticipate consistent strong free cash flow returns to continue as we work to deliver on both our customers and shareholders.

I'd like to thank all of our colleagues around the world for their remarkable contributions to another great year for Moody's, and with that, Rob, Mike, Steve, and I will be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please dial. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset and make sure that your mute function is turned off so that your signal reaches our equipment.

We ask that you please limit yourself to one question. The option to rejoin the queue will be unavailable. Again, that is star one to ask a question.

Monifin Nayak with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Monifin Nayak

Thank you. I just wanted to ask you about the medium-term guide. I just wanted to confirm if those were organic numbers, particularly on the MA side, and just maybe just some of the moving pieces in there.

It sounds like, Noémie, from your last comment, maybe there's less M&A than what you initially thought. Is that correct.

Noémie Heuland

So we're in the third year of the medium-term target. As I said, I'm almost a year in the CFO seat, so it's a good time to take stock and look at how we did, how we're tracking. As I said, we're tracking ahead on MCO revenue and adjusted diluted EPS metrics.

And MIS operating margin is already up 60%. So we've delivered strong organic growth in MA. We had reported growth consistently in the 9% to 10% range over the last two years, and I think that's what you should expect us to deliver over the medium term.

What's to your point, what's to note, we had a bit lower contribution from M&A than what we initially envisioned when we published those medium-term targets initially. We had a different rates environment back then. So, again, we're committed to deliver 9% to 10% ARR growth, as I said, over the medium term, and that's mostly organic.

We may do a bit of tuck, that's really what's driving the main change here.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sabadra

Yeah. I just wanted to follow-up on that midterm question, particularly on margin. So the MIS margins are already at low 60%.

So just wanted to better understand if there's not much room for margin expansion on with issuance just given the high incremental margins there. But also, what does it imply for earnings growth in the midterm. Are we implying a much more modest earnings growth profile.

Any color that would be helpful. Thanks.

Noémie Heuland

So on MIS margin for 2025, just to kind of give you a little bit more color on what's on our guidance. You gotta remember we had higher incentive compensation accruals in 2024 as a result of the extraordinary performance. We rebaseline that at the beginning of each year.

So, obviously, that gives us a bit of tailwind in margin for 2025. And then in terms of further out in the medium term, we're continuing to make investments in our ratings business. I mean, we mentioned the workflows, the rating workflows, the analytical tool so that we can make our analysts more efficient and really focus on what they do best, which is talking to our customers, our issuance, and doing some research.

And we're continuing to invest in our risk and resiliency program as you know, we are regulated, and so we continue to improve and enhance our internal controls with automation there. And we're investing in a lot of areas that are going to fuel the growth of the ratings business in the long term, like private credit, sustainable finance, and I'm sure Mike and Rob can give some color on that as well.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Toni Kaplan

Thanks so much. I wanted to ask about MA margins. Really great quarter and higher than expected guide.

You talked about the efficiency plan which was very helpful. Are you pulling back on investment at all. And just any additional color on simplification or the efficiency plan and maybe embedded in the whole thing is sort of AI.

And if how you're thinking about investment there and cost savings from it. Thanks.

Noémie Heuland

Yeah. Thanks. I'll start, and I'll have Steve provide some color as well.

As I said, we said, I think, in the last earnings call, we're mostly through our large investment cycles. We were redeploying now capital internally. We're self-funding some major investments around sales to go after the corporate segment. We've made we're making some investments there.

We're continuing to invest in our platform. And our data estate as well. The efficiency is really coming from you know, that's the we're at the point where we've integrated, for the most part, the acquired entities.

We're shifting a little bit our go-to-market to focus more end-to-end solutions towards our customer segment. That gives us some opportunity to simplify the organization and Steve can talk about some of the things he's doing. We've also, to your point, invested in Gen AI, that's delivered some very nice efficiency gains in engineering, as well as in our customer success group.

So, obviously, we're starting to reap the benefits of that as well.

Steve Talinko

Everything you said there makes good sense. I would say the simplification dynamic is a rich one and I think a very valuable way to think about this. Maybe most importantly, we're concentrating on those use cases and those areas where we perceive the demand to be the richest among our customers. Rob talked about drivers of growth in the future and we're making investments in those concentrating on those, and redeploying toward those sometimes redeploying out of some areas that aren't going to be as fast growing.

So that's probably the other big change there. Just to reinforce, Gen AI really is making a difference internally. We're pretty excited about the productivity gains we're seeing in engineering especially. And starting to see some on the sales side as well already seeing some in customer service, so pretty excited about that.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm with UBS. Please go ahead.

Alex Kramm

Yes. Hey. Morning, everyone.

I guess a good afternoon now. But very quickly on the rating sites, obviously, laid out kinda some of your expectations, but maybe you can dig a little bit deeper for 2025, the puts and takes. On the range, where do you think some upside can come from, for example, M&A.

And what do you see as the biggest risk for the outlook here.

Rob Fauber

Hey, Alex. It's Rob. Thanks for the question.

So let me give you a little insight into maybe a few of the, you know, some of the key assumptions here in the outlook. I mean, first of all, you know, economic growth, we think, is gonna support broader market activity. Spreads are tight.

They may widen a little bit. During the balance of the year, but we'll still be well below historical levels we expect. And we think we're gonna see continued strong investor demand.

Refinancing and improved M&A activity are gonna be key drivers. In regards to refi, there's a fairly wide range of assumptions about refi. Volumes for leveraged loans in particular for 2025 when you look across all the banks.

And it ranges from, you know, leveraged loan issuance being substantially down to being up, and you could see in our webcast deck, we're kinda somewhere in between you know, down mid-single digits. So that's one. And the second is the second key variable is M&A activity.

And we've assumed something like a 50% increase in M&A for 2025 meaning that M&A will be an increasing percent of the use of proceeds and that is favorable to revenue mix. And just to give you a sense of the sensitivity there, if it was something like 20% to 25% increase, that might be you know, two to three percentage points of revenue growth. We also haven't assumed any you know, any risk-off periods, you know, when you've got you know, a forecast that calls for more than $6 trillion of issuance.

You know, we've assumed virtually all Blue Sky days. So there are a lot of things obviously that go into issuance. It's not just one assumption.

But taken together, Alex, that explains our guidance range for revenues that spans mid to high single digits on low single-digit issuance growth.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Scott Wurtzel

Hey. Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question.

I wanted to go back to Moody's Analytics. I'm wondering if you can speak to just the sort of broader demand environment that you're seeing and how sales cycles are trending. I know, you know, go back a quarter or two, maybe on the Gen AI side, there were some longer sales cycles.

So wondering if we can get an update on that and just demand more broadly. Thanks.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. So maybe I'll take that. Thanks, Scott, for the question.

So I think, first of all, the length of the sales cycle has not changed materially. Over the last eighteen to twenty-four months. I would say that's been a question we've heard a couple of times. And I think in general, we're seeing patterns that are consistent with the patterns we've seen in the last couple of years.

I'd say we're very encouraged by the pipeline our new business production has actually been very good in 2024. Across the board and across segments. Retention strong in 2024 as well.

We held, in fact, at the same level, actually slightly higher than what we saw in 2023. So retention about the same, maybe a little bit better. New business production in general, better across the board, and I would say pipeline going to 2025 is very strong as well.

So very encouraging.

Noémie Heuland

And if I just ask so just gonna add on the new business growth. That was really an encouraging sign that we saw in research and insights. And across all the businesses, actually, where we had a new business growth going faster than ARR, and we had some very interesting use cases on Gen AI on research assistant and that gives us confidence on the outlook.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Owen Lau with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Owen Lau

Hi. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. So again, I'm sorry for multiple questions here, but you expect your revenue to grow high single digit even though your ARR is expected to grow high single to low double digit.

Should we expect this dynamic that is still, like, I don't know, maybe two, three percent gap between the two. Like, this dynamic to continue in the near to medium term, when and what does it take for revenue to actually accelerate to low double digit. And, also, how much have you baked in some of the new initiatives such as AI, MSCI partnership, and other new product launch in your guidance.

Thanks a lot.

Noémie Heuland

So just a couple of things on revenue, first of all. There that can include some M&A, FX, and so ARR is an organic constant currency growth number. So that's just one clarification.

In terms of the best way to look at it, ARR and recurring revenue over a trailing twelve months period should be pretty consistent. If you look at 2024, for example, our recurring revenue was in 9%, and that's very consistent with ARR. What's really driving the difference is this transactional revenue is going down and provides a bit of a headwind.

Continue to see that in the foreseeable future as we have still that outside of the US in banking and insurance. But we expect that to continue to narrow as we migrate those customers over in the platform. Think that's the best way to look at it.

Owen Lau

How about guidance. Have you taken any AI and MSCI all these into your guidance.

Rob Fauber

We incorporate those into our plans. I would say the sales pipeline's big enough that they are contributors to the pipeline, but they're not major contributors or material contributors. Across the whole business.

Yeah. I would say, though, that so it's all baked in, but Research Assistant has been very helpful to sales in research and insights. And 25% of the growth in research and insight ARR is from customers who subscribed to Research Assistant. And the weighted sales pipeline for Research Assistant is double the total sales for fiscal 2024.

So we've got larger opportunities around workflow automation, and we're seeing good momentum. So it's an important contributor to growth even though it's modest in terms of the overall base of revenues.

Owen Lau

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Silber

Thank you so much. With all the discussion coming out of Washington, DC, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about first year of your exposure to the federal government as a customer. And then more broadly, in terms of some of the expected policy changes, what the impact on your business might be.

Thanks.

Noémie Heuland

In terms of the overall impact, it's pretty small. We have an overall MCO level. It's less than 1% of our consolidated revenue, and maybe that Rob talk a little bit about some of his policy changes and how we're looking at that.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. So I think it's important to kinda zoom out for a moment. And just think about what the world's been through over the last five years and we've had a pandemic.

We had a huge negative shock to GDP and employment. Then we had a huge monetary and fiscal stimulus in response. Then that led to record inflation and an interest rate shock.

And as the pandemic subsided, we had two military conflicts in key energy-producing regions. But through all of this, the global economy has been surprisingly resilient and it's been able to adapt. I think it's important just to keep that backdrop because, you know, obviously, there's a large volume of executive orders and policy directives that span a number of different issues, but the headlines don't, you know, tell all the story.

You know, I think we'll see some impact you know, in certain sectors based on what happens with tariffs, and you can imagine sectors like autos and retail and steel and aluminum, immigration, sectors like agriculture and hospitality and construction. You could see on fossil fuel producers, so they're gonna be, you know, I think some again, some puts and takes here. We may see you know, more broadly a stronger economic environment that's gonna be good for issuance in general.

So I think you know, from a also from a rating agency perspective, we're really gonna anchor on the credit impacts of all this and know, we're putting out a lot of research about know, what those impacts could be.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of David Motemaden with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

David Motemaden

Hey. Good morning. I had a question just on the higher medium-term outlook for MIS revenue, the high single to low double-digit growth now.

Versus mid to high growth when you guys last updated these medium-term targets. Could you help me think through what's driving that uptick. Were there any big movements in the long-term building blocks that you've given in the past.

Or is it just M&A coming back that's driving that. And maybe also if you could just talk about how we should think about the third-party private credit rating assessments contributing to that as well would be helpful.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. So I think maybe the first thing just to anchor on is you know, this is we're still anchoring off of the base year of 2022 and the medium-term targets that we put out. So we're now a couple of years into that.

We've got guidance out for the third year, and we're kinda looking out to now where do we think we're gonna be five years out in 2027. So we've got two years in the books. We've got a year of guidance.

And two years of unknown. And so what you're seeing is us now just updating, and an important part of that is the performance that we've already achieved. So, you know, that hopefully, that gives you a sense.

But, Mike, maybe just talk a little bit about some of the you know, the demand drivers for issuing because I think that also gives some insight into the durability of growth in ratings.

Mike West

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Rob.

As Rob mentioned earlier, what you've got is a lower rate of M&A over the last few years that we do anticipate to come back because there's large pent-up demand. But if I move away from some of those traditional M&A refunding studies and think a little bit more broadly, about the growth of private credit, whether that is in direct lending, whether that's in securitization, whether that's in fund finance, or whether it's in the broader reallocation of capital into the private market away from the banks. Then on top of that, got to think about some of the drivers in that sustainable and transition finance area.

There are clean energy commitments around 93% of global GDP, which is expected to translate in investment needs of about two and a half times by 2030. And Rob also talked about digitalization and digital infrastructure, which again is another multitrillion-dollar market that needs long-term financing for long-term assets, and that could be project financing, could be corporate finance, or it could be some form of securitization. So when we think of that third building block the evolution of the debt capital markets.

These are some of the things that we're investing in, are engaging in with market participants and feel very good as part of that medium-term story.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

George Tong

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon.

With respect to the MA segment and your medium-term target of high single, low double-digit growth, how are you thinking about growth by subsegments. So decision solutions, research and insights, and data and information, and what do you see as driving the differences in growth. Between those segments.

Steve Talinko

Maybe I'll take a I'll talk to that, George. Thanks for the question. It's Steve.

First of all, if you just think about the core franchises, these franchises have been around literally for decades. The data information business, the research and insights business. These businesses have, you know, demonstrated a good track record of solid growth, maybe above average for the industry or above average for a peer group.

With ARR numbers in the high single digits, we think that's gonna continue very reliably into the future. You've got continued investments in terms of data quality, data coverage, and as well as tools like the Gen AI tools we've talked about as well. So we believe these to be strong solid performers in the future delivering good retention and good new business numbers.

The decision solutions unit where you have some of the higher growing businesses most notably, KYC and third-party risk management work that we do to help people understand who they do business with, that you know, that's put up some really nice numbers in terms of ARR numbers in the recent past and continues to do so. We think, in the future. So you should see higher growth in the decision solutions segment, maybe high single-digit growth in these core franchises that have been around for a long time.

High growth in decision solutions driven by a lot of innovation, and a lot of work to make our customers' jobs easier leveraging our data, our analytics, and our software together to solve problems and to help them do their jobs. So I think you'll see a differentiation that way.

George Tong

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Christiansen with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Peter Christiansen

Thank you. Good afternoon. Great to be a part of the call.

Really nice execution here. I wanna get back on the M&A side. You know, you've had some really good speed to market on some new products, some enhancements.

I was just talking just like to hear any color on your ability to pass on value-based pricing across a number of your products and segments subsegments there. Then lastly, just curious how you're thinking about headcount for MIS and growth there potentially. Thanks.

Steve Talinko

Maybe I'll start with the questions about MA. Welcome to the call there. Nice to have you on board, by the way.

Nice. You know, the value-based philosophy is, I think, one that we have long talked about and long maintained. We think it's really important to the process, you know, inflation is not as important as the value we create for customers.

For example, in MA, we actually provide some statistics. I'm sure Shivani will have this in our investor deck. Where we dimension the contributions that come from upgrades and price.

And you'll see those are contributions that are very stable and continue over the course of the last couple of years and we expect it to continue in the future. I think that number was around 7% in 2024, just to give you a benchmark. So the contributions from pricing, I think, are stable and we expect them to continue going forward.

Noémie Heuland

Do you wanna talk about the staffing question. For MIS, I think we we've talked about earlier and that actually drove our part of our performance in the fourth quarter and the full year. We're invested significantly in automation and rating workflow to make our analysts more efficient, and we expect us to you can expect us to continue to do that.

We'll obviously continue to invest in our skill set. We have the best analysts that will continue to invest and grow, but probably less than the pace of revenue growth given the investments we've made in automation.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. The one other thing I'd add, you know, double-clicking on Steve's point about you know, the value prop. It's really interesting.

You have so many customers who are focusing on efficiency and digitization and automation and all of these things. And I think we've talked a little bit about you know, the example of what's going on with our CreditView offering with research assistant where the value prop itself is changing. So CreditView with no Gen AI enablement is a research subscription product.

And CreditView with Gen AI enablement, research assistant, custom AI workflows, those kinds of things, is actually something where people can start to say, how do I change the leverage model for labor in my you know, whether it's my investment team or my research team or whatever it may be, that's a very different conversation and a very different value proposition. Now the cycle time to have those conversations is different, but that's a pretty exciting evolution of that particular product.

Peter Christiansen

Thank you. Compelling narrative. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research. Please go ahead.

Craig Huber

Thank you. Rob or Mike, can you just talk further about private credit, the I'm curious what if you're willing to give this, what percent of your ratings revenue came from private credit last year. How do you see the market growing here to add your ratings growth rates in the coming years here.

And then, Noémie, if you could just throw in there what the what's the incentive comp number in the fourth quarter and for the full year, how that changed year over year. Thank you.

Rob Fauber

Craig, yeah, let me give you so we don't know, we don't break out exactly like you're asking, but we can give you some data points to give you an insight into the traction that private credit is getting within the franchise. So I mentioned in my prepared remarks that you know, we had nearly 400 private credit mandates across all of ratings. Now that includes things like ratings on, you know, BDCs, sub-lines, closed-end funds, you know, the suite of fund finance, but also asset-backed finance and middle market CLOs, private ratings for investors.

So you know, and that has grown very significantly in the course of one year. And also just to give you a sense, because Fund Finance is certainly a growing area and I think it's gonna continue to grow for a number of years. And fund finance is in our FIG we address that through our FIG rating franchise, in 2024, 30% of our first-time mandates in FIG were private credit related.

So again, this goes back to the when you look at it in the total base, it's still modest, but when you look at it as a percent of growth, you can see that this is starting to make a difference. Do you have anything you wanna add just in terms of how we're addressing private credit.

Mike West

Yeah. And thanks for your question, Craig. I mean, as Rob said, we definitely see private credit as a tailwind.

It's a rapidly evolving space across all those asset classes. And it's very important when you think about the originator the transparency around the credit quality there, they're looking to move on to the buyer, and then many of the buyers again, want to know their credit quality and an independent view of that credit quality because many of these buyers are sensitive. With regard to regulation and their own capital allocation.

So, again, there's many trends that support why independent opinion is very important in a growing asset class. And the way that we've organized ourselves is because it's across all of these different franchises that at the very highest level, we have to organize around leadership so we can engage with all these players that may be touching in these different franchises. And, therefore, we have dedicated commercial people, dedicated analytical teams.

But the very good thing is that we have depth and we have experience in each of our lines of business and the appropriate methodologies. So as they start to develop as individual areas of asset class, we are able and available to discuss at a very early stage, and that's what's very important when you have an evolving market like this. So I feel very good about going into 2025 and over the medium term.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Meuler with Baird. Go ahead.

Jeff Meuler

Yeah. Thank you. The medium-term growth guidance, obviously, really good.

But as Rob said, a lot's updating for performance already achieved. I think, mathematically, it implies lower growth in 2026 and 2027 relative to what I'd consider your longer-term structural growth, especially in MIS. Are there any specific callouts there.

Should we just not read too much into that. I think Rob said there's kinda blue sky assumptions for issuance in 2025. But 2025 MIS doesn't look overly inflated.

Any means relative to the long-term trend, and Mike sounded positive on structural growth. If you could just help us reconcile what's implied for 2026 and 2027. Thank you.

Rob Fauber

Maybe the fundamental takeaway for me is you know, we're not downgrading our growth assumption for ratings. And hopefully, what you're hearing is some real confidence about the medium-term drivers of issuance. So that may be the math.

Remember, we've got ranges and other things in here that we're expressing it in ranges. But I don't want you to take away that we think somehow the growth outlook has been dampened for the ratings business.

Noémie Heuland

Yeah. One other thing I would add is you look at the overall picture is we're really reflecting the MA growth rates that we've observed across our different businesses. Steve talked about the nuances between our mature franchises and decision and, data and information, research and insights, and the faster-growing businesses in decision solutions.

So that's one element. And the other piece that I really wanna point out is we're focusing on increased profitability, especially in MA. And that's something that's driving increased profitability going forward, and that's what's behind partially the increase in the adjusted diluted EPS rate.

Jeff Meuler

Hear you loud and clear. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Andrew Steinerman

Hi, Noémie. I just wanted to talk about the contribution of M&A in the quarter for both MA and MIS and also going forward is the Cape acquisition and the guide. I'm not sure if that closed.

Noémie Heuland

Yeah. So it was really small for the fiscal 2024, Andrew. We had maybe 25 bps of revenue growth for MA.

And then for the full year 2025, what's embedded in our guide you have a little bit of tailwind from M&A, but you also have some FX headwinds. So net-net the net of two is really not material to our fiscal year 2025 guidance.

Andrew Steinerman

I think Cape is it.

Noémie Heuland

Cape is it. Yes.

Andrew Steinerman

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Russell Quelch with Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Russell Quelch

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having me on.

In respect of ARR growth, within KYC. Sorry. Had been some expectations that I would mature after the booms post the pandemic and the Ukraine Gaza conflict.

Can you talk about what's driving a reacceleration of growth in that area and how sustainable is in the high teens range. And then separately, MSCI said on its conference call, it was having further conversations with you about expanding your partnership, which is currently in ESG. It's perhaps other areas including private credit.

Can you provide an update perhaps on that from your perspective.

Steve Talinko

It's the KYC. Yeah. So we are believers that we have a better mousetrap when it comes to KYC and third-party risk management.

Whether you're talking about knowing who you're doing business with as a customer or a supplier, and we've made investments across the board, really, in terms of data, in terms of models that would help you make decisions on whether or not you should do business with this customer. As well as software to organize coordinate your thoughts and remember why you decided to work with that customer. So we're releasing those features and those products literally all the time.

Those investments we think are gonna be very worthwhile and contribute to this growth rate. This has been a good grower for us, and we could expect it to continue.

Rob Fauber

And I would say the other thing I'd note here is that we are increasingly helping people with the labor associated with doing this work. So not just but helping and maybe coordinating and helping make things more efficient in that respect once they identify someone they want to investigate and learn more about, we're helping to do that much more quickly. So the number of people required to do this work can go down when they become a customer of ours.

And to be clear, it's not by us providing bodies to do that. It's providing software, data, and analytics and AI enablement. Just a couple of things I'd add.

To what Steve said. You know, we had some nice growth in the quarter. We had some very large expansions of our relationships with several of the largest banks in the world.

And I think that that really is validation of the value of the Orbis dataset and the other analytics that go along with it. The other thing is and, you know, we talked about this on last year's call that we were developing a platform to address a variety of use cases for corporates all drawing on you know, this massive company data and then other datasets to support things like customer onboarding and monitoring supplier risk and so on. Well, we've now launched that.

And so we're excited about that because we think that's gonna give us a good entree into the large corporate market and provide support for the growth in our KYC segment.

Noémie Heuland

Hey. Before we go to the next question, I just wanna go back to Craig's question of incentive comp. I realized we passed that.

So on the for 2024 incentive comp total was $507 million, Craig, with $133 million in Q4. And we're projecting around $420 to $440 for 2025.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Hey, Rob.

It seems like some of the early slowness that we saw in adoption in research assistant has turned around, and it looks like things are really starting to pick up well there. I was wondering if you could update us and some of the other capabilities that you added, like the, you know, the automated credit memo, the early warning system. What are you seeing over there in terms of traction.

And do you expect a similar type of adoption path as what you're seeing for research assistance, or do you think that those things could take a little bit longer because the customers might need to do a little bit more on their side in terms of process.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. Maybe a couple of things, and I'm also gonna ask Steve to add on here. First, we have Gen AI enabled a number of our products now through the course of the year.

I think we talked about last year, you know, this concept of navigators which helps our customers use AI and as an interface and get more out of our applications. We've done that across eight primary solutions. And that is not an a la carte offering that we sold.

That's included in the solution, but that's gonna go to really helping with the overall value prop and retention and pricing opportunity for us. And we know that to be true because we have some really encouraging data points from research assistant where we see customer satisfaction is considerably higher. We see the usage on the platform is considerably higher.

So that gives us confidence there. And, you know, you're right. We have launched several other, what I would call, a la carte products.

They're early days and anything that, again, is selling into the banks, so there's lots of really good conversation particularly about, you know, early warning. But like research assistant, these sales cycles take time with the bank. Steve, anything you wanna add to that.

Steve Talinko

Well, number one, we have people meeting with some of your colleagues, not you, Shlomo, but some of the people on this call literally today talking about these things. I would say the big institutions are increasingly talking about this as a transformational moment. And we're starting to hear quotes like, Steve, can you help us save one million hours of work by leveraging your tools.

Right. Is there a way for us to can we literally have a proposal that is literally intended to displace a knowledge-based outsourcer by using some of these more refined workflows and persona-based Gen AI tools. So the prompt engineering that we're able to do now is progressing to the level where we're able to help people literally do their job and replace some of the labor and we're starting to see that in the pipeline.

Starting to see the adoption curve a change in tenure from I need to meet regulations to I'm starting to get confidence that we can let's see if we can develop a business case to do that. So I think there's some pretty exciting green shoots in that respect.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Thank you.

Operator

Our final question will come from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo.

Jason Haas

Hey. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I wanted to follow-up on the MIS revenue growth in Q4. It looks like I was looking specifically at the MIS transaction revenue growth.

It was up 29% in Q4, but the issuance growth was up 42%. So I was curious what drove that delta like it was maybe on the corporate finance side, but, yeah, maybe you can help explain a little bit better why the revenue is weaker relative to issuance.

Rob Fauber

Yeah. It really relates to bank loans. So there was very robust bank loan issuance by our definition.

We include repricings as issuance volume. And so in the fourth quarter, something like 55% bank loan volume was repricings. And that's the highest that we've seen in any quarter for a long time.

And the, you know, the economics on repricings are much different for us. So, actually, if you strip out essentially, if you just take out bank loans out of issuance and take bank loans out of transaction revenues, you know, we would have had you know, by our definition issuance of, you know, something like mid-teens percent growth, but we would have had, you know, call it, you know, 30% transaction revenue growth. So that I think that's primarily what was going on there.

One other thing I'd add is we do see a lot of repricing activity in January. So strong loan volume, but repricing activities, so keep that in mind.

Operator

And I will now turn the call back to Rob for any closing remarks.

Rob Fauber

Okay. Well, thanks, everybody, for your time and your questions and we look forward to talking to you in the first quarter. Goodbye.

Operator

This concludes Moody's Corporation fourth 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.