S&P Global Highlights AI-Fueled Growth, Margin Expansion at Barclays Conference

S&P Global is seeing continued growth across its Market Intelligence, Ratings, Indices and Energy businesses, supported by commercial integration, artificial intelligence adoption and productivity initiatives, Chief Financial Officer Eric Aboaf said during a Barclays conference discussion. Aboaf, who joined the company about a year and a half ago after two decades in banking, said his focus has been on improving visibility into commercial activity, including sales pipelines, customer segments and product offerings. He said the company is seeking to operate at greater scale while continuing to invest in growth and deliver margin expansion. He credited the management team, led by Martina Cheung, with establishing a chief commercial officer organization focused on 130 customers representing roughly the top third of S&P Global’s revenue base. The approach is intended to bring the company’s ratings, market data, benchmarks and energy offerings together for senior client discussions, including with corporate and financial-services executives. Addressing market speculation concerning the Capital IQ Pro business, Aboaf said S&P Global does not comment on “unwarranted rumors.” He said the company remains focused on growth in Market Intelligence, where first-half revenue growth exceeded 6%, within its full-year guidance range of 5.5% to 7%. The company has reorganized Market Intelligence into two segments: Kensho Data Platforms, which represents about two-thirds of the division, and Enterprise Solutions, which accounts for the remaining third. Enterprise Solutions, which includes system-of-record workflow software and data offerings, grew 10% year over year during the first two quarters, according to Aboaf. Aboaf said the company is seeing high-single-digit to low-double-digit growth in data, depending on the quarter. He said the number of customers using model context protocol, or MCP, connectors reached 500, up 50% from the prior quarter. Data usage through application programming interfaces and large-language-model calls increased fivefold from the first quarter to the second quarter, after also rising fivefold from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. He also pointed to the integration of S&P Global data into ChatGPT financial-services workflows. According to Aboaf, an OpenAI study released the prior week found error rates below 3% when using trusted proprietary S&P Global data, compared with about 6.5% for the company’s nearest competitor.