Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Moody's Corporation First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded [Operator Instructions] The call is scheduled to last approximately 1 hour. I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations at Moody's. This morning, we reported our first quarter 2026 results. The press release and today's presentation are posted at ir.moodys.com.

We'll reference non-GAAP or adjusted measures, please see the tables in our earnings release for reconciliations to U.S. GAAP. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, please see the safe harbor language in our earnings release and the risk factors and the MD&A in our most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings available on our website and the SEC's website. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Members of the media may be listening in a listen-only mode. With that, I'll turn it over to Rob.

Hey everybody, and thanks for joining us. Q1 was a strong start to the year despite a volatile geopolitical backdrop. And Moody's again delivered sustained revenue growth across both businesses and powerful operating leverage as we continue to capitalize on the deep currents driving demand for our ratings and solutions. Now there are 3 takeaways for the first quarter.

First, we delivered strong financial performance. Both MIS and MA grew revenues by 8% and disciplined cost management drove 150 basis points of adjusted operating margin to 53.2%. Together, this contributed to adjusted diluted EPS of $4.33 and that was up 13%. We returned $1.7 billion through buybacks and dividends in the quarter, and we increased full year buyback guidance by $500 million to approximately $2.5 billion.

Second, demand remains healthy across both businesses. And ratings issuance continues to reflect long-term funding needs tied to infrastructure, technology, private credit and energy transition even as volatility may affect timing. In analytics, engagement is strongest and our largest, most strategic relationships, which continue to grow materially faster in a broader MA base, and we have a growing pipeline of some of the world's largest financial institutions to consume our agent ready intelligence, and that's supported by further expansion with our hyperscaler and AI partners. Third, we're executing on our strategic priorities.

And when our intelligence is embedded directly into customer decision-making, we see tangible outcomes, higher retention, expanding relationships and more durable recurring revenue. And like last quarter, we'll share some specific examples of meaningful customer wins. So now let me turn to what's driving performance. In Ratings, as I said, issuance remains anchored in long-term funding needs tied to AI-driven infrastructure, private credit, energy transition in emerging markets.

And these are multiyear funding needs. They're not short-term cycles. And as I said, volatility may affect timing, but the underlying demand is structural. And that showed up clearly in Q1. In fact, in the first quarter, rated issuance surpassed $2 trillion for the first time, and that was led by near record investment-grade volumes, including several jumbo AI-related financings totaling more than $100 billion.

Private credit activity remained durable this quarter despite increasing credit concerns. As private market scale and come under greater scrutiny, demand for our independent credit assessment continues to increase, and that dynamic contributed to private credit related revenue in Ratings growing more than 80% year-over-year. In Moody's Analytics, we're embedding our intelligence into mission-critical workflows, particularly lending, underwriting and compliance where accuracy and auditability and trust are essential. And to support that shift or expand how and where our customers access Moody's Intelligence.

In fact, over the last several weeks, we announced a set of partnerships that significantly extend our distribution without compromising governance or independence, and through model context protocol integrations, Moody's license intelligence can now be accessed directly within enterprise AI environments such as ChatGPT Enterprise and Claude. And this allows customers to bring trusted Moody's content into their own AI workflows rather than relying on generic or unverified data. With Anthropic for licensed users, our agentic credit and compliance workflows are now available natively inside the cloud interface through something called an MCT application.

And that's the first of its kind as far as we're aware, and it enables users to access Moody's agents to perform analysis, generate outputs and trade sources without leaving the [ Claude ] environment. And by making our agentic solutions available through the AWS marketplace, we're meeting customers inside their existing cloud and procurement ecosystems, reducing friction by allowing customers to burn down their AWS commit when consuming Moody's agents and intelligence. And Moody's scaling workflow embedded distribution by launching a dedicated Moody's agent in Microsoft 365 CoPilot and making Moody's intelligence available as a grounding data source across CoPilot experiences.

That's CoPilot Chat, Researcher, Copilot and Excel. And this brings trusted decision grade context directly into everyday Microsoft tools, extending access beyond specialist teams and enabling faster, more consistent, explainable and auditable decisions. And importantly, these are bring-your-own license models. They expand reach and usage but preserve our direct relationship with our customer.

And all of this sets up what I'm going to turn to next, which is how customers are using these capabilities today and how that's translating into growth and differentiation across analytics and ratings. So I'll start with lending and credit decisioning. And our AI-enabled lending suite continues to gain traction as banks modernize end-to-end credit workflows. ARR for our lending suite grew 18% year-over-year, was driven by customers upgrading to an integrated platform that spans origination, decisioning and monitoring.

And what's driving adoption is workflow integration and AI enablement. So the faster decisions, greater consistency, clear auditability. We're also seeing demand for credit assessment and workflow beyond banks with asset managers and even corporates. In the first quarter, we expanded relationships with 2 of the world's 5 largest asset managers, representing nearly $20 trillion of assets under management, the first signed an approximately $6 million multiyear deal to bring our decision grade intelligence to both public and private credit workflows, supporting risk investment decision-making at a global scale.

And the second asset manager signed a multiyear contract of over $2.5 million and adopted multiple Moody's modules to support front, middle and back ops credit and compliance workflows. It also represented our first structured finance software win with a trustee, which provides a strong reference for future opportunities. And in the corporate space, a global athleisure brand tripled its relationship with us and signed a multiyear contract for an automated credit decisioning solution that accelerates decisions from days to minutes. And these are all ways that customers are accessing what we believe are the best set of commercial credit scoring capabilities in the world.

In insurance, growth was sustained from continued demand for digitization via our intelligent risk platform. That included adoption by 1 of the top 3 reinsurers in the world in the first quarter as well adoption of our high-definition models. In fact, IRP cross-selling and upselling accounted for almost half of our insurance net growth in the first quarter. And that growth was also supported by our trailing 12-month retention rate of 97% which reflects how embedded we are in customers' workflows as what they call their primary view of risk.

In KYC and compliance, growth continues to be driven by scale, complexity and regulatory expectations. And I've talked before how these needs go beyond regulated financial institutions. And a good example is our first Moody's for compliance customer. In the first quarter, a global real estate firm spanning approximately 275,000 sites operating in more than 80 countries selected our enterprise-wide solution for counterparty screening and monitoring covering millions of entities handily.

And we replaced a fragmented region-specific approach, with a single governed platform integrating ownership, sanctions, politically exposed people and adverse media representing both a competitive displacement and a meaningful expansion of our relationship. And finally, let me turn to Ratings and digital finance. And as capital markets evolve, we're extending the same rigor and governance and independence that define our ratings franchise into new asset classes and new forms of market infrastructure. In fact, during the first quarter, we were the first rating agency to publish a methodology for stable coins, and that's an asset class that's expected to reach north of $2 trillion by 2030. And I'm excited to share that we already have a number of deals in the pipeline.

We were also the first rating agency with blockchain agnostic capabilities to ingest data and publish ratings directly on chain. We're now live on The Canton Network, making Moody's the first rating agency operating a node in the privacy-enabled blockchain ecosystem. And during the quarter, we were the first rating agency to rate an innovative inaugural bitcoin backed bond where repayment is secured by bitcoin collateral. So these are not pilots or proof of concept, they represent and reflect real customer demand for trusted comparable risk assessment as finance evolves, whether assets are traditional or digital.

And taken together, this is what differentiates Moody's across analytics and ratings. We're embedding decision grade intelligence directly into the workflows and decisions that matter most, driving durable growth today and reinforcing the long-term strength of the franchise. Now finally, before I close, I want to highlight an important leadership milestone, and I am absolutely thrilled that Christina Kosmowski will become Moody's Analytics CEO in June. And she brings a blue-chip Silicon Valley pedigree.

She's been a pioneer in customer success and brings a track record of delivering high growth at scale, and her leadership materially strengthens our ability to accelerate execution in an increasingly AI-driven world, and I'm very excited about having her join us in June. I also want to thank Andy Frepp for stepping up to serve as the Interim President and for his steady and effective leadership. And Andy has had a fantastic career with us for almost 15 years. He is deeply respected across Moody's.

And in a brief period of time, he provided some real focus and business direction and has ensured continuity and momentum during a critical period. And we are tremendously grateful for his leadership and continued support through the transition. And with that, I'll turn it over to Noemie to walk through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Rob, and hello, everyone. Q1 represents a solid start to the year. And echoing Rob, our performance reflects disciplined execution across both of our businesses. Let me start with Moody's Analytics.

Our Q1 results -- [ so we're ] delivering against the framework we've discussed over the last several quarters, durable recurring growth, strong retention and margin expansion, while we reshape the portfolio. MA revenue increased 8% in the first quarter as reported or 6% on an organic constant currency basis, reflecting healthy underlying demand across our core franchises. Recurring revenue grew 11% as reported or 7% on an organic constant currency basis and represented 98% of total MA revenue underscoring the shift towards renewable subscription-based solutions. As expected, transactional revenue declined materially, down 54% year-over-year, reflecting both the learning divestiture and our deliberate focus on scalable recurring revenue streams.

This is fully consistent with the portfolio actions we've taken over the last several years to prioritize durable, high-quality revenue. ARR remains the clearest indicator of underlying demand and of the health of our future revenue base while reported revenue can move quarter-to-quarter due to timing effects and portfolio actions. ARR ended Q1 at $3.6 billion, up 8% year-over-year. Decision Solutions continues to be a key growth engine for MA, representing approximately 44% of total MA ARR and delivering 10% ARR growth.

KYC grew 13%, driven by deeper penetration within existing banking customers and expansion beyond financial services. Our new Moody's for compliance offering officially launched in April, and we have already seen success in prelaunch activity, as Rob highlighted earlier. We are building pipeline, with April renewals as the first cohort of upgrades, and we expect this revenue to build progressively through the year. Banking ARR grew 10%, supported by strong adoption of our lending solutions, which grew in the high teens.

We continue to see good customer uptake of our new package. Strength in lending was partially offset by more modest growth in the RAG product portfolio. Insurance ARR grew 7% reflecting sustained demand for higher definition models and cloud-based delivery via the intelligent risk platform, which is enabling the cross sell and upsell motion that is central to our strategy in this business. Research and Insights ARR grew 7% year-over-year, driven by our flagship CreditView suite, now Moody's View and EDF-X with broader adoption across banking customers and deeper integration into customer workflows.

Data and Information ARR grew 6% year-over-year and we closed several high-value agreements that illustrate 2 distinct, but reinforcing demand patterns for Moody's decision grade intelligence. The first is mission-critical workflows where precision and auditability are nonnegotiable. 2 government tax authorities, one, supporting national scale fraud detection and tax compliance across thousands of users and the other powering AI-driven tax risk assessment and transfer pricing enforcement, selected Moody's as their long-term data partner. In these environments, the consequence of error is too high for good enough.

Moody's curated, auditable data, we believe, is the best viable choice. The same dynamic plays out in financial services. A leading specialty insurer embedded our private company data and proprietary risk signals directly into its real-time surety underwriting workflows, replacing manual processes with automated point of decision analytics. The second pattern is front office and investment intelligence, where our data drives commercial advantage.

First, as Rob shared, a major asset manager embedded our private and public credit risk data sets directly into its core portfolio platform to enhance credit modeling and surveillance across public and private markets. Second, a leading global professional services firm expanded access to our real-time information and research intelligence across thousands of consultants to sharpen customer advisory and business development workflows. Together, these wins reinforce that Moody's decision grade intelligence is becoming foundational infrastructure across both the risk and growth agenda of our customers.

And across public institutions, financial services and global enterprises. Quarterly retention improved to 96%. That's up 200 basis points year-over-year as the outsized government and ESG-related churn we saw in Q1 2025 has no left. On a trailing 12-month basis, retention was 95%, improving 1 percentage point versus Q4 '25 and within our historical range, evidence that our solutions remain mission-critical as customers modernize their workflows, including with AI.

Turning to profitability. MA adjusted operating margin was 32.5% and that's up 250 basis points year-over-year. We are well on track for full year margin of 34% to 35% and our mid- to high 30s target by the end of 2027. This expansion reflects the impact of prior restructuring actions, disciplined cost management as well as a thoughtful reallocation of resources, which enables us to fund priorities without increasing costs. As we look ahead, margins are expected to continue improving as efficiency initiatives scale, including usage of AI-enabled tools that lower unit costs in product development and tighter alignment of sales capacity to our highest growth opportunity with full benefit building into 2027. These structural changes underpin confidence in our medium-term margin trajectory.

Turning to MIS. We delivered the strongest quarter on record. Rated issuance surpassed $2 trillion in Q1 for the first time, supported by strong primary market activity, relatively tight breads, increased M&A and solid investor demand. While investment grade and high yield spreads widened in March by roughly 15% and 30%, respectively, they remained well below the level seen around Liberation Day and the market stayed open and functional.

Transactional revenue grew 8% year-over-year, outpacing the 6% increase in rated issuance. Recurring revenue grew 9%, supported by growth in our portfolio of monitored credit, new mandates and pricing. First-time mandates increased 20% year-over-year, an important leading indicator of future recurring revenue. Here is how transactional revenue performed across the major categories.

Investment grade was the largest contributor with revenue up 33% year-over-year. Investment grade revenue within Corporate Finance was driven by a record first quarter and the second highest quarter ever for issuance, including several jumbo transactions from hyperscalers and other technology issuers. Issuance from the top 5 hyperscalers year-to-date has already exceeded full year 2025 levels. Specialty grade revenue grew 31%, with investor appetite holding up well for most of the quarter despite geopolitical volatility.

Now we're watching this closely as sub-investment-grade issuers tend to be more sensitive to issuance windows. Bank loan revenue declined as activity moderated in March following a strong start to the year. M&A-related issuance in Q1 was the highest in a number of years, which we view as an encouraging indicator for the balance of 2026. Public, Project and Infrastructure finance grew 8% driven by infrastructure finance, which delivered its second strongest quarter of the past decade. Funding needs tied to the energy transition, transportation and AI-related infrastructure remain key demand drivers.

Financial institutions revenue was modestly higher year-over-year. Funds and asset management remained strong, supported by private credit activity, partially offset by lower opportunistic issuance from infrequent issuers in banking and insurance. Structured Finance revenue was slightly lower year-over-year as large AMBS and RMBS reductions in EMEA were offset by softer CMBS and CLO activity in the U.S., especially refinancing. On profitability, MIS delivered an adjusted operating margin of 66.7%, reflecting strong operating leverage, disciplined cost management and technology investments that are improving analytical productivity.

We're streamlining credit workflows, so analysts can spend more time on credit analysis and less time gathering and formatting information, while maintaining the controls and human judgment regulators and the market expects. Those investments supported our ability to handle record issuance volumes while expanding margins. Looking ahead, our full year guidance remains unchanged across revenue, adjusted operating margin and adjusted diluted EPS. Our base case assumes the current market turbulence is largely contained to April with issuance recovering through Q2 and Q3 on the back of ongoing refinancing needs, a healthy M&A pipeline and sustained demand for high-quality investment-grade issuance, including AI-related financing.

For the second quarter, we expect MIS revenue growth in the low to mid-teens with adjusted diluted EPS of approximately $4.15 to $4.30. If volatility persists beyond April, we'd have less confidence in a full recovery in Q2 and Q3 and would expect full year MIS revenue growth to moderate to the mid-single-digit range with adjusted diluted EPS trending towards the low end of our guidance range. For MA, we expect to close the sale of our Regulatory Solutions business on April 30. We have, therefore, excluded its contribution from our reported revenue outlook, which moves us towards the lower end of our mid-single-digit MA revenue guidance range.

Importantly, this does not change our expectations for ARR or organic constant currency recurring revenue growth, which both remain anchored in the high single-digit percent growth range. On MA margins, we expect a modest step up in Q2 and a more meaningful ramp in the second half, consistent with our typical revenue seasonality. Pulling this together, in terms of MCO revenue guidance, as I shared, we expect to be within the high single-digit percent growth range we previously provided. For modeling purposes, taking into account the impact from the MA divestiture, we anticipate growth to be towards the lower end of high single-digit percent range for MCO for the full year.

Finally, a few housekeeping items to help with your modeling assumptions. Excluding restructuring and other charges, we anticipate Q2 expenses to be broadly in line with Q1 with increases in the second half, reflecting typical seasonality. This includes ongoing investments and annual salary increases, partially offset with our continued cost containment initiatives. We expect MCO adjusted operating margins to be above the midpoint of our full year guidance range for Q2 and Q3 before taking down in Q4, consistent with MIS revenue seasonality and historical patterns.

There is no change to our tax rate guidance for the full year, and we expect Q2 to be in the high end of the full year range of 23% to 25%. And please note that our revised nonoperating income and GAAP EPS guidance reflects the expected gain on the sale of our Regulatory Solutions business in April, but it doesn't impact adjusted diluted EPS guidance. We again delivered strong cash flow this quarter with free cash flow of $844 million, up 26% year-over-year. And given price levels and market dynamics, we were active in the market repurchasing shares in Q1. We returned approximately $1.7 billion to shareholders through a combination of share repurchases and dividends.

Given the nearly $1.5 billion of buybacks executed in Q1, we have increased our full year repurchase guidance by $500 million and now expect approximately $2.5 billion of share buybacks in 2026. We remain on track to return approximately 110% of free cash flow to shareholders by year-end. Importantly, our balance sheet remains strong, providing us with the flexibility to continue investing growth while maintaining a disciplined and consistent capital return framework. In summary, we delivered another quarter of strong growth and profitability expansion and remain confident in the trajectory of the business.

We believe we are well positioned to deliver sustainable growth, margin expansion and long-term shareholder value. And with that, operator, we'd like to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

You talked about your MCP strategy allowing Moody's data to be accessed through LLM. Can you discuss how many customers are accessing Moody's data through these channels and what your plans are to monetize MCP distribution?

George, good to have you on the call. So yes, I talked a little bit about these different partnerships. And so that's enabling integration of our intelligence through MCPs through those surfaces. And then we have -- we have customers who are also looking to take the data directly into their own AI, internal AI workflow orchestration platforms at their institution.

We have, I would say, a number of large financial institutions who are trialing, I'm going to call this our agent ready data through either the MCPs directly into the institution or through one of these channels. And what that does is it allows us the opportunity to up-level the commercial model that we have with these institutions, right? Because if they want to bring our intelligence into the corporate and investment bank, we need to make sure that there's an arrangement and a license that allows them to access that content across that entire division as opposed to in the past, we may have had been serving different use cases in different parts of the bank.

So I would say it's in early days. Lots of really good engagement of number now of trials, and we'll be looking to convert those to obviously, the sales through the balance of the year. The one other thing I'd say is -- sometimes it will also depend on the kind of institution or what the use case is for some of this. So we may see some of this show up in different segments across MA.

Our next question will come from the line of Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research.

Wondering if you guys can help maybe contextualize how much of the operating leverage in MIS is being driven by the technology innovations and AI efficiencies, I think just in the context of maybe some softer-than-expected MIS revenue growth in the quarter, it was still encouraging to see the 70 basis points of margin expansion. So wondering if you can talk about how much of that is being driven by AI efficiencies?

Yes. So you're right to say that we've been able to deliver on $2 trillion of issuance this quarter and still expand our margins. We've talked a lot about the investments we've made over the past few years on technology and now so technology, workflow automation, for all the works and steps that precede the ratings committee, where the analysts actually gather and discuss and make decisions and the work that preceded that was automated over the past few years. We've enabled them to be more efficient, avoiding repetition in different tasks.

As you can imagine, Moody's being a 120 years company. We had some technology infrastructure that needs to be updated. So we've done that over the past few years. And now we're adding AI to those workflows in large parts of our analyst groups to help allow them in areas like financial statement spreading, data gathering, all the information, again, that precedes the the Ratings Committee moment where it's a lot of human in loops discussing and talking about different industry sectors and what they're observing.

So that's -- I would say that's what behind our margin expansion. I'm pretty pleased with that.

Yes. And Scott, I would -- just to double click, I mean I think that the AI enablement really picked up in the back half of last year. As Noemie said, there was a lot of foundational work that we had done that put us in a very good position. We also had to work through our risk teams and make sure that we're going to deploy that in the appropriate way across ratings.

And then it's not only about efficiency, and I appreciate you acknowledging that. But it's also going to be about inside as well. I mean, as Noemie said, we're capturing more and more structured and unstructured information across our entire ecosystem. And we're already seeing that that's going to give us new insights for our analysts that are going to support ratings quality as well as new research insights.

Our next question will come from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO.

I wanted to shift back to MIS. Rob, I think you had mentioned that volatility may impact timing and I was just curious, do you think there was any pull forward in the first quarter or conversely -- have we seen any recent delays? And if so, when do you think that debt might be issued?

Jeff, good to hear from you. We were looking at the pull forward. And I would say there was no more pull forward than what we would consider to be within typical ranges. And we've talked about it on prior calls that -- and typically, there's less pull forward with investment-grade issuers because they typically have market access all the time, and spec grade issuers is a little bit more pull forward.

But nothing out of the ordinary, I would say, first of all. And I would say, Jeff, that in general, yes, things have been choppier, but spreads have come back in from the highs in late March and so is the 10-year as well. So I would say from an investment grade perspective, markets open. And in fact, last week was a big week for financials.

You had 4 of the 6 largest banks hitting the market, almost $40 billion in issuance. There is a backlog of Q1 deals that we have heard this from the bank. Some of these deals have been deferred into the second quarter. And I think there's some optimism that we're going to see some of that come back in May and June.

But overall, the funding costs are pretty attractive. You think very tight spreads by historical standards, and looking at default rates, if anything, continuing to modestly decline based on depending on what plays out. It's that great, I'd say there's a little bit more selectivity as you'd expect with a preference towards credits at the higher end of the credit spectrum. But last week was pretty strong from a high-yield issuance perspective, pretty good from a loans perspective as well.

So I'd say the market is open, constructive, and I think there are some risk windows, risk on and off windows that we're going to continue to see for some time as we've got some of the headlines playing out.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.

I wanted to follow up on the AI efficiency gains topic. And maybe asked a different way on the regulatory side. It seems like you guys have been first mover on a lot of these items, a lot of progress already to date. Is there any gating factor on adoption internally tied to regulatory pushback or what the regulators are comfortable with you kind of leveraging or ratings or even within MA.

Just trying to get a sense for the puts and takes on that side.

Yes, Andrew. Good question. So I'll take it in 2 parts here. One with ratings.

As you'd expect, we have a very active dialogue with our regulators, and they want to understand how we are thinking about deploying and using AI and they want to make sure that they are a very strong control environment around all of that. There's I'd say, heightened sensitivity for sure around the use of AI to actually be making decisions. And I think you see that across a number of industries, actually. So a lot of what we're doing is around the rating process and tools to give our analysts more new insights like I talked about.

But we have a very good engagement with our regulators, and I would say they understand and expect that we will be deploying these AI tools and providing them transparency and having a strong control environment. Now on the analytics side of the business, I would say that if you think about who we serve, these are -- we have several thousand bank customers, something like 1,000 insurance customers, they expect a strong control environment. They expect for us to have strong AI governance and other things as part of our products. And in fact, some of our customers come in and actually audit our products and solutions and what we're doing.

And so when we talk about decision grade intelligence, we always say it's got to be decision grade and that means you have to have strong control environment and auditability and all of those things that are regulated customers expect of us. So that does I think that -- we've seen that it takes a little bit longer for adoption with these big regulated institutions because they've got to satisfy not only their internal environment, but make sure that the third parties that they're working with have the same kind of controls and governance that their regulators are going to expect of them.

Our next question will come from the line of Peter Christiansen with Citi.

Congrats Rob. Best luck on next chapter here and also great to see first-mover strategy on digital assets. I had a question about private credit. It seems like sentiment here has been kind of going back and forth the last couple of months, and you called out 80% year-over-year growth, which is pretty impressive.

Should we think that there's been a bit of a build and in the pipeline there? I mean you did talk about some deals that potentially are creeping in from 1Q to 2Q, but specifically on private credit, whether you're seeing that that dynamic occur and, if possible, is there any way you could size that portion of the growth for us?

Peter, thanks. So there's a few kind of cross currents I'm going to try to address on private credit. I think fundamentally, though, when -- obviously, we've been reading about increased credit stress in private credit throughout the quarter. That -- we've been talking about this now for -- I mean, for a couple of years about the importance of transparency in the context of private markets and having benchmarks and data and other things that can support a consistent understanding of credit risk across that market.

And that is very important for that market to be able to continue to grow and scale. And so I think one of the things that you're seeing as there's -- and this happens in the public markets as well. When there's more credit stress in the market, there is more interest and demand in our ratings and in our solutions. And that is exactly what we are seeing right now.

It's exactly what you'd expect that we are seeing aspects of what I call investor demand pull or the investors in private credit are starting to say, we'd like to have a third-party independent credit assessment on these loans that are in the fund that I'm invested in. You're starting to see alternative asset managers make disclosures about how much of their portfolio is rated or the insurers are doing that and by whom. So -- and that's because the underlying investors are asking questions and wanting to have a third-party assessment of credit risk. Now I'll say this, though, that -- so we've seen a number of deals shift from private into public market this past quarter.

That's not surprising. The public markets are typically a cheaper source of funding. We've seen a lot of that, but there are massive funding needs. We've talked about these deep currents, they're not going away.

And we've talked about sovereign balance sheets being really stretched. And so that means you've got both the public and private markets are going to have to be very important sources of funding going forward. So all of that is playing into what you're seeing, I think, with our growth in private credit. And obviously, we've got very strong growth in ratings.

But a couple of the things I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're actually us supporting credit assessment out of our MA business with our credit scoring tools and other things. So I mentioned, we believe we have the world's best commercial credit franchise. So we're very well positioned to serve these needs across the entire company and across the entire ecosystem.

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

I'm curious what caused ARR to come in a little better than expected since I think a few weeks ago, you're talking about it maybe coming in towards the lower end of high single digits. And then I think the expectation then was that we would see an improvement through the year, maybe just due to some timing of new products getting pushed out. So I'm curious if that timing cadence still holds.

Jason, I'll start and see if Noemie has anything she wants to add. You're right, at that BofA conference, I did mention that there was a chance that we might have a little bit of a downdraft in ARR from the fourth quarter, just given that the way we had kind of sequenced our sales kickoffs and product launches and other things. We -- so I think the short answer is we had good sales execution through the balance of March coming out of those sales kickoffs and we ended up making up a little bit of that ground that I was kind of noting might be at that BofA conference. So change to how we're kind of thinking about the full year.

I don't...

No, you're right, we had some pretty good execution in March. We had some swing deals that we were able to close, and we're pretty confident with the new product release that pipeline is building. We talked about what we're doing in KYC and we're confident about the high single-digit victory for ARR for the full year.

Our next question will come from the line of Sean Kennedy with Mizuho.

So I wanted to see if you could discuss a bit more about KYC and some of the trends that you're seeing there and the longer-term opportunity? And if some of the slowdown was due to macro later in the quarter?

Yes. Thanks, Sean. So for KYC, 13% ARR growth, we had a little bit of a tough comp for new business versus the first quarter last year. We had a couple of outsized deals last quarter.

Retention improved pretty notably as we lapse those cancellations that we had last year, most of that was related to DOGE. I would say, Sean, that we think growth is going to pick back up into the mid-teens through the balance of the year. We've got some new use cases and new product launches. Probably the most important of those is the one that I just mentioned briefly in my prepared remarks, which is what we call Moody's for compliance.

Think of that as a kind of a platform solution that serves nonregulated institutions, corporates and so on. So we've been building pipeline on that. We expect that to continue through the balance of the year. Most of our growth so far has been from cross-selling to existing banking customers, and we're starting to see that corporate growth pick up.

So I think the key message here is that we expect ARR growth to pick up through the balance of the year into that kind of mid-teens number.

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

Rob, I was hoping you could just give us an update on how you're thinking about the hyperscalers and if you've seen a number of them move to the frequent issuer program and whether the economics there are sort of similar to other IG issues? And I guess, has that created sort of a price dilution or a mix dilution between sort of when we look at the issuance numbers and ratings revenue, is that one of the factors that would drive sort of a delta there? And should we expect that to continue as we see this sort of massive hyperscaler issuance over the next few years?

Toni, good question. I'm glad you asked it because I mentioned kind of $100 billion-ish hyperscaler issuance through the first quarter. That's a big number, and that's getting close to what we were thinking of for the full year for 2026. So it is possible there's some upside to that through the balance of the year. But I'm glad you asked the question because I would say hyperscalers are, in many ways, no different than any other what you would think of as frequent investment-grade issuer.

And we always talk about some of our serial investment-grade issuers are on frequent issuer pricing programs, which is why there's a little bit different revenue mix on investment grade versus spec grade, and that's true here. So when you see these big numbers around hyperscaler issuance, just think of that as frequent investment-grade issuer kind of issuance.

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

Noemie, I just wanted to queue in on something you said in your prepared remarks about MA and you specifically said you're reshaping the portfolio. I was just wondering if that's sort of the past like the learning divestiture? Or is that also kind of a reminder something that's ongoing and MA portfolio changes ahead in terms of divestitures or product sunsetting?

Yes. We -- so you're rightly pointing to the couple of divestitures. We -- one we've closed last year and what we're about to close in April. So that's part of it, really focusing on high-growth areas product suites where we have cross-selling opportunities with the rest of our customer ecosystem.

That was an important driver for the decision around regulatory solution divestiture, for example. And beyond that, we're looking at within Moody's Analytics, really reallocating our resources, both in the product development as well as sales and go-to-market to higher-growth areas. There's a product where the growth rate, and you see that, for example, in the Banking and Decision Solutions, some of them are very mature products, very much in demand from our customers, but at scale. And I would say we're investing less and putting them more in maintenance mode and making sure we continue to serve the customers who have those solutions before they migrate into the new package.

So that's kind of the decisions we're making in terms of resource allocation. And that's what allows us to continue to fund investments in really strategic areas like lending, decision grade data, insurance underwriting, while at the same time not increasing the amount of developers resources new product and go-to-market.

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

Yes. Staying on MA, and this is also Noemie, just a little bit more of a numbers question here, but obviously, the transactional side of that business, I think, is the lowest quarter on record, I think $17 million. So obviously, done a lot I know you deemphasizing. So just the question is, is this kind of it now?

Is this kind of a good run rate to use for the rest of the year? And does that mean that as we think about 2027, you're finally getting to the point where like ARR and recurring revenue growth and overall growth kind of start converging? Or is there still more to go? And can there still be more lumpiness on the transactional side here.

I'm just trying to understand like really what's happening on that side?

Yes. Recurring revenue on an organic basis is actually very trending really close to ARR. So I would continue. That's why we were disclosing those numbers separately.

When it comes to transaction revenue, you have the effect of the learning solution divestiture in Q1 number. That's why you have the down dip in that number in Q1, which was expected. So you'll continue to see that carrying through the rest of the year. We had a double-digit decline in transaction revenue, which we continue to expect as we move services, integration work to our partners.

We don't want those on our paper. We're obviously here to support our customers as they go through migration and implementation, but those revenues are now being recorded outside of our books. So you'll continue to see that carrying through '26 and '27. However, if you look at, again, organic constant currency growth for recurring revenue, that's really much aligned now with ARR, you can have a few lumpiness in a given quarter if we have on-premise revenue recognition for long-term software arrangement that could create a little bit of variation. But on a trailing 12-month basis, that's pretty close.

Our next question will come from the line of Owen Lau with Clear Street.

I do want to go back to the organic revenue growth and ARR bridge because the organic growth was 6% in the first quarter, ARR was 8%, but you still guide to high single-digit percentage range for organic revenue growth. Can you please talk about the bridge to go there from 6% to high single digits? Because -- would that come from like Moody's for compliance, AI and some other stuff. More color would be helpful.

So the guidance for organic constant revenue in the high single-digit range is at the low end of that range. We have, as I said, about a percentage point of headwind from transaction revenue decline. It was down 56%, for example, in Q1. So that's one thing. In terms of the underlying organic recurring revenue growth, that typically accelerates throughout the year, consistent with our sales cadence.

As you know, the second half is usually stronger when it comes to sales execution and pipeline build. So that's gradually building back up to high single digit. About organic recurring constant currency growth and ARR guidance is really consistent with what we've said before in the high single-digit range. So if you look at the organic revenue growth, that transaction revenue is really the delta here and the drag.

Our next question comes from the line of Curtis Nagle with Bank of America.

Great. Just a quick asking question on ratings issuance just assuming we stay at that current guide of singles rate for revenue. Rob, last time you had spoken to at least the relative mix of the weighting to be about mid-50s for the first half of the year. Is that still roughly right or just anything we should think about or any changes that's baked into the current forecast?

Yes, Curtis, good question, because obviously, we held the guidance but the issuance has been a little softer than we had expected. So I can give you kind of an update on how we're thinking about the calendarization of both issuance and then maybe I'm sure it will be helpful. I'll translate that quickly into ratings revenue. So we're expecting issuance to grow in the, call it, high single-digit percent range for the first half of '26 versus the first half of last year.

And then we're expecting it to decline mid-single-digit percent in the second half of '26 versus '25. And remember, we have bank loan repricings in those numbers. So from a sequential standpoint, we think that issuance is going to decline from the first quarter to the second quarter in kind of call it the mid-teens range, flat issuance from the second quarter to the third quarter and then then kind of mid-20s decline from third quarter to the fourth quarter. From a revenue perspective, we're expecting first of all, year-over-year revenue growth in every quarter in 2026, stronger in the first half versus the second half.

So in the first half, something like low double-digit percent revenue growth in the first half. And then for the second half, we're expecting something like mid-single-digit percent revenue growth. And again, the delta is just because of bank loan repricings being in there. So hopefully, that gives you a sense.

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

Rob, I thought one of the most important things you said earlier was a partial response to a question was concerning that the regulators were very apprehensive have an issue with AI making decisions out there talking about parts of your portfolio. Can you elaborate on that? It's obviously a major, major issue AI concerns and some hope with the AI tools can come in and duplicate some of the services that information service companies have in general. Just talk about a little bit further, please.

It's a big point.

Yes, Craig, and just take this for what it is from my seat. Obviously, I'm not an expert, for instance, in insurance and all of that. But I would say, just in general, you can imagine, and this is true with our regulators as well, thinking about the opportunity to accelerate your process and the time to get to a decision and all of those things, those are pretty straightforward conversations with regulators. When it comes to, hey, I've got an AI model that's actually going to make a decision about who's going to get a loan, who's going to get an insurance policy at what price, what a credit rating might be, there's a lot more sensitivity around that, as you'd expect, because there's questions about the model -- does the model have bias, how is the model being governed, what kind of data is going into the model?

Is there a human in the loop? All of those things, right? And that's true with us, and that's true with a number of our customers. So obviously, there are decisions across financial services that do get made by models.

I get that. There's quantitative trading platforms. There's credit score things that go on for consumers, all of that. But I would just say that, that's generally where there's more scrutiny from the regulators and wanting to understand it.

If a decision being made by a model, well, there's a lot of questions about that. Hopefully, that gives you a sense.

Our final question will come from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel.

A little bit more of a broader question in terms of the guidance. And I know it's a fluid situation geopolitically, but I'm just wondering how did you incorporate the war in Iran, what's going on and the potential impact to inflation and anything else in terms of spreads going up and down into the guidance? I know you mentioned the guidance talked a little bit about volatility. But like when you think about it through the year, and your decision to keep the guidance there.

How are you thinking about it as it goes through both MIS and MA?

Yes. I'll focus probably mostly on ratings just because I think that's where more -- there's more variability given the geopolitical backdrop. But obviously, the Iran war is the most important variable is interesting actually because we were thinking back at the first quarter call this time last year. And if you remember, there were the liberation day tariffs.

And it was very -- it created a lot of volatility and uncertainty in the market. And what we saw through the balance of the year was that, that volatility resulted in considerably lower issuance levels in April last year. But then we saw that get made up for the back half of the year, right? And we ultimately ended up essentially right in line with our original full year guidance.

So I think we're -- we feel like we're in a little bit of the same situation. It's April 22. There's still a long way to go in the year. There's actually an interesting stat, Shlomo, that in March, 80% of investment-grade issuance was in 6 days. That's pretty remarkable.

And that tells you a couple of things. I mean one, it just shows you kind of the risk on, risk off windows that were going on in March. But two, it also shows you how much demand there is that was just waiting until there's a risk on window and that demand hits the market. So it goes back to all these things about the underlying funding drivers, the demand drivers for raising capital, those are still there.

And so Noemie talked a little bit about in her prepared remarks that if we see heightened volatility that goes on into May, and we see real softness in the month of May, I think at that point, we're probably going to -- Noemie gave you a sense of what that would mean for our guidance. But right from where we sit right now, given the conditions that I talked about, given the underlying drivers and given the fact we're still in April, we think it's most prudent to hold to our current guidance. And when we talk to the banks, that's the same thing we hear from them as well.

This concludes our question-and-answer session, and I will hand the call back over to Rob for any closing comments.

Okay. With that, thank you very much for joining, and we look forward to taking -- talking with you on our next earnings call. Goodbye. .

This concludes Moody's Corporation First Quarter 2026 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. You may now disconnect.