MSCI Inc. (MSCI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, hello again. Next up, we've got MSCI, Andy Wiechmann, CFO. Thanks for coming again...

Of course. Always happy to be here.

Great session last year, and great to have a quick update.

So why don't we start, actually, very big picture. MSCI has seen some very impressive growth over the years. You have some very impressive long-term targets out there, double-digit subscription growth over the business, low to mid-teens EBITDA growth. So we'll talk about the business in detail later, but maybe we can start very big picture in broad strokes. And why don't you outline for us why the business is positioned for that growth, in particular, as the last, I would say, 12 to 18 months have been a little bit more choppy, but hopefully get back on those -- on that long-term track?

Sure, absolutely. Yes. And I think it's good you started there because it's good to focus on the big picture. As you said, you can get caught up in the choppiness in the short term, to use your term. Although when you look at the secular opportunities that are in front of MSCI, it's a massive opportunity. So if you start at the highest level, you have growth in global savings, so increasing savings among institutions, individuals, government organizations. They are funneling those savings into professional management or what we call the investment industry. And at the same time, you have a growing number of investment opportunities cutting across private markets, new security types, new geographies. And so those investors need the frameworks to help navigate those opportunity sets in a structured fashion, and that is exactly what MSCI does. And so we have tremendous opportunities to continue to drive the adoption of our solutions across the investment industry. The capital markets more broadly, we play a pivotal role in connecting the providers of capital with the users of capital. And so we have tremendous opportunities across a number of dimensions. So if you look at what are those trends within the investment industry that are driving structural change, on one hand, they create some choppiness, as you said, as change happens in an industry. But on the other side, you're seeing assets move more into rules-based, outcome-oriented or systematic strategies where you need some sort of mechanism to reflect a systematic strategy effectively and efficiently, and that's what an index is. You're seeing more assets allocated to private markets. And today, there are not those structures, those frameworks to understand what is the private market opportunity, and how do I understand how I should allocate across that opportunity set and then understand the performance and risks that I'm taking by doing a specific allocation. You're seeing a bigger focus on sustainability across the investment process. And then bringing that all together, you're looking -- investors are increasingly putting assets into customized solutions, multi-asset class solutions that look at risk and return across all asset classes. Across all those dimensions, MSCI is very differentiated and uniquely positioned. And so yes, you might see some pressure in the short term as some of that structural change happens. But on the flip side, what that means is we have big opportunities in markets where we're relatively small today, in pools of assets like wealth management, like insurance companies, fixed income and asset class we've historically been small in but we're growing at an outsized growth rate, in areas like private assets. And so there are a number of avenues and levers of growth that position us well to achieve those long-term growth targets, not only on the subscription side, but also fuel the attractive financial algorithm that we have across the entire business. And so everything we're doing generally is selling IP, which has very attractive incremental margins, operating leverage. And so we have the ability to continue to invest in the business and fuel that growth while at the same time, driving attractive profitability growth, free cash flow growth, and do it through all environments. So I know you focused on the last 12 to 18 months. But if you look at 2024, where, as you said, there was some choppiness, our revenue growth, our organic revenue growth in 2024 was close to 10%. We delivered EBITDA growth of 13% and free cash flow growth of 20-plus percent. And so it's a very attractive financial model in all environments.

Thanks for the reminder. Sometimes people forget about how good things are still. But look, let's go a little bit more into the near term. I would say you sounded the most optimistic in a while on the fourth quarter call. So maybe unpack a little bit what you're seeing specifically and how that's giving you more confidence in 2025.

Yes. It's important to put it in the context of what we've seen through this cycle, if you can call it that. So looking back to late 2021, which was when we saw the previous market high, we saw from 2021 through to probably the middle of 2023 a period of down markets, enhanced volatility, significant outflows from active equities, in part, driven by the higher rate environment and a lot of flows into cash and money market products, which ultimately pressured many parts of the investment universe, including our largest client segment, which is asset managers, active asset managers. And if you look at our financials, we actually -- our subscription run rate continued to grow through part of 2022. It didn't start dropping until late 2022. And then the impacts of that environment I just alluded to started to trickle through into '23 and then through '24, of last year. And even in '24, you continued to see some outflows, meaningful outflows from active management. But what you have seen over the last 18 months and particularly over the last year is sustained momentum in equity markets. You have seen stabilization of flows. You have seen fewer big global banks who are focused on restructuring. I would say the overall environment for big global banks is a bit more constructive than it was historically. And as many of you know, that was something that led to some elevated cancels for us and noise. So if you put what we've seen over the last year in the context of what we've seen over the last 3 years, it's constructive. That's the term we've used. It's encouraging. As you said, I said I'm excited for the year ahead. For sure, there are lingering impacts from all those factors, and there are still parts of the investment universe where you are seeing outflows. But you are absolutely starting to see the sustained momentum in equity markets, higher AUM levels translate through to a higher degree of confidence about the stability of the revenue and outlook for many of these organizations, and ultimately, confidence is what feeds buying decisions. So as we've said, we've seen more constructive buying behavior, that translating through into healthier pipelines. And so it's early, but we are encouraged, particularly relative to where we've come from here over the last several years.

Okay. Since you just mentioned the other side a little bit, so the negative side, where should we be still worried about maybe sales being slower, retention declining? So any -- do you think retention has normalized? How do you feel about that?

We haven't given specific guidance on retention rates. We have indicated in the first quarter we don't expect cancels to be the same level we saw in the first quarter of last year. But I would say there are areas of the business, not surprising, where we expect to see probably some continued elevated cancels in areas like Real Assets, an area where we've seen a heavy cyclical pressure in part of the business, the transaction price related part of the business. And many industry participants have been feeling significant pressure, and that's led to some elevated cancels for us. There are areas within -- pockets within asset management where I alluded to on the call. Europe has been a little bit slower moving, so those dynamics I alluded to in your earlier question. We see it globally, but it's more -- that rebound and momentum is probably more noticeable in the Americas. And so Europe is a bit slower-moving. And so we'll probably see some lingering impacts in Europe. And then there are certain client segments where there continues to just be some elevated transaction activity, but I don't want to overstate it. So there are lingering impacts here. But overall, I think the environment is more constructive, it's more encouraging. The other cyclical dynamic that we were talking about earlier that is worth pointing out is one thing that you have seen, another rotation that has happened over the last several years has been a strong rotation into U.S. equities. And so you've seen not only more -- higher market appreciation in the U.S. market, but you've seen more significant flows in the U.S. exposure strategies. That's helpful to us for all the reasons I talked about earlier, indirectly. But for direct opportunities, for us, the place where we are most strongly positioned is international investing. And so that performance, I alluded to, even through this choppy environment, has been in a period where U.S. strategies have been in vogue. I'm not calling a rotation back in the international strategies, but to the extent that happens, that is something that's very constructive for not only the health of our clients, but new sales for us on a number of fronts. And so that's another area that can be a key catalyst for us as well.

All right. One last one from a big picture perspective, pricing. So couple of years ago, with inflation being elevated, your pricing was probably elevated as well. Let's just assume that. But then you very much talked about that's easing a little bit and coming down last year. So as we think about 2025, I know it's an important component for a lot of people, so how should we think about pricing as you enter 2025 here?

I know people will feed it into their models, and I'm going to disappoint by not giving more specific color or guidance on it. But it's an important area for us as well. It's not only an important area for driving new sales and revenue growth for us, but it's important because it's how we oftentimes capture the unique value that we are bringing to our clients. And so our approach to pricing has not changed, where we do focus on the value that we're bringing to clients. And that could be enhancements to a specific product. It could be broader usage that we are enabling our clients to use that product. Those 2 things will feed into how much of a price increase we roll out in specific areas. We also look at the overall pricing environment. We look at our costs, and we look at client health. And so to the extent clients are healthier, we're increasing product, we're increasing -- enhancing our products, increasing usage of our products with clients. All else equal, we can increase or we will increase price more with clients. I would say we are very measured. I think there are many areas, Henry said this on the earnings call, where we have very strong pricing power. But we are playing the long game and focused on long-term growth. And so we have seen in this environment, opportunities for competitive wins. We've seen opportunities to position ourselves more strongly with clients to do more in the future. And so oftentimes, we will be measured with our price increases to be a helpful partner and oftentimes, couple it with an upsell and a broader sale. We are, we think, differentiated. We want to capture that differentiation, but we also want to really drive long-term growth. And so it will continue to be a dynamic process across different product areas, client segments in different parts of the year, but it is something we are very focused on and we think can be a constructive driver of capturing that value we're delivering to clients.

Right. As promised, let's jump into some of the segments a little bit more, starting obviously with Index. That's been a double-digit grower for quite a long time. And as I said at the beginning, it softened a little bit. And clearly, people worry it's not going to be as fast of a grower. So maybe you can unpack how we get to double digits again, which are still your targets.

Yes. I mean, linking it back to your first question and my answer there, this move within the investment industry towards personalized, rules-based or customized, systematic strategies, the most efficient way to implement those strategies is through an index. And so we see a number of opportunities across content sets that we deliver as well as client segments that we're serving where we are relatively small today to unlock significant opportunities. And so those manifest themselves in client segments like wealth management, where we play an integral role or increasingly integral role in model portfolio construction, which is a big trend within the wealth space and one that arguably, our indexes are perfectly designed to help with, as that's similar to how a pension fund might use our indexes to do their asset allocation exercise. When you look at areas like broker dealers, as they are increasingly launching things like structured products, index-linked notes, over-the-counter derivatives for both their institutional and their high net worth clients, our index frameworks allow them to develop these tailored types of products and solutions. Not to mention the end-users for those products, particularly pension funds or insurance companies or sovereign wealth funds are using our framework, and so they are looking for products based on our indexes. So that has been a very attractive growth area for us. Hedge funds as well. And I think that's a reflection of just the growth in indexation and the index ecosystem where they're actually our highest-growth client segment, and it's coming across a wide range of use cases, everything from probably what everyone would think of as like index arb use cases, through to more statistically driven quantitative strategies where our indexes can be very helpful in back-testing or even designing a strategy going forward, through to more trading, market-making type of opportunities, around many of those over-the-counter products I alluded to coming out of broker-dealers as well as the growth in listed products. And so there's a wide range of these more systematic use cases that are creating opportunities for us that are very encouraging. And when you look at the pools of capital that we're going after, we're relatively small in them, and these are big pools of capital. So it's wealth management, the largest pool of investable assets. Insurance companies, arguably the second largest pool of investable assets. It's also serving, as I said, areas like fixed income where we've historically been very small but is the largest asset class based on AUM. And so there are these big opportunities, which we are on the precipice of unlocking here, combined with many of the cyclical dynamics that we were talking about earlier, including that geographic rotation that we were talking about. So yes, our Index subscription run rate growth was 8.5% in the most recent quarter, but against a very tough several prior years and this period when the U.S. strategies were very much in vogue. So I think there's a number of angles to help us accelerate the growth there.

Can we specifically talk about custom indices? It does seem like you're winning in that marketplace against some of the others in the space, but so maybe tell us why you're winning. And then how do you think about the opportunity longer term or the TAM or however you want to think about where customer indices may eventually fit?

Sure. So yes, we think we are doing well there. All those use cases I talked about in the prior conversation are slightly different, but they do anchor back to our position as a market standard and having the systematic framework. So our index is not Just a market parameter to track the largest stocks on an exchange or in a country, they're really designed for an asset allocation exercise. So they are used by the who's who of institutional investors, increasingly, wealth organizations out there, to do their asset allocation. How much do I want to allocate to this region, to this country, to the sector, to this size, to this factor, to this style? And we do that in a cohesive interoperable framework. And so that lends itself very nicely to a systematic customization. So when that institution who's using ACWI, All Country World Index, to do their asset allocation exercise, says, "I want to put an overlay on my portfolio because it's more cost efficient than totally rebalancing my assets with managers or reallocating," or "I want to hedge a risk that I have across my portfolio," they're thinking in terms of ACWI. And so that lends itself to us being a natural implementation tool for that custom index use case. And that similar value proposition is resonating in the other channels and client segments that I was alluding to. And so we see it as an important flanking strategy where, historically, they might have allocated a certain amount to the U.S. and they might not be using us as the benchmark for that U.S. allocation, but to the extent they are thinking of they want to get a specific factor exposure, which involves the U.S., with some sort of climate objective on top of it. the value proposition becomes that much more compelling to use MSCI versus another competitor. And so yes, I think we're nibbling there. We're getting some traction. And that helps not only on the subscription side over time, but it helps on the asset-based fee side. I think I mentioned on the earnings call, if you look at non-ETF passive where a huge chunk of that non-ETF passive is in what we call institutional passive, where that's a -- you can think of a pension fund or some other institution that is giving an indexed mandate to track one of our indexes and we similarly -- to ETFs, get paid basis points on the assets under management. We saw AUM in non-ETF passive grow by about 20% year-over-year. If you look at the growth rate in the nonmarket cap, AUM, it was about 35%. And then if you look specifically at custom, it's 50%. And so those are areas where we are seeing outsized growth. And a lot of that is capturing share. And some of that is capturing share against competitors. A lot of times, it's new assets as well that we are capturing, so they would have gone into some other strategy or approach. And so it's an area we get quite excited about. On the TAM point, listen, you could say that it is the entire investment market where an index can underlie or reflect any investment strategy out there, but I think that will take time. We are focused on many areas like active ETFs where we can actually play a broader role. But I'd say across so many dimensions, this is a massive market opportunity for us. And we tend to look at -- this is an overstatement, but look at, instead of the $9 billion or so of fees that are paid to index providers, we look at the $600 billion of fees that are paid to managers because we are playing a bigger role in that value prop and the valuation equation.

Yes. Fair enough. My next question, I feel like we can almost skip because you had almost answered it already, but I'll ask it anyways and I think you can give a quick answer here. But wealth and hedge funds, you talked about in terms of new customer sets. So just do you think what you're doing there is enough to overcome the challenges on the traditional asset manager side or -- yes?

Yes. I would say these generally, particularly wealth, and even asset owners directly, so if you look at our growth rate with -- our subscription run rate growth in index with wealth management, it was 12% in the most recent quarter, hedge funds, 28%-plus, asset owners directly, who historically and still are huge influencers, but have been modest clients who are actually seeing healthy growth there as they increasingly internalize 12% growth as well. And so these are all big wallets, huge fee pools where we are relatively small. And so listen, I think there's opportunity for us to do -- continue to do more, help asset managers reposition, reinvent themselves, attract assets and high fee paying assets. But there are also big opportunities in many of these additional client segments for us.

Good. All right. Let's move on from Index and dive into ESG and Climate, which used to get a lot of attention, different type of attention now. But look, the business has slowed to double digits still, but I remember when it was 30% plus. So clearly, the appetite has slowed a little bit. And look, there's not as much push from clients. There's obviously regulatory changes or lawmakers are thinking about it differently, particularly in the U.S. So why should we not expect that business to slow more from here?

Yes. For sure, there is a lot of noise around ESG, sustainable investing, more generally, that is most pronounced in the U.S. and most significant in the U.S. It's important to keep in mind that only 35% of our subscription run rate comes from the Americas, which is mostly the U.S. And so 2/3 of the business is coming from outside the U.S. So it's important not to get overly focused on the dynamics in the U.S. But you are seeing this continuation of noise. So you're seeing investors and managers who are cautious about launching new sustainability-oriented funds. They're being very measured about how they integrate ESG, how they communicate that to their clients and, to your point, even to stakeholders, other stakeholders. And so that has led to longer sales cycles and caution in buying decisions. And as we said, we expect the dynamics to continue -- that we've seen in recent quarters to continue in the near term around ESG and Climate, but there are a couple of positives here, and then I'll touch on other regions, which I think the dynamics are more constructive. But you're seeing a refocusing, and this is something that we are really helping to drive, a refocusing on financial materiality. And so I think ESG and sustainability has gotten, in certain circles, a bad name because it's politically-motivated capital or trying to drive social change. At the core of what we do is we are helping investors understand the financial risks that they are taking in these factors or in these dimensions, the environmental dimension, the social dimension, the governance dimension from climate. And so I think Henry said this on our earnings call, we are not seeing clients say, "I don't need this." In fact, clients are saying, "Help me be more effective at using it," and that is really where we differentiate. And so there's an opportunity to create some standardization, some real understanding of how to use it, and differentiate relative to competitors. And so I think we've been successful actually in capturing market share in many areas because of our -- not only our position as probably a leading or the leading provider, but because we are laser-focused on helping investors achieve better outcomes, help understand the drivers of risk and performance related to ESG considerations. And so that is something that resonates with investors and is creating a healthy dialogue and probably a stronger position for us longer term. In Europe, you see, I'd say, noise around regulation. So you've seen a multitude of regulations, many with competing objectives, competing disclosure requirements. And you're seeing, as you said, noise and often pushback around the conflicting requirements being placed on investment organizations and financial services organizations and companies more broadly. Regulation is, for sure, a catalyst for us. So to the extent there is a regulation that requires disclosure around climate or sustainability in an asset portfolio, we can help on that front, and it's usually a catalyst for sales. But because there are so many different regulations, that has led to hesitancy in buying behavior in Europe. And so we've seen some slowdown there. I would say Asia is earlier in its adoption curve. So we are seeing definitely opportunities in certain geographies in Asia to help them on that ESG integration financial materiality journey. And so we're excited about the opportunity there. Listen, we're likely to see these dynamics continue in the near term, as I said, which is why we mentioned that we were reviewing our long-term target for the segment. We take pride, we have conviction around our long-term targets, and we want to be realistic about the near-term trajectory and the ultimate impact that has on the longer-term growth of the segment. And so we will be, in the coming quarters here, rolling out an updated target for the segment. But we continue to believe it is a massive, massive opportunity for us and one where we are increasingly being positioned as a leader.

All right. I'll skip the next question then. I was going to give you a chance to change the targets here today, but we'll leave that for another day. Can you talk maybe -- to me, still a much more positive side on that segment, ESG and Climate, which is the Climate side. I mean, maybe talk about your competitive position. It seems like it's still an early business. A lot of other folks are pushing in that market. But where is the demand coming from? What are regulations doing? Again, with the new administration, does that change anything in your mind, which is something that I know Henry, in particular, has talked very, very positive about in the past?

Yes. So yes, climate is a very exciting opportunity. As you said, Henry, rightfully so, sees a massive opportunity for us longer term, and it's in its infancy, to your point, yes. We've got a pretty good franchise growing at a good clip today. But when you look at the use of the tools, the adoption of standard approaches, the multitude of potential use cases, it's a big, big market opportunity that is relatively small today. And so we are coming from a place of helping clients with transition and transition risk to a place of increasingly helping them to navigate things like physical risk as well as other sorts of climate objectives. And so the approach that we take is differentiated in that we have the broadest data -- accurate, high-quality data coverage. We have a research-based approach to help investors really understand not only their emissions footprint across their total portfolio, but the trajectory of that emissions footprint through to helping them understand their physical risk exposure across a whole host of dimensions, and thinking about it systematically as we call it climate value at risk or climate risk, and so what is that going to mean for valuation and value impacts on their portfolio. And then bringing that all together to allow clients to implement indexes, to achieve certain objectives, as we were talking about earlier, to key input into climate strategies. And so it's one where we think we are uniquely positioned given the breadth of our coverage, the quality of our coverage, our unique footprint with the investment community and investors, the interoperability of our tools from the research, the data insights through to analytics tools and indexes, all working together to help investors achieve objectives. And so we think we are a leader and uniquely positioned. And as I said before, we are just on the early stages of -- as Henry would say, we're on the ground floor of delivering things like insights into biodiversity and nature, geospatial insights across all assets in a client's portfolio, helping them think about physical risk. And then as you alluded to earlier, a whole host of climate regulations and reporting requirements that are being imposed on them. So yes, climate is one that is still early in the journey, which is part of the reason why I think you've seen some noise in the growth rate as well, where there's not a totally clear use case or not many totally clear use cases. There are absolutely some, and I think we're a leader in many of them. But for things like how to think about physical risk, those are areas where we can really drive differentiation and leadership over time, so we continue to be very excited about Climate.

Good. All right. Then going to another segment that's been probably a positive, an outperformer here, which is Analytics. Really strong over the last couple of years. So where is it coming from? Is it sustainable? What should we be focused on?

Yes. So yes, it's sustainable. I think it's a reflection of the investments that we've made into the Analytics segment, the strong strategy we have and the differentiation of MSCI as a partner to the investment industry. And so if you look at what's driven the acceleration in growth, it cuts across a few areas, all of which are -- have been the areas of strategic focus for us. So firstly, front office. So we've continued to invest in our risk models, our factor models. And that has really helped to, I think, fuel success in areas like multi-strat hedge funds, which had a very strong year for us last year, but across a broader range of use cases where we're increasingly moving from quantitative investors and quantamentals, which is -- we're very strongly positioned in as well into kind of the fundamental investment process. Similarly, we have been investing in the applications and interfaces and content sets around that, that's just brought in the value proposition. So that has been a key growth area for us. And you see that in the equity analytics line that we have in our earnings presentation. Fixed income is the other area that I would mention. So within fixed income, we have, over the last several years, really invested in broadening our asset class coverage to cover hard-to-model securities like corporate loans, like mortgage-backed securities, providing very important analytics, really best-in-class analytics in areas that are very important for fixed income investors like liquidity analytics and performance attribution. And you have seen us enhance the functionality around our tools that has enabled us to not only broaden our coverage within multi-asset class clients of ours, but also land front-office fixed income use cases. And we've had some competitive wins on that front, so that's been encouraging. And then the last area I would highlight is increased usability of our tools. And that cuts across a few different areas. One is we've invested in things like our APIs, making our content available on platforms like Snowflake to allow clients to more easily access, store data, do analysis around it as well as integrating with other workflow providers, other services providers to just make it easier for clients to use our solutions with their investment technology architecture. And then importantly, releasing functionality like our Risk Insights and more recently, our AI Insights, that are providing increased value to clients. Instead of having to trawl through thousands of data points in the user interface or within a report, they can now interact in a much more natural fashion with those data sets, including through platforms like Snowflake, to be able to interrogate, analyze, glean insights from and ultimately take action from the really differentiated analytics that we produce. And that's an area where we continue to invest very heavily. And so we're encouraged. There's runway there. There's momentum. One of the things about Analytics that is so exciting is we have so many different client segments and use cases. When you're providing best-in-class performance and risk across all asset classes, it opens up a lot of doors. And so we do think there are opportunities. It's also part of the reason why we say there will be some lumpiness, continued lumpiness in Analytics because there are areas where we're probably less focused. But overall, this is a growth opportunity for us.

Good. Excellent. Maybe just finishing up on the private side. You mentioned Real Estate already earlier. So maybe just very quickly, that business has been going through some tough times. It seems like RCA was done at a bad time in the cycle. But look, sometimes that -- the asset is there and you need to execute. So the question is like, yes, what are you seeing at the moment? And when do you think we can get out of that funk that the Real Estate side of the business has been in?

Yes. So you're right, we acquired RCA towards the top of the commercial real estate cycle. And there is a big part of the business where we are selling transaction data -- transaction-related data, valuation data to industry participants that are tied to that cycle. And so yes, you've seen some of the slowdown in growth and the drop in retention related to pressures within the commercial real estate industry over the last couple of years. And I think that relates to where we are in the cycle. Now we have started to see capital come back in to the industry. It takes a little bit of time for that to translate through to pick up in transaction volumes, but that is all encouraging for us and should be helpful from a cyclical dynamic. But importantly, from a strategic standpoint, we continue to have the best dataset out there, the highest quality, the broadest coverage of real estate transacted values, other sorts of real estate information that is integral to help market participants and investors ultimately navigate the market, capitalize on the market and build portfolios. And so we've continued to invest heavily in building out our suite of indexes. I mentioned on the call, we've seen -- we've continued to see momentum in our Index Intel offering. You've seen us launch -- continue to launch a wide series of indexes, including real estate indexes. And you've seen us start to release additional data products in areas like mortgage debt and real estate debt more broadly. And so we have a really strong position to ultimately help the market not only for real estate industry participants, but also help investors into real estate, and then help investors more generally, who have real estate as part of their total portfolio. And so it is a very strategic capability for us where we continue to see a number of growth avenues that will continue to fuel not only the Real Assets segment for us, but broader private assets as well as be a key input into some of the multi-asset class analytics and total portfolio insights that we can provide to clients.

Good. All right. Well, then why don't we go to the better part, if I can qualify it like that, of the private or other segment, which is private markets. So we're definitely getting a lot more questions there, in particular, since and this is now a while ago, BlackRock decided to buy Preqin, which I think hasn't closed, right? But anyways, there are a lot of players trying to do more in private markets. So maybe with the few minutes that we have left here, what are you trying to do? And why are you better positioned than your competitors...

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So we -- I think, to your point, every big info and analytics company or financial technology has some focus on private asset investing, alternatives, because they see increasing asset allocations to private markets, the majority of fees, huge fee pool there and the need for solutions. And so you see many providers that are focused on workflow tools or technology services solutions to help with accounting, reporting, cash management, even things like CRM. Those are important and there are opportunities there, but you see a whole host of folks who are focused on those areas. You see many folks that are focused on providing information. So I want to understand what -- who the partner is on this fund or what their last capital raise was. And so you see a lot of partner -- providers who are trying to provide that information. Where we are focused is very distinct in that we are providing those same performance and risk standards that I talked about earlier in the session that we do across other asset classes within the private asset space. Ultimately, we see our clients, the big institutional investors, the big investors of the world who are screaming for better ways to think about the private market opportunity, more structured ways to think about how they allocate their assets, understand the performance of those allocations and the value that the managers are providing, and then understanding the risk that they are taking in totality, not only within privates, but cutting across every asset that they're invested in. And so that leads to enormous opportunities for us to create deep insights -- firstly, baseline analytics for clients, but deep insights into their portfolio, help them achieve better outcomes, be more effective investors and then monetize all sorts of data. So we are differentiated in that we have the best dataset out there. We've got a very strong ingrained client base with the who's who of institutional investors out there. And we have a wide range of tools and know-how to deliver these solutions that nobody else can deliver. So we continue to be very excited about the opportunity.

Excellent. I had a couple of CFO questions for you on expenses, but you're doing a great job there anyway, so we'll skip those for today. So thanks, Andy, for coming again. And please help me thank for the great conversation here.

Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you.