S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody. Great to see many familiar and new faces. I'm glad to be back in person here, of course. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Manav Patnaik. I'm the information services analyst here at Barclays. But more importantly, we're very pleased to have with us Doug Peterson, the CEO of S&P Global. So Doug, firstly, thank you for being here.

Great. Manav, thank you for inviting us, and it's great to be in person again and see people actually with some ties on like me.

So I'm obviously going to be just running the fireside chat here. Towards the end, if you have any questions, of course, feel free to raise your hands, and I'll try and squeeze them in. But otherwise, we've got a lot to get through here. So Doug, maybe just to begin, firstly, there's obviously a lot of questions in the markets generally on macro and where we're heading towards the slowdown, soft landing, hard landing, whatever you want to call it. But from your perspective, and S&P has a unique view into the world through all your different divisions and a lot of the data that you have, any just opening remarks on what your take on the macro situations are?

Yes. First of all, thank you for inviting us. And yesterday was 9/11. So just one quick comment on that. I think all of us remember where we were on 9/11 and 9/12, and it was a very difficult time for all of us. But one of the reasons I raised it is that the city, our industry, the country was very resilient. And we're also going through some tough times again. There's a war in Europe. We have inflation, which has started revealing itself again and quite high in Europe. But I think that we've learned so much over different crises over the years that our industry, our company, all of us have the ability to find new ways to do things. But to your question specifically, the -- we started the year with some very high expectations about growth. We thought that coming out of the pandemic that we were going to see very high growth around the world in different economies. You still had seen some supply chain restraints, but we had high expectations. But after the Ukraine was invaded, that hit the energy markets. It exacerbated the supply chain disruptions that we've been seeing. And so now we're in a situation where you have a combination of inflation, which has started to abate partially because of lower energy prices. You have the supply chain constraints. You still have the pandemic. You have the slowdown of growth. So we're looking at a pretty tough environment almost no matter what industry you're in. But with longer-term projections, with a lot of positives that will be coming out of it once we can get through this, our expectations overall in S&P Global are that inflation will start coming down with the actions of the central banks. We think that Europe is going to have higher inflation and might go into a recession. The U.S. could see a mild recession. It's a very delicate dance that the Fed has to play. But overall, market conditions are still tough. Finally, on oil. Oil prices are much higher than they normally would be, which means that all energy prices are a lot higher. We think that the price of oil will be in a range of about $90 to $110. But if there could be some sort of abatement of the hostilities in Ukraine, you could see the price of oil is coming back down. But right now, kind of a range bound $90 to $110.

Got it. Okay. That's a helpful setup. I think the best approach, I think, we'll just go by your segments because you have a lot of them now. So obviously, the first one everyone wants to know about is the Ratings business. Just generally, your latest thoughts on the issuance environment. It sounds like it's still tracking down 30% plus year to date, but...

Yes, it's tracking down. If you recall, over the last 25 years, issuance has grown at about 5% a year. So if you look at economies around the world, you've got 2 big themes. The United States, particularly, is about now 75% of financing is capital markets. Europe, it's more -- the other way, it's probably about 40% capital markets. And in Asia, it's only about 25% capital markets. So a combination of the growth of the U.S. capital markets, which has been the largest driver of issuance, and then the shift from banking markets to capital markets in Europe and Asia have also helped drive that growth. So we see those trends continuing, although right now there has not been a lot of issuance. We expect that issuance will be down somewhere from 30% to 45% for the full year, which means it's going to be down more in the second half than it was in the first half. July and August, I don't like to talk about an entire quarter just based on 2 months, but July and August were still quite weak. July and August are always the weakest month. But year-on-year, they were -- the issuance is still weak, especially in high yield, especially in high-yield bonds, high-yield loans. There are still -- the only couple of bright spots, covered bonds in Europe, which were not -- it's not a big area for us. And then in the U.S., financial institutions issuance has continued to be pretty strong. But net-net, it's down. We expect that the full year will be down 30% to 45%.

Got it. And financial institutions as well, investment grade saw, I think, a lot of activity in certain windows. Are those more on your frequent issuer programs? Or should they be kind of little benefit to the whole...

It's probably -- it's both. Some of them would be frequent issuers, especially if they're large financial institutions. Some of the corporates would be. We probably have some -- there's some new issuers going to market. But it's not going to be the big driver of growth. I mean that's still why we see the 30% to 45% down for issuance. As you recall, we have -- in our last quarterly earnings, we put a chart in, which explained the difference between forecasting of total issuance versus what we call billed issuance, what we actually bill for. And we have an issuance forecast. We take out what would be certain types of activity in China, medium-term notes. We add back loans, and then we -- then we come up with a net number that's billed issuance. That's what I'm talking about is down 30% to 45%.

Got it. And you mentioned July and August are usually weak, which obviously are probably the summer months lull. And then September and the fall becomes more important. And is that -- why is that the case? Is that just because the post-summer activity begins? Or is there some other dynamics at play?

No, it's just purely in -- typically in August, people are on vacation, the markets slow down, there's not as much activity and then things pick up in the September and into the fourth quarter in a typical -- if you look at issuance on a monthly basis, you'll see that there's always a curve that goes -- drops during the summer.

Got it. And you referred to billed issuance. How much of visibility do you have into billed issuance? Like do you know how September is tracking? Or how far out can you really see that?

We -- I don't have a tracking of exactly what those numbers are. The 30% to 45% down is based on what we track. We meet with capital markets desk, debt capital market desk and all the big investment banks. We also watch very closely the M&A activity. M&A activity is a good leading indicator of issuance because M&A activity, whether it's large corporate activity or sponsor activity, typically will bring some refinancing with it, maybe a bridge loan that turns into a loan, which turns into a bond, et cetera. So M&A activity is also something we watch carefully, and that's also been quite weak.

Got it. And then when you think out over the next, say, 2 to 5 years, is the issuance dip that we're seeing this year kind of making up for the big surge that we saw in the COVID period, and we're starting off a new base with healthy growth? Or how do you think about what this down 30% to 45% means for the long-term algorithm?

Yes. On December 1, we're going to be having an Investor Day, where we'll give longer projections of what we see. But generally speaking, when I look at the issuance market, I mentioned earlier that we've seen issuance grow at about 5% a year for over 25 years, if you look at the CAGR of that. We know that there's continued growth in the markets. When we're looking going forward, we have a couple of factors we look at. We look at what is the maturity schedules of debt which is coming to maturity. We know that in '23, '24, '25, there is a healthy maturity schedule, which will start coming back to market, in particular, '24 and '25. We expect some of that will get refinanced earlier pull forward. We also look at, as I mentioned, M&A activity. We look at what's happening with very specific markets. I think to your point about was there pull forward into 2020, 2021, there was likely some pull forward of investment grade. Or if you think about it on the other hand, when we were sitting here 2.5, 3 years ago, we weren't actually here, we were on a Zoom call or a BlueJeans call, I think it's called, we were talking about how -- if you were a corporate treasurer, you were not being criticized for having too much liquidity. And so there are a lot of especially investment-grade corporations that raised excessive amounts of debt. They let it sit on their balance sheet as cash. And right now, they don't necessarily need to do any refinancing because they've got -- still have some of that cash on their balance sheets.

Got it. And maybe just to wrap up Ratings but ask it slightly differently. Are you taking any aggressive actions around the cost to your employee base in the Ratings business because of this kind of year-to-date decline that you've seen thus far?

Not necessarily. It's an area that we still have obligations to do surveillance on all of our -- all of the outstanding issuance. We also know the markets will come back. You've heard me say this before because I've said it to you. We -- I've always said we were going to see a bad quarter, a bad half year, a bad year. We knew that there would be -- at some point, there could be some sort of a correction, but we want to be ready for the return to the markets. So clearly, we're taking -- across the entire company, we're taking prudent measures, scaling back, filling open positions, scaling back some travel, accelerating our opportunities with our synergies. But there's -- but we want to maintain our capacity in the Ratings business because we know that the markets will come back.

Got it. That's helpful. And I guess if you just move to the Indices side of the equation. Again, just a broad comment like in terms of the AUM activity that you're seeing, maybe just an update there. And also does that change your -- how you manage your cost? Or is that also just one of those, you expected some kind of a correction at some point?

Yes. If you recall in the prior quarter, we had -- the AUM activity was not quite as robust, but we saw -- on the flip side, we saw a lot of exchange-traded derivative activity, which picked up. Right now, I personally watch the VIX number quite carefully because that's not a really official indicator of what we see in terms of our revenues, but it's an indicator that I look at. Volatility has remained high. And so on the one hand, AUM activity has been quite volatile, generally downward headed this year about -- down about 15% for the S&P 500 year-to-date. But the exchange-traded derivative activity has been much higher than normal, which is a partial offset to the AUM activity right now. So we see that the AUM activity is down there. A question about what are we doing on expense management, same approach. We are making sure we're very prudent on travel, on offsites, asking tough questions about filling open headcount. Are there areas we were expecting to invest in? And should we slow down that investment or not? But generally speaking, we think it's a great time to invest. We see that there's an opportunity for transformational markets, both in the Ratings business and the Index business you've asked about. There is an emergence of new types of products. I don't know if you're going to ask later about ESG or sustainability, but there's a whole new set of sustainability and energy transition products, which are starting to emerge. We want to be there at the forefront of those, in the Index business, multi-asset class. It's very exciting that we just brought in the fixed income franchise of IHS Markit. And having those capabilities is bringing in a whole new set of opportunities for us of multi-asset class products, applying different types of screens to fixed income indices, such as sustainability, looking at new types of funds for -- that the insurance industry is looking at for annuities. So we're seeing a lot of interest in the capabilities we have. So on the one hand, we could manage only for margins, but we think managing for growth, managing for innovation is really quite critical at this time.

Got it. Yes, I was going to ask if you could just help the audience with kind of the profile of your Indices business. You acquired the fixed income business from IHS Markit, which I believe was around $100 million, if I'm wrong. But just how do you think about your portfolio between equities, fixed income? And then how much of that could potentially be an ESG universe, too?

Yes. The business is now about -- it was -- we used to have about 4% to 5% fixed income. Now with the addition, it's about 15% fixed income with the rest being equities, although it's not quite fair to say the rest is equities because we also have the leading commodities index business with the [ CGSI ] of different indices. So we have a very solid base of fixed income of commodities. And then we have a blend of revenues, which come from AUM, from exchange-traded derivatives and from data. And the data business that IHS Markit brought is also even stronger than the one we had. So we see a growth opportunity in data, data distribution and data services, both direct feeds as well as data which is used by analysts. So the business overall has those characteristics of the revenue streams. And then of the product capability and asset classes, as I mentioned, we're seeing a lot of demand for sustainability, for ESG, for multi-asset classes, for age-based opportunities. And the ETF space and the index space overall are really booming, and we see it with the multiplicity of new products and services that have been emerging from the industry.

Got it. And just one question, just back to the ESG angle. Like is it fair to say that the entire index universe will have some kind of ESG layering or element to it? Or how do you size that opportunity when you think about the opportunity of ESG in Indices?

Yes. I don't know if you could say that every single fund will have an ESG angle on it or a sustainability angle, but there's clearly interest in almost any major index to now see the ESG or sustainability linked to it. So it could be that in the case of the S&P 500, there's an ESG S&P 500. There's a low carbon. There's a no carbon. So you see demand from different types of investors for different flavors of the S&P 500 and then the sector is the 400 and the 600 and also industrials with different types of industrial. So we're starting to see this demand for the screening to be used to use ESG screens on almost any index we have.

Got it. All right. Let's move to Market Intelligence. That was perhaps the biggest area of synergy with your IHS Markit merger. So maybe just to start with, like how would you describe the profile of Market Intelligence now? Because there's a lot of different sub-businesses, and it's hard to kind of put it all together.

Yes. Market Intelligence is incredibly exciting. I've had a chance to go on the road, kind of like a whistle-stop tour and visit different offices around the U.S. as well as in London and meet with the different teams and learn as much as I can about the products. So Market Intelligence, which was the combination of the Financial Services business of IHS Markit and MI of S&P Global, we're managing in 4 areas. We've got the Desktop, we have the data services, Enterprise Solutions and then credit services. And so each of them -- it's not quite a quarter each, but it's about a $4 billion revenue business. So about getting close to 4 -- $3.8 billion business, with about $3 billion of them are close to $1 billion. And the credit risk services is closer to maybe, let's say, $700 million. But the 4 businesses -- the Desktop business is a traditional S&P Cap IQ Pro, which is delivering information to people's desktop with a whole series of new additions going into it, especially from what is now the data business, the data services business of Market Intelligence, which has expanded incredibly with the offerings from IHS Markit, which include valuations, reference pricing, a whole series of different data and analytics that are coming along with that. The third area, which is the Enterprise Solutions, is pretty new for S&P Global. We had a little bit there, but this is a very interesting business that has embedded software solutions and workflow solutions for, in particular, financial institutions and as well as serving things like the private markets with an eye level. It's where Ipreo is. If all of you recall, Ipreo, Wall Street Office, ability to provide investor relations tools for managing their business. And then the credit services is an area we're seeing a lot of growth, especially in this kind of a market, for people that want more and more solutions. So the nice thing about Market Intelligence is not only do we start with a very strong position in all of these areas, bringing them together. We're finding every day more opportunities for data that will cross the different areas, data services that can be included in other parts of S&P Global, not just across Market Intelligence, and then a lot of demand and interest from underlying growth, both from people who use a screen or model themselves as well as from data-to-data feeds.

Got it. And within those businesses, maybe particularly Desktop and even Ipreo, are you seeing any signs of slowdown or changes in the sales cycle or competitive behavior even?

Yes, not too much. We do see occasionally you'll get as people might be thinking -- worrying about inflation or a potential recession, they might want to try to renegotiate a contract that we've already had in place for a couple of years. They might want to try to renegotiate. When we're negotiating our contracts as they renew or we're trying to bring 2 or 3 renewal dates into one single one, they're tough negotiations, but it's always been tough. We always have tough negotiations. But we've been using at S&P Global an approach towards our contracts, which is enterprise pricing. I can't say that across that entire set of 4 different management areas that we do pricing, which is enterprise pricing. But generally speaking, for most of our products, we try to do enterprise pricing. What that means is that we don't charge by the seat. So it's not a per desktop pricing. We look at an enterprise. We look at their usage levels. We look at the number of users. We typically like to have a 2- to 3-year contract with escalators already built into it. And once we do that, we let everybody that wants to use the product. And we end up seeing more users and more usage, which gives us more leverage the next time we go back for renewals. And so that's a model that we have an opportunity to bring to some of the IHS Markit areas of Market Intelligence.

Got it. And I'm sure we'll hear more about this at Investor Day, but you had mentioned that the most amount of revenue and cost synergies were from this Market Intelligence division. So is this where the next level of kind of growth investments come in? Or is there also a little bit of portfolio pruning in this particular business that you might be doing?

Nothing that's obvious for pruning. But what we're seeing though is opportunities to get additional synergies by bringing together products that once you really get to know the portfolio, they're quite similar. And so maybe as opposed to pruning, it's more like merging products as we get -- the deeper we get into the businesses, the more we find opportunities to -- it's not just a [ cross-sell of something ]. It's a cross-sell of something and merger of 2 products into 1. So there's opportunities there. Related to your question about the synergies, generally, the growth synergies will be coming, in particular, from Indices, Market Intelligence and from Commodity Insights with Market Intelligence being -- having the largest portfolio and the largest opportunity for this upside of growth.

Got it. Well, that's a good segue then to move to Commodity Insights. And maybe just the first broad question, again, if you could just frame the profile of that business between Platts and then the IHS piece that you acquired. And yes, maybe let's just start there first.

Yes. So if you think about this Commodity Insights business, this is a -- this is a business that right now, if you think about the kind of environment we've been in the last 3 years, this is an environment where having this set of capabilities of providing data, benchmarks, analytics to the markets about the energy markets and about commodities. This has been an area where we're seeing increasing demand and increasing growth. If you think about it, I don't know if any of you here have had conversations recently where you're not talking about energy transition or sustainability. And this business is at the center of that and also that whole transition. So we have the benchmarks, which are basically the pricing benchmarks, which get embedded in people's contracts, which is part of the Platts business. You have a smaller analytics research data business from Platts, which is now marrying with a very large business coming from IHS Markit of data, research, analytics, advisory, conferences. So you bring these together, and you get a very powerful business that is now bringing the highest quality, highest level of research, forecasting analytics to the markets and the commodity sectors. IHS Markit had a business that was called upstream that had been a negative grower. It's been declining for many years because of the -- where it had arrived in terms of its negative growth, plus the opportunities for repurposing a lot of their analytics for new types of opportunities, for underground as an example. Wind farms, which are offshore, need to do a lot of the same kind of geological mapping that an oilfield offshore will do. So the upstream business, which had been a drag, has now actually flattened out, and we're going to be expecting growth from it. So that's actually one of the positives of the merger that we can repurpose a lot of the software, the analytics in the upstream business. And we see the upstream business is no longer being a drag and at a minimum being neutral, and we are hoping even being positive.

Got it. To that point, we had our Barclays Energy Conference last week, and it sounded like the broad tone was very constructive. So do you -- I know you just said it's not a drag anymore, but do you anticipate that the Commodity Insights business can maybe even start showing incremental growth? I mean Platts has been resilient. We know that. But I guess the question is more on the IHS side of the equation that you acquired.

Yes. I think that we're looking at a period where some of the IHS Markit products and services were hit by the pandemic. They have the premier global energy conference, CERAWeek, which hadn't taken place for a couple of years. It did take place this year. There are some other energy conferences around the world, which have not taken place that are back in the market. Those are going to be upside. But just being able to bring together the teams and the expertise that we have across both teams and getting out to the market is quite valuable. One thing I didn't mention yet, though, is that there's this opportunity for the Market Intelligence data and the Commodity Insights data to be used by the rest of the portfolio as well. So the Ratings business is using this data in their analytics, actually substituting some other data we used to have. You've got the Mobility business, which is being -- data is being used across all of these businesses. So we have a large transformation going on in our own data network and how we use it internally and all the upside there. So Commodity Insights on its own is -- it's a very exciting area. It's one that I'm personally very excited about. And as you mentioned, you had an energy conference. And energy is at the center of almost every conversation we have, especially because of the Ukraine. And I would say that because of Ukraine, we will be having a much faster energy transition dialogue than we would have before. It's forcing policymakers in countries to think more carefully about their sources of energy, how they're going to think about an energy transition, and the Commodity Insights business at S&P Global is the center of all of that.

Got it. So you've almost answered the next question, but I'm going to ask it anyway if you want to add some more. But -- so many years ago, the name of the company was S&P Global Financial, right? And then you made it S&P Global...

It was McGraw Hill Financial.

McGraw Hill Financial and you went there. But -- so I guess, in our mind, sometimes when we talk about S&P, we still focus more on the financial piece, and every now and then you wondered why Commodity Insights needs to be part of the portfolio. You already gave a few points, but maybe just some broader thoughts on why it's so key to being part of the other financial pieces that we think about.

Yes, because I think of what we do as S&P Global is about markets. And markets are providing liquidity information. They're delivering different types of assets from an investor to a borrower, from a borrower to an obligor, to an investor, et cetera. So there's -- the type of information we're providing is used by institutions, typically, not necessarily individuals. We're not a big individual marketer, although there's people that get that residual opportunity to understand what we do. But we're all about providing independent assessments, benchmarks, data, analytics, research to organizations that can make -- use that to make decisions, whether that's using a desktop, it's using their brains, it's using spreadsheets, it's going into models. And the same thing happens for the Commodity Insights business, the oil markets, gas markets, the emerging markets of renewable energy, the metals, which are going to be a huge, huge upside for an organization like ours in the metals industry. So I see these are all market activities. So maybe they're not necessarily financial instruments, liquidity instruments, but there are clearly market activities that fit very well with the portfolio.

Got it. Fair enough. And so maybe to lead into the next segment, the Mobility or auto segment, kind of a similar question. So how do you -- I think that came with the acquisition, but how do you see that fit into this profile that you just talked about?

Yes. This is another business where if you look at the overall automotive market over the last couple of years, it's gone through an incredible combination of shock and transformation and where the value is being created. So this is another type of a business where you see exchange of information and data analytics and goods across the different supply chain. The automotive market in the last couple of years went through a couple of shocks. One was the inability to produce new autos. The second was this incredible updraft of sales of used autos, and there was also a shift of the information required between a dealer and the OEMs. The dealers have been -- I call it the money ball moment, where they no longer can just rely on thinking that somebody walks into a dealership and they know what kind of car they want. They need analytics around that. They need analytics around what sort of rebates they need to give, what kind of insurance needs to go with their products, how they need to do their floor planning, their financial planning. So the dealers have had to become much more sophisticated. And because of CARFAX, which you think of it as a used car market, it's a portfolio of data and analytics about the used cars. CARFAX has been much larger -- played a much larger role in the portfolio over the last couple of years because of the interest and need for information about the used car market. So that's fed the data to the markets themselves, to the OEMs, to the dealers. There's a whole new set of dealer products that IHS Markit had developed. And those have benefited the business while the overall OEMs have actually not done as well. So the portfolio has been quite strong. And we now see that as the market shifts again and it's going to shift towards a very high growth of automotive production in the next few years, the Mobility business will again benefit from that side on the OEM side plus what they've embedded in the dealer model.

Got it. We had spoken to a lot of the credit bureaus last week, and they described the auto market as healthy but constrained by the supply chain constraints, I guess, out there. In your business specifically, is that an issue? Is that holding back growth? Or what are some of the current trends that you're seeing there?

It holds back growth from that instead of in the mid- to high single digit, it's not higher than that. We see that the automotive industry is getting -- well, it's hard to say that it's getting back yet. It's still not really getting back. You have -- the supply constraint in particular has been of chips. That is something that's still under constraint. And so -- but we do think that there's a secondary impact on the industry, and that's the shift from what they call ICE, or internal combustion engines, to electric propulsion systems. So there's a major transformation going on in that industry right before our eyes. And so at the same time you have the constraint, you also have this shift going on in the industry. So if you're a -- if you're in the automotive industry, you're a producer, you're part of the supply chain, you're a dealer, you need to have independent analytics, research, pricing information about the entire supply chain, and that's what the Mobility business brings.

Got it. And maybe just to wrap it up again on the auto side, like the synergies between the Mobility business and the rest of your businesses? Is that more on the data and analytics...

It's the data side. It's not a big part of the upside. It's a very, very minor part of the synergies of the overall deal come from Mobility. The biggest synergies come, in particular, from areas like the corporate center, real estate, things like that and then in the 3 businesses I mentioned before, Market Intelligence, Commodity Insights and Indices. That's -- the bulk of the synergies come from there, not from Mobility.

Got it. And just to touch on the last segment in the interest of completeness, but the Engineering Solutions business, it's tiny, but even at IHS Markit, there was a view that it didn't necessarily need to be in the portfolio. But it was good free cash flow, and they never did anything. What's your take on the...

Yes. Yes. First of all, I'm getting to know the business quite well. I've actually spent time with the people in some different offices. It provides a service which embeds their workflow in large manufacturers. And it's another way where we're embedded in the workflow of different types of organizations, providing them truly essential intelligence they need to make decisions to design and manufacture. I'm getting to know the business much better. As you said, it's a very small part of the portfolio. And I'm excited to get to learn as much as I can about it.

Got it. We have about 5 to 6 minutes left. If anybody has any questions, do raise your hand. Otherwise, I'll just continue. The -- so maybe just to wrap all this up, Doug. First question, capital allocation. Obviously, you've got a big $12 billion ASR going on this year. But is the focus still on integration? Or should we start seeing a little bit more M&A or whatever your priorities now are?

No, focus is on integration. This is for us the most important thing we could do right now. I don't want to declare victory. One thing we have to make sure, though, is that we don't overly obsess about integration because we need to also talk about growth and innovation and transformation, the things that will allow us to see the top line and to be filling new opportunities and new niches. So we definitely are here to meet our goals for our synergies and do the integration. The integration has a very robust office. We have what we call an Integration Management Office. I get a report from them every week. I meet with them or speak with them almost every week. We have formal meetings where we go through the integration process. Later this week, we have a very in-depth meeting on planning as well as the integration update. So integration is not going away. It's a top priority for us right now. And we're finding new areas all the time where along with the integration we want to invest, and we want to invest for growth. Private markets is one of those opportunities. As I've been traveling around the world and meeting more and more asset managers and pension funds, insurance companies, they're seeing increased needs to have the same kind of data and analytics they have for public market assets for private assets. And we already have a very strong base of that coming from IHS Markit and some of the other credit risk products we have. And we think that's an area where -- well, instead of saying as we learn more about it, let's invest in it. So we have a capital allocation, which will be returning 85% of our free cash flow as a target direction with the combination of that going to dividends as well as through stock buybacks. This year, we have a large $12 billion stock buyback. We've completed $8.5 billion of that. And then we want to make sure that we're also allocating to growth opportunities to drive innovation.

Got it. And we touched -- sorry, do you have a question? Yes. You can -- I'll repeat it.

Okay. Your ESG business, how do you score different [indiscernible]? How do you [indiscernible]?

So the question is more around the ESG scoring methodology and the differentiation versus the competition. And Doug, if you can just address. You've already given some snippets, but just your thoughts on consolidation there as well.

Yes. So ESG is a field right now that -- you've probably heard me say this before. It's in the second inning of a 9-inning baseball game. It's very, very early in the -- this is a new asset class. We're going to call it that for the Financial Services industry. There's a whole set of different types of capabilities, which we provide for the markets within what I call the sustainability framework. We had started investing in sustainability services over 20 years ago with the original Dow Jones Sustainability Index. And then over in particular the last 8 years, we've invested in, acquired a whole set of different capabilities. Every single division has some type of ESG or sustainability products or services. Scores is one part of it. It's actually quite a small part of what we do. Our Scores, our ESG Scores, which are looking at both impact and risk. Most of the competitors, their scores are only looking at risk, not impact. And we know that there's a whole set of different types of investors that won't, both or one or the other. There's still a lot of dialogue about what is risk, what is the impact. But our ESG and sustainability services also include many other things. A couple of examples. In the Ratings business, there's green bonds. There's green deals. There's sustainability revolvers, et cetera. There's a new area which is really starting to pick up fast, which is called second-party opinions. And so we've been providing these second-party opinions for deals that go to the market. In Market Intelligence, we have Trucost. We have credit climate analytics. We have a whole set of climate and energy transition opportunities. In our Commodity Insights business, we have a whole set of other products and services related to energy transition, renewables, carbon pricing, et cetera. So we think of the entire ESG sustainability portfolio across all of the businesses. Scores is a piece of that. Scores is a small part of that and something that we will continue to evolve and grow. But we think about the Sustainable1, which is 1 year old, in a much broader way.

Got it. And maybe just last question to wrap this up. Just IR Day coming up in December. You've had 6 months under your belt since the deal closed, but you had 15 months before that while you were doing diligence. So just broad thoughts on what we should be expecting during IR Day and just initial take on since the merger has been closed?

Yes. The merger closed 6 months ago. It's been a really exciting last 6 months to get to know the people, to get to know the organization, to really go out in the markets in what is a difficult time. We started the conversation about inflation and potential recession and energy crisis and pandemic, et cetera, all of that happening at once. And so it's an -- outside, it's a tough environment. But that's given us an opportunity to say we're going to control what we can control really well. We're going to control our strategy, where we invest. We're going to build a new culture. And so we have an intensive Integration Management Office I mentioned. We have a very aggressive approach to looking at opportunities for the future. And when we get together for Investor Day, we're going to bring all that together. We will give a singular common vision going forward, which will have elements of integration, of execution, of discipline. But on top of that will be the innovation, the growth, the transformation that will come as we provide new services and new opportunities for the markets in these different areas that we have. So we think that with the kind of transformation that's taking place -- I mentioned the automotive sector, the energy sector, the credit markets, the moving in Europe and Asia into new types of capital markets away from banking markets. These are all the secular trends -- moving from active management to passive, et cetera. These are all the secular trends that we will bring. We'll talk about what those mean and what it means for the upside and the growth and the excitement for S&P Global. So we're looking forward to seeing people there. In the meantime, we will continue to meet with you. I'm actually very excited to be here today and meet with many people throughout the day. These are -- conferences are always really valuable, and I also like to hear what's on people's minds. So thank you for hosting me this morning and for hosting the entire conference, and good luck with the rest of your day.

Thank you, Doug, for being here. And thank you, everyone, as well.

Thank you so much.