S&P Global Q3 2026: Capital IQ Goes Under Review in the Quarter Ratings Grew 2%

In July I wrote that S&P Global is two companies under one ticker. Ratings and Indices own a benchmark and carry the growth, and Market Intelligence and Energy sell data that buyers can swap out. This morning S&P said it's reviewing a possible separation of Capital IQ, the part of that data half that competes with Bloomberg and FactSet. That's the split I described, and S&P is now acting on it. The stock jumped. What I underplayed is in the same release: Ratings grew 2%, slower than either data segment, and I think the price now assumes that bounces back.

S&P says the review covers Capital IQ and the data businesses around it, and that it expects to keep the ratings-data feeds it sells alongside its ratings. There's no timetable, no revenue figure for what's in scope, and no promise of a deal, and full-year guidance assumes nothing changes. The stock was up 5.6% at $476 in the first half hour of trading, on the beat, the raised guide and the review.

I put Ratings and Indices in the same bucket because both own something other people's contracts refer to. That's still true of the moat. It isn't true of the growth. An index fee is charged on assets that sit in funds whether or not anyone trades, so it moves with the market level. A rating fee is mostly charged when a bond gets issued, so it moves with how much companies borrow that quarter. The July piece named that risk in its last section, then built the headline on a quarter when issuance was booming.

S&P wasn't alone. At Moody's the ratings business shrank in the same quarter while analytics grew, and at MSCI the index business kept its lead. So across the three, the index businesses kept the spread and both rating agencies lost it at once. That points to the borrowing cycle rather than anything S&P did. It's good news for the moat, and bad news for anyone who expected the Q2 pace to last.

If Capital IQ goes, the company that's left leans harder on the two segments that swing. Market Intelligence barely moved all year while Ratings fell from 17% to 2%. Mobility, the auto-data unit S&P spun off in July, was the other steady subscription business, and it's already gone. So the margin would go up, because Capital IQ sits inside the lowest-margin segment S&P has, and the quarter-to-quarter swings would get bigger.

I think that's a fair trade for S&P to make, and it's the trade I said the market should pay for. What I'd push back on is the size of the move on a day Ratings printed 2%. At $476 the stock sat right on the base case on its stock page, which assumes this year's guided earnings and a multiple like Moody's, about 26.7 times the midpoint of the new guide. Holding that multiple through a quarter like this one means the market expects Ratings to recover soon. I'd want to see it first.

The best case against me is that I'm reading too much into one quarter. Ratings grew about 11% over the first nine months, well ahead of Market Intelligence, and Q3 2025 was the strongest Ratings quarter of last year's first three, so it was a hard comparison. A flat quarter after a borrowing boom is normal for a rating agency. On that view S&P raised both its organic growth guide and its margin guide, and the review only helps: it gets rid of a business that competes with Bloomberg and FactSet on price and keeps the ones nobody can copy.

I agree with most of that. The part I can't wave away is the non-transaction line, the ratings revenue that doesn't depend on new bonds, which slowed every quarter this year (the second Ratings line in the chart). Some of that may be currency or timing, and S&P didn't explain it in the release. If it keeps slowing while issuance recovers, the problem is bigger than the issuance cycle, and the case for keeping only the benchmark half gets weaker.

I'm still holding the July view on where the moat is. I'm no longer treating Ratings growth as steady, and I'll come back after the Q4 print.