MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: Our next question comes from Russell Quelch from Redburn Partners. Russell, please go ahead

Russell Quelch: Yes, thank you gen. Just wanted to come back to the analytic business to start, can you pin down exactly what’s driven the heighten growth in the last couple of quarters? I know you’ve made a few comments to this already, but is it new products? Is it tech enhancements to existing products? Is it pricing? I’m trying to get a bit of a sense as to, is this structural or cyclical growth. And just kind of linked to that, how does it get decided if climate-related product revenues get booked in ESG and climate or analytics? So I just want to check, there’s been no shift in the revenue allocation, which is flattering the growth in the analytics segment?

Henry Fernandez: Look, in some, the analytics product line, we have been revamping their strategy. And the hub on the core is continued work on enterprise risk and performance. And we make some good progress there, but the growth rates are not dramatically different than they were before. The growth areas are in three elements that we’re pivoting towards. One is the front office so equity portfolio analytics and fixed income portfolio analytics along the lines of what Baer was mentioning. Those are high growth areas for us. Second is climate risk with Climate Lab Enterprise. And the third area, which we just launched a whole bunch of products, is more content. We launched a protocol insights and the like. And so, we’re hoping that the 60% of the run rate, which is central risk, continues to grow at a reasonable pace, but the acceleration of the growth will come from those three pivots that I mentioned.

Andy Wiechmann: And Russell, there’s no shifting of run rate from ESG and climate to the analytics segment. There are some climate and ESG focus tools that are analytics tools that are showing up in the segment like our Climate Lab Enterprise and some of our ESG reporting capabilities, but those are not shifting. Those have always been there.

Russell Quelch: Okay, okay thank you. And then just as a short follow-up, the basis point fee charge on the AUM in the Index business that was notably up in Q4 versus Q3 to 2.54. Is that a lagged effect from lower AUM in previous quarters? I’m just wondering, should we expect that to fall again as AUM stays higher in Q1?

Andy Wiechmann: Yes, I would say it was impacted by flows out of lower fee products. So there was that mix impact. We saw a very small impact from a positive fee adjustment as well. Despite the steadiness that you’ve seen over the last year, I do want to underscore that we do expect the average basis points to continue to decline gradually over time. As we’ve seen over the last, call it, eight to 10 years or so, although we do expect the assets to increase at a faster growth rate and continue to be bullish about the growth in the ETF front. But we do expect fees to gradually come down over time.

Russell Quelch: Got it, thanks so much.

Operator: We have a question from Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas. Greg, please go ahead.

Greg Simpson: Hi, thank you. I think you mentioned price increases being 35% to 40% of new subscription sales firm-wide in the fourth quarter. Could you provide some color around how this compares versus history? Do you get the impression that you’re increasing pricing more or less or similar to some of your competitors in Index and ESG?

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