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

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Andy Wiechmann: Sure yes. I don’t want to comment on what our competitors are doing. But I would say that, yes, we are generally increasing prices more than we have in the past. The 35% contribution from pricing to new subscription sales across the subscription base and the 40% plus that we are seeing in Index, the contribution within Index from price increases, those are about five-plus percentage points higher than what we’ve seen in the recent past. And so yes, price is contributing more than it has in the past. I would just underscore that we are – in our price increases, we are heavily focused on delivering value together with the price increases. And so we’re continuing to enhance the content that we deliver to our clients, the capabilities, the functionality and the overall client service that they are getting.

We do recognize that our growth is heavily going to come from our existing clients and we want to do it in a constructive fashion. But given the overall pricing environment and cost environment, we are increasing prices more than we have in the past.

Greg Simpson: Great, thank you. And then just quickly on the real estate business. New sales were down year-over-year. Is there anything in particular to call out in what is maybe a trickier backdrop for real estate? And more broadly, how is RCA progressing since your acquisition?

Andy Wiechmann: Yes, I mean its similar message to what we’ve seen in the past, which is things are progressing well in the segment. I would highlight that our – some of our portfolio services are getting a lot of traction and a lot of interest. Investors, in particular, are focused on understanding what is driving the performance and the risk in their portfolios. And so, we’re seeing strong engagement there. On the data side, including the RCA data, we do see some pressure from the backdrop, to your point. There are aspects of the RCA business and the data that we have that are used as part of transactions in the real estate space, and we have seen a slowdown in transaction volumes across the space. But you can see the overall growth rate on an organic basis at 12% is still pretty good, and we think there are some environmental impacts going on given the backdrop in the real estate space, but we continue to be quite encouraged about the long-term opportunity there.

Greg Simpson: Thank you.

Operator: And we have a question from Simon Clinch from Atlantic Equities. Simon, please go ahead.

Simon Clinch: Hi, everyone thanks for taking my question. I wanted to just get your perspectives, please on, I guess, the opportunity in the futures and options line, which today they’re still relatively small in the context of your overall Index business. I mean how should we think about the structural growth opportunity here for that? Obviously, the larger it is, the more diversified benefits you’ll see during times of risk. And I imagine that’s quite a desirable thing to have? Thanks.

Henry Fernandez: Yes, so there are three legs of any large and successful Index business, the active management; the fees that we charge to active managers, what we call the subscription business; the fees that we charge to passive managers, both in any proper ETF or institutional passive or owning some mutual funds. And the third leg is the licensing of indices into all sorts of derivative products. Some of them are lifted like futures and options, and some of them are unlisted such as swaps and options and structured products that investment banks make. We are very, very intent and focused on building that third leg. What you see and that we comment on is the listed futures and options, and there’s still a lot of runway for us to continue to grow in new products.

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