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

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So we are being very measured on our pace of expense growth. We’re continuing to find efficiencies. You saw we took some significant actions on the severance front in the fourth quarter. And so that has a meaningful impact on the expense base, although we are continuing to invest in key areas. And so despite those efficiencies and continued actions on the head count front, we are planning to grow our investment spend in 2023 by 13%, and that’s more than double the overall expense growth. And so we are, in our guidance, assuming that we continue to be quite disciplined in a number of areas, especially for the first half of the year. But we are continuing to grow head count and invest in those key investment areas, those key growth areas for us as a firm.

Owen Lau: Got it. That’s super helpful. Thank you. And then I want to go back to the Google partnership, the Google Cloud partnership. Henry, could you please talk about maybe the potential incremental revenue and an expense opportunity for this partnership? I mean it would be great if you can even give us some more specific examples so that we can better understand the value creation of this partnership. Thank you.

Henry Fernandez: So look, I can’t, at this point, give you any numeric analysis of the revenue or profit or any of that. Too early to tell. What is very key is that in us becoming a very large data building company, we need to use the most advanced methods and protocols and technologies and all of that and this partnership with Google will give us that. And for example, one specific area that we’re focused on right now is asset locations. So in order for us to be the best, undisputed leader in climate, we need to have understanding of every manufacturing facility every mine, every office of every single company in the world, whether it’s private or public company. So being able to work with Google in gathering that information through Google maps and Google’s geospatial services and the like will put us at a significant advantage there.

That would be clearly one example of that. Another example clearly is the – in the work that we’re doing in the private assets, there is a lot of data that we’re collecting from GPs and LPs and all of that, and we need to figure out how we index the data, organize it and the like. So the way to think about us, if you want to compare us to – obviously, to the work that Google does is that everyone focuses on the search engine of Google, right? And that’s at the top. But on the – search engine is clearly data. So think about our investment tools, whether it’s indices methodologies and ratings and risk models and the stress testing models and all that, the equivalent of search engines, like the equivalent of algorithms. And then underneath that, they have to be a base of data that is large, whether it’s third-party data or our own data that is large, and that’s what we’re trying to build with that.

Owen Lau: Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator: And we have a question now from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. George, please go ahead.

GeorgeTong: Hi, thanks. Good morning. You mentioned it’s possible you’ll see higher cancels and longer sales cycles during protracted periods of market volatility. Can you elaborate on where in your subscription businesses you’re seeing most sensitivity to the macro environment and, conversely, where you’re seeing most resilience?

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