Those are areas that continue to build and areas where we see large secular growth. Those are somewhat unique offerings for us, given our market position in some of those businesses. Across our data and reference data, pricing, valuations, those are in pretty steady demand. So they’re less subject to the activity in the marketplace quarter-to-quarter. And that’s where we see some of the stability and the general growth. What’s really unique about the S&P Global offering is the scale and breadth that we can deliver to a customer. It’s really being able to service them across the portfolio from discovery and research for an investment to processing the investment, monitoring it, valuing it, keeping it in a workflow tool. That set of solutions and the efficiencies we can drive through it, I think that’s the biggest part of our value proposition and particularly our larger customers as they look to consolidate relationships.
That gives us a bit of an advantage there. Thanks again for the question, Jeff.
Doug Peterson : Thanks, Jeff.
Operator: Our next question comes from Russell Quelch with Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open.
Russell Quelch : Yes. Hi, Doug. Another really good quarter in Commodity Insights. So I was wondering if you could share what drove the 14% growth in Price Assessments in the first quarter. Is that maybe new product related? Any early feedback on Platts Connect? Is that helping drive more cross-selling? And perhaps is there upside risk to guidance here? I mean, obviously, you’ve upgraded guidance on some of the sort of transactional base revenue segments, but this is maybe a higher-quality revenue line. So is there upside risk here?
Doug Peterson : Yes. Thank you for that, Russell. When you look at Commodity Insights, we’ve continued to advance incredibly well. We’ve had this is one of the home runs when it comes to the integration of the E&R business and the Platts business. We very quickly been able to bring together products like Price Assessments. Cross-sell has been strong if you think about being able to sell in E&R products to Platts clients as well as selling Platts clients to E&R clients. So that was right out of the gate, a very strong approach. But we’ve also seen a demand — high demand for energy transition, and we’re at the sweet spot of energy transition. This relates to products like Oil and Gas, what are all of the different substitutes.
It’s also carbon intensity of Oil and Gas products. It goes into renewables, looking at what’s happening with the renewable space. We also have a whole set of new Clean Energy and alternative energy products and services. As we’ve been launching an additional set of products related to metals and mining as well as ag. So across the board, we’ve seen very strong results. We also had a strong quarter for CERAWeek, which is CERAWeek is a conference that took place in Houston a few weeks ago. It’s the place to be for anybody that wants to understand what’s happening in the energy space. So across the board, it’s just been very, very strong this year. We do expect that later in the year, we’re going to have tougher comps. So we looked at that very carefully as we were setting our guidance.
Last year, our third and fourth quarter, especially our fourth quarter, was quite strong. So we do get towards the end of the year, and we do have a tougher comp. But overall, the Commodity Insights business is doing incredibly well. It’s a broad-based business. And then something like what you mentioned, Platts Connect has been one of the examples of a really early win and something that we’re very pleased with. And you’ll see more coming from Platts Connect over the next few quarters. Thanks, Russell. Thanks for the question.
Operator: Our next question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
George Tong : Hi, thanks. Good morning. In your updated Indices guidance, can you talk about how much of the growth comes from flows versus market performance, and what you’re seeing from a pricing and mix perspective from customers?
Mark Grant : Hi. George, this is Mark. The updated guidance on Indices is really driven just by strength across that business. But just giving you the underlying assumptions for the full year guide, we’re expecting the S&P 500 to be essentially flat from 3/31 through the end of the year. The guidance assumes modest growth in the ETD volumes. And then we are expecting that subscription line to accelerate a little bit as we progress through the full year.
George Tong : Thanks, George.
Operator: Our last question comes from Owen Lau with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Owen Lau : Good morning, and thank you for picking my question. So just a quick follow-up on Commodity Insights, and there are lots of conversation about commodities trading, growing our U.S. customers and the prices go and things like that. How much does this volatility contribute to your business this year? And if this kind of volatility subside, how do you see the sustainability of your growth? Thanks.
Doug Peterson : Thanks, Owen. Yes, we think that, that volatility is something that helps drive more people to try to understand what’s happening in the markets. But as we’ve seen over time, the volatility doesn’t seem to go away. There’s always something else that comes up to create interest in the area. We do think that there are some very important long-term secular trends related to the business, which are energy transition I mentioned earlier. Energy transition is a topic that is on everybody’s minds, especially when you go outside of the United States. I’ve been traveling this year, and I can’t have a conversation anywhere I go without having a discussion about energy transition. And what are not just the impacts that we see the benefit the Commodity Insights business, but also those that benefit businesses like the Ratings business and Market Intelligence because those are moving also over into how do you finance energy transition question as well, which crosses into our other divisions.
Finally, with Commodity Insights, you can recall that this business is principally a subscription-based business. And so we can see over time the subscription flow, where we’re seeing the growth coming from the new customers coming into the portfolio. There’s something that I say all the time that every single company is an energy company. It doesn’t matter what you do, energy company. And so we also see an expanding set of new clients that aren’t necessary traditional energy companies that are needing the solutions we have so they can manage their own energy footprint. So Owen, thank you very much for that. And I think you were the last call. So let me give a couple of closing remarks. I really want to thank everyone today for being on this call and for your excellent questions as usual.
This was a great quarter, and we’re really pleased with the results. And we think this validates our strategy, but it also showcases our execution. As I mentioned, I’ve been very busy traveling around the world this year, speaking with customers across all of our businesses and from every industry. And in those meetings, we’re hearing that the themes that we have, that we have the strength in this franchise are those that the customers need going forward. And that includes things like energy transition and private markets and supply chain and credit and risk. But it also includes artificial intelligence, and I’m pleased that we’ve been able to roll out in our road map many, many new capabilities and products and services to protect our IP, but also to take a leadership position in AI.
I want to thank Martina and Adam for providing their perspectives today on this call. And I also want to thank our people across the company as usual for a fantastic quarter. And again, thank all of you for joining the call today, and hope you have a great day. Thank you very much.
Operator: That concludes this morning’s call. A PDF version of the presenter slides is available for downloading from investor.spglobal.com. Replays of the entire call will be available in about two hours. The webcast with audio and slides will be maintained on S&P Global’s website for one year. The audio-only telephone replay will be maintained for one month. On behalf of S&P Global, we thank you for participating, and wish you a good day.
