S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) — Fundamental Analysis

Snapshot & Big Picture

S&P Global is one of the world's premier financial intelligence companies, operating across credit ratings, market data, indices, commodity insights, and mobility analytics. The company's business model is built on high-value, subscription-heavy and transaction-linked data products that create deep customer stickiness and recurring revenue streams. Its flagship divisions — Ratings, Market Intelligence, Indices, Commodity Insights, and Mobility — collectively serve banks, asset managers, corporates, and governments globally. The 2022 merger with IHS Markit dramatically expanded SPGI's scale and diversification, which is clearly visible in the revenue trajectory: from roughly $6.7 billion in fiscal 2019 to over $15.3 billion in fiscal 2025. That transformation makes SPGI one of the more compelling compounders in the financial data and analytics space.

Latest Quarter Snapshot (Q1 2026, ended March 31, 2026)

The most recent available data — more current than the annual figures — comes from SPGI's 10-Q filed April 28, 2026, covering the quarter ended March 31, 2026.

Q1 2026 shows strong momentum. The 48.0% operating margin is the highest in the dataset, suggesting continued operating leverage as the IHS Markit integration matures. On an annualized basis, the quarterly revenue of $4.17 billion would pace above $16.5 billion for the full year, ahead of fiscal 2025's $15.3 billion. The net margin of 33.4% is also notably strong. The current ratio of 0.68 is below 1.0, which is consistent with the prior few annual periods and reflects SPGI's tendency to carry short-term liabilities (including deferred revenue and current debt) greater than short-term assets — not unusual for a business generating substantial operating cash flows.

Profitability

SPGI's profitability profile over the past several years tells an interesting story of transformation followed by recovery and expansion.

The dip in FY 2023 — operating margin falling to 32.2% and net margin to 21.0% — reflects the cost drag and integration charges associated with absorbing IHS Markit. That was clearly a transitional year. Since then, margins have rebounded sharply: operating margin climbed to 39.3% in FY 2024 and 42.2% in FY 2025, with Q1 2026 reaching 48.0%. Gross margin figures were not available in the filings for any period. The trend is directionally positive and points to meaningful operating leverage as the combined company scales and integration costs recede. EBITDA has grown from $3.43 billion in FY 2019 to $7.66 billion in FY 2025, more than doubling over six years.

Financial Health

SPGI's balance sheet has undergone significant changes since the IHS Markit merger closed in early 2022.

Leverage: The most striking change is the collapse in the debt-to-equity ratio, from a highly leveraged 8.24 in FY 2019 and 8.07 in FY 2020 down to 0.30–0.43 in recent years. The old S&P Global (pre-merger) ran with very thin or negative equity, making D/E ratios appear extreme. Post-merger, the substantially larger equity base from the IHS Markit transaction normalized the ratio dramatically. At 0.42 in FY 2025 and 0.43 in Q1 2026, leverage is now modest and manageable relative to SPGI's cash generation.

Liquidity: The current ratio has been below 1.0 since FY 2022, sitting at 0.82 at year-end 2025 and 0.68 at the end of Q1 2026. For a business with SPGI's operating cash generation, this is not an immediate red flag — companies with strong recurring cash flows routinely operate with sub-1.0 current ratios — but it is worth monitoring, particularly if debt maturities or macro headwinds were to compress cash flows.

Capital Expenditures: SPGI is a notably low capital-intensity business. CapEx-to-revenue has ranged between roughly 0.4% and 1.7% over the period, which is characteristic of data and analytics franchises that monetize intellectual property and proprietary datasets rather than physical assets. The spike to $195 million (1.27% of revenue) in FY 2025 is the highest absolute dollar figure in the dataset and may reflect increased technology investment as AI and data infrastructure become more central to the product roadmap. That said, even at $195 million against $15.3 billion in revenue, the reinvestment burden remains very light. The Q1 2026 figure of $27 million (0.65% of revenue) does not yet suggest an accelerating trend. The overall picture is of a business that generates substantial free cash flow with minimal physical reinvestment requirements.

Growth

The 10-year CAGR of 24.7% should be interpreted with care: the start point (September 30, 2019) represents a single quarterly revenue figure of $1.69 billion drawn from SPGI's oldest available SEC filings in this dataset, making that comparison somewhat unusual relative to a standard full-year base. The 5-year CAGR of 15.6% and 3-year CAGR of 11.1% are more straightforward full-year-to-full-year comparisons and are both impressive for a company at this scale. The moderation from 15.6% (5-year) to 11.1% (3-year) is expected as the IHS Markit revenue is now fully baked into the base — future growth will need to come from organic expansion and pricing power rather than transformative acquisitions.

Plain English Summary

S&P Global is a high-quality financial data and analytics business that has grown dramatically over the past five years, largely through its 2022 merger with IHS Markit. The core franchise — ratings, indices, market data, commodity intelligence — generates highly recurring revenue with very little need for physical capital reinvestment, which translates into exceptional free cash flow conversion. Margins dipped in FY 2023 as integration costs weighed on profitability, but the recovery since then has been strong: operating margins have climbed back toward pre-merger levels and, in Q1 2026, reached a multi-year high of 48%. The balance sheet is now in much better shape than the pre-merger era, with a debt-to-equity ratio below 0.45 compared to the heavily leveraged structure that existed when SPGI had minimal equity. The main things to watch going forward are whether organic revenue growth can sustain double-digit rates now that the merger tailwind is behind the company, whether the tick-up in capital expenditures in FY 2025 reflects the beginning of a more meaningful technology investment cycle, and how credit issuance volumes — a key driver of the Ratings segment — evolve in a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. Overall, the fundamental picture is one of a wide-moat, cash-generative business with improving margins and manageable leverage.

Source Filings

• 10-Q filed April 28, 2026 — Quarter ended March 31, 2026
• 10-K filed February 11, 2026 — Fiscal Year ended December 31, 2025