SPGI — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis

A bond-issuance boom carried the quarter — and Ratings supplied three-quarters of the profit growth

S&P Global reported second-quarter revenue of $4,146 million, up 10.4% from $3,755 million a year earlier, and diluted earnings per share of $4.12 versus $3.50. Currency movements added less than one percentage point to revenue, so this was almost entirely underlying growth.

But the growth was narrow. Of the $391 million of additional revenue, $191 million came from the Ratings segment alone and another $88 million from Indices. On the profit line the concentration is starker: operating profit rose $261 million, and Ratings by itself contributed $198 million of that. The two subscription-heavy businesses — Market Intelligence and Energy — grew revenue 6% and 2% respectively and added almost nothing to profit growth between them.

This was also the last quarter that includes Mobility. The separation of Mobility Global Inc. became effective on July 1, 2026, with S&P Global shareholders receiving one Mobility Global share for each S&P Global share held on June 15; the business now trades separately as MBGL. From the third quarter onward, Mobility's historical results move into "discontinued operations" — an accounting category for a business being exited, reported separately from continuing results and restated across all prior periods, so the revenue base every future comparison is drawn against will be smaller.

Key numbers

Operating margin is the share of revenue left after the costs of running the business, before interest and tax. All figures are as reported under US GAAP in the 10-Q; percentage changes are calculated from the unrounded dollar figures shown.

Ratings: the cyclical half of the company had a very good quarter

S&P Global Ratings splits its revenue in two. Transaction revenue is the fee charged when a company or government actually sells a new bond or takes out a rated loan — it rises and falls with how much debt the market is issuing. Non-transaction revenue is the steadier part: annual surveillance fees for keeping an existing rating current, relationship-based pricing programs, entity ratings, and research at the Crisil subsidiary in India.

Transaction revenue rose 25% to $746 million, and the volume data explains why. Total billed issuance — the debt volume that actually generates rating fees, excluding things like frequent-issuer programs and unrated debt — was $1,268 billion against $1,017 billion a year earlier. Investment-grade issuance (the higher-quality end of the credit market) rose 25% to $539 billion, which management attributes to AI-related issuance and M&A financing. High-yield issuance rose 15% to $169 billion, also on M&A. The "other" bucket, mainly bank loans and structured finance, rose 27% — and here management is explicit that the comparison flatters the result: volumes were "up from a low base in the second quarter last year impacted by market volatility."

Non-transaction revenue rose a more sedate 8% to $593 million, on higher surveillance fees, more Ratings Evaluation Service work (where an issuer pays to have a hypothetical transaction assessed before doing it) and growth at Crisil.

Ratings' operating margin reached 68%, up from 62%. Management's own bridge: reported operating profit +28%, or +23% once you strip out $27 million of legal costs that sat in the prior-year quarter and made the comparison easier, with a further 3 points of that growth coming from favorable currency moves. The offset was higher compensation from merit increases and headcount, plus strategic investment spending.

Indices: fees that track the stock market, not the bond market

S&P Dow Jones Indices earns most of its revenue from asset-linked fees — a small percentage charged on the money invested in ETFs and mutual funds that track S&P indices. That means its revenue moves with the value of those funds, which moves with the market. Ending ETF assets under management were $6.350 trillion, up 34% year over year, and the quarterly average was $6.046 trillion, up 38%. Asset-linked fee revenue rose 22% to $348 million, revenue for the segment rose 20% to $534 million, and operating profit rose 21% to $373 million at a 70% margin.

Two smaller Indices lines also grew: revenue from licensing index data to exchanges for futures and options (sales usage-based royalties) rose 22% to $99 million, and data subscriptions rose 9% to $87 million. Note that a meaningful share of Indices profit is not S&P Global's to keep — $97 million of the segment's $373 million operating profit was attributable to the joint-venture partners that hold non-controlling interests in the business, leaving $276 million net.

Market Intelligence and Energy: the steady businesses grew at half the company rate

Market Intelligence revenue rose 6% to $1,290 million. Subscription revenue, 83% of the segment, also rose 6% to $1,076 million, on Data, Analytics & Insights, Lending Solutions within Enterprise Solutions, and RatingsXpress. Recurring variable revenue — fees that scale with client activity such as trades processed or positions valued — rose 9% to $173 million. Acquisitions and disposals roughly cancelled out: the November 2025 purchases of ORBCOMM's AIS data services business and With Intelligence added revenue, while the January 2026 sale of the Enterprise Data Management and thinkFolio businesses to Symphony Technology Group removed some. Segment operating profit rose 13% to $293 million (margin 23% from 21%), but management's adjusted figure is +9%, with the gap explained by prior-year severance and this year's intangible amortization moving in opposite directions.

Energy was the weak spot: revenue up just 2% to $568 million and operating profit flat at $233 million, with the margin slipping to 41% from 42%. Management identifies specific drags rather than a general slowdown — the Upstream Data & Insights business is comparing against a one-time benefit in the second quarter of 2025, and Advisory & Transactional Services fell on lower usage-based royalties from Platts-linked contracts as trading volumes declined, plus event timing and some event cancellations. Price Assessments and Energy & Resources Data & Insights did grow.

Mobility, in its final quarter inside the company, grew revenue 7% to $468 million on Dealer-business wins and improved contract terms, with lower vehicle recall volumes holding back the Manufacturing business. Its reported operating profit fell 1% to $104 million, entirely because of $21 million of separation-related costs booked in the segment; excluding those, management puts it at +8%.

What sits between operating profit and EPS

Three things worth separating out before reading the headline numbers as clean:

• Separation costs suppressed the quarter. Operating profit carried $79 million of disposition-related costs, against $11 million a year earlier, plus $44 million of severance. The filing does not itemize what each dollar relates to, but the quarter spans the Mobility spin-off and two agreed divestitures. Excluding one-off items and acquisition-related intangible amortization, management calculates operating profit growth of 14% — still comfortably ahead of 10% revenue growth, so the operating leverage is real and not just a comparison artifact.
• Below the operating line, everything went the wrong way. Other income fell to $4 million from $28 million, equity income from unconsolidated subsidiaries went to zero from $11 million, and net interest expense rose to $87 million from $77 million. Together that is roughly $52 million of headwind, which is why pre-tax income grew 15.1% while operating profit grew 16.8%. The effective tax rate also edged up to 23.5% from 22.8%.
• Buybacks did about four points of the EPS growth. Net income attributable to S&P Global rose 13.5%, but EPS rose 17.7%, because the diluted share count fell 3.5%. The company spent $1.5 billion on 3.5 million shares in the first half through two accelerated share repurchase agreements, and 28.4 million shares remain authorized under the November 2025 program.

One technical item that distorts the expense lines: foreign-exchange forward contracts that do not qualify for hedge accounting produced a net loss of $8 million in selling and general expenses this quarter versus a net gain of $111 million a year ago. That $119 million swing makes reported selling and general expense growth of 9% look better than the underlying trend — but these contracts are held to offset currency movements on specific assets and liabilities whose own revaluation also runs through the same expense line, so the two should largely cancel and neither should be read on its own.

First half: a gain on sale is doing real work in the EPS line

For the six months, revenue rose 10.4% to $8,318 million and diluted EPS rose 25.1% to $8.81 from $7.04. That EPS growth is not comparable to the quarterly figure. The first half includes $186 million of gains on disposals against $3 million last year — $172 million pre-tax ($168 million after tax) from the Enterprise Data Management and thinkFolio sale in January, and $11 million pre-tax ($8 million after tax) from selling a Centennial, Colorado facility in April. Against 296.6 million average diluted shares, those gains are worth roughly $0.59 of the $8.81. Strip them out and first-half EPS growth is closer to 17%.

Cash generation was less dramatic than earnings: operating cash flow rose 3% to $2,476 million and free cash flow 6% to $2,249 million. Cash on the balance sheet of $4,141 million looks inflated by $2.4 billion versus year-end, but $2.0 billion of that is senior notes Mobility Global issued in May (5.05% due 2029, 5.45% due 2031, 6.05% due 2036) which left with the spun-off company. The quarterly dividend is $0.97 per share.

Takeaway: Ratings and Indices — the two businesses whose revenue depends on bond issuance volumes and equity market levels rather than on contracts S&P Global controls — generated $279 million of the $391 million revenue increase and essentially all of the $261 million profit increase. With Mobility now gone, those two are roughly half of what remains, so the company's results are more tied to capital-markets conditions after the spin-off than before it, not less.

What to watch from here

The 10-Q contains no revenue or earnings guidance, but it does set out what mechanically changes next quarter. From July 1, S&P Global reports four segments — Ratings, Indices, Energy and Market Intelligence — with Mobility in discontinued operations for all periods, 451 Research and Maritime & Trade moved from Market Intelligence into Energy, and some Credit Analytics costs moved into Ratings. Comparisons to previously published segment figures will not line up. Management pre-emptively restated Q2 growth on the new basis in several places: Ratings operating profit would have been +27% rather than +28%, Market Intelligence +16% rather than +13%.

Three transactions are pending, all described in the filing as immaterial to consolidated results: a majority stake in Pan-African rating agency Agusto & Co. and the acquisition of data-center intelligence provider datacenterHawk (both announced July 28, 2026, both expected to close in the second half), and the sale of Energy's geoscience and petroleum engineering software portfolio to SLB, whose assets are already classified as held for sale.

My read on trajectory: the subscription base is the floor and it is growing at 6% in Market Intelligence and 2-5% in Energy, so the double-digit company-level growth rate requires the issuance and ETF cycles to keep cooperating. Two things argue for caution on the Ratings comparison specifically. First, management explicitly attributes part of the bank-loan and structured-finance strength to a depressed second quarter of 2025 — a comparison effect that does not repeat. Second, the investment-grade surge is tied to AI-related and M&A financing, both of which are issuance decisions made by borrowers responding to conditions S&P Global does not control. The non-transaction half of Ratings, at +8%, is a better indicator of the segment's underlying run rate. Margins should hold or improve once separation costs roll off, which is the more durable part of this quarter's story.