Moody's Corp

NYSE:MCO

Earnings Call Analysis

Moody's Q3 2024 Earnings: Strong Revenue Growth and Upgraded Outlook

In Q3 2024, Moody’s achieved record revenues of $1.8 billion, up 23% year-over-year, fueled by a 70% rise in transaction revenue within ratings. Adjusted diluted EPS increased by 32%, reflecting strong operational performance and a favorable market environment. Moody's Analytics saw 7% revenue growth, with recurring revenue climbing 9%. The company raised its guidance for full-year ratings revenue growth to the high twenties. They forecast adjusted diluted EPS between $11.90 and $12.10 for the year, marking a significant increase in expectations. This momentum is driven by robust demand and an expected issuance recovery as rates remain favorable.

Record Revenue Performance

Moody's Corporation reported its highest third-quarter revenue in company history, delivering $1.8 billion, which is a 23% increase from the previous year. This performance was buoyed by strong transactional revenue growth in its ratings business, particularly a remarkable 70% increase driven by first-time issuers and a robust market environment.

Strong Corporate Finance Growth

The corporate finance sector was especially strong, with investment-grade transaction revenue skyrocketing by 137%, far surpassing the 84% growth in issuance during the same period. Additionally, leveraged finance saw nearly $80 million in revenue, marking a 67% increase supported by a favorable spread environment. Overall, corporate finance revenue reached record levels this quarter, driven by an unprecedented level of infrequent issuer activity.

Moody's Analytics Performance

The Analytics segment experienced a 7% growth in revenue, with 9% growth in recurring revenue. This consistency was reflected in the organization’s high retention rate of 93%, indicating strong customer loyalty. Notably, recurring revenue from Decision Solutions, which represents over 40% of total revenue, grew by 12% year-on-year.

Strategic Mergers and Acquisitions

A key strategic development was the integration of RMS into Moody's Insurance Solutions, enhancing the company's capability to serve the insurance sector and manage risks associated with climate change. The acquisition appears to be yielding positive results, with a fivefold increase in customers on their intelligent risk platform since the merger three years ago.

Outlook for Future Growth

Looking ahead, Moody's raised its full-year guidance for ratings revenue growth to the mid-30% range, reflecting a confident outlook fueled by anticipated issuance growth despite a moderating fourth quarter. Specifically, they expect a mid-single-digit decline in global issuance for Q4, which is an improvement from previous expectations of a more significant downturn.

Cost Management and Profit Margins

Despite higher expenses primarily driven by increased incentive compensation, the company's adjusted operating margin expanded by 600 basis points to approximately 48%. For the fourth quarter, Moody's maintains a guidance range for margins between 47% and 48%, forecasting adjusted diluted EPS to rise by approximately 21% year-on-year, with projected figures between $11.90 and $12.10.

Competitive Positioning and Market Trends

The company noted favorable market trends, including a continuing rise in refunding walls and mergers and acquisitions that support ongoing demand for ratings services, projecting continued strength in their ratings business. The company also highlighted its strategic positioning as a trusted independent source for credit risk assessments in the expanding private credit market.

Long-Term Strategic Investments

Moody's is actively investing in technology, including GenAI capabilities and enhancements to its platforms, aiming for margin expansion in the coming years. The company remains focused on integrating new technologies to improve efficiencies and effectiveness in client offerings, particularly within KYC solutions and broader analytics services.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good day, everyone and welcome to the Moody's Corporation Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Shivani Kak, executive]

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'm Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. This morning, Moody's released its results for the third quarter 2024 as well as our revised outlook for select metrics for full year 2024. The earnings press release and the presentation to accompany this teleconference are both available on our website at ir.moodys.com.

During this call, we will also be presenting non-GAAP or adjusted figures. Please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings press release filed this morning for reconciliations between all adjusted measures referenced during this call in U.S. GAAP. I call your attention to the safe harbor language, which can be found towards the end of our earnings release. Today's remarks may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In accordance with the act, I also direct your attention to the Management's Discussion and Analysis section and the risk factors discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and in other SEC filings made by the company, which are available on our website and on the SEC's website. These, together with the safe harbor statement, set forth important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such forward-looking statements. I would also like to point out that members of the media may be on the call this morning in a listen-only mode.

I'll now turn the call over to Rob.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Thanks, Shivani. Good morning or good afternoon. Thanks, everybody, for joining today's call. I'm really looking forward to discussing our third quarter results with you. And we again delivered some impressive results with a 23% increase in revenue and adjusted operating margin of approximately 48% and 32% growth in adjusted diluted EPS. And one of the key drivers of these great results was our rating business, with a remarkable 41% increase in revenue versus the prior year period.

September was a particularly strong month for issuance. It included a new record for weekly investment-grade activity with over $85 billion issued across 61 deals in the first week of September. Strength in first time and infrequent issuers drove transactional revenue up 70% for the quarter and that outpaced global rated issuance growth of 51%. And this growth, combined with ongoing cost discipline, delivered over 600 basis points in adjusted operating margin expansion compared to last year. So this year has obviously been a very strong issuance environment. In fact, it's likely to be the second strongest on record. And amidst that strength, we see both cyclical and secular tailwinds that are going to drive future growth. And that includes refunding walls, M&A and other market trends that give us confidence in the medium-term outlook for our ratings business.

In MA, we delivered 7% overall revenue growth and 9% growth for both ARR and recurring revenue, both of which exclude onetime revenue that we're intentionally deemphasizing. Year-to-date customer retention is at 93% and our adjusted operating margin for the quarter was in line with our expectations at 30.3%.

Now our Decision Solutions line of business and that is banking, insurance and KYC, that continues to lead MA with almost $1.4 billion of ARR and that's growing at 12%. And last month, we marked the third anniversary of our RMS acquisition. So I'm going to spend a few minutes on today's call recapping our progress and performance there. When I finish, I'll turn it over to Noémie to provide more color on our numbers, including raises to several of our full year guidance metrics, including our outlook for adjusted diluted EPS.

But before I move to MIS, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge our third consecutive #1 ranking in the Chartis RiskTech100. We're #1 in 12 categories and that's a testament to the breadth and depth of our solutions, to the strength of our competitive positioning and to the trust that our customers place in us. So a big shout-out to all my colleagues who contributed to this fantastic recognition.

Now moving to ratings. As I mentioned, we feel really good about the durable drivers of MIS growth as we look into the future. And those are both cyclical and structural. So looking at the market drivers, as you all know very well, the refunding walls are a key source of built-in growth. And last week, our analytical teams published their analytical report on the nonfinancial corporate refi walls in both the U.S. and EMEA. And that data shows an 11% growth in the upcoming 4-year maturity walls which amount to almost $5 trillion and that represents a record high. Now the majority of this growth is actually coming from spec-grade issuers, where for the first time, forward maturity walls exceeded $2 trillion and that's up 19% from our last study.

That's particularly true for the U.S. market, where forward maturities are up 17% and spec-grade refi walls are up approximately 27% for the upcoming 4 years. And that bodes very well for future issuance. And as I think many of you know, spec grade is obviously a positive to our revenue mix. Now for any of you that want to dive deeper and I'm sure there are many on this call, just check out the full reports that we've made available on our website at moodys.com or contact our IR team.

Now another significant historical driver of ratings revenue growth is M&A. And activity in recent years has been well below historical levels, as you can see on this chart. But we don't see that subdued level as sustainable given the needs for private equity sponsors to both exit as well as deploy huge amounts of capital, along with a more benign rate environment and improved macroeconomic conditions. Now along with these market factors, there are also some structural trends that we believe will drive both credit supply and the need for independent third-party ratings and assessments.

The first is Private Credit. That's been a consistent theme on our recent calls. And this sector is experiencing some significant growth. We expect that to continue. Last week, we published estimates that private credit assets under management will reach up to $3 trillion by 2028. And as this market grows, the need for transparency, data and rigorous independent credit assessment is likely to become more important than ever. And as Apollo highlighted in our recent Investor Day, rating agencies have an important role to play in this ecosystem. I completely agree with that and we're gearing up to ensure that we meet the needs of this market.

Now the second is Sustainable & Transition Finance. And to put this opportunity into context, currently, countries and companies that have net zero commitments that cover something like 93% of global GDP and our analysts estimate that in order to meet these targets, global clean energy investment needs are going to rise by 2.5x by 2030 to around $4.5 trillion annually. So that means huge amounts of debt capital is -- are going to be raised. And there's going to be increasing demand to understand how these investments are translating to organizations progress on their decarbonization efforts. So we're investing to provide the insights, the analysis and the products to meet this demand.

Now third growth driver is Emerging & Domestic Debt Markets. And many of you have heard me say before that domestic debt market issuers are the cross-border issuers of tomorrow. And while smaller than developed economies, emerging market countries typically average higher economic growth rates than more developed markets. So we've been investing to build out our footprint and market leadership across Asia, Africa and Latin America, so that we are poised to capitalize on this growth. Finally, we're positioning our ratings business for a world of digital finance and that includes blockchain and tokenization. And while the issuance volumes are relatively modest at present, there are a number of public and private sector initiatives and pilots in this space and we want our ratings to play just as important a role in a digital issuance world as they do in today's analog world. So as I said, a number of factors that give us confidence about our growth, both in the near term and over the medium term for MIS.

Now as I mentioned earlier, we've just hit the third anniversary of our RMS acquisition, so I thought it made sense to take stock of our progress on today's call. And some of you may remember the financial profile of RMS before we acquired it, low single-digit revenue growth, EBITDA margins in the high teens. And it was also early in its second cloud platform launch. And our investment thesis at the time was twofold. First, we thought there was much more that we could do for the insurance industry as we expanded our TAM to the property and casualty sector.

And second, we believe that RMS' really rich climate and cat modeling capabilities would be increasingly important to a wide range of finance and risk applications and also for a broader range of customers. We also thought that Moody's represented a natural home for RMS after years of ownership by DMGT. So 3 years later, how have we done? Well, first, RMS is now fully integrated into our Insurance Solutions business. Its growth has improved significantly over the last 3 years and now is growing in line with the mid-teens ARR growth of our broader insurance business. It's also now operating at MA-like margins.

Since we acquired RMS, we've also grown the number of customers on the cloud-based intelligent risk platform fivefold to over 250. And these customers are using our next generation of high-definition models, enabling them to get more granular insights, leveraging the power of cloud computing and also offering a great upsell pathway and competitive differentiator. Now as part of Moody's RMS has also expanded the ways that it partners with the insurance industry. That includes last year's partnership with NASDAQ, where we're hosting third-party and in-house models on the IRP, our creation of a cyber industry steering group with the largest players in the cyber insurance market to develop tools to help this market grow and our recent collaboration with Lloyd's to build a greenhouse gas emission platform for the Lloyd's insurance market.

And 3 years later, together with Moody's, RMS has solidified its blue-chip customer base with all 10 of the top 10 global reinsurance brokers, 9 of the top 10 commercial lines insurers and 28 of the top 30 global reinsurers. That really is market validation of RMS as the gold standard in the industry. We continue to invest to extend the solutions that we deliver for the insurance sector and beyond. And in early September, we announced the acquisition of Praedicat to expand into casualty analytics and that's an area of growing interest for insurers. And as I've talked about in past calls, we've leveraged RMS' platform, technology and engineering teams across all of Moody's Analytics and we've integrated their climate capabilities into solutions for banks and corporates.

So we feel really good about the progress with RMS. And earlier this year, we merged RMS and our legacy life business into a broader Moody's Insurance Solutions unit. So I feel even more confident about how this positions us for the future, both across the insurance industry but also with respect to our ability to serve the needs of organizations to better understand physical risks from extreme weather and a changing climate.

With that, I'm going to hand it over to Noémie to provide more details on our numbers.

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Thank you, Rob and good morning, everyone. Q3 was a record quarter, the highest third quarter revenue performance in Moody's history, with strong growth across revenue and profitability metrics, driving 32% adjusted diluted EPS growth and a free cash flow conversion rate of over 100% of net income.

We delivered $1.8 billion of revenue, a 23% increase compared to last year with Moody's ratings growing transactional revenue by 70%, well above the 51% growth in global issuance. And that truly demonstrates the impressive strength of our ratings franchise. We executed very well across all sectors with the most notable contribution from corporate finance. Investment-grade transaction revenue growth of 137%, exceeded 84% growth in issuance and that was driven by sustained levels of infrequent issuer activity as well as large jumbo deals over the summer.

In addition, leverage finance transaction revenue grew 67%. That's approximately $80 million, supported by the favorable spread environment. Collectively, this drove the largest third quarter for corporate finance revenue on record. The level of infrequent issuers activity, which was the strongest in over a decade, also drove a favorable revenue mix in FIG, where transaction revenue grew 77%, well above issuance growth of 18%.

Turning to Moody's Analytics. Revenue grew 7%, including 1 point of growth from FX. Recurring revenue, which is now 95% of the segment revenue grew 9%, which was in line with our ARR growth. As Rob mentioned earlier, our year-to-date retention rate is 93%, illustrating the stickiness of our solution. Consistent with recent quarters, revenue growth was driven by recurring revenue in Decision Solutions, which is over 40% of our total revenue, which, as Rob said, delivered 12% year-on-year ARR growth.

Let me provide some color on each of the main businesses in this segment. Banking revenue grew 3%. What's happening here is we have the effect of 2 opposite dynamics. On the one hand, we had double-digit decline in low-margin transactional revenue and flat growth in on-prem sales year-over-year. On the other hand, we continue to invest in our banking platform and focus our sales efforts to drive recurring revenue growth which was 10% in Q3, aligned with ARR growth and aligned with the first half of '24. We observed similar trends in our insurance business, where revenue grew 7%, driven by recurring revenue growth of 11%, and our insurance ARR grew 13%. KYC delivered 19% recurring revenue growth. We've continued to deliver higher levels of growth from the nonfinancial corporate and government sectors. And we're actively investing to scale and sustain this level of growth as we expand our capabilities to deliver integrated solutions for a number of key customer workflows, including compliance, supply chain and trade credit.

Outside of Decision Solutions, our Research & Insights and Data & Information businesses grew reported revenue by 6% and 7%, respectively, which is broadly in line with ARR growth. Data & Information ARR growth was a bit lower this quarter at 8% as a couple of large federal government contracts, which contributed to higher growth in 2023 were renewed at a lower value this quarter. Overall, it was an exceptionally strong quarter.

MIS revenue performance translated into a 320 basis points improvement in the total company adjusted operating margin, a 32% growth in adjusted diluted EPS and over 100% of net income to free cash flow conversion year-to-date. MIS achieved 59.6% adjusted operating margin and that includes the adjustments to reflect the impact of increased incentive compensation accruals, while MA delivered 30.3% adjusted operating margin, a sequential improvement of 180 bps from Q2. With a record third quarter and continued strength in the market, we are updating guidance to our full year ratings revenue, underpinned by revised global issuance growth assumptions for the full year across all asset classes, as you can see on this slide.

We expect issuance will continue to be supported by opportunistic activity in the fourth quarter as issuers take advantage of lower rates, high spreads and strong investor demand. We also expect sustained levels of activity within first-time mandates, which we forecast will revert close to prepandemic levels. Our revised guidance of mid-30s percentage range issuance growth for the full year, now implied a mid-single-digit decline in global issuance for the fourth quarter, which is an improvement from an expected decline in the mid-teens back in July.

Now with that backdrop, we are raising our guidance for MIS revenue growth to high 20s percentage range, which at the higher end of the range, would translate into an increase in Q4 ratings revenue expectation versus prior guidance. We are raising MIS adjusted operating margin to a range of 59% to 60%, up 100 basis points from prior guidance. The upward revision to our guidance range accounts for the adjustment to our incentive compensation, as well, what's included in the full year range is approximately 50 basis points of headwind from the settlement of a regulatory matter, which we recorded and disclosed in Q2. For MA, we're maintaining our guidance across all metrics.

Taking all this into consideration, we are now expecting Moody's revenue to grow in the high teens percentage range, expenses to increase by approximately 10% and adjusted operating margin in the range of 47% to 48%. Consistent with last year, the revised expense outlook primarily reflects increases to incentive compensation, the majority of which will be in MIS, as a result of the upward revisions to the full year ratings revenue outlook. We are also updating our free cash flow guidance to approximately $2.3 billion. And in addition, we are increasing and narrowing our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range to $11.90 to $12.10, an $0.80 increase at the midpoint and a growth of approximately 21% versus the prior year.

Before we go into Q&A, I want to say I'm very proud of our team's performance this quarter. And Rob and I cannot thank our colleagues enough for their hard work and dedication. That concludes our prepared remarks.

And operator, will you please open the line for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

[Toni Kaplan, analyst]

I wanted to pick up on the Data & Information ARR slowdown from last quarter. I think, Noémie, you mentioned the government contracts renewing at a lower value. Was this a reduction in number of products that were being purchased? Or was it pricing or something else? And maybe just what percentage of revenues related to government? Was this federal government? And are there any more renewals with government coming up?

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Yes, thanks. We -- actually, this is something we've kind of signaled in the last earnings call, where we had some large federal government contracts up for renewal in the second half of the year. So what you saw here in decision -- in Data & Information, we had a lower renewal with one of our large federal government contract. That's associated pretty much with their spending patterns. As you know, we're in election year. So they are looking at their overall contract space and we expect to see some renewals being a little bit more challenged this year but we've accounted for those in the third quarter and we don't expect any -- or just one affecting the remainder of the year. In addition to that, in Data & Information, the thing that affected a bit the ARR growth this quarter is the transition of some of our customers into the MSCI. And we also signaled that earlier in July when we were on this call. Some of our customers are transitioning and sourcing their sustainability content directly from MSCI. So that's affected a bit the pipeline and the existing renewals of those customers as well.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra from RBC Capital Markets.

[Ashish Sabadra, analyst]

Rob, thanks for flagging both the near and midterm secular and cyclical tailwinds for issuance. But it was also the -- as you mentioned, the second strongest issuance year. So what we want to understand is, can these near-term issuance tailwinds help offset the headwinds from tougher comps and the pull forward as well as the revenue tailwinds from the infrequent issuers? Or do we need to normalize before we can start to grow off those levels?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Ashish, are we talking about 4Q? Are you talking -- are you starting to look towards 2025?

[Ashish Sabadra, analyst]

More 2025.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

All right. So maybe what I'll do here, Ashish, is just kind of tackle early -- very early -- too early thoughts on 2025 and maybe what some of the headwinds and tailwinds might be. And I guess -- I have to do the health warning of we're not introducing guidance for fiscal '25 yet. We'll do that on the next earnings call. So I'll just talk about kind of what we know now. Certainly, we don't know exactly how the year is going to finish up. But I would say that I think the balance of tailwinds to headwinds for issuance for next year, is probably in favor of the tailwinds. So we all know that this has been a huge issuance year. Yes, there has been some pull forward. I imagine we'll talk about that later on the call.

This is probably -- you heard me say probably going to be the second biggest year for issuance on record. So it does create some tough comps for sure. And how the year-end finishes up, it definitely factors into that. But I would say that we've got some very constructive issuance conditions, absent, of course, exogenous events that can create uncertainty and volatility but that should support issuance. So let's tick through what those are. First, the spec-grade default rate has actually been declining and we expect that to decline further into next year. That means that spreads should remain tight. They are very, very tight right now. Spreads are near their all-time lows. The expectation of lower interest rates and combine that with tight spreads, that's going to give a very, I think, favorable environment for new issuance and also for some refi.

Then we've got the refunding walls that I talked about, the nearly $5 trillion over the next 4 years but in particular, the real strength around in growth in the spec-grade maturity walls. M&A has picked up, I would say, kind of modestly this year versus the last 2 years. But I certainly would expect that recovery to continue into 2025. I mentioned that there's just -- there's more and more of a need for both sponsors to exit but also sponsors to put a lot of dry powder to work. And that is going to happen at some point. And then we've got some of those medium-term tailwinds. And again, I'm sure I'll get asked about private credit and transition finance. Both of those are going to be, I think, catalysts for demand for ratings and credit assessment but also for issuance of debt as we transition to a cleaner energy economy.

Now thinking about the headwinds for a moment, I would say the market is still very data dependent. So you've got macroeconomic factors, whether it's jobs or inflation or growth that could signal either a harder landing or softer landing or higher for longer. That could impact issuance and we've seen a little bit of that throughout the year. It's -- we've got an election coming up in a few weeks and we'll see what that means for the antitrust environment and whether that is favorable and not favorable for M&A and then, of course, geopolitical events. We basically got 2 wars going on around the world. I think a third event would be -- the global economy has been surprisingly resilient so far but I think that could really be tested if there was something -- another shoe to drop. And when I talk to companies, they all say that geopolitical events are kind of at the top of their risk register. So hopefully, that gives you a sense. But like I said, on balance, I think, modestly skewed to the positive from where we sit right now in terms of issuance for the year.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel from Wolfe Research.

[Scott Wurtzel, analyst]

Wanted to stick on the topic of the issuance here. And Rob, maybe wondering if you can share just where we are with debt velocity right now? Obviously, I know it's a strong quarter for issuance but just on the balance of things, where we are with debt velocity and how you're thinking about that.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. So obviously, debt velocity has generally been improving just given the strength of the issuance environment. And -- so it's interesting, if you actually go back and look at -- kind of take a historical look at issuance. So this year, we're going to be probably just under $6 trillion. And if you go back to, say, 2012 -- and I know a CAGR is not a perfect thing to do in this situation. But you'd have a CAGR of something like 3.5% in terms of the growth of issuance from 2012. I understand it's not linear but growing a little bit more than GDP growth. But if you look at the stock, the total stock of nonfinancial corporate debt outstanding, that's grown by something more like 7% over that period of time.

So it's interesting. The debt -- that means, therefore, that debt velocity has been below kind of the historical averages just because there's so much more debt outstanding. And so we've gotten close to that, closer to that historical average, we look at that as about 14%. We look at nonfinancial corporate debt. Other people look at it different ways. We're still underneath that probably something like 12% for fiscal '24. But I think that indicates just where we are with debt velocity, still below historical averages. To me actually indicates that, that's actually a tailwind when you think about the potential for issuance growth in the future.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas from William Blair.

[Andrew Nicholas, analyst]

I wanted to ask a question on Research & Insights. I think last quarter, you talked about your expectation that ARR growth would accelerate in the back half of the year. I think you cited the Research Assistant tool and some of the release of some private credit-oriented products supporting that. It doesn't look like we saw that in the third quarter. Just wondering if there's anything else to unpack in that line particularly and maybe that's an excuse to ask about the broader monetization of the GenAI related tools so far this year.

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Yes, I'm happy to take that. So Research & Insights for the third quarter grew 6% ARR, which is aligned with the first half. It's also a little lower than the 9% we saw prior to the attrition events that we've talked about in the previous calls. So there continues to be a bit of pressure induced by the stress in the broader banking sector. But as you said, we're investing in Research Assistant. We have a strong pipeline in Research Assistant as we are entering the largest quarter of the year. We also have very interesting usage stats and customer satisfaction scores for our Research Assistant that are very encouraging, actually the satisfaction, the NPS score for CreditView users who are using Research Assistant is significantly higher than the CreditView users who aren't using it. So I think that's a very strong driver for pipeline growth. We continue to see a little bit longer than sales cycle that we had expected entering the year with -- we have very rapid adoption with the early adopters and those smaller asset management players.

But when it comes to large financial institutions, the adoption of GenAI capabilities has maybe been a little slower than we had expected at the beginning of the year, simply because they're going through their own GenAI utilization framework and governance. So to your point, there's a lot of pipeline and we're working very hard to close that in the fourth quarter. And I think on the overall MA and ARR outlook for the full year, we also have some interesting pipeline growth in KYC, which we expect would contribute to continued growth in the fourth quarter and beyond.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

And Noémie, I think we had expected some acceleration in the second half of the year. I think we still expect to continue to see some modest acceleration but we'll probably see ARR in the lower end of high single-digit growth rather than our previous expectation of -- at the higher end of high single-digit growth for the fourth quarter just based on some of the things that Noémie just talked about.

[Andrew Nicholas, analyst]

And Rob is that Research & Insights or MA as a whole, just to be clear?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Well, I was specifically referring to Research & Insights in that case.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik from Barclays.

[Manav Patnaik, analyst]

Just to stick on MA. The revenue versus ARR growth keeps widening. So I was just hoping you could just help level set why that is today and then thinking about how that flows into 2025 would be helpful as well.

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Yes. So on the revenue, Manav, we have -- we're focused on recurring revenue. If you look at recurring revenue for Decision Solutions, Research & Insights and Data & Information, it's very close, moving closely to the ARR growth. So let me unpack a little bit the revenue growth dynamic for Q3 and the different components of it. Revenue grew 7% on a reported basis in Q3. Recurring revenue, which is 95% of the total revenue in the quarter grew 9%, which is very much in line with the pace of ARR. What's going on there is, you have our training and other services revenue that's declining -- that are declining double digit. And our revenue for multiyear on-prem software remains stable but fluctuates throughout the year based on timing of renewals.

So there's a couple of dynamics that I want to call out that are behind the 9% growth in recurring revenue that should help tie that back to the ARR growth and the longer-term profile of the business. If you look at banking, recurring revenue, banking and insurance, the KYC work flows, what we call Decision Solutions grew 13% in the third quarter. And that's pretty much in line with what we saw in the first half of the year. There's 19% growth in our KYC solution and banking and insurance grew about 10% and 11% recurring, which is again very much in line with ARR.

On the Research & Insights, again, we saw -- that's about 30% of our business. We saw recurring revenue growth of 6% in the third quarter. That's actually improved slightly from the 4% we saw in the first half. We've talked about some of the attrition events and some of the pressure in -- with research -- with the asset managers and banks previously. So that's been a bit of a headwind to growth in this business in this year. But the -- again, the recurring revenue growth is very much aligned with ARR. And on Data & Information revenue, we grew 7% in the third quarter.

I talked about the effects of some of the large renewals with our government -- federal government contracts that's now behind us. And we have very significant prospects in the pipeline that should get that growth rate a little bit higher up in the upcoming quarters. So hopefully, that gives you a sense of the revenue growth dynamics in the third quarter. It's again very much broadly in line with the first half, except for Decision Solutions, where we had a bit of a tough comp and the large renewals of the government contract that renewed at a lower rate this year.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. And Noémie, maybe -- I mean you touched on it, just there's the transactional onetime revenue and the recurring revenue. And actually, for fiscal '23, actually, that onetime revenue actually grew. And this year, obviously, we're seeing a decline. So that would contribute to, Manav, some of what you might think of as a little bit of a widening.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Owen Lau from Oppenheimer.

[Kwun Sum Lau, analyst]

And I know we have touched on private credit in the past but the narrative of public private market convergence is expanding. And Rob, you talked about the Apollo Investor Day. And I think one idea they threw out was so-called standardized credit ratings. So could you please talk about how much appetite for investment-grade issuers to raise debt directly from PE firms and bypass the rating process done by Moody's, or the credit rating is so valuable that they will still need it?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. Owen, thanks. So I've had a lot of engagement with many of the most senior players in this market over the last, I don't know, call it, over the course of this year. And while I think maybe 2 years ago, we kind of talked about this defensively, there's a real opportunity here and a real need. There's a real need for independent third-party credit assessment, whether it's through ratings or other tools. And it's interesting because when we engage with the big players like the Apollos and the Blackstones, one of the things that we hear, and again, I referenced, if you look at their Investor Day, they talk about credit rating agencies being an important part of the ecosystem because we have the ability to provide the data, the analytics and the ratings that will help people understand the comparability of whether it's public or private credit.

And as they are looking at the growth of that market and if you start to think about private credit, not just as leveraged direct lending but you start to think about, Owen, you mentioned investment grade, in many cases, asset-backed finance, the numbers are much bigger than the $3 trillion that I talked about. But there is going to be I believe, a need for ratings and third-party credit assessment. And so we have a great dialogue actually with many of the largest players in the market about ways that we can serve those needs. So for instance, Owen, we've got -- we've got real -- a lot of growth in our ratings of BDCs and credit estimates for the exposures in the BDCs. I think we probably have the leading coverage of BDCs in the market that's contributing to the growth in our FIG franchise.

We've got a growing pipeline of fund finance ratings, whether it's feeder funds, credit-linked notes, sub lines, all of that. There's a lot of demand for that and a lot of demand for ratings. So again, you're going to see that come through the FIG line in ratings. And then all the asset-backed finance because remember, Owen, where is a lot of that going to? A lot of that is going and sitting on insurance balance sheets and those insurers are rating sensitive. So as this market grows, I think ratings are going to play a really key role. And I think you're going to see actually a lot of that revenue come through the ratings business.

So hopefully, that gives you a sense of why we feel optimistic about this. And Owen, the last thing I would say is, look, the key for us is to make sure we understand where is the flow coming from, right? Do we have the methodologies in place, rigorous methodology so that we can rate this stuff? Do we have the people, right, the resources to be able to do this and play that role in the market?

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy from Deutsche Bank.

[Faiza Alwy, analyst]

So I wanted to ask about Moody's Analytics again, just in context of your medium-term targets. I know you referred to them previously as aspirational. I'm curious if you have an update on that, just given that there has been a little bit of deceleration this year. Maybe if you could highlight what are some of the areas that you're most excited about? And if you expect an acceleration as we think about '25 and beyond?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes, thanks. Great question. So I think absent a real catalyst, we would update those medium-term targets annually. And so I think we'd be prepared to talk about the targets in the February earnings call. But maybe just to give you a sense of -- we've talked about those targets serving as kind of our North Star to drive innovation, product development. Let me maybe talk to you about where I think the big opportunities are that we're going after to be able to achieve those medium-term targets. So I would say it's really around kind of a land and an expand strategy. So if you think about -- and we've got relationships with several thousand banks, probably close to 1,000 insurers.

We have a really good customer footprint in financial services and we have an opportunity to do more for those customers. So that is really an expand strategy in financial services. If you look at the number of products and solutions that many of the customers take, there's still a big opportunity for us to do more for them. We've actually provided that -- some of that data on prior calls when we've done the spotlight on insurance and banking. And then with corporates, it's really an expand -- really a land strategy. And so I think Noémie just touched on it briefly. But we've got one of the world's largest databases on companies and that then supports a range of interconnected use cases, including things like trade credit, customer onboarding and monitoring and supplier risk.

And so we see a pretty big opportunity to go after that. And that means probably a lot more new logos in the corporate space and a lot more cross-sell and upsell in the financial services space. So again, we've still got some things to do to be able to better enable the cross-sell and to be able -- we talked about earlier this year about the investments we're making in building out that platform to serve corporates but those are the things we're doing to try to get after those medium-term targets.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of David Motemaden from Evercore ISI.

[David Motemaden, analyst]

Rob, could you just give us an updated view on the pull forward that has taken place this year and in 3Q specifically? And if that's lowered your expectations for issuance growth at all in 2025?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. First of all, welcome to the call. It's good to have you on. So it's actually interesting when you look at pull forward, it's a little bit of a tale of 2 cities between investment grade and spec grade. And if you get a chance to dig into those, refunding studies that we published, you'll see a lot of this in there. But if you look at investment grade, so 2025 investment-grade maturities actually grown by about 9%. They're 18% higher than the 1-year forward maturities were last year. So starting the year, the maturities were actually higher than they were last year. But we've seen a good bit of pull forward in spec grade. And if you think about it, that's pretty typical, right? If you're an investment-grade issuer, you generally have market access throughout market cycles. Spec-grade issuers are more sensitive to risk on, risk off and market windows.

So you'll see more pull forward typically from spec-grade issuers who don't want to get to a quarter before their maturity. I will say that when we look at the data, it does look like there has been a bit more pull forward in spec grade than would we -- what would be typical than kind of historical averages this year. That's not surprising. I think we had been seeing that. But it's also interesting, again, if you look at just the maturities 1 year forward, right now, they're about the same level as they were this time last year. And so the other thing I would say is if you actually go to the -- drill down into the U.S., so some of these refi walls are a little bit more back-end loaded, particularly around spec grade. But about 25% to 30% of spec-grade loan and bond maturities in 2028 were actually issued in '23 and '24 when rates were elevated. So I mean, that tells us if we have a declining rate environment, going forward, we may actually start to see some pull forward from those very elevated maturity walls a little bit out in the future.

So when you actually combine investment-grade and spec-grade maturities -- so as I said, we've had less pull forward investment grade, more pull forward in spec grade. Actually, on an aggregate basis, the pull forward, the 1 year -- the pull forward from 1-year forward maturity walls is almost exactly in line with historical averages and the forward maturities 1 year out or 15% higher than this time last year. So I think net-net, despite the fact that we've had a heavier spec grade pull forward this year, I actually think this is still a tailwind for us in the near term.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners.

[Craig Huber, analyst]

Can you just talk a little bit about the spread that you had between the 70% transaction revenue growth in ratings versus 51% global issuance in the quarter? And then maybe, Noémie, just throw in there what the incentive comp was in the third quarter and the fourth quarter outlook.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes, Craig. So we had favorable mix. We certainly -- and Noémie talked about, we had very strong investment-grade issuance but there was a lot of opportunistic issuance. So if you think about investment-grade issuers, we have 2 kinds of commercial constructs. We have frequent issuers and we have infrequent issuers. We saw a lot of volume coming from infrequent issuers, just tapping the market. Then we had very strong leveraged finance growth. Leveraged finance is typically revenue mix friendly. That was certainly the case. And then, of course, we also have -- we had a real pickup in first-time mandates. And so they have -- oftentimes, there's fees associated with onboarding first-time issuers. And we had kind of our consistent pricing initiatives, which all contributed to favorable revenue mix relative to issuance.

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

And then on the incentive compensation for the third quarter of 2024, we actually recorded an adjustment to the accruals to reflect the updated full year revenue outlook in MIS specifically. So the incentive compensation accruals were about $150 million in the third quarter, which is higher than prior year by 54%. Just for the full year, we expect incentive compensation overall to be approximately $490 million and that translates into about $120 million for the fourth quarter.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of George Tong from Goldman Sachs.

[Keen Fai Tong, analyst]

I wanted to dive more into your ratings outlook. You mentioned on a net basis, the pull forward of IG and spec grade is exactly in line with historical averages in the forward maturities, 1 year out is about 15% higher. And yet your updated guide implies about mid-single-digit MIS revenue growth in 4Q, even though comps don't really get any tougher in the fourth quarter. So can you talk about what leads you to think 4Q issuance growth will moderate meaningfully? And to what extent do you think 4Q MIS growth will serve as a proxy for 2025 MIS growth?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

George, so we've, I think, talked about on each of the earnings calls this year, that we believe that issuance is going to decline in the fourth quarter versus the prior year quarter because there's been intra-year pull forward. So that's within the calendar year and that's just banks telling issuers, hey, in the event there's any election volatility, why don't you just get ahead of that. And so we're also looking at the strength of the issuance to date. So we actually have lifted our outlook for Q4 issuance, so we -- versus our prior forecast. So we now expect the fourth quarter issuance to decline in something like the mid-single-digit range and it was mid-teens percent decline in our prior guidance. So we've actually lifted the view for the fourth quarter.

And that lift, combined with the beat in the third quarter led us to up our full year issuance outlook to mid-30s. And then you triangulate that to revenue where we're looking at something like low single-digit percent growth in revenue over the prior year quarter. And that's just, again, what contributes to that favorable issuance mix, some of the things I just talked about with Craig's question. 2025, I think, could be a different ball game. Again, there's just been a lot of, we believe calendar year pull forward. And I think you are going to know in early November, if we don't see a slowdown in issuance, then there would potentially be some upside to our guidance.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum from Stifel.

[Shlomo Rosenbaum, analyst]

Rob, can you give us a little bit of an update on some of the progress for the various AI products? So you had like navigators, skills, assistants. Can you talk about where you are in both, in development and then also in kind of adoption? I know Noémie talked about a little bit of a -- not as fast of an adoption because the clients are setting up their own frameworks. Maybe you could talk about, is there anything that leads you to believe that the pacing is going to be dramatically different from what you thought or the adoption will be very different from what you thought?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Shlomo, thanks for the question. So let me just kind of tick these off here. So we talked a little bit about Research Assistant, which was our first product in the market. So I'm not going to spend too much time on that. Since then, we've rolled out suite of what we call navigators. So this is -- think of AI enablement of the existing products, allowing you to kind of get the most out of the products. We've rolled that out across a number of products. And that's going to be helpful to both -- well, Noémie mentioned some of the things, customer satisfaction, it's going to be helpful to retention. It's going to be helpful to our ability to price behind those enhancements. We've also started to roll out other AI-enabled products. So Research Assistant was the first.

The second was an AI early warning system leveraging a number of our different datasets. We started with a focus on commercial real estate. We've got a very nice pipeline for that. That's focused primarily on banks. And then we started -- early in the year, we did a very small acqui-hire of a company called Able AI. And that brought over a small engineering team that was working on AI enablement for banking workflow. And so when we brought them over, that then accelerated our product road map for banking. And so we've rolled out an automated credit memo offering and automated covenants. So you're going to see more and more AI enablement of our banking workflow, of our insurance workflow. That's one of the benefits of having the IRP as well in insurance, very easy to do the AI enablement.

So just in terms of adoption, it's a mixed bag. And we talked a little bit about it. You've got, in some cases, your smaller firms, the asset managers and others are able to adopt more quickly. When it comes to the big banks, they've all got risk frameworks and regulators and other things that they have to make sure before they're deploying these AI-enabled solutions that they've got a risk and control framework that's going to pass regulatory muster. So while those conversations are very encouraging because we've elevated the dialogue we're having at many of our customers, they're taking longer. So hopefully, that gives you a sense.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber from BMO Capital Markets.

[Jeffrey Silber, analyst]

In looking at your guidance for the year and if I try to back into the implied guidance for 4Q adjusted EPS, it looks like you're guiding to that to be flat to potentially down. Are you just being overly conservative? Or is there something specifically going on?

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

So we're guiding for -- we've updated the adjusted diluted EPS guidance range based on the updated Q4 implied outlook. So just to give you numbers, we're raising our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range and we're narrowing it to -- for the full year to $11.90 to $12.10, that's still 21% at the midpoint, which is driven by MIS performance. So what we've done here is, we flowed through the Q3 beat through our full year guide, and we've increased our ratings revenue outlook for Q4 versus the prior forecast at the high end. So the midpoint of our updated guidance now implies Q4 EPS growth will be relatively flat to slightly down in the Q4 versus the prior period and down approximately 30% sequentially from Q3, which is aligned with what we see in the top line for MIS.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

And I guess -- sorry, go ahead.

[Jeffrey Silber, analyst]

No, I was just going to ask if there's something specifically going on with margins in the fourth quarter we should focus on.

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

So for the fourth quarter margin, as I said earlier in my prepared remarks, we've accounted for the incentive compensation adjustments in the third quarter to reflect the updated Q4 -- to reflect the updated top line outlook. So that's already been accounted for. And if you look at the margins for the Q4, we -- that's really the effect of the incentive compensation but there's nothing else that we should...

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. I mean the MIS margin, I mean, I think primarily, it's just revenues are going to be lower, that, we'd expect that margin to be a bit lower. And so as I said, let's watch kind of the -- starting around the second week of November and see what's going on with issuance and that will give you a sense of how to think about our guidance.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Haas from Wells Fargo.

[Jason Haas, analyst]

Appreciate the comments earlier on MA ARR. It sounds like the Data & Information and Research & Insights is maybe not as strong as expected but there was no change to the full year guidance there. So I was curious if you're now expecting closer to the high single digits and the low double digits? And then if not, can you talk about what other areas have been coming in stronger than expected to offset that? And then maybe also any color on what would drive an acceleration from 3Q into 4Q?

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Yes. So on ARR growth in the third quarter was 9%. It was a bit lower than our recent sustained performance of 10%. That was affected by some of the factors we've highlighted on last quarter's call. Stepping back and looking at our performance today, we've had more attrition events in the first quarter, as we said. We had a bit of a lower sales than expected with our banks and asset manager customer segment as they continue to face tight purchasing pattern. And we also had a couple of headwinds from the other factors we've talked about in the last call, that's customer transitioning to MSCI for sustainability solutions and large federal government contracts that renewed at a lower value in Q3. We also want to acknowledge that the new business growth has been a little bit more back-end loaded than we initially thought with 50% more pipeline entering the fourth quarter this year than a year ago.

Looking out to the remainder of the year, we're maintaining our outlook of a high single-digit revenue growth and ARR of high single to low double digits with a midpoint still in the higher end of the high single digit. That's the guidance for the full year. And we have, as I said, a strong new business pipeline going into the fourth quarter. We have a very large book of renewals for the month of December, which we expect to renew at 93% plus rate in line with what you've seen year-to-date. So again, the good pipeline creation that we saw in the third quarter, which was driven by, I think, an increase of 35% in meeting activity, a lot of those in person, that's very significantly up from a year ago. And so as we're heading into the fourth quarter, which is our busiest month of the year -- our busiest quarter of the year, our new business pipeline is very healthy. We have a good mix of large few deals in our KYC and Data & Information businesses and we also have a large volume of new business and renewals, which is what underpins our outlook.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. And maybe just to double-click -- and by the way, welcome to the call, Jason. It's good to have you on. Just to double click on maybe an area where -- and there are plenty that we're encouraged by. As Noémie said, we've got a very nice pipeline relative to this time last year. But in KYC, we've got a really good set of product launches. So we've got a new digital investigations product that we've just launched in September. We've got a lot of customer engagement around that. We've got our entity verification offering, which has got a really nice and growing pipeline. And also, there's a really interesting emerging opportunity here to leverage AI to build screening agents.

And if you think about how much of what is going on around KYC, diligence is done by armies of people oftentimes in offshore centers, there's a real opportunity to leverage our -- both our data as well as AI to be able to not only be more efficient but actually be even more effective and have a great audit trail for the regulators. So some very interesting stuff there, I think, in our product -- recent product pipeline around KYC that leads us to continue to be very optimistic around that business.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Meuler from Baird.

[Jeffrey Meuler, analyst]

So this kind of runs counter to that last answer. But can you just comment on KYC ARR. In the quarter, 14% growth is great but it decelerated from what your KYC business has historically done. I don't know if there was any holdback of customers waiting for the new product launches or just any comments on why KYC growth was a little softer for ARR in the quarter?

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

The KYC ARR growth was 14% in the third quarter that was lower than the 19% we saw in Q3 last year. In Q3 last year, we had large transactions with the federal government. As I said earlier, some of those renewed at a little bit lower rate. So that's what explains the lower number for the third quarter. Having said that, we have a strong pipeline, as Rob said, heading into the fourth quarter. So we expect this to be more of an air pocket than a new run rate.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan.

[Andrew Steinerman, analyst]

I wanted to ask about Praedicat. I think it was the only acquisition that Moody's has done with revenues closed in the last 12 months. Just tell me if I'm correct about that. And specifically about Praedicat, I'd like to know the dollar contribution both to revenues and ARR in the third quarter just reported and in the fourth quarter guide.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Andrew, it's Rob. We did -- maybe you're talking about MA, we did acquire the remaining interest in GCR, which is the African rating agency and that closed in the very beginning of the quarter and that had revenues and operating income. I guess I would say it's just -- this is immaterial to our overall our overall financial results. And I know you're looking for an organic number, I might steer you to ARR. So I would say, first of all, Praedicat is not in our third quarter results. And if you look at ARR, ARR is an organic number. So that will give you a sense of excluding acquisitions. The one other -- since we're on the topic of Praedicat, I mean, it was a really nice bolt-on for us to move into the casualty space.

RMS, very, very strong in the property space and this allowed us to move into the casualty space. And we announced that acquisition right before a huge industry conference in Europe that I went to and we did literally north of 100 customer meetings and there were some very strong interest in Praedicat's capabilities and really understanding emerging and long-tailed casualty and mass tort risks. In fact, I think it's something we're going to be able to use across not only analytics but also even it will help inform some of our work in ratings. So we're really excited to have Praedicat as part of the Moody's family.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Russell Quelch from Redburn Atlantic.

[Russell Quelch, analyst]

Rob, I wondered if you could be a bit more specific about the level of growth you're seeing in private credit assessments and how much that's contributing to the revenue today. You mentioned being a leader, early leader perhaps in rating the BDCs. So I wondered what else you're doing to position yourself to capture this opportunity. You mentioned conversations with Apollo and Blackstone. I wonder if you could add a bit more flavor to those conversations, if that's leading to immediate revenue opportunities or if this is more stuff for the future?

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. So Russell, thanks for the question. Actually, I would say we're going to see revenue -- so we are already seeing revenue from private credit flowing through the rating agency and analytics, that's already happening. So it's interesting. I had a conversation with my team the other day and I said, AI is a fantastic opportunity for us. So is private credit but private credit is going to manifest itself in the financials faster than AI is going to because of some of the dynamics I just talked about in terms of adoption curves. So we've got some work to do to start to break out from you all and give you a better sense of how we're capturing private credit revenue coming through both the rating agency and the analytics business.

And I -- we know we, in some ways, kind of owe that to you all. But what I would say is again, back to a few of my comments earlier, we're already seeing it come through FIG ratings and that is through the ratings of BDCs and fund finance instruments. And while those numbers are small relative to things like what we're doing, the total revenues that we're getting from rating insurance and banking issuance, it's growing quite fast. In fact, in many cases, growing faster. So what we're doing with BDCs, that's growing faster than, for instance, our revenue line for banking, right? So you're going to see it -- you're already seeing it in FIG. We're already seeing it in structured finance and the rating of asset-backed finance. And we talked a little bit about that earlier and there's quite a pipeline for that.

We're starting to see it in our -- even in our project finance area, where there's more and more demand for private ratings that for -- loans that investors are investing in and they actually want a third-party view of risk. And so it's interesting, as you think about what's going on with the banks and this kind of originate to distribute model that they're more and more moving to. They're all saying, "Hey, look, in order to distribute this credit to a wide -- broader range of potential investors, including everything from insurers, pension funds, high net worth, you name it, we need a third-party assessment of credit risk." In some -- in many cases, that's a rating for the instruments that I talked about.

But there's also demand from the investors who say, "Hey, look, I'm invested in these private credit funds and I want to have more visibility into the credit risk in these funds. And I want that to come from an independent source rather than from the GP themselves, right?" So we are seeing demand for that. And in fact, when we announced our partnership with MSCI and ESG, we said that we're working to explore opportunities to leverage their distribution into the LP and GP community and to be able to provide solutions around private credit. In fact, we just had a fantastic meeting with the teams and we're working to do exactly that. So I think, again, I know that we need to do probably a little better job of helping you understand how that's starting to materialize across both parts of our business but we're already seeing that in both P&Ls.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm from UBS.

[Alex Kramm, analyst]

I know it's late in the call. So just a quick cleanup here. On MA margin, can you just talk about what you're expecting in the fourth quarter? I think, if I do my math right, I think margin is supposed to pick up in the 4Q. But generally speaking, from a seasonal perspective, costs go up after the 3Q and margin goes down. So I don't know if that's part of the incentive comp you talked about or anything else. And obviously, Praedicat is coming in as well, I think. So just maybe flesh out why this year may be a little bit different. And then sorry, related to that, you talked about investing a lot in MA earlier on the call. So just wondering if you have any updated thoughts on the margin expansion that you're looking at for that business in the next couple of years?

[Noemie Heuland, executive]

Yes. Thanks. So for the -- to get on the Q4 question, this is a seasonality of revenue driven. So as you know, our fourth quarter in MA is the largest quarter in terms of revenue. So given the typical strength in the fourth quarter, we expect the adjusted operating margin in MA to tick up in the fourth quarter to slightly above the range of our guide. There's a little bit of headwinds from Praedicat but as Rob said, not materially affecting the guide and we're maintaining our 30% to 31% margin for the full year. So that's for Q4.

Now looking out in the outer years, as Rob said, we'll update you later in February but we're -- we've been investing. We've invested in our GenAI capabilities, in our platforming, in our new product development. I'd say we're mostly through that investment cycle and we'll be really focusing on expanding the margin and continuing to migrate some of those customers from the legacy platforms into the banking and IRP. That will drive our margin expansion in the long run. And we're also making sure we are very disciplined in the management of discretionary spend. Actually, you saw that materializing in the expansion in operating margin in MA in the fourth -- in the third quarter despite the fact that revenue kind of remained consistent with the second quarter. So that's really what I can say about the MA margin and still reiterating our guidance range for the full year.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

Yes. So to underscore that, we're definitely committed to the medium-term targets for margin for MA. I'm also reflecting on one thing I said earlier about positive mix on leveraged finance and I lumped bank loans and high yield together in that. Actually, I think because of all the refi and reset activity we had going on and all the refi with loans, that wasn't a favorable mix but high yield was. So I just want to make sure that was clear. But on balance, we had a favorable mix from our corporate finance issuance.

[Operator]

And that concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Rob and Noémie for some final closing remarks.

[Robert Fauber, executive]

All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for the questions and we look forward to talking with you on the fourth quarter earnings call. Until then, take care.

[Operator]

This concludes Moody's Corporation Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. As a reminder, immediately following this call, the company will post the MIS revenue breakdown under the Investor Resources section of the Moody's IR homepage. Additionally, a replay will be made available after the call on the Moody's IR website. Thank you.