Zacks Equity Research
·4 min read
How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in S&P Global (SPGI) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to SPGI for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
S&P Global's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at S&P Global's main business drivers. Incorporated in December 1925, S&P Global Inc. is a leading provider of transparent and independent ratings, benchmarks, analytics and data to the capital and commodity markets worldwide.
The company operates through six reportable segments: S&P Global Market Intelligence (“Market Intelligence”), S&P Global Ratings (“Ratings"), S&P Global Commodity Insights (“Commodity Insights”), S&P Global Mobility (“Mobility”), S&P Dow Jones Indices (“Indices”) and S&P Global Engineering Solutions (“Engineering Solutions”).
Ratings (27% of total revenues in 2022): Ratings operates as an independent provider of credit ratings, research and analytics, providing investors and other market participants with information, ratings and benchmarks. With offices in more than 25 countries globally, Ratings holds an important position in the world's financial infrastructure. Ratings’ revenues are differentiated between transaction and non-transaction revenues.
Market Intelligence (34%): It helps investment professionals, government agencies, corporations and universities to track performance, generate alpha, identify investment ideas, understand competitive and industry dynamics, perform evaluations and assess credit risk. Desktop, Data Management Solutions and Risk Services are the business lines included in the segment.
Commodity Insights (15%): Commodity Insights provides information and benchmark prices for commodity and energy markets. It helps producers, traders, energy and commodity market intermediaries with price data, analytics and industry insights, thereby enhancing transparency and efficiency in the market.
Indices (12%): Indices is a global index provider that maintains a wide variety of valuation and index benchmarks for investment advisors, wealth managers and institutional investors. Indices mainly derives revenues from asset-linked fees based on the S&P and Dow Jones indices and also from subscription and transaction revenues.
Mobility (10%) & Engineering Solutions (3%) which were acquired as a result of the IHS Markit buyout, serves two different sections of customers. Mobility serves vehicle manufacturers, automotive suppliers, mobility service providers, retailers, consumers, and finance and insurance companies while Engineering Solutions serves technical professionals.
Bottom Line
Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For S&P Global, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in February 2014 would be worth $5,971.20, or a gain of 497.12%, as of February 5, 2024, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 178.17% and gold's return of 55.50% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for SPGI too.
S&P Global remains well-poised to gain from the growing demand for business information services. Buyouts help innovate, increase differentiated content and develop new products. New service launches have been aiding the company's growth. Dividend payments and share buybacks boost investors' confidence and positively impact earnings per share. Increasing current ratio bodes well for the company. Partly due to these positives, the stock has gained in the past year. However, S&P Global remains vulnerable to proceedings, investigations and inquiries concerning the ratings provided, leading to legal charges, damages or fines. Growth initiatives, higher compensations and incentives raise the company's expenses. More long-term debt than cash does not bode well for the company.
The stock has jumped 6.10% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 9 higher, for fiscal 2023; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
S&P Global Inc. (SPGI) : Free Stock Analysis Report
