MSCI Q3 2026 Earnings Call: ABF Growth and AI Investment

Key Takeaways

• MSCI reported Q3 2026 revenue growth of 12.4%, including 25% growth in asset-based fee revenue and 8% growth in subscription revenue.
• Adjusted EBITDA increased 12% and adjusted EPS rose 14%. Total run rate grew 12%, while subscription run rate increased 9%.
• Asset-based fee run rate reached a record of nearly $1 billion. Assets benchmarked to MSCI indexes totaled nearly $23 trillion, including roughly $15 trillion actively managed and $8 trillion indexed.
• MSCI added nearly $55 million in recurring net new sales and achieved a 95% retention rate, up 30 basis points year over year. Analytics and Private Capital Solutions delivered record recurring net new sales, while Index recorded its best-ever Q3.
• Private Capital Solutions subscription run rate growth accelerated to 19%, while organic Index and Analytics subscription run rate growth reached 11.7% and 7.5%, respectively.
• Management plans to reinvest AI-driven efficiency gains rather than target material margin expansion, focusing on new products, use cases and client segments.

Key Financial Data

From July 1 through October 19, MSCI repurchased $627 million of shares at an average price of $562. Since the beginning of 2024, the company has repurchased nearly 8 million shares for $4.4 billion.

Business and Operating Performance

Index

Organic subscription run rate growth accelerated to 11.7%. Subscription growth reached 32% among hedge funds, 15% among banks and brokers, and 10% among both wealth managers and asset owners. Index retention exceeded 97%, including 98% among asset managers.

Custom index subscription run rate increased by more than 26%. Management attributed momentum to systematic investing, active ETF development, expanded trading and liquidity tools, and faster product creation supported by AI.

Asset-based fees benefited from record AUM in ETFs and non-ETF products linked to MSCI indexes. Management also identified additional opportunities among traders, market makers, broker-dealers and exchanges that facilitate trading in index-linked assets.

Analytics

Organic subscription run rate grew 7.5%. Growth was supported by large strategic wins with asset owners and wealth managers seeking integrated risk, portfolio management and investment decision-making tools.

Last-12-month recurring net new sales increased 18% from the prior comparable period. MSCI said its largest Q3 transaction shifted the company from a vendor to a strategic portfolio analytics partner for a major Asian sovereign wealth fund.

Private Assets and Real Assets

Private Capital Solutions subscription run rate growth accelerated to 19%. Demand covered transparency, private capital intelligence, total-plan solutions, data platforms, diligence tools and private-market benchmarks.

MSCI’s UBS agreement is intended to expand the reach of private-asset solutions and strengthen connections between general partners and wealth managers. The company also cited traction for its AI-enabled private-assets diligence and document-management capabilities.

Real Assets organic subscription run rate grew 2%, supported by improving retention and demand for broader data access through Snowflake.

Sustainability and Climate

MSCI generated more than $5 million of new recurring sustainability sales and more than $2 million in climate. However, elevated cancellations included one sizable sustainability downsell caused by a client reducing spending.

Climate run rate across MSCI product lines grew 8%, excluding First Street. Management said First Street integration remains on track and client engagement has been strong, while expressing confidence that the acquisition can support a return to higher climate growth.

Clients and Regions

Recurring net new sales rose 74% in EMEA, 36% in APAC and 26% in the Americas. APAC delivered its best-ever quarter, driven by Analytics.

Asset-owner recurring sales more than tripled year over year. Organic growth was approximately 18% among hedge funds, above 12% among asset owners, and roughly 10% among banks and broker-dealers. Asset-manager organic subscription run rate growth was about 6%, including approximately 8% in Index.

Management Guidance

Management expects 2026 expenses to finish at the top end of its guidance ranges. Acquisitions are expected to add roughly $20 million of expenses, performance stock-option accruals approximately $15 million to $20 million of noncash expense, and severance about $10 million to $15 million more than initially planned.

The company raised its interest expense guidance because of higher revolver balances used to support share repurchases. It also narrowed full-year tax-rate guidance to 18%–19.5% and maintained its free cash flow guidance.

For Q4, MSCI expects recurring net new sales in the Sustainability and Climate segment to be roughly flat to slightly positive. Management said pressures in parts of the sustainability franchise are likely to continue through the quarter.

Management does not intend to target material margin expansion. AI-driven savings in existing operations are expected to be reinvested in product development and expansion into new client segments. Henry Fernandez noted that margins could still rise marginally by roughly 20–50 basis points because of conservative budgeting, but said this is not an explicit target.

Risks and Watch Points

• Sustainability and Climate continue to face retention pressure, elevated cancellations and client spending reductions.
• Large strategic transactions can make recurring sales and other operating metrics volatile from quarter to quarter. Management recommended evaluating these trends over multiple quarters.
• Traditional asset managers continue to face secular pressures and are expected to remain a steadier, lower-growth client segment than hedge funds, banks, traders, asset owners and wealth managers.
• Adoption of agentic AI workflows remains at an early stage. MSCI said many clients currently have limited internal capabilities, which could slow uptake through third-party connectors.
• Free cash flow can vary because of interest payments, taxes, collections and other timing items. Q3 included more than $50 million of additional cash interest payments related to prior-year financing.
• Higher acquisition costs, severance, performance-based compensation and interest expense are increasing the 2026 expense base.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

AI and the Analytics platform: Management described MSCI as an integrated analytics company built around proprietary data, models and technology. AI is being used to aggregate portfolio information, generate client insights, accelerate model creation and improve access to MSCI content.

New products and monetization: New-product contributions to sales increased by more than 50% year over year in Q3. Management said innovation also supports retention, pricing and broader client relationships, beyond direct product revenue.

Agentic AI capabilities: MSCI said model-development time has fallen from several weeks to a matter of hours, with the potential to move toward minutes. Agentic tools are also supporting specialized datasets, portfolio construction and private-asset analysis that would be difficult to deliver manually at scale.

Expense efficiency and reinvestment: AI is expected to reduce growth in expenses required to operate the existing business from mid- to high-single digits toward low-single digits and potentially negative growth over time. Those savings are intended to fund growth investments rather than drive substantial margin expansion.

Index growth durability: Management linked Index acceleration to hedge funds, traders, banks, custom indexes, systematic investing and active ETFs. Demand for data used to train models and support agentic investment processes remains early but could provide another source of growth.

Fourth-quarter momentum: Management described the pipeline as robust across Index, Analytics and Private Capital Solutions, but cautioned that large deal timing creates quarterly variability. Q4 is important because of concentrated renewals, client budgeting and MSCI’s sales calendar.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MSCI Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Jeremy Ulan, Head of Investor Relations and Treasurer. You may begin.

Jeremy Ulan

Thank you, operator. Good day, and welcome to the MSCI Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the third quarter 2026. This press release, along with an earnings presentation are available on our website, msci.com, and under the Investor Relations tab.

Let me remind you that this call contains forward-looking statements, which are governed by the language on the second slide of the presentation. You are cautioned not to place undue relies on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made, are based on current expectations and current economic conditions and are subject to risks, and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements. For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, please see the risk factors and forward-looking statements disclaimer in our most recent Form 10-K and in our other SEC filings.

During today's call, in addition to results presented on the basis of U.S. GAAP, we also refer to non-GAAP measures. You'll find a reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to the equivalent GAAP measures in the appendix of the earnings presentation.

We will also discuss operating metrics such as run rate and retention rate. Important information regarding our use of operating metrics such as run rate and retention rate are available in the earnings presentation.

On the call today are Henry Fernandez, our Chairman and CEO; Andy Wiechmann, our Chief Financial Officer; and Alvise Munari, our Chief Product Officer and Head of Client segments, will be joining for the Q&A session. With that, let me now turn the call over to Henry Fernandez. Henry?

Henry Fernandez

Thank you, Jeremy. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us. In the third quarter, MSCI delivered strong financial and operating metrics, including historic net new sales in index, analytics and private capital solutions, plus another record quarter for asset-based fees. We have built impressive momentum across these 3 product lines.

While sustainability and climate continue to face challenges, we believe that our recent acquisition of First Street will help accelerate a return to higher growth in climate. These results show that MSCI is expanding our mission critical role in global investing, even as we transform our business to an AI-first company.

Since our IPO 19 years ago, MSCI has demonstrated a strong and consistent track record of execution. This foundation positions us well to capture expanding opportunities, both across client segments and a growing range of solutions. We have multiple dimensions of growth and a compelling opportunity to compound over the long term.

Financially, our strong Q3 performance included total revenue growth of 12.4%, ABF revenue growth of 25%, subscription revenue growth of 8%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 12% and adjusted EPS growth of 14%. From July 1 through October 19, we repurchased $627 million of MSCI shares at an average price of $562 per share. Since the beginning of 2024, we have opportunistically repurchased nearly 8 million shares for $4.4 billion. During the same period, I have personally purchased an additional 57,000 shares for $30.1 million. These purchases unequivocally demonstrate our strong belief in the potential of the MSCI franchise.

Operationally, in Q3, MSCI achieved total run rate growth of 12%, fueled by a record ABF run rate of almost $1 billion. Our ABF performance reflected record AUM levels in ETFs and non-ETF products linked to MSCI indices including inflows of $76 billion. There are now nearly $23 trillion of AUM benchmarked to MSCI indices. Of that $23 trillion, roughly $15 trillion is actively managed, while $8 trillion is indexed.

We also posted subscription run rate growth of 9% after adding nearly [ $55 million ] in recurring net new sales, and we delivered a retention rate of 95%, an improvement of 30 basis points from Q3 of last year.

MSCI is a long-term compounder driven by both ABF and subscription growth. On the overall subscription side, Q3 was our best-ever quarter for recurring net new sales in analytics and private capital solutions, along with our best-ever Q3 for recurring net new sales in index. Compared with a year earlier, recurring net new sales grew by 88% in ETF, 63% in analytics and 40% in index. Notably, MSCI saw robust demand by both our traditional and newer solutions. In fact, we continue to see consistent growth in recurring sales from our newer products, and importantly, our higher pace of innovation is strengthening sales of our existing products as we continue to deliver greater value to clients. Virtually, all those newer products are powered by artificial intelligence.

Q3 also showed our diversified strength across regions. Recurring net new sales grew by 74% in EMEA, 36% in APAC and 26% in the Americas. Indeed, we achieved our best-ever quarter in APAC, driven by analytics.

MSCI is unlocking additional growth layers through our recently announced partnerships and acquisitions. In Q3, for example, we formalized the landmark agreement with UBS that we first announced back in July. This agreement will extend the reach of our private asset solutions, strengthen connections between GPs and wealth managers and promote greater transparency across private market. Similarly, our acquisition of the AI-native platform [indiscernible], now the MSCI Private Assets Diligence Platform, enable us to complete a major deal with a large U.S. bank.

At the client segment level, MSCI achieved a record quarter with asset owners, more than tripling our recurring revenue sales from a year earlier, driven by demand for our total portfolio solutions and our integrated risk and portfolio management analytics.

Our largest deal of the quarter moved MSCI from a vendor relationship to a strategic portfolio analytics partner for one of Asia's biggest and most sophisticated sovereign wealth funds.

We also closed a number of major analytics and index deals with top hedge funds, including deals for our equity models and custom index modules.

Finally, we maintain our steady performance with asset managers globally while achieving a strong quarter in EMEA where we posted 35% recurring net new sales growth.

Despite the ongoing retention pressures in sustainability and climate, we entered Q4 with solid momentum and a strong client engagement across the whole MSCI franchise.

We are incredibly excited about the expansion of MSCI's offerings through new use cases for newer client segments such as wealth managers, banks, [indiscernible] lenders, GPs and insurance companies in their underwriting processes. We are delivering and expanding MSCI by leveraging what we already do for our more traditional clients such as asset managers, asset owners, [indiscernible] and hedge funds.

MSCI truly is a one of a kind company that is uniquely positioned to benefit from the biggest transformations reshaping the global investment and finance industry.

And with that, let me turn things over to Andy.

Andrew Wiechmann

Thank you, Henry. Hi, everyone. Our strong results reflect a rapid pace of innovation, our effective go-to-market execution and the growing ecosystem around our tools. We believe this momentum is sustainable and we continue to have an attractive pipeline of opportunities.

MSCI is a powerful compounder, and the run rate algorithm was on full display with continued double-digit subscription growth in index, high single-digit growth in analytics, accelerating growth in private assets and outsized secular growth in asset-based fees.

Across client segments, we saw double-digit growth with nonasset manager segments and mid- to high single-digit growth among asset managers. This algorithm, combined with inherent operating leverage and ongoing capital optimization allows us to fuel consistent compounding value creation. And the momentum in the business is evident with LTM recurring net new subscription sales up 26%.

Drilling down into index, organic subscription run rate growth accelerated further to 11.7%. Powerful indexation trends drove double-digit subscription growth across hedge funds, banks and brokers, wealth managers and asset owners of 32%, 15%, 10% and 10%, respectively, and the retention rate was over 97% across index, including a retention rate of 98% with asset managers. Additionally, asset-based fees were fueled by $76 billion of equity ETF cash inflows concentrated in developed markets ex U.S. and emerging markets. This was our second highest quarter of inflows behind only the first quarter of this year.

Within Analytics, we had organic subscription run rate growth of 7.5%, driven by several large strategic client wins with asset owners and wealth managers. These clients are seeking to modernize their investment platforms, integrate risk and portfolio management workflows and enhanced investment decision-making alongside sustained demand for our factor content. As we have mentioned, analytics operating metrics will be lumpy quarter-to-quarter, but the trend has been encouraging, with LTM recurring net new up 18% over the prior LTM period driven by strong momentum in key areas.

In Private Capital Solutions, subscription run rate growth accelerated to 19%. We see growing demand across existing solutions like our transparency, private capital intel and total plan offerings, and we are building momentum in newer offerings like our data and diligence platforms. Additionally, we are seeing good traction in landing benchmark wins across asset owners.

In Real Assets, organic subscription run rate growth was 2%, supported by improving client retention and client seeking broader data access through Snowflake.

In the Sustainability and Climate reportable segment, we executed over $5 million of new recurring sales and sustainability and over $2 million of new recurring sales in climate. We saw elevated cancels with 1 sizable down sale related to a client rightsizing its sustainability spend.

Meanwhile, in climate, run rate growth across MSCI product lines was 8%, excluding the impact of First Street.

Demand for our physical risk solutions, including from recently acquired First Street, is growing. The integration of First Street remains on track and client engagement has been very strong.

As we mentioned last quarter, the pressures on parts of the sustainability franchise are expected to continue through the fourth quarter. We expect the Sustainability and Climate reporting segment to have recurring net new sales that are roughly flat to slightly positive in the fourth quarter.

Turning to our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA expenses in the third quarter were in line with the level we indicated in September, driven by the impact of recent acquisitions, higher performance stock-based compensation and higher severance as we unlock efficiencies ahead of schedule. Given these items, which enhance the franchise heading into 2027, and the strong top line momentum this year, we expect to be at the top end of our expense guidance ranges for 2026.

To provide more color on the elevated expense items in 2026, acquisitions are expected to add roughly $20 million of additional expenses this year. The incremental accruals of performance stock options, which are mostly driven by higher-than-expected AUM growth and products linked to our indexes and the strong business momentum are expected to add roughly $15 million to $20 million of noncash expenses, and severance is expected to be roughly $10 million to $15 million higher than originally planned, reflecting the acceleration of efficiencies and the AI transformation across the organization.

Despite our high level of investment and the addition of 4 acquisitions, headcount has remained roughly flat compared to a year ago. This reflects our ability to leverage AI to transform the company for the future, accelerate the pace of innovation and drive faster growth. Additionally, we increased the interest expense guidance as a result of higher revolver balances to support our opportunistic share repurchases.

We also narrowed the tax rate guidance for the full year to 18% to 19.5%. Overall, we remain well positioned for and committed to delivering very attractive profitability growth while investing for the long term.

In summary, our Q3 results show consistent execution across product lines and client segments. We are pairing continued investment in growth areas with strong financial discipline, and we have the flexibility to adjust as conditions evolve. We look forward to keeping you posted as we deliver on our priorities.

And with that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Now first question coming from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

Question-and-Answer Session

Toni Kaplan

Henry, I wanted to ask a longer-term question on analytics. I was wondering how you're thinking about the future in terms of the product platform and distribution? Just given the advancements in AI, how do you think customers will be interacting with your data, with your platform? Just trying to think of, from a long-term perspective, over the next few years, how you think that this is going to change.

Henry Fernandez

Thank you for the question, Toni. The first thing to keep in mind, you know well is at MSCI, we run a fully integrated in which each product line fits off and fits into other product lines. In the past, maybe more distant past, we viewed analytics especially a risk management platform, risk and performance management platform as one of the more important product line. In the recent past, we have begun to develop a strategy that help us take this extremely important product line and make it much more strategic and much more value added.

So for example, in our risk management platform, we get enormous amount of portfolio data that, in general, we have rights to anonymize and aggregate and things like that, that could develop new products. Secondly, we know risk management and performance platform. We know what the clients are doing every single day by them having their portfolios and running reports in our platform. So we're developing plans to propose to the clients why don't you do this? Why don't you look at this? Why don't you think of this new product, this new idea [indiscernible]? And AI is going to help us do that because otherwise, we will have to have humans do that.

So anyhow, so the last point that I will make, therefore, is MSCI is an analytics company in totality, where by history, we're a modeling company basis, therefore, analytics company, models, the index methodologies are modeled. The risk, the factor model, the other risk models, the ESG ratings and models, all of that. So we need to -- we are in the process of integrating the company into a more holistic analytics shop with proprietary data and very advanced new AI technology to gather the data, process the data and help our clients consume the content, the data and the models much more effectively.

So that's the vision of analytics at MSCI.

Operator

Our next question is you coming from the line of Alex Kramm with UBS.

Alex Kramm

You talked about strong momentum in the business continuing. So maybe you can be a little bit more specific. I know we're only 20 days into the quarter, but if you think across the business, you talked about sustainability being weak again in the 4Q. But where are you seeing strong momentum as it relates to maybe last year because the 4Q was the strongest sales quarter usually in the year? So just any more color around pipelines to give us some comfort for the momentum to your end, please?

Andrew Wiechmann

Sure. Alex, it's Andy. So as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we see an attractive pipeline here. We've got tremendous momentum across the business. If you look at where that momentum is, we saw an acceleration in index, saw an acceleration in PCS, we saw a pickup in analytics and we've seen it across non-asset manager client bases. And so those are all things that are sustainable trends and we see good momentum. Obviously, the third quarter was a very solid quarter. We continue to expand and do more for clients, and we are -- as a result of that, we're having many large deals. These types of deals are reflective of repeatable types of strategic sales that I think we're going to see more and more across the business and are going to be a key component of growth into the future.

There will be some inherent lumpiness related to the timing of these deals. And as we've alluded to, I wouldn't really focus on one quarter. But I would say the overall pipeline is quite robust. The momentum is there. Q4, as you said, is a very strong quarter for us for a number of reasons, notably, there are things like concentration of contract renewals, client budgets, the year-end for our sales organization. And so yes, we're looking at an important fourth quarter here, and we've got the opportunities and the momentum to deliver. And I think we're seeing good momentum, not only into the fourth quarter, but heading into next year across those key growth engines for the firm.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Manav Patnaik

I guess I just wanted to follow up on that in terms of the big -- you called out a bunch of large contracts this quarter. It sounded like, Andy, you just said you expect more of those to continue. So we shouldn't treat these as timing perhaps. Just trying to get kind of a level check on the growth rate there. And then I just wanted to clarify your comments around how First Street is going to help the growth on the sustainable side, please?

Henry Fernandez

So look, I think as we expand MSCI into new use cases, new client segments, there is an incredible amount of innovation and new product launches at MSCI. And as we engage with clients, the number of large deals is going to increase.

Now each quarter, we're going to have a lot of large deals and it will make it a great quarter like this one and some deals will slip to the next quarter. And it may appear that the quarter wasn't that great. It will be a mistake to interpret it that way. The best way to analyze our performance is on a multi-quarter basis because these large deals are going to create differences quarter-by-quarter. And therefore, when we have a great quarter, we're going to get really excited. When the quarter is a little less -- is a little softer because a few deals, large deals, great, to the next quarter is going to look like excited and everyone is going to start worrying. The trend here is very positive. The trend is that we're picking up growth a little bit in asset managers. We're stable in asset managers with slightly higher growth, but importantly, in the no-asset manager segment, of course, as a base piece within index and ETF and all that. But in traders, and in hedge funds, in GPs, in [indiscernible] and asset owners, as you saw in this quarter, et cetera.

So I think that my best advice to all of you is to evaluate the -- not the financial metrics. The financial metrics get smoothed out by the accounting process. But the operating metrics in recurring new sales and retentions and cancels, you need to evaluate them on a multi-quarter basis. Otherwise, you're going to go crazy that you're going to feel very good one quarter and you're not going to feel not as good next.

Operator

Next question in queue coming from the line of Alexander Kramm with JPMorgan.

Alex Kramm

Yes. And just wanted to see if you can get you both to elaborate on the qualitative and the quantitative and something in your prepared remarks in the press release. You noted robust demand for both traditional and newer solutions. Maybe we could have Andy start off with dimensioning how much are newer solutions contributing to the net new number? And then maybe from Alvise or Henry, how we should think about what's resonating in market right now? And Yes. And then also, if you don't mind me tacking on, any comments you can offer on the largest deal you closed and what was different about that specific transaction?

Andrew Wiechmann

Alex. So let me give some color on the quantitative side. And as you said, I'll turn it over to Alvise to give some color on types of products where we're getting traction. He can comment on that big win we had, which is very exciting for us. As you know, we have seen not just this quarter, but this year, we've seen a meaningful increase in the contribution from new products to sales. That is something that is a key driver of growth, and we expect that to continue. In the third quarter here, that contribution to new sales from new products increased more than 50% compared to a year ago. And so we have seen a significant step-up in new products launched this year, but importantly, the monetization of those new products.

I would also highlight beyond just the monetization of the products themselves, that innovation, that development, the enhancements that we are making are also critical in driving improved retention, they also helped to support price increases, and they are key enablers for broadening the relationship with many clients. So this innovation is a key part of our growth algorithm on many fronts, not just the new sales contribution, but it's something that we think is really helping to fuel the repositioning of the company and opening up additional use cases and new client segments, new parts of the market and new solutions for us. So with that, why don't I turn it to Alvise to give some more color.

Alvise Munari

Thank you, Andy, and thank you, Alex, for the question. So we see a continued sustained demand for new solutions for portfolio [indiscernible]. The demand from all angles of the market for more customized, more bespoke portfolio solutions continues and that allows us to continue accelerating the success of our customer index franchise. We also help accelerate our mobile franchise, so we launched a custom model service. We're also building new factual pace. And we also are accelerating the new specialized data sets we are making available to our clients in the market. These are on a range of different aspects, portfolio constructions. There are some very specific new type of signals that we're putting out through our signal library effort on crowding, on specifics of factor models. And there is also new solutions where people build the optics [indiscernible]. And so this is all driving this continued growth of the portfolio ecosystems and is offering us, frankly, a very, very positive environment for the next several quarters to continue the expansion.

The other area that I would highlight is portfolio solutions. So on the one hand, a significant appetite for new total portfolio solutions, and we have very successfully gone to market in Q3 with a new total portfolio management offering for asset and wealth managers and also a new offering, specifically for wealth managers. This, again, are solutions which we see getting more traction in the quarters to come, and we'll continue supporting our growth.

We also delivered a substantial innovation in the multi-asset class risk space, namely by enabling a substantially lower latency intraday capability that will transform our complex multi-asset class investment organization can bring risk to the front office to inform decision-making.

Finally, I want to highlight what we're doing in the PCS space, the Promarket solutions, where, as it was alluded in the introductory remarks, thanks to the advantage of acquisition, we've brought to market a highly differentiated and valuable [indiscernible] and document management solution that is getting a lot of traction. And we also see that continuing and massively expanding its appeal to investors.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line of Scott Wurtzel with wolfe Research.

Scott Wurtzel

Similar question on the product side, maybe switching more of a kind of AI-focused topic. Wondering if, in your conversations with customers or any other deals that you're seeing with customers who are adopting AI products, are you seeing any uplift in deal size associated with that? Any color on that would be great.

Alvise Munari

Yes. So the solution I alluded to in my earlier answer, especially in the private market space, these are all natively genetic solutions. And it is not that people are buying them more because they are agentic, it is that they couldn't be delivered built without the support of latest chain NMS technology because -- simply because the amount of syntactic analysis that has to be done is only possible, thanks to the usage of latest gen NLM technology with the right training in the right context specifically for the analysis and understanding of private asset object.

So additionally, in the portfolio construction space, all the newest data sets we are releasing, again, are only buildable and can be delivered at scale and with the right consistency because of a massive use of agentic capabilities and clients understand that. So they see that this is intel, it's IP with a transformative value that we could have created before half.

Look, there is another step which is that we also are agentifying the way the clients can actually use some of these capabilities. So we delivered within our solution agents that are specialized and actually doing some of this portfolio construction capabilities for clients. We see this as being a game changer. The biggest limit, frankly, would be not our ability to build, but it will be the ability for the clients to accept this solution in their environment given that we are building agents.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank.

Faiza Alwy

I actually wanted to ask about operating leverage and profitability going forward. I know you've historically talked about reallocation of expenses and maybe AI-related efficiencies that are being reinvested in the business. I'm curious if your thoughts have evolved around is there a time where we can start to see higher operating leverage, maybe more margin expansion and potentially a decline in expenses?

Henry Fernandez

The answer is no margin expansion. MSCI is a company with incredible opportunities in a new world, which is a world of large amounts of data, huge number of models to help people understand portfolios, either investment portfolios, loan portfolios, insurance risk portfolios. And of course, the use of technology to do all of that. So in the past, one of the biggest problems of MSCI is that we've had an enormous number of very attractive organic investments that we haven't been able to fund because we didn't want to touch the margin. So now with AI, which I call [indiscernible], we have an incredibly positive algorithm, which is we're applying AI to the -- we divided up MSCI into running the existing business and the enhancement [indiscernible] and what we call growing the business, a lot of the new innovations, the new products. And in the running of the existing business and the enhancement of the existing business, we're applying AI significantly to gradually lower the growth rate of EBITDA expenses from mid- to high single digits, to the low single digits and eventually to negative growth. And then we want to put all that money into the growing of the business with all these opportunities that I mentioned earlier in order to expand into new use cases, new client segments, of course, new solutions powered by more data, more models and more technology.

So we believe that we have -- we're going to have probably a triple benefit of AI. The first benefit is the ability to free up capital to invest. The second benefit is that the products that we're creating, as Alvise described, we couldn't do them without genetic processes. And therefore, we can now do that, and we can expand faster, and the payoff is going to be larger per product as the second benefit.

And the third benefit is that we think that eventually we'll be able to disrupt the SaaS software, the SaaS industry by which our clients consume content from us, content means data and models and analytics with the agentic processes rather than this incredible investment in SaaS software that needs to be made and the like. Allow me an analogy here. I used to be a media investor in my private equity firm. And in cable -- I mean, in media, the transformations went from over-the-air transmission of media to cable transmission of media to streaming media. So the SaaS industries, the equivalent of cable. It makes -- it is an incredible investment to wire every house, every building, every day with copper wires and fiber optic wires etc.

So there came a streaming technology that for anybody who has access to an Internet connection, you can have access to all the content in the planet. So we believe that the cable TV type of industry is the equivalent of SaaS, and the streaming technologies is the agentic technology that could bypass all of that and we could get a big benefit as well and increase the number of users of our content all over the world. Instead of having 100, we now have maybe tens of thousands of users in our client organization. We got hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of user of our content and significantly expand our white space.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Kelsey Zhu with Autonomous Research.

Kelsey Zhu

Could you talk a little bit more about your investment into agentic-based AI solutions. And I know you just talked a little about that. the private market space earlier. But what new products and features are you building in the other segments? And how do you see that changing the competitive landscape for you?

Alvise Munari

Yes. Thank you for the question. So as I alluded to, another area that is being completely revolutionized by agentic capabilities is our model creation factory. So it used to take us several weeks to build and fully calibrate a new model. We can now do it in the space of a couple of holes. At some point, we'll be able to do it in the space of minutes. That transforms what these models can do because we will be literally capable of creating models on demand targeted exactly to the needs of a specific users in a way that it was never possible before. And this done with the same level of quality, integrity and the dependability that the MSCI [indiscernible] for decades.

Another area is the creation of new specialized data sets. So the ability to do fundamental analysis of not even companies, assets, both assets pointing to public companies and product companies through the use of different artificial intelligence technology is completely transformational. And this allows us to create product offering that are completely different than what we used to do before. So for instance, our geospatial offering is an example of that. We have just launched a few specialized data sets to help understand the AI value chain. And all of this depend on the agentic ability to basically map company's characteristics, company's revenues, company's assets, to very specific characteristics that it would be impossible to do just with humans.

Operator

Our next question in the queue coming from Owen Lau with Claire Street.

Owen Lau

I have a question about your free cash flow guidance. It's being maintained even though you did the results by quite a bit. I saw that interest expense weighed by $6 million. And Andy, you also mentioned higher investments, and we had lots of conversation about this investment already. But I'm just wondering, like, are these the main drivers of maintaining the free cash flow guidance? Or there are some conservatism baking your guidance? And also, do you expect some kind of incremental revenue or maybe lower expense in 2027 or beyond because of these investments?

Andrew Wiechmann

Sure. Yes. So I would highlight a couple of things. So free cash flow, as you know, can be a little lumpy quarter-to-quarter. So what we saw in the third quarter was heavily driven by 1 factor in particular, which was interest payments. So we had a significant increase of $50-plus million of additional interest -- cash interest payments in the third quarter related to the financing that we did last year. There can also be lumpiness related to tax payments, even timing of collections, other payment items. And so I wouldn't focus too much on any given quarter. The reason why we keep the full year guidance and we're confident about the outlook is the collections have been strong, so business growth to put it front and center. So as we continue to grow with the top line, as we continue to expand with clients, that translates through to cash collections, and that is what's powering the overall free cash flow for us, even though we do have, as you alluded to, higher expenses in areas.

I would highlight one of those items that I called out that's leading to higher expenses this year, namely the performance stock options and the additional accruals related to those as our financial performance improves. That's a noncash item. So there are some noncash items in those expenses that aren't going to impact cash flows.

Punchline is, as I said, there will be some lumpiness quarter-to-quarter. The timing of some of those items can push swings, but we continue to be confident about the momentum of the business and the top line growth, and that will over time translate through to better cash flows for the business.

As you know, that's a key part of our financial algorithm. We are always focused on driving very compelling EPS growth and free cash flow growth and particularly free cash flow per share growth over time.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

Keen Fai Tong

You mentioned double-digit growth across your non-asset manager segments. Can you put a finer point on where within the double-digit range that growth is running and whether that year-over-year growth accelerated from the prior quarter?

Andrew Wiechmann

Yes. And listen, I don't want to get too specific because the amounts can move around a little bit quarter-to-quarter here. But if you look on an organic basis across the organization, we saw solid double-digit growth with asset owners, as we alluded to, so north of 12%. Hedge funds, we continue to see as our highest growth client segment. So I think it was roughly 18% growth with hedge funds. You see roughly 10% growth in areas like broker-dealers and banks and elevated growth in other pockets as well. And so that collection of opportunities has been fueled by innovations that we've been making. As we've alluded to before, we've continued to develop new products and solutions that are fit for purpose for many of these client segments. We're also enhancing our go-to-market efforts around many of these client segments. Those are translating through to elevated growth, and that's going to be a key part of our financial algorithm driving that overall double-digit top line growth is continuing to fuel the opportunities across these client segments.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line Curtis Nagle Bank of America.

Curtis Nagle

Maybe a 2-parter. Just going back to how to think about sort of the expense structure. So appreciating you're not making a change to the, I guess, the net savings, right, because you're going to be reinvesting and it sounds like an accelerating rate. But in terms of the time line, Henry, to your point, getting to very closer to low singles, right, and maybe even negative on a gross basis. Is that something we should be compensating for next year? Or is that perhaps a longer time line? Just trying to think through, again, how to think through the reinvestment cadence and when that starts to maybe even accelerate further.

Andrew Wiechmann

Yes. And just to be specific on Henry's comments, I think you got this, but to be totally clear, the low single digits and potentially negative in the future, referred to or run-the-business expenses. So these are the expenditures in the business that are supporting the existing franchise and existing products as they are today. That's an area where AI is being transformative for us. So in our production environments within our data operations, our technology, organization, these are areas where AI is dramatically enhancing productivity and efficiency, and that is what's enabling us to take down the rate of growth on the run-the-business expenses.

As Henry alluded to, we intend to reinvest those savings. So those productivity enhancements are going into fueling these very attractive organic opportunities that we have in front of us. And so we do intend to reinvest. And so the overall expense trajectory and the financial algorithm is not changing per se, it's just AI is enabling us to invest more. And that is, if you will, I guess, I could say it's supercharging that algorithm. So it allows us to invest more, which is going to fuel more top line growth, as Henry said, with the same inherent operating leverage or inherent margin dynamics, and that's going to fuel over time, higher profitability growth for us.

And so it's kind of supercharging what we've done in the past. As we head into next year, there are some items that are positioning us well. So things like the severance which is running higher than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. A lot of the transformations that we've talked about are happening quickly and will continue to happen. Those are things that will help position our expense base for next year. There are also a number of broader initiatives that are positioning us well for next year.

Now we do intend to, as I said, reinvest a lot of those savings and productivity enhancements, but we've got the levers in our business to make sure in all environments, all dynamics, we've got the ability to flex up and down and continue to drive not only those investments, but also fuel very attractive profitability growth going into next year. And so I don't want to comment specifically on expenses or any targets for next year other than to say we're very confident in our position and the momentum we have in the business, and we think we are setting up well nicely for next year.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line of David Motemaden with Evercore.

David Motemaden

I just had a question on the MSCI connectors and what you guys are seeing so far as clients are building a genic workflows with embedded MSCI data. I'm just wondering if you have any insight into MSCI data consumption by agents and how that compares to human users? And then maybe how we should think about that playing out as agentic use cases continue to gain traction here?

Alvise Munari

Thank you for the question, David. Look, it's early stages. So we have built connectors for all the main LLM providers. And we've also agentified the experience through our own applications. And for the time being, the evidence is the clients prefer to use our content to our own directly trained and created capabilities. And look, there's 2 reasons for that. Reason number 1 is that the convergence rate is actually higher, not massively higher, but it's a few points higher. And so you get the better experience going directly via the MSCI application. And the other one is that the client space only has by and large limited capabilities at this point.

Look, most of our clients only have access to Microsoft Copilot, right? And so this will naturally make for a relatively slow rate of adoption via the mainstream connectors and a faster rate of adoption for the directly controlled connectors because you're just connecting to MSCI as you always has done historically.

That said, that will change. And so look, we're doing 3 things. On the one hand, we are accelerating our connectivity to all the main platforms, whether they are large companies or large cloud data provider company like Snowflake and Databricks. We are also, as I explained, continuing to invest in our direct agentified access capabilities. And then we're also building own agent capabilities to enable the content on the client side, as Henry alluded to, to transform the experience. but we don't know which 1 of these 3 will prevail, but we are preparing to support all 3. And then brad the market will show us what works best. As I said, it's very early stages right now for the reason I said the MSCI [indiscernible] are the most balance.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

Craig Huber

I want to talk about index recurring subscription run rate growth. It's obviously accelerated here in recent quarters, I guess, 10.7% in the first quarter this year, 11.5% in second quarter, now it's 12% here in the third quarter, obviously, up from 8.5% to 9.5% the prior 8 quarters. Can you talk about what's going on there in terms of how much AI is potentially helping those revenue growth numbers there? It's quite impressive acceleration there.

Andrew Wiechmann

Yes, Craig. So it has been encouraging. We've got good momentum there. As you said, we continue to see an acceleration. I'd say the themes at this point are consistent with what we've talked about recently. So we have a huge focus on building the trading and liquidity ecosystem around our indexes. And correspondingly, we have a very strong traction with hedge funds and traders. Within index, we saw a 32% growth with hedge funds, on the subscription run rate side, we saw a 15% growth with banks and brokers. A lot of that success was on the heels of many of the new modules that we have released. And as Alvise indicated earlier, our ability to develop these modules, these content sets is enabled by AI or ability to get to market faster is enabled by AI. So AI is definitely helping on the piece of innovation, the productivity front and that is helping to enable the sales.

I would say more generally across index, we are seeing good momentum, including in areas like asset owners and wealth managers where we're seeing 10% plus growth. And so we're seeing momentum across the board. Asset managers have been reasonably steady for us, but they are licensing more content from us. We're helping us -- helping them by licensing solutions that help them in, as you know, active ETFs help them move to be more systematic in their investment processes. And so we've seen pretty steady momentum with asset managers. And a lot of that is fueled by innovation, better services, access to more content that is fueled by underlying AI.

I would say looking forward here, there are dynamics that can even enhance that further. So I know we've talked about this a little in the past, but clients -- many clients are starting to want to have access to our content to be able to train models to use more content involved in an agentic investment process. This is very early days. And so the impact has been small to us at this point, but those are things that can create additional demand on top of all the great things we're doing today.

The last thing I would highlight, and we've talked about this a lot in the past, custom indexes, which are a reflection of that move towards systematic investing, and we are best positioned to be able to help clients make that transition. We saw 26-plus percent growth in custom index run rate, subscription run rate. And so we continue to have very strong momentum on that front. Our capabilities there are enabled by AI, and we continue to broaden our ability to do more custom indexes with a faster turnaround and that's something that's enhanced by AI.

So listen, we're very encouraged overall by the momentum in index subscription. It is fueled by the innovations we've been making and AI is an accelerant on that. So all good things for us on that front.

Henry Fernandez

Let me add one other comment when we sort of sit back and look at the totality of our index subscription business. In addition to the significant growth that we see and the focus on indices, on the assets, a lot of our business on index has been focused on monetizing the amount of assets that are in the ecosystem of our index, $23 trillion, which $8 trillion is -- more than $8 trillion is [ partly ] managed.

In addition to that, we have found huge white space in developing products on the trading of the assets. the trading of the asset, not just the assets, but the trading of the asset. So what data sets are going to help traders, market makers, broker-dealers exchanges, help facilitate the flow of trading of those assets. And that's what you see this significant growth in index in traders and hedge funds, for example. And we're not even yet penetrating the market makers. That's -- we're working on that, but that's not yet even on the numbers.

So we believe that this white space is going to create another layer of growth in our index subscriptions.

Operator

Our next question in queue coming from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.

Ashish Sabadra

I just wanted to circle back to an earlier question from Faiza on operating leverage. Henry, if I understood your comment that low margin expansion, did I hear that right? And is that just for -- I was just wondering if you could provide some time line around that no margin expansion.

And maybe just a follow-up there. Obviously, you've had a great track record of these investments. How should we think about the ROIC on these investments, but also how quickly do these investments translate into revenue growth?

Henry Fernandez

That's a great question, Ashish. Look, as one of the largest shareholders in the company, I would love to see high valuations today and the next couple of years. But I'd rather see a company double or triple the size in 10 years compared to what it would otherwise be if we let the margin rise. So we, for sure, have a huge inherent pressure, if you want to call it, in the operating leverage increasing. And it's not easy when you see that and having to mobilize to invest the additional sort of revenues, additional cash flows coming from the operating leverage.

When we sit down every year to analyze all the investments that we have, we have to stop. We have to draw the line on organic investments in places that have sometimes triple-digit returns, high double-digit IRR with relatively short payoff because we don't have the organic capital to do that, meaning we do have the capital, it's just that you got expense it first before you generate the revenues, and we do not want to lower the margin. for sure, but what we can do is not let it increase.

There will probably be a marginal increase in the margin because every time we budget on so, we build a cushion and lection typically doesn't get eaten. And therefore, there is 20, 30, 50 basis points of increases. But that is just because of the nature of our budgeting process and our conservatism, not because we're we're targeting an increase in the margin.

So the end result is our strategy is that we're going to like this company a lot better if it's 2, 3x bigger than it would otherwise be if we get the margin right because of the opportunities we have. So that's the process of doing all of this.

Now as I mentioned to you, we have a huge installed base of customers. We're gradually moving into new customers and new client segments. Everything we built is on top of an already existing infrastructure. So the larger the infrastructure like an index, the higher the payoff relative to a lower infrastructure. So the profitability of these organic investments are huge because as the sort of some costs of the infrastructure is built, the incremental money required or capital for a particular amount of payoff, the incremental capital goes down for the same payoff. So it's going to increase the operating leverage even more than before.

Operator

You next question in queue coming from the line up. Alex Kramm with UBS.

Alex Kramm

Just a quick follow-up from my part. On the asset manager customer base, first of all, Andy, I don't think you gave a specific number about the run rate growth. You usually do that. So it would be great to have that. But then more importantly, it sounds like a lot of the momentum, and this is a good thing, is coming from some of the new products and the newer customer bases. I think in the past, you may have talked about some of these newer products also applying to asset managers. So I'm just wondering are sales cycles longer there? Are you still confident that some of these new products can at some point also click into gear? And then do you have to change anything to maybe do a better job on the sales front with that customer base?

Andrew Wiechmann

Sure. So yes, just for reference, asset manager organic subscription run rate growth was around 6%. I mentioned within index, it was around 8%. As I alluded to, that's been reasonably steady for us. Retention is pretty steady as well, maybe slightly up -- very slightly up from a year ago.

Listen, there has been some benefit from several years of equity markets rising. We see reasonably healthy dynamics in many areas with asset managers and you can tell from [indiscernible] metrics and solid retention rates. There are still those secular pressures on asset managers and those are likely to continue. But as you alluded to, we are in a position to help them. And so we are innovating. We're enhancing our servicing model. We're helping them transition to those areas where they see asset growth and fee stability. And so we are in a good position to help them overall. And so we think asset managers are going to be an important part of our client base. They're an important part of the investment ecosystem, but they're going to be more of a steady grower, and we're expecting outsized growth from other areas.

And if you look at the environment and the backdrop for other client segments, we see it being pretty constructive in areas like hedge funds, banks, traders, asset owners, wealth managers. It's a pretty constructive backdrop with them. And obviously, index managers have been doing exceptionally well, and we've been doing well with them.

So overall, it's a pretty good environment. We've seen steady progress with asset managers, and we think we're in a good position to help them continue to evolve and adapt to changes in the investment process and the investment industry.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo.

Jun-Yi Xie

This is Jun-Yi Xie on for Jason. I'm curious what you're seeing from your hedge fund end market, and particularly quantfunds that have been consuming more of your data and new product launches. Do you think that there's a potentially cyclical component to this and some of this growth could moderate in fiscal year '27. Are you seeing these funds remain highly profitable with continued inflows that could potentially lead to more funds immersion that you can sell into?

Alvise Munari

Thank you. Very important questions. We see this as being a structural trend in the market, especially in the equity market, but we believe that the this income market at some point will also follow the same path. And the path is the following. The unit of conversation in the market has gone from being the single stock to being the portfolio. The portfolio, in all possible ways, possible -- logic possible designations. This is something which intrinsically requires a higher ability to make marketing complex objects at scale, at speed. And this is why, in the face of capital limitations from the traditional players, i.e., the broker dealers and the massive, massive increase of the demand from this portfolio ecosystem is making a very big opportunity get even bigger for the most sophisticated market makers and the hedge funds that effectively play the role of market makers to create an investment function.

Because this primacy is supported by very significant investment in the technology capabilities and superior access to the market. I think this is a trend that is there to stay.

Now can there be short-term reversal? Yes, of course, it can be, right? Market never goes in just one way all the time, but this is a structural transformation. And because, you said the unit, our conversation is the portfolio, and we are the portfolio guys. We're going to be in massive beneficiary of discontinued trend.

Operator

Our next question coming from the line Alexander Hess with JPMorgan.

Alexander EM Hess

Maybe just a quick follow-up on 2 initiatives that you guys are pretty -- that were pretty prominent for you and the story maybe a year ago. I would like to hear a bit more about the latest on active ETFs. And then has anything changed with respect to the Moody's private credit ratings partnership? I know they had an announcement out there with a third firm, so I would be interested to know on latest updates on both those fronts.

Alvise Munari

Yes. So on the activity front, as Andy alluded, we've seen significant growth because essentially, the vast majority of asset management firms of traditionally active asset management firms are converting many of the products at an accelerated pace into ETFs. The process of doing so entails a couple of ingredients. One, most of the time, the conversion takes the products to be closer to being systematically built products, which, of course, creates a lot of opportunities for our tools and capabilities throughout the managers do the transition. So Alex asked Andy earlier if some of the tools we've built for the broker dealer trading and hedge fund and market-making communities at some point will be usable for asset managers, the answer is absolutely yes. Because the growth of this activity at market will entail this obvious being managed more systematically at greater scale with greater level of customization and the cost we built to help create edge and book an tides market make us to do that will absolutely be fungible for us and managers.

And so we see that continuing and being a trend which we also facilitate Same for a lot of capabilities we're building in portfolio creation, [indiscernible] creation and the specialized data set that can be used to create specific flavors for this new activity of objects. So I said, I see the trend continuing and I see the trend being very positive for us.

Operator

And I'm showing there are no further questions in the Q&A queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Henry Fernandez for any closing remarks.

Henry Fernandez

Thank you, operator. Before we sign off, I would like to share that this is the final earnings call in which Jeremy Ulan will be serving as MSCI's Head of Investor Relations. At the end of this month, Jeremy will move to a new and exciting role at MSCI as the lead finance director for client segment or solutions. And as we expand into a variety of new client segments, we need better financial management for that, and Jeremy will provide that leadership in addition to his current role as [indiscernible] of the firm. Craig Carter, currently, our Head of Corporate Development, will take over as Head of IR.

I want to thank Jeremy for all his incredible contributions to the IR team, and welcome Craig to his new position.

Looking ahead, MSCI continues to expand our footprint with client segments, traditional client segments and newer client segments across the investment ecosystem as we accelerate our product innovation using AI and other advanced modeling and technologies. We have a great franchise for the age of AI. AI is the most useful in places where you have large amounts of data, big number of modeling and the use of a lot of technology, and that's what the MSCI is. We remain intensely focused on delivering long-term compound growth and long-term value creation for our shareholders. Thank you for listening, and we'll keep you posted throughout the quarter.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.