Key Takeaways:
- AI Investment Leadership: Over $1 billion invested in AI since 2018, with continued margin expansion throughout
- Price Projection: Based on the current trajectory, the stock could reach $673 by December 2027
- Potential Gains: This target implies a total return of 26% from the current price of $534
- Annual Return: Investors could see roughly 13% annual growth over the next 1.9 years
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S&P Global (SPGI) delivered record revenue, operating profit, and EPS in Q3, with revenue growing 9% year-over-year. But the headline numbers barely scratch the surface of what CEO Martina Cheung calls the company’s strategic transformation across data, benchmarks, and AI innovation.
- Market Intelligence accelerated to 8% organic growth—its strongest performance in six quarters. The Ratings division hit a 67% operating margin with double-digit revenue growth.
- And the company returned nearly $1.5 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, with an additional $2.5 billion buyback planned for Q4.
With collaborations spanning Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, and IBM for AI integration, plus the pending acquisition of With Intelligence to dominate private markets data, S&P Global is positioning itself as the essential intelligence provider across every asset class.
Despite generating nearly $4 billion in cash flow in two quarters, just for return to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, and achieving 50% adjusted operating margins, SPGI trades at $534, offering upside for investors who understand the company’s data moat and AI-powered growth strategy.
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What the Model Says for S&P Global Stock
We analyzed S&P Global through the lens of its evolution from a ratings and benchmarks provider into a comprehensive data and intelligence platform powered by proprietary AI capabilities.
The company’s business model creates natural revenue defensibility. Over 95% of revenue comes from proprietary sources—benchmarks, curated data, and embedded workflow tools that clients can’t easily replicate. Only about 5% comes from publicly available data.
Using a forecast of 7.6% annual revenue growth and 51.4% operating margins, our model projects the stock will rise to $673 within 1.9 years. This assumes a 27.2x price-to-earnings multiple.
That represents a modest compression from SPGI’s current P/E of 27.6x. As the company scales its AI investments, integrates with Intelligence, and expands its private markets footprint while maintaining margin discipline, the multiple should hold near current levels.
The real value lies in sustainable margin expansion paired with high-quality revenue growth across divisions.
Our Valuation Assumptions
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Our Valuation Assumptions
TIKR’s Valuation Model lets you plug in your own assumptions for a company’s revenue growth, operating margins, and P/E multiple, and calculates the stock’s expected returns.
Here’s what we used for SPGI stock:
1. Revenue Growth: 7.6%
S&P Global’s growth engine operates across multiple resilient revenue streams.
Market Intelligence Acceleration: Organic growth hit 8% in Q3, driven by competitive wins like a major investment bank choosing Capital IQ Pro as its primary desktop. ACV (Annual Contract Value) growth reached 6.5-7%, up from low-6% earlier in the year, signaling sustained momentum.
Private Markets Expansion: Revenue growth doubled to 22% year-over-year, driven by strength in private debt issuance and middle-market CLOs. The With Intelligence acquisition adds differentiated data on private equity, private credit, infrastructure, hedge funds, and family offices—sourced directly from asset allocators and fund managers.
Ratings Resilience: Q3 ratings revenue grew 12%, with particular strength in high-yield and structured finance. The maturity wall through 2026 sits 8% higher than this time last year, while the wall through 2028 remains robust.
AI-Powered Innovation: Document Intelligence 2.0 within Capital IQ Pro now allows users to analyze multiple documents simultaneously. The company achieved its merger revenue synergy target of $355 million on a run-rate basis, well ahead of schedule.
2. Operating margins: 51.4%
S&P Global demonstrates exceptional margin discipline while investing in future growth.
Current Performance: Q3 adjusted operating margin reached 52.1%, up 330 basis points year-over-year, with expenses growing just 2% against 9% revenue growth.
AI Efficiency Gains: The company consolidated 8,000 data operations employees into an enterprise data office, reducing redundant activities and tool costs. In Commodity Insights, AI tools now assist with content creation and data synthesis, generating multimillion-dollar savings.
Division Strength: Market Intelligence expanded margins by 360 basis points to 35.6%. Ratings hit 67.1% margins with 540 basis points of expansion. Indices delivered 71.2% margins.
Investment Without Sacrifice: Despite investing over $1 billion in AI since 2018, the company delivered margin expansion every year except 2022, proving it can innovate efficiently.
3. Exit P/E Multiple: 27.2x
The market currently values S&P Global at 27.6x earnings. We assume slight compression to 27.2x through our forecast period.
Reflects Quality Premium: SPGI’s P/E has averaged 28.6x over the past year and 29.7x over five years. The current multiple reflects a maturing business model with proven profitability balanced against continued growth investments.
Defensibility Warranted: S&P Global deserves a premium multiple due to its proprietary data moat (95% of revenue from sources competitors can’t replicate), market-leading positions in Ratings and Indices, 50%+ operating margins, and strategic AI positioning with collaborations across Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, and IBM.
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What Happens If Things Go Better or Worse?
Data businesses face technology disruption and competitive pressure. Here’s how SPGI stock might perform under different scenarios through December 2027:
- Low Case: If revenue growth slows to 6.4% and margins compress to 35%, the stock still offers a 6.4% annual return.
- Mid Case: With 7.1% growth and 37.6% margins (our base assumptions), we expect an annual return of 12.7%.
- High Case: If AI adoption accelerates and With Intelligence integration exceeds expectations with 7.8% growth and 39% net margins, returns could hit 18% annually.
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The range reflects different adoption curves for AI features and private markets integration.
In the low case, competition from Bloomberg and Refinitiv intensifies, or AI disrupts data workflows faster than S&P Global can adapt.
In the high case, Document Intelligence drives deeper client engagement. With Intelligence opens significant cross-sell opportunities, hyperscaler partnerships create new revenue streams, and enterprise clients consolidate spending with SPGI to reduce vendor complexity.
How Much Upside Does S&P Global Stock Have From Here?
With TIKR’s new Valuation Model tool, you can estimate a stock’s potential share price in under a minute.
All it takes is three simple inputs:
- Revenue Growth
- Operating Margins
- Exit P/E Multiple
If you’re not sure what to enter, TIKR automatically fills in each input using analysts’ consensus estimates, giving you a quick, reliable starting point.
From there, TIKR calculates the potential share price and total returns under Bull, Base, and Bear scenarios so you can quickly see whether a stock looks undervalued or overvalued.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
