Key Stats for Moody’s Stock
- 52-Week Range: $402 to $547
- Current Price: $451
- Street Mean Target: $536
- Street High Target: $610
- Analyst Consensus: 12 Buys / 4 Outperforms / 7 Holds
- TIKR Model Target (Dec. 2030): $710
Moody’s Posted a Record Quarter and Raised Guidance. The Selloff Has Not Caught Up
Moody’s Corporation (MCO), the credit ratings and data intelligence company that grades the debt of corporations, governments, and structured products worldwide, posted record Moody’s Investors Service revenue of $1.15 billion in Q1 2026, up 8% year over year, while simultaneously raising its full-year adjusted diluted EPS guidance to a range of $16.40 to $17.00.
Rated issuance surpassed $2 trillion in Q1 for the first time in company history.
Adjusted diluted EPS came in at $4.33, up 13% year over year and ahead of the Street’s estimate of $4.22.
Free cash flow reached around $844 million in the quarter, up roughly 26% year over year, giving management the firepower to raise full-year share repurchase guidance by $500 million to approximately $2.5 billion.
Moody’s Analytics, the $3.6 billion subscription-driven arm that sells risk models, KYC compliance tools, and credit data to financial institutions, posted ARR of $3.6 billion, up 8% year over year, with KYC growing 13% and the Lending Suite growing 18%.
“As AI adoption accelerates, it is driving demand for Moody’s decision-grade connected intelligence in high-stakes environments,” said CEO Rob Fauber on the Q1 earnings call.
The five largest hyperscalers had already issued as much debt in Q1 as they did across all of 2025, with several jumbo AI-related transactions totaling more than $100 billion driving investment-grade issuance to near-record levels.
Private credit-related revenue in Ratings grew more than 80% year over year, as investor demand for independent credit assessment rose alongside scrutiny of the private credit market.
On June 9, Moody’s held a dedicated investor call on its generative AI strategy, presenting three pillars: Connected Intelligence (proprietary data covering 600 million entities and 2 billion ownership links), Agentic Workflows built on that data for credit risk, KYC, and insurance underwriting, and a Distribution layer delivering both through partnerships with Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, and AWS.
The MCP app inside the Claude environment, which Moody’s believes is the first of its kind, lets licensed users run credit memo and KYC workflows without leaving Claude, querying Moody’s data through a controlled interface rather than receiving raw data dumps.
Moody’s retains the customer relationship, controls pricing and fulfillment, and has contractually prohibited all partners from training on its data.
Track Moody’s Analytics ARR growth and MIS issuance trends in real time on TIKR for free →
Why 16 Analysts Still Target $536 for MCO Despite a 17% Pullback
Moody’s stock enters June with 16 analysts covering it and a consensus that sits firmly in bullish territory, 12 Buy ratings and 4 Outperforms against 7 Holds and zero Sells, with a Street mean target of around $536 and a Street high target of $610.
At the current price near $444, the mean target implies roughly 21% upside, a gap that has widened as the stock drifted lower while fundamentals moved in the opposite direction.
The forward earnings trajectory is what the bulls are anchored to. Consensus EPS for Q2 2026 is estimated at around $4, with full-year 2026 normalized EPS projected at around $17, representing roughly 13% growth year over year.
Beyond 2026, the estimates table shows normalized EPS continuing to compound: Q1 2027 consensus sits at around $5, with the growth rate holding in the high single digits across the next five quarters.
That compounding is structural, not cyclical. MIS revenue is anchored to long-duration funding needs across AI infrastructure, energy transition, and private credit, while MA recurring revenue at 98% of the segment total is as close to contractually assured as software revenue gets.
The bear case is AI disruption: that large language models will commoditize Moody’s data and disintermediate its analytics workflows. The June 9 call was designed to address exactly that fear, and the key point from Head of Generative AI Solutions Cristina Pieretti carries weight: “You cannot build decision-grade agents on poor data,” and Moody’s data is auditable, traceable, and continuously curated across more than 170 proprietary sources, which means the AI threat is actually the AI tailwind.
The risk the bulls are watching is issuance volatility. CFO Noemie Heuland guided that if volatility persists, MIS revenue growth would moderate to the mid-single-digit range, which would push full-year EPS toward the low end of guidance.
With $536 as the mean target and $610 as the high, and with the business generating record revenue and raising guidance, Moody’s stock looks undervalued at around $444, pricing in execution risk that the Q1 results do not support.
Moody’s Stock Runs Ahead of S&P Global on EPS Growth and the Gap Is Widening Into 2027
Moody’s stock’s normalized EPS of $4.33 in Q1 2026 pulled further ahead of S&P Global’s $4.82, but the more instructive comparison is the trajectory heading into 2026 and 2027, where MCO’s growth rate outpaces its nearest peer on a percentage basis.
S&P Global’s EPS is expected to reach approximately $4.93 in Q2 2026 against Moody’s approximately $4.18, a dollar gap that has persisted for several quarters — but Moody’s EPS is projected to compound to approximately $4.76 by Q1 2027, implying roughly 10% growth year over year from the Q1 2026 actual, while S&P Global reaches approximately $5.63 in the same period, roughly 17% growth from its own Q1 2026 base.
The spread is not a deficit; it reflects different business mix, with Moody’s carrying a heavier subscription-revenue weight in Analytics relative to S&P Global’s market intelligence division, which produces a different margin and growth profile at the EPS line.
What the comparison confirms is that both businesses are compounding EPS through the same structural demand drivers — debt issuance, private credit growth, and AI-related infrastructure financing — making any discount Moody’s stock trades at relative to S&P Global on a price-to-earnings basis a valuation gap to examine rather than a quality gap to explain away.
Is Moody’s Stock Undervalued in 2026? TIKR’s $710 Model Points Well Past Street Consensus
TIKR’s base case values Moody’s stock at approximately $710 by December 2030, implying roughly 57% total return from the current price near $444, or approximately 10% annualized over the next 4.6 years.
The mid case assumes a revenue CAGR of roughly 7%, net income margins expanding toward approximately 37%, and EPS compounding at around 9% annually, consistent with the current trajectory and the mix shift toward high-retention subscription revenue.
If revenue growth holds closer to the low end at around 6% — a scenario that reflects slower-than-expected MA expansion and muted MIS issuance in the back half of the decade — TIKR’s model puts the stock at approximately $783 by 2030, implying roughly 73% total return, or around 7% annualized.
If the AI distribution partnerships accelerate ARR growth and the analytics business expands margins toward the high 30s as Heuland has guided for end-of-2027, the high case points to approximately $1,260 by 2030, a roughly 179% total return at around 13% annualized.
All three scenarios imply that Moody’s stock’s current price is embedding a pessimism about the business that the operational data does not support. The June 9 AI presentation is not a pivot, it is an articulation of where the revenue actually comes from, and the valuation gap it implies is the argument.
Is Moody’s stock a good investment in 2026?
The operational case is strong. Q1 2026 produced record MIS revenue of $1.15 billion, adjusted EPS of $4.33 (up 13%), and free cash flow of around $844 million.
Management raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $16.40 to $17.00. The stock trades around 17% below its January peak, giving investors a wider entry point than the fundamentals justify.
TIKR’s mid-case model targets approximately $710 by December 2030, implying roughly 10% annualized returns from current levels.
What do analysts say about Moody’s stock?
Sixteen analysts cover MCO as of early June 2026, with 12 Buy ratings, 4 Outperforms, and 7 Holds.
The Street mean target is approximately $536, implying roughly 21% upside from the current price near $444.
The Street high target is $610. No analyst carries a Sell.
The consensus reflects conviction in the company’s dual-segment model, with the AI disruption debate treated as a tailwind rather than a threat by the majority of covering analysts.
Should You Invest in Moody’s Corporation?
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