Good day everyone, and welcome to the Moody's Corporation fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded and that all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the request of the company, we will open the conference to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations, p lease go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Moody's fourth quarter 2020 results and our outlook for full year 2021. I'm Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. This morning, Moody's released its results for the fourth quarter of 2020, as well as our outlook for full year 2021. The earnings press release and the presentation to accompany this teleconference are both available on our website at ir.moodys.com. Rob Fauber, Moody's President and Chief Executive Officer, will lead this morning's conference call. Also making prepared remarks on the call this morning is Mark Kaye, Moody's Chief Financial Officer. 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 a reconciliation between all adjusted measures referenced during this call and 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 meanings 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, 2019, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, 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 statements, 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 will now turn the call over to Rob Fauber. Thanks, Shivani. Good morning, thanks to everybody for joining today's call. I'm going to begin by summarizing Moody's full year 2020 financial results, then I'll provide an update on our strategic direction. Following my commentary, Mark Kaye will provide further details on our fourth quarter 2020 results, as well as our outlook for 2021. After our prepared remarks, we'll respond to any of your questions. First, on behalf of the entire Moody's management team, I'd like to extend my appreciation to our employees for their steadfast dedication and resilience. Your remarkable adaptability and commitment to providing our customers with world-class service and supporting each other to our continued success, and we're really proud of your accomplishments. Our employees helped Moody's achieve record results in 2020, with revenue growth of 11% and an increase in adjusted diluted EPS of 22%. Against a backdrop of heightened credit market activity, Moody's generated $3.3 billion in revenue. That was up 15% from the prior year. Moody's Analytics also performed well, with revenue totaling $2 billion, up 6%, and demonstrating the strong value of our solutions during these unprecedented times. For 2021, we project Moody's revenue to increase in the mid-single-digit percent range. It's driven by our expectation that strong growth from MA and a favorable issuance mix for MIS will offset an expected decline in global debt activity. Moody's 2021 adjusted diluted EPS is forecast to be in the range of $10.30-$10.70. In 2021 and beyond, we're going to continue to deliver solutions that meet our customers' evolving needs by integrating and leveraging our data and analytic capability and investing in innovation. In addition, recent acquisitions, combined with organic investments, position us well for the future and reinforce our long-term growth opportunity. We continue to emphasize our role as responsible stewards of our stockholders' capital. While investing in the business remains our top priority, we'll seek to return approximately $2 billion to our stockholders this year in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Turning to full-year results, Moody's revenue grew an impressive 11%, with record revenues from both MIS and MA that increased 15% and 6% respectively. On an organic constant currency basis, MA revenue increased 8%. Moody's adjusted operating income rose 16% to $2.7 billion, and the adjusted operating margin expanded 230 basis points to 49.7%. Adjusted diluted EPS was $10.15, up 22%. We achieved many milestones in 2020. For the first time, revenue at MIS and MA surpassed $3 billion and $2 billion respectively, with MIS having rated more than $5.5 trillion in global issuance. We made significant progress in delivering for our stakeholders. During 2020, we made an $11 million contribution to The Moody's Foundation. That was to support the work to empower people with the financial knowledge, resources, and confidence they need to create a better future and to reach their potential for themselves, their communities, and the environment. The events of the past year have also underscored the importance of a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, both internally and externally. In this past year, we launched a number of initiatives to further support diversity and inclusion, both across our company as well as within the communities we operate, including $2 million in commitments to support equal justice and educational opportunities. On the environmental front, we furthered our sustainability leadership by enhancing our disclosures and establishing clear commitments to environmental sustainability. As a result, Moody's was recognized by CDP with an A score for addressing climate change. In 2020, amidst the pandemic, we continued to invest in our business and position the company for ongoing growth. In a range of product launches, we also acquired or invested in companies that complement and enhance our products and solutions and expand our market reach. In September, we restructured our ESG assets under a single unit. This aligns our efforts across the firm, it strengthens our thought leadership in the ESG space, and it better positions us to meet the needs of the market. Turning to MIS, credit market activity reached record levels in 2020, and especially for non-financial corporate issuance, which grew over 16% from its previous high in 2017, and was 34% above its prior five-year average. Both investment-grade and speculative-grade debt benefited from a favorable environment as issuers fortified their balance sheets and opportunistically refinanced debt. However, leverage loan volumes remained modest for most of the year, despite an uptick in M&A activity in the fourth quarter. Mark's going to provide some details on MIS's 2021 issuance expectations when he discusses our guidance. Now, pivoting to MA. We continue to see significant growth in recurring revenue, which now comprises over 90% of its total. This has been driven by our strategic focus on building our subscription-based business with mission-critical products and services that are embedded into customer workflows that support strong customer retention rates. As a result, MA's margin has grown 480 basis points over the past three years. This expansion is inclusive of the organic and inorganic investments that we've made in the business. Before I turn it over to Mark, I thought I'd provide some thoughts about the opportunity in front of us. To do that, I think it's helpful to reflect on our journey as a company over the last 15 years, in which we've expanded our capabilities in order to meet the evolving needs of our customers. Back in 2007, we formed Moody's Analytics. That was the first step in broadening beyond the rating agency through the development of software and analytics businesses. From 2017- 2020, we built out some very substantial data and analytics capabilities, starting with the acquisition of Bureau van Dijk, one of the world's largest company databases. We complemented that by adding depth across people, properties, ESG, and climate, just to name a few. This strategy has positioned us well to serve a wide range of risk assessment markets where data and analytics and delivery are all enabled by Moody's. Looking forward, organizations face a complex, interlinked world of risks and stakeholders. COVID has accelerated the digitization of manual processes across the financial sector and the importance of resilience and scenario planning. For organizations managing a variety of risks that just weren't on the radar screen years ago, from ESG to climate to cyber to financial crime, they're seeking a more 360 view of risk, of who they're connecting to and who they're doing business with. To do this, companies are increasingly incorporating alternative data sets into their core risk processes, and they're looking for insights amidst the proliferation of data. There are a variety of stakeholders influencing companies to better identify and manage these risks. Includes regulators, customers, employees. There's some significant financial and reputational impact for not managing these risks effectively. With this as a backdrop, looking for trusted partners who have the scale, the rigor, capabilities to help them make decisions about a wider range of risks. As Chief Executive Officer, I'm focused on three key areas to meet these market needs and to realize the full potential we have as an integrated risk assessment business. First, our understanding of how our customers' needs are evolving and delivering solutions that can draw on the breadth and depth of our capabilities. Second, investing with intent to grow and scale, deepening and extending our presence in expanding risk assessment markets, as we've done successfully with Know Your Customer. Third, collaborating, modernizing, and innovating with a focus on technology interoperability and data access that allows us to maximize our data analytic and technology capabilities on behalf of our customers. Of course, this is all underpinned by supporting and developing our people so that we have the skills and the engagement needed to drive the business forward. For the last year, we've referred to Moody's as an integrated risk assessment business. Today, we serve a wide range of risk assessment use cases and end markets collectively worth more than $35 billion. Our largest risk assessment business, of course, is the rating agency. It serves fixed-income issuers and investors. As Moody's has evolved, we now help customers with everything from customer onboarding to commercial lending to sustainable investing and a number of other areas, as you can see around this circle. What's been a winning formula for us over the years has been combining our data, analytics, and insights with our deep domain expertise in technology enablement to provide solutions for customers to identify, measure, and manage risk. We're not just a data company or a software company, but a company that has a unique combination of strengths and assets, as well as a deeply trusted brand. We continue to invest in our people and these data sets and analytics capabilities, as they're all increasingly important across a growing number of risk assessment use cases and markets. That's what we mean by an integrated risk assessment business. Now, earlier this week, we announced our intention to acquire a company called Cortera. We're excited about the valuable assets that they're building Moody's portfolio, including a world-class database on private companies in North America and one of the most comprehensive databases of commercial credit information featuring data and analytics on six million companies. We put Cortera's data into our offerings to better serve several markets, including commercial lender onboarding supply chain management. By combining the data from Cortera with Moody's proprietary analytics, we look forward to helping our shared customer base make better decisions about their business relationships. Cortera builds on several acquisitions we've made over the past few years, beginning with the Bureau van Dijk business in 2017, followed more recently by RDC and Acquire Media this past year. Together, they form a comprehensive suite of reference and entity data and AI technology to serve a range of use cases, including among other things, KYC and compliance. In 2020, Moody's Analytics generated approximately $525 million in annual sales of these solutions. We expect them to produce high- teens growth in 2021. The know your customer and compliance use case, in particular, is generating over $200 million in annual sales and is projected to grow by over 25% in 2021, continuing to be our fastest-growing risk assessment market. I'm now going to turn the call over to Mark to provide further details on Moody's fourth quarter results as well as our outlook for 2021. Thank you, Rob. In the fourth quarter, Moody's total revenue increased 5%, with MA and MIS contributing 8% and 2% of growth respectively. Moody's adjusted operating income of $531 million was down 5% from the prior year period. Solid revenue growth in the quarter was outpaced by increased operating expenses, including non-recurring items such as severance and incentive compensation. This resulted in a 410 basis point decline in the adjusted operating margin. Fourth quarter adjusted to diluted EPS was $1.91, down 5%. For MIS, fourth quarter 2020 revenue benefited from favorable issuance mix across all lines of business, increasing by 2% against a 3% aggregate decline in global MIS rated issuance. Financial institutions was the largest contributor in the fourth quarter, growing 12%, double the 6% increase in issuance. This was driven by infrequent U.S. bank issuers taking advantage of the low rate environment. Corporate finance revenue grew 2%, despite a 9% decline in issuance. This was primarily the result of strong contributions from both U.S. leveraged loans and speculative grade bonds, as issuers continued to opportunistically refinance debt and support M&A deals. Revenue from Public, Project and Infrastructure Finance declined 3% against a 12% increase in U.S. public finance activity, with many issuers addressing funding needs earlier in the year to avoid potential election-related volatility. In structured finance, revenue decreased 11% compared to a 31% decrease in issuance. This is primarily due to lower CMBS activity, despite signs of improvements in CLO. In the fourth quarter, first-time mandates grew 32%. For the full year, we received approximately 700 new mandates. MIS expense growth included non-recurring costs such as severance related to business efficiency initiatives and incentive compensation accruals associated with strong full-year performance. Consequently, expense growth outweighed revenue expansion for the quarter, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of 48.3%. On a full-year basis, MIS' adjusted operating margin expanded 170 basis points to 69.7%. Moving to MA, fourth quarter revenue grew 8% or 5% on an organic basis. Continued robust demand for KYC and compliance solutions drove a 21% increase in RD&A revenue or 11% on an organic basis. This was further supported by sustained customer retention rates in the mid-90% range and strong sales of research subscriptions and data feeds. In ERS, low double-digit recurring revenue growth, driven by strong demand for our insurance products, was offset by an expected decline in comparable year-over-year one-time software licensing fees and implementation services, resulting in an overall growth rate of 1%. Growth in ERS' subscription products, the acquisition of RDC, as well as the divestiture of [MAKS] in 2019, all contributed to a 5 percentage point increase in MA's recurring revenue, now comprising 91% of its total, up from 86% in the prior year period. In the fourth quarter, MA's adjusted operating margin increased 280 basis points, benefiting from lower year-over-year incentive compensation accruals. For the full year, MA's adjusted operating margin increased 160 basis points, supported by growth in recurring revenue as well as expense efficiency initiatives. Turning now to Moody's full year 2021 guidance. Moody's outlook for 2021 is based on assumptions regarding many geopolitical conditions, macroeconomic and capital market factors. These include, but are not limited to, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, responses by governments, regulators, businesses, and individuals, as well as the effects on interest rates, foreign currency exchange rates, capital markets, liquidity and activity in different sectors of the debt market. The outlook also reflects assumptions regarding general economic conditions, the company's own operations and personnel, and additional items as detailed in the earnings release. Our full year 2021 guidance is underpinned by the following macro assumptions. 2021 U.S. GDP will rise approximately 4%-5%, and Euro area GDP will increase in the range of approximately 3.5%-4.5%. The U.S. unemployment rate will gradually decline to between 5% and 6% by year-end, and benchmark interest rates will remain low, with high yield spreads falling below approximately 450 basis points. Finally, the global high yield default rate is expected to decline below 5% by year-end. Our guidance assumes foreign currency translation at end-of-quarter exchange rates. Specifically, our forecast for 2021 reflects U.S. exchange rates for the British pound of $1.37, and $1.22 for the euro. These assumptions are subject to uncertainty, and results for the year could differ materially from our current outlook. In 2021, we project that Moody's revenue will increase in the mid-single digit percentage range, given our approximately flat revenue outlook for MIS and the expectation of low double-digit growth in MA. Operating expenses are projected to increase in the mid-single digit percentage range as savings generated from our cost efficiency programs are reinvested in key strategic initiatives. I'll provide more detail on these shortly. After expanding Moody's adjusted operating margin in 2020 by 230 basis points to 49.7%, we are projecting 2021's margin to remain in the range of 49%-50%. We estimate net interest expense to be in the range of $190 million-$210 million. The full year 2021 effective tax rate is anticipated to be between 20% and 22%. Diluted EPS and adjusted diluted EPS are forecasted in the range of $9.70-$10.10, and $10.30-$10.70 respectively. Free cash flow is expected to be in the range of $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion, and we plan to return approximately $1.5 billion through share repurchases subject to available cash market conditions and other ongoing capital allocation. Additionally, today we announced an 11% increase in our quarterly dividend, bringing the total expected capital return to stockholders in 2021 to approximately $2 billion. For a full list of our guidance, please refer to table 12 of our earnings release. For MIS, we estimate that revenue will be approximately flat year-over-year, with global rated issuance projected to decline in the high single-digit percent range. We forecast that full year investment grade and high yield activity will decline approximately 30% and 5% respectively. In contrast, we anticipate leveraged loan issuance to grow by approximately 10%, supported by increased M&A activity. Structured finance issuance is expected to grow in the 15%-20% range due to increased asset formation and loan volumes contributing to larger pipelines from CLO creation. In 2021, we expect 700-750 first-time mandates with the strongest contribution from leveraged finance activity. First-time mandates contribute both to the current year's transaction revenue base and to recurring monitoring fees. MIS' adjusted operating margin will remain stable at approximately 60%. Disciplined cost management is enabling ongoing investment back into the rating agency, enhancing our offerings and delivering greater value to our customers. For MA, we project 2021 revenue to increase in the low double-digit percent range, supported by high single-digit constant dollar organic growth, as well as recent M&A activity and favorable movement in foreign exchange rates. Robust customer demand for KYC and compliance solutions, including contributions from the recent Cortera, RDC, and Acquire Media acquisitions, support future RD&A revenue growth. This expansion is further reinforced by strong retention rates for our research and database products. For ERS, we anticipate recurring revenue to continue growing at a double-digit rate. As we de-emphasize one-time sales, we expect that transaction-based revenue will decline 20%-30% year-over-year. MA's adjusted operating margin is projected to be approximately 30% in 2021. Our outlook assumes continued positive margin expansion of approximately 50-100 basis points, inclusive of ongoing organic and inorganic investments in the business. Last quarter, we highlighted $80 million-$100 million of cost savings from our expense management initiative that we would be reinvesting back into the business in 2021. In addition to the KYC and compliance opportunity, our focus is on investing to meet our customers' evolving needs in ESG and commercial real estate. We are also strengthening our presence in emerging markets, including China and Latin America. Furthermore, we continue to invest in our IT infrastructure and product development. Over the long term, these investments will reduce costs, promote interoperability, and accelerate decision-making. Before turning the call back over to Rob, I would like to highlight a few key takeaways. Following a record year that validated our strategic direction, we're pleased to provide a robust outlook for 2021. This is driven by high demand for our data analytics and insights, and reaffirms our long-term growth opportunities. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged, and we prioritize attractive opportunities to invest in our business before returning capital to our stockholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Finally, we believe that Moody's long-term sustainability is best served by meeting the needs of all of our stakeholders. By actively supporting our employees, customers, and communities, we are able to demonstrate our commitment to sustainable future and create enduring value for our stockholders. With that, let me turn the call back over to Rob. Thanks, Mark. This concludes our prepared remarks, and Mark and I would be pleased to take your questions. Operator? Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, simply press the star key followed by the digit 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. As a reminder, star one if you'd like to ask a question. Alex Kramm with UBS, please go ahead. We'll hear from Judah Sokel. Hi, can you hear me all right? Yeah, we sure can. Okay, great. Thank you for taking my question. The first question I wanted to ask was about margins, specifically the margin outlook for 2021, thinking about balancing operating leverage from the top line with reinvestment. Appreciate the color that you guys gave in the extra investments that you're making in emerging markets and taking some of the cost savings. Generally, you guys have done great with margin expansion over time, yet here we have a year coming up where margins are going to be a little bit more constrained. How do you think about that balance of driving margin expansion using top-line growth that you will have in 2021, especially in MA, coupled with the need to continue growth via reinvestment for growth? Thank you very much for the question. This is Mark here. We are constantly pushing to increase margin while ensuring to your point that we are balancing that against the need to invest in the business to maintain and accelerate top-line growth. As we noted in the prepared remarks, there are a number of exciting investment opportunities that we've identified for 2021, and we're going to take advantage of those while preserving the margin at approximately 49%-50% for the year after having, and we spoke about this, expanded the margin by 230 basis points in 2020. If I give a little bit more color in terms of how that's broken down, that might also be helpful. If we think about creation of margin in 2021 through operating leverage, that's probably 50 basis points-100 basis points, and that's going to come from things like scalable revenue growth, a little bit of a benefit from the reset of our interest compensation accrual. If I think about creation of additional margin from savings and efficiency, that's probably between 140 basis points and maybe 180 basis points to the positive. That's going to come from things like our restructuring program, which we can speak about later in the call, increased automation, utilization of lower-cost locations, procurement efficiencies, real estate efficiencies, et cetera. Those positive margin creations are going to be offset then by organic investments that we're going to be making back into the business. We spoke last quarter about that $80 million-$100 million that we're going to be reinvesting into key strategic areas, which we can talk about further in the call if you would like. Around 50 basis points-100 basis points from some of the recent M&A acquisitions that we've done. Of course, there's that math element in terms of business mix where MA is full cost of work faster than MIS in 2021, and that's probably a headwind of around 25 basis points. If you put that all together, you get a sense of how we're managing the portfolio of businesses to ensure continued margin expansion while we invest in for growth in the future. We'll hear from Alex Kramm of UBS. Can you hear me now? Hello? Yes, Alex, we can. Yeah. Oh, hey. I don't know what happened there earlier. Anyways, maybe starting off on MIS, and sorry if I missed the last question, but can you perhaps unpack the delta between your issuance forecast and then also how you get to the flat revenue forecast? I am particularly interested in the recurring revenue given the solid issuance that we had last year, and then also obviously pricing and mix. Any comments there would be helpful as well. Thank you. Yeah, Alex. Maybe let me talk to you a little bit about the 2021 issuance outlook. As I said back in October, we still think issuance is going to be down modestly year-over-year, and we're guiding to being down in the high single-digit percent range. I would say, while we expect some very robust issuance activity to continue, we've got some favorable market conditions. The challenge is that the year-over-year growth is we've got some very tough comparables after two very strong issuance years between last year and the year before. Our outlook assumes that these constructive market conditions continue largely and that for 2021, widespread distribution of a vaccine and improving economic growth. Certainly, we're seeing continued recovery in M&A activity, and we're seeing a lot of now sponsor-driven activity, and sustained central bank support, and potentially another round of stimulus. All that, I think, will be underpinned by a continued low rate environment that's going to be supporting of refinancing. That means I think we're going to see growth in some areas like we have a rating and assessment service that supports M&A activity, leverage finance, various parts of structured finance, and so on. Alex, maybe let me take it by sector, and then you can get a sense, and you can do your own compare and contrast. For investment grade, we're looking at something like a 30% decline, moderating after what we all know was an extraordinary issuance year last year. In particular, U.S. corporate investment-grade issuance was up almost 80% in 2020. That is just a very tough comparable. That said, our outlook for 2021 investment grade would still be one of the strongest years on record. We think issuers are going to continue to come to market driven by refinancing and amidst all the, as I said, kind of ongoing low rates, tight spreads, and M&A activity. Leverage finance, we think that high-yield bonds will remain elevated relative to recent years. You can see we're estimating a very modest decline of 5%. I think high-yield activity outside the U.S. should improve after a relatively slower year in comparison to the U.S. I think we'll see that investor demand should remain quite strong in the ongoing search for yield. Thinking about leverage loans, we actually think we're going to see some growth there coming off of obviously more subdued activity in 2020, but also being driven by M&A and LBO activity that's going to help support the issuance. When you think about structured finance, we see that improving somewhere in the range of 15%-20%. It's a mixed bag as you think about the different components of structured finance. ABS growth we think will be supported by asset classes like auto loans, where we're seeing some good activity. Maybe a little bit more muted in places like credit cards and student loans. We'll see some growth in RMBS. I think we'll see some modest growth in CMBS, the market for whole asset securitizations, even though you've got some parts of the commercial real estate market like hotels and retail that are experiencing some distress. As you know, as we think about CLOs, we also look at what's going on with the leverage loan market. We think there'll be some growth in CLOs with just that stronger leverage loan supply and tightening spreads in the CLO market. Maybe just one other thing I'd add, just in public finance, a very strong year generally for public finance. We'd expect that to remain elevated, but at levels consistent with last year. Did you care to talk about the recurring versus transactional pricing as a follow up question? Sorry. Yes. Sorry. From a recurring revenue standpoint, I think we'll be looking at probably something in the low to mid-single digits. We've gotten some questions about just kind of thinking about how we characterize recurring revenue versus others. I think if we included our rating assessment service and excess issuance fees and issuer rating fees, we'd be looking at something like a mid-single digit recurring revenue growth. I think in general, when you look at it on a full year basis, pretty comparable outlook for recurring revenue. Okay. Secondarily, if that's okay, a quick one. Just on CCXI, definitely some headlines in December on China, which is obviously an important topic for a lot of people. Can you just flesh out how you're feeling around that you're really considering that they're essentially out of the market for a few months and really highlighted that maybe the market is ready for a different rating agency arrangement over there, if that's the right word? Thank you. Yeah, Alex, maybe just to touch on that, obviously CCXI had a license suspension. It was a three-month suspension coming at the end of December. They're taking a number of actions to address that. I guess as I think about the China strategy more broadly, we've got the MIS cross-border rating business. We've got the MA business in China. Really no impact to that. In terms of the domestic rating market, obviously it's unfortunate that CCXI had this issue. They do remain the leading domestic credit rating agency in China. I think early signs from the Biden administration don't lead us to think that U.S. policy towards China is likely to soften meaningfully. I think for us, looking at this, the environment for majority-owned U.S. firms in important sectors like credit ratings will remain challenging to be truly successful over the long term. We're going to continue to collaborate with CCXI like we have been on things like commercial engagement. I guess I would also say, Alex, that given some of the challenges we've seen in the domestic credit rating industry, we're also thinking about how we can capitalize on the demand for things like green finance and insights into small businesses and know your customer solutions. Now thinking beyond CCXI, right? in 2000 in October, we set up a new dedicated product development group based in Shenzhen to develop data and analytics and other offerings for China's domestic risk markets. In November, we acquired a minority stake in a company called MioTech, and they're kind of a cutting-edge provider of alternative data and insights serving the ESG and KYC markets in Greater China. The last thing I'd say is, given the importance of sustainability and green finance in China, we'd also made an investment in a company called SynTao Green Finance, and we're very excited about that and helping to support the growth of that market. All right. Very helpful. Thank you. Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Thank you. Rob, maybe you can help us understand your thoughts around M&A. Would you say you're more open to large deals, or would you continue to stick to small or medium tuck-ins? What would be sort of the most attractive for you in an M&A target, and what return thresholds do you look for? Yeah. Toni, thanks for the question. I'd say our M&A criteria remain very consistent, and we've talked about that over the years. What we're really looking for are things that are going to advance our strategy. I laid that out in my prepared remarks. Cortera is an interesting example, right? Because there's a company where we were able to acquire data that we thought was very valuable across multiple customer segments and risk assessment use cases. That's very attractive. Another good example, Toni, would be what we did with climate, right? We bought 427 a couple of years ago, but that climate data is now being used in the rating agency, and it's being integrated into a wide range of risk offerings across MA, in addition to the standalone 427 offerings. Those kinds of opportunities are very interesting to us, where we can acquire data and analytic capabilities that have relevance across a range of risk assessment use cases. That's what you've been seeing us do with some of these acquisitions we've done in commercial real estate and more recently Cortera. I would just say that when you've got very strong industrial logic like that, it helps us meet the kinds of return criteria that we have had for years. That's great. Then you've mentioned in the past your ESG revenue was about $15 million-$20 million. Can you just update us on where that stands now and how fast it's growing? Then what particular areas of focus within ESG are you looking at in 2021 relative to initiatives where, and where do you see just the most opportunity there? Toni, good morning. This is Mark. In 2020, our ESG revenue was approximately at $17 million. We're looking to grow that by around 25% in 2021, really through discrete sales to external clients. The interesting piece about the ESG revenue for 2021 is, of course, in addition to that, looking at another $5 million-$10 million for revenue that will be earned through either MIS using their data and analytics to inform or ESG data and analytics to better inform MIS ratings and enrich the research that we produce. Through MA, where we can continue to pilot and develop new products, including distributing ESG through CreditView and CreditEdge in some of our platforms. There are a lot of exciting developments that we have going into 2021 in terms of how we're thinking about our ESG products. Those, for example, include integrating our climate and ESG content into CreditView, updating, and this is something we just did, our physical risk scores for over 5,000 listed companies, and that's leveraging, of course, BvD data and our [HÅRD] methodology. Of course, increasing our coverage around transition risk. Finally, of course, incorporating ESG within credit, having ESG issuer profile scores, ESG credit impact frameworks. There's a lot of opportunity that we're capitalizing on this space. It's not just about the isolated ESG business, but how it integrates more holistically across MCO. Thank you. Ashish Sabadra of Deutsche Bank. Thanks for taking my question. Rob, thanks for providing the color on the integrated risk assessment market and your focus on the KYC and compliance, obviously very high growth areas. I was just wondering if you think about your growth going forward, in addition to KYC and compliance, are there other use cases or geographies which you think are pretty attractive from a group perspective? Thanks. Ashish, first of all, welcome to the call, and it's great to have you. Just to clarify, you're talking about kind of our portfolio more broadly. Is that right? That's right. Yeah Growing the business outside of even KYC and compliance. Thanks. Yeah. Maybe a couple things I would say. First, I'm going to talk about kind of the broad portfolio of RD&A in MA, because that's obviously where we have that business today. There's a portfolio of content there. Obviously, the KYC and financial crime solutions is one, and we see some very strong growth rates behind that. There's also just a lot of demand for data and analytics on private companies. That's to support integrating that data into commercial lending decisions, supply chain management decisions. Transfer pricing is another place where we're seeing some growth. Then we've also got in that broader portfolio within RD&A, a lot of credit research data tools that are also increasingly incorporating content, as Mark said, like ESG and climate and cyber. We're building out our commercial real estate content because we've got a lot of demand there from our core customer base around analytics and workflow tools for lenders and investors. We're also seeing some good demand for our economics content. You think about that as being used to support scenario analysis and market planning and stress testing. That's very helpful color, Rob. Maybe a quick question on the organic growth for the MA business, the high single-digit group, if you could help parse the growth from RD&A, the recurring growth in ERS, then obviously, Mark, you talked about some of the headwinds from shift to the subscription model. Any incremental color that you could provide on individual pieces there, that'll be helpful. Thanks. Absolutely. I think forward to 2021, specifically in terms of growth here, we think the majority of growth is likely to be driven through our RD&A segment. Rob spoke earlier, we spoke in part of the prepared remarks around ERS and the ongoing transition of that business to more of a recurring revenue basis. That will offset some of the decline in one-time sales in the ERS space. If you're thinking about attributing some of that low double-digit guidance, the majority will come through RD&A in 2021, then we'll see a smaller growth but still growth within the ERS over the year. That's very helpful. Thanks, Mark. Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Hi, good morning? I was hoping you could provide a bit more detail on the different strategic investments you outlined on slide 23. Maybe some examples of investments you're making that you're particularly excited about. Also wondering, is there any single initiative there that's outsized relative to the others in terms of both investment spend and total opportunity? We certainly feel very positive about some of the areas that we're investing that $80 million-$100 million of cost efficiencies into. Just to give you a sense, maybe we can start on the commercial real estate side. Both growth through our Reis business and then the integration, obviously, of some of the datasets that we're producing and many of our adjacencies into those commercial real estate products. I think just simply about the KYC and compliance, it's about that further integration of the Acquire Media, RDC, BvD, Cortera-type datasets that really then begin to allow us to create synergistic opportunities. Of course, on the ESG side here, how we're beginning to build through, as we spoke a minute ago to Toni's question, of the creation of new products and opportunities that give a holistic integrated risk view out to the market. Maybe let me add to that, Mark, just specifically focusing on KYC and compliance and the company and reference data, because we've made a lot of investment there and we're continuing to make investments there, both organic and inorganic. We're now 3+ years out from the Bureau van Dijk acquisition. You remember that puzzle page there on the webcast. We're now thinking about this business more holistically inside of MA. Collectively, our company and reference data business is growing sales of something like the high teens. That suite of data products is performing very well. We're continuing to look at opportunities to complement that Orbis data. You've seen us do that with RDC. That's where we got all the people data Acquire Media with all the adverse media and the Cortera acquisition, giving us even more data on private companies and commercial credit. We're continuing to invest in building out what we think of as the world's most useful and usable database on companies. Let me give you an example of the kind of thing we've done recently. This is one of our organic investments, part of the integration of Bureau van Dijk and RDC. We just completed the first commercial release where we're bringing together the Orbis database and all of its corporate hierarchy data with all of the data on people risk profiles in RDC. That's all in one simple interface and screening tool. That is very powerful. It creates a lot of efficiency for our customers. We think it's one of a kind in the market. That was really the promise of the acquisition of RDC, was to put all that in one place for our customers, and we've had some immediate customer traction with this. Great. That's helpful. Maybe a follow-up to that KYC discussion. Obviously, it's among the faster-growing opportunities at Moody's from a margin perspective. As that becomes a bigger part of M&A, is that accretive to kind of the long-term margins for that business or pretty consistent with the segment as a whole? Absolutely. As we think about longer term, the KYC opportunity continues to be very attractive for us, both from a revenue and a margin perspective. We're not necessarily as focused on margins in the very near term as we build out and integrate that business. We're very focused on ensuring that margin profile approaches something like the BvD margin profile over the medium term. That really gives you a sense of how we're balancing that revenue growth versus margin profile over the next 12 months to 18 months. Overall, big scale business and a generally attractive margin profile. Great. Thanks a lot. Manav Patnaik of Barclays. Thank you. I just wanted to focus on Cortera as my first question, if that's okay. I was hoping you could give us a little bit more on how big that asset is, how it's growing. You are already partnered with them, I believe. To tie into that also, just wanted to see how much of the gap does that fill for kind of the U.S. coverage that BvD didn't have, I suppose. Yeah. Manav, good to hear from you. Look, I think the acquisition of Cortera, it's not a big acquisition, but it's important. It's an important next step in enhancing this data business that I've been talking about, particularly in the U.S. and Canadian market. They're already an important data contributor to our Orbis database. We've known Cortera for years. In fact, we worked with them on the Know Your Supplier portal that we rolled out last year during the height of COVID. We have a really good working relationship with them. As I said, their data's already contained in the Orbis database. By owning Cortera, we now unlock the access to really their full suite of reference and trade credit data. As I said, 36 million companies with something like 1.5 trillion data points. It's just an enormous amount of data that we think is going to have real relevance across the Moody's franchise. A key part of that is their contributory accounts receivable network, and that gives great insights on the company spending and commercial credit. You asked about growth. I mean, frankly, Manav, I think they've really been focused on building out the data asset rather than really focusing on growth. They have a very small sales force, so the data is going to enhance our offerings, as I said, in multiple end markets. Then, of course, we're going to enhance their offerings. We've got a lot of great proprietary credit and company data and analytics. We've got a global sales force, a big sales force in the United States to better serve Cortera's core market and our shared customers. Okay. Got it. I guess the little data puzzle you're putting together all across Moody's Analytics, I can call it that, seems pretty exciting. I was just wondering, how do you see ERS fitting with this puzzle within Moody's balance? Yeah. I guess the way I might think about it, Manav, is we've got an enormous content engine, right? As you're getting a sense, this company and reference data that we talked about that is kind of the puzzle piece, that's a big part of it. Now we've got other content engines, right? The rating agency is producing an enormous amount of content. We've got commercial real estate capabilities. We have, I think of it as kind of several ways to distribute that. One of them is through ERS, right? ERS is effectively software that is being used and embedded into customer workflows in banks all across the world, and it gives us an opportunity. I almost think of it as kind of risk as a service. Maybe that's the term I'm going to coin on this call. We're putting a lot of that content. You can imagine the data, the analytics, we're putting that content through those software as a service solutions, right? We're also leveraging that content in our research business, and then we're looking for other ways to be able to distribute that content, whether it's through APIs, whether it's through partnerships with third parties. Just a big content factory, and I think of the software as a service business, the ERS business, as one of the platforms for distributing that content. The other thing I'd say about ERS is it's deeply embedded into very important workflows at these financial institutions, so it is very sticky once it's installed. Okay. Thanks for that, Rob. George Tong of Goldman Sachs has our next question. Hi. Thanks. Good morning? I wanted to dive deeper into your operating margin expectations by segment. Holistically, you're expecting margins to be relatively flat this year. Assuming MA margins continue to increase, how are you thinking about MIS margins and the sustainability as the issuance levels begin to normalize? George, good morning. This is Mark. Maybe I'll step back for one minute and I'll talk a little bit about fourth quarter, then I'll talk a little bit about expectations for 2021 after that. You're very aware, based on our press release this morning, that the fourth quarter margins for both MIS and MA themselves were down. If I look at MCO in total, it's really the primary driver for that. Fourth quarter expenses grew by 16%. Primary drivers of that, call that 11% of the 16%, were really attributable to what I think of as unlikely to reoccur factors. Five percentage points of that 16 was restructuring and severance expenses on our efficiency programs. Three percentage points of that would relate to sort of incentive stock and commissions on strong sales performance. Around three percentage points of that would relate really to the M&A impact as we continue to invest for growth. The underlying core expense base there was really salary increases and hiring, and that was probably only 2%. It's very consistent, very disciplined, very controlled. If we step back from Q4 and we look at 2021 as a whole, we feel very comfortable in terms of maintaining our operating expense base to be supportive of the revenue that we're able to achieve in 2021. That's what led us to give confidence in guiding towards that approximately 60% for that MIS margin outlook for 2021. Got it. That's helpful. Switching gears, if you look at your issuance expectations, you're looking for high yield issuance to be down about mid-single digits off of difficult comps. You also cited some factors that could be very conducive to high yield issuance, like low default rates, low spreads, improving macro environment, M&A activity, et cetera. How would you handicap the potential upside or downside versus your base case expectations for high yield? George, I might even kind of broaden the lens out and just kind of talk about the puts and takes overall to issuance. Then maybe I'll also touch on just kind of what we're seeing in the market right now in leverage finance. I think in terms of upside, if we see a faster than expected health recovery leading to a faster than expected economic recovery, I think that could provide some upside. We could see some things coming out of the Biden administration that may be supportive of issuance, whether it's around infrastructure or public finance. M&A is a wild card, we've expected M&A activity to pick up to what looks more like levels that we've seen in kind of 2018, 2019. It's possible that we could see M&A activity go beyond that. That would provide some upside also specifically to the leverage finance market, right? Leverage loans, M&A activity, sponsor activity would be very positive to the leverage finance market. Maybe from what could be a headwind, you've got a lot of companies that have a lot of liquidity. We have to see what the companies are going to do with all of that liquidity, whether they're going to use that to pay down debt, whether they're going to use that to make acquisitions, invest in their business. Of course, if we see things drag out in terms of health and economic recovery, that I think will probably lead to some downside in issuance. Interestingly, and Mark and I were talking about this the other day, if we see things get worse with COVID, I don't think we expect to see another surge in liquidity-driven financing like we saw in the second quarter of last year because we've still got companies that still have very healthy cash positions. Very helpful. Thank you. Owen Lau of Oppenheimer. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. Just want to quickly go back to the expense guidance, up mid-single digits. Could you please talk about your assumption in terms of the T&E and marketing? Do you also include, for example, additional severance and incentive or any charges related to real estate or reorganization? What are the key drivers of this expense growth? Thank you. Owen, good afternoon. If I think about the attribution of the 2020 actual expenses to our 2021 outlook of mid-single digit growth, it's probably, let's call it four primary categories. The first category is really that savings and efficiency, the $80 million-$100 million that we anticipate creating, that's probably 3%-3.5% of that expense base. The whole point of those savings and efficiency is that it's going to enable us to self-fund many of the opportunities that we see in 2021 as well as to be able to enhance our technology infrastructure to better enable automation, innovation, and efficiency. That investment base that it's going to go to is probably also going to consume somewhere between 3% and 3.5%. You could almost see the savings and efficiency and the reinvestment back into the businesses washing itself out. You've probably got around 2%-2.5% of expenses related to that incremental M&A activity. That's going to be a big driver of that sort of guidance towards mid-single digit growth. We've got a little bit of FX in terms of headwind. The dollar's depreciated over or expected to depreciate over 2021 versus in 2020, and that's probably another 2%-2.5%. Of course, we don't expect to have sort of that same degree of restructuring and impairment charges. That will give you a sort of sense of the breakdown in terms of our thinking in coming up with that mid-single digit guidance. You had one specific question on T&E expenses, and we certainly have modeled an increase in T&E expenses as we move through the year. We're probably going to return to a more normalized level by the time we get to that third, maybe fourth quarter. It's still going to be lower than those historical levels that we would have experienced pre-pandemic as we become more efficient and more effective in communicating with our customers and our workforce. That's very helpful, Mark. My follow-up is, thank you for the color on slide 15. I think it's very helpful. Could you please talk about maybe the pace of the integration in terms of these offerings? How do you expect you can fully realize the synergy of these four great assets and drive additional growth and penetration in subjects, the sum of its parts? Thank you. Yeah. I guess I might start by just going back to Bureau van Dijk, we had put some synergy targets out into the market at the time of the acquisition, we effectively achieved those. We feel very good about the integration of Bureau van Dijk into the business. RDC is the other kind of big asset. RDC has performed very well, in line with our expectations since we acquired it. The example I gave to you earlier on the call, that integration of RDC's GRID database into the Orbis database to create a one-stop shop into what we call Compliance Catalyst, is a great example of one of the most important things that we wanted to achieve with the RDC integration, was getting all that content that's relevant for our customers in one easy place for them to use. Our integration of RDC, that's a big milestone for us, so we feel very good about that. We just bought Acquire Media back in October. We actually stood up what we call an integration management office. As we've had a number of these bolt-on acquisitions, and we wanted to make sure that we're able to get out the business value as quickly as we can and get these corporate integrations done as quickly as we can to realize really the full potential of what we're acquiring. Got it. Thank you very much. Jeff Silber of BMO Capital Markets. Thanks so much. You might have answered this earlier, I just wanted to get a little bit of clarification. I think Toni had asked about your M&A strategy. Would we expect going forward most of the acquisitions would be in the MA area as opposed to MIS? Is there anything in MIS that might look attractive to you? Yeah, historically, that has been the case. There just aren't that many scaled opportunities to build out the rating business. You did see us make an investment last year in a Malaysian rating agency. That was important for us because it's one of the largest sukuk Islamic finance markets in the world. We thought that that was an important opportunity to kind of augment the global rating capabilities around Islamic finance. As you kind of look around the globe, there just aren't that many sizable domestic markets. We're in them. We're in India, we're in China. The other thing I might say is, I think we highlighted in the webcast deck, we have been building out a platform in Latin America. We call it Moody's Local, and that's basically think of that as kind of a pan-regional approach to domestic markets in Latin America so that we can provide locally tailored products with local analysts to meet local market needs. We've been getting some good traction with that. Again, there just aren't that many sizable opportunities. You look over at MA, and you look at the size of these addressable markets that I talked about and the growth rates, and the nature of demand from our customers. I think you'll see that trend continue, that we'll make regionally focused investments in the rating agency, and then we'll continue to build out our presence in these risk assessment markets in MA. Okay. That's helpful. Then a quick question for Mark. Just looking at your MIS revenue guidance, can you scope out what the impact of acquisitions would be in 2021? Thanks. Sure. Good afternoon to you. If I think about MIS for 2021, we are looking at organic growth consistent with our overall outlook of approximately flat for the year. Inorganic acquisitions would be relatively immaterial to our overall MIS outlook for 2021. Forgive me. I meant MA. I'm sorry about that. All right. Jeff, I had assumed MA, I wasn't 100% sure if I should say ignore it and give you. It's been a long week. No problem at all. That is true. In terms of M&A on MA, we're looking at around two to three percentage points of growth from the inorganic acquisitions that we've completed over the last several months. All right. Fair. Thanks again. Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners has our next question. Thank you. Mark, I just wanted to get a little more clarity, if I could, on the costs for the fourth quarter. What was the incentive comp there, please, and what was it for the full year? More importantly, can you quantify for us how much of the cost in the fourth quarter would you think are non-recurring? I know you guys call out this $30 million restructuring charge in your presentation packet and press release, but what else is in there that you can quantify that's so-called non-recurring? I have a follow-up. Good afternoon, Craig. Let me start with the 2020 full year incentive compensation number. That was approximately $246 million. It is very consistent with the 2019 number, as you will recall, of the $237 million. If I think forward to 2021, the incentive compensation is expected to be between $50 million- $60 million per quarter. It is a little higher than what we had in 2020, really as we bring on and align the incentive compensation plans of those inorganic acquisitions into our business. I thought it might also be helpful to touch on the expense ramp that we anticipate in 2021, addressing your question. From Q1 to Q4, we would look to guide to between $45 million and $55 million, primarily driven by selective growth in some of the investments, additional salaries and benefits, an increase in team to some extent, and there are really other costs that support our overriding revenue growth line. The expense numbers from the fourth quarter, just to close out completeness for your question, really restructuring expense was probably the biggest one there. That was around $36 million. Then really that incentive compensation stock and commission, that was above our normal run rate. That's probably another $23 million. Those are the ones that I'd suggest to adjust down. Thank you for that. Rob, if I could just ask you, with the new Biden administration here, outlook seems to be with higher corporate tax rates potentially, perhaps we get increased regulations out there. Can you maybe just touch on that, basically a reversal of the prior administration, what that potentially could mean for debt issuance once we get to that stage? Also about regulations on the rating agencies in general. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how will that change and impact on ESG perhaps favorably. Thank you. Yeah. Craig, happy to do that. In regards to a potential increase in corporate taxes, I don't think it's the first priority of the Biden administration. I think the COVID recovery and then the economic recovery are really the near term focus. We may see discussions in the back half of this year for potentially something in 2022. In terms of how it could impact issuance, maybe we'll roll the clock back to when there were all these questions about what would happen from a decrease in corporate tax rates. Remember all the concern about the reduction of the value of the tax shield, right? Was that going to reduce, negatively impact debt issuance? Our answer at the time was, well, it's certainly a factor, but it's just one factor that drives debt issuance. I guess I would say kind of looking the other way, that in theory, the tax shield's going to be increased, but it could also be limiting to some extent the free cash flow of issuers. I think in general, I would expect this to be pretty modest. They're talking about a 28% rate. That's still lower than where the tax rate was before any of this change. I think I would just look at things like the pandemic economic growth, low rates for longer geopolitical factors. I think they're going to be more impactful than what looks like a relatively modest change in the corporate tax rate. You mentioned ESG. Certainly the Biden administration is very focused on climate change. They've already announced the intent to rejoin the Paris Agreement. It's one of their top priorities. I think what we're going to see is more ESG disclosures for one in the United States. I think there's a real desire to just get more comparability, consistency, availability, verifiability, if that's even a word, and a desire to kind of harmonize around a framework. I think ultimately that'll be good for the market. That'll be good for us as a provider of ESG data and analytics. I think we're very well positioned to capitalize on the increased focus on ESG. Great. Thank you. Next we go from Kevin McVeigh at Credit Suisse. Great. Thanks. Just to follow up on the ESG, just any thoughts as to restructuring and how that relates and how it may affect business with further restructuring and how it can impact the rest of Moody's? Kevin, this is Mark. You're just confirming, just because the audio got broke up a little bit there. You're specifically asking about the restructuring programs that we're putting in place or something different? Yes. Yep. That's right, Mark. Right. Kevin, in late December, we approved a new restructuring program that we estimate is going to result in annualized savings of something between $25 million-$30 million per year. That program specifically relates to the strategic reorganization within the MA reportable segment. We also put in place, just as a reminder, in July, a separate restructuring program primarily in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, that was around the rationalization and the exit of certain real estate leases. If I put those two together, total restructuring charges in 2020 were around $50 million. We expect that those 2020 actions are going to generate a little bit more than maybe $30 million in run rate savings. Now, if I broaden the lens just for a second and I sit back, and I think in total since mid-2018. Including our expectations for 2021, our rationalization and efficiency initiatives will have created almost $180 million in run rate savings. We probably, as a rough order of magnitude, invested about 50% of that towards expanding the margin. You certainly saw the benefit of that in 2020, and about 50% of that reinvesting back into the business to support future growth. That's super helpful. With the issuance at work, does that factor any of the $1.1 trillion or similar that's being debated now in where there's potential increase in infrastructure, even just green energy overall? Does that factor in any benefit from this stimulus or similar that's put in place from now, or would that be negative to both the GDC and i8's outlook you folks have framed out today? Yeah, I think in general, we have an assumption that there will be a stimulus package. I don't think we've necessarily tried to quantify the size of it in our assumptions around issuance. If there were no stimulus package, that would be a negative to our outlook. I think in terms of things like infrastructure, I think that was sufficiently uncertain enough for us as we were thinking about our outlook that we hadn't incorporated specifically or explicitly some sort of infrastructure package and what the upside. If there were a meaningful infrastructure package bill, I think that could provide some upside, and I think you'd see that in our PPIF segment and ratings. Thank you so much. Shlomo Rosenbaum of Stifel. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I just want to hone in a little bit on that Cortera acquisition. While Cortera, besides focusing on banks and providing some of the information for your scores and stuff like that, their trade credit is actually pretty interesting, and they've been kind of a perennial thorn in the side of D&B. Is that something that you guys are planning to pursue further, to be more in the trade credit area? Can you elaborate on kind of the strategy on that part of that business? Yeah. You're right, that trade credit data is really interesting, valuable data, was part of the appeal of that acquisition. As we've said, I think you're going to see us thread that through our offerings, ranging from know your customer. We've got a Procurement Catalyst that supports supply chain risk management. It'll be useful there. You can imagine us, we're thinking about integrating that into our commercial lending solution. A number of ways that we see monetizing that trade credit content. I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of content, right? Obviously, through not only Orbis, but all of our credit capabilities. We think there's some opportunities to enhance their core offering. We have a big sales force here in the United States, and better serve their core market. Okay. Is that, yeah, we could be more heavy in the trade credit area? Is that the way to understand, besides obviously enhancing the other part of your business? There are multiple ways to win here, would be my answer. Okay. Just Mark, is Cortera part of your guidance as well in terms of the growth or not? Shlomo, we have incorporated Cortera into our guidance for 2021. Maybe if I just step back and I think about both Acquire Media, ZM Financial, Cortera and Catylist, just in aggregate, this might be helpful. The relative adjusted EPS impact for our 2021 guidance is relatively small. It's probably around $0.05 or so. The margin impact, as we spoke a little bit earlier on the call, is a bit more impactful. We see around that 130-ish basis points impact to the MA adjusted margin and around 60 basis points negative impact, obviously, to the MCO adjusted margin. That might give some color in terms of those recent acquisitions and how they impact our guidance for the year, fully incorporated. Thank you, Mark. Great. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question or make a comment, press star one at this time. We'll now hear from Simon Clinch of Atlantic Equities. Hi, guys? Thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if we could cycle back to what you're building within RD&A. Really, I'm interested in how competitive the environment is for acquiring these sort of data assets that you're hoping to continue doing. Obviously it's not gone unnoticed that this is a very desirable part of the market. I was just wondering how you think about that competitive environment and how and why Moody's should win in sort of getting the assets that you want. Simon, great question. It's a very competitive market. It's a frothy market. You see the valuations are quite expensive. We have always had a very disciplined approach to M&A, which I think puts a real premium on the industrial logic of these acquisitions, right? Because we want to make sure that we are the natural owner for these assets. That the industrial logic gives us ways to really enhance and monetize what we're buying. You go back to Cortera as a good example, right? I talked about the value of the data, putting it through multiple of our product offerings. When we looked at Cortera, and I think they felt the same way, it felt we were the natural owner for that business. I feel the same way about RDC. That's because when you think about what's going on with our customers, back to some of my prepared remarks, our customers have huge pain points around understanding the risk of who they're onboarding as customers and monitoring those. It has historically been a fragmented manual approach. The real promise of RDC was to be able to put all that together for our customers. That then allows us to be competitive in a process where there are other parties that are looking at these assets. That you've seen certainly other companies are investing in anti-financial crime and know your customer because it's a very high-growth space. It's a very attractive place to be. That industrial logic allows us to not only be the ultimate owner but also to meet our acquisition criteria at the same time. Okay. Thank you. Just following up on ERS. I just want to make sure I understand this right. There's some fantastic growth in the recurring revenue line. You're effectively winding down the sort of one-time transactional side of that business. I just wanted to make sure I understood sort of how long that sort of wind down should last and when we should start to see that really strong growth from the recurring side flow through more optically. Through the total revenue line. Yeah? Yeah. Simon, you've got it exactly right. Mark touched on it earlier. We've got low double-digit recurring revenue growth. That is the focus for us, right? Is building up the recurring revenue, the subscription part of the business. As you saw in the fourth quarter, that was almost fully offset by that decline in one-time sales. We had talked about one-time sales being soft back in 2020. We also had a very tough comp on one-time sales. The reality is I'm not sure I'd say winding down, but I would say de-emphasizing. There are some customers who still only want an offering through a licensed solution. In that case, we're probably going to sell it to them. Our real focus is on recurring revenue. We are kind of pushing through right now where you're seeing the overall top line is a little bit soft relative to what it's been historically. That recurring revenue line is very strong. Simon, maybe to give you also just a little bit of insight into what is driving that low double-digit revenue growth for recurring revenue. There are really three main things I would cite. One is insurers. They're seeking our help in getting compliant. You've heard us talking about IFRS 17 regulatory requirements. That stuff is very computationally demanding. Some of you may remember, we bought a company called GGY a few years ago, and that GGY product suite, along with our own internal product development, has really set us up nicely to capture the demand there. We're not only just adding new customers, but we're building new modules, we're adding analytic capabilities, and we're deepening our penetration with the existing insurance customer base. That's a great story. Second, we've got ongoing demand from U.S. financial institutions to comply with the credit loss reporting requirements. Third, you've heard us talk about CreditLens, our commercial lending application in the past. Again, we're deepening our penetration with our existing bank customers. We're adding modules and capabilities that they need. This is another land and expand story, and a great example of that, we launched an automated spreading tool called QUIQspread that came out of our accelerator. It was really an employee-driven innovation that worked its way through the accelerator, and that's now we're selling that alongside CreditLens, and it's in use at over 40 global banks. That's what's driving the demand, and as you said, we're going to continue to have some headwinds. I don't know exactly how long that's going to be. I would imagine it's the next couple of years as that one-time line continues to decline. Okay. That's very useful. Thank you very much. Once again, star one if you'd like to ask a question or make a comment. We'll pause for a moment. It appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call over to our presenters for any closing or additional comments. Yeah, I guess I would just say thank you for joining today's call. I hope you all are well, and we look forward to speaking with you again in the spring. Thank you very much. This does conclude Moody's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. As a reminder, immediately following this call, the company will post the MIS revenue breakdown under the fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings section of the Moody's IR homepage. Additionally, a replay of this call will be available after 3:30 P.M. Eastern time today on Moody's IR website. Thank you, y ou may now disconnect.