Right. Hello everyone. Thank you very much. I'm Alex Kramm, Senior Research Analyst at UBS, covering exchanges and business services. With me here to kick off my portion of the program is Andy Wiechmann, CFO at MSCI. Thanks for being here in. Of course. Scottsdale for the first time. Great to be here. Amazing event. Thank you for doing it. Yes. Yes. A lot of interest in tech and AI these days. Look, in the interest of time, why don't we just jump in with the conversation here? From my perspective, always helpful for the audience to start very big picture. Look, MSCI has had some pretty impressive long-term targets out there: double-digit subscription revenue growth and low to mid-teens EBITDA growth. Correct me if I'm wrong there. We'll get into the business details here in a minute, but maybe in very broad strokes, why don't you outline why the business is positioned for that type of growth, in particular, given the results in the last couple of years have not been quite there? Yeah. Sure. I think you hit the right term there, which is big picture. I think to understand the opportunity set that fuels that growth trajectory, it's important to start with the big picture. As you know, we are a provider to the investment management industry, more broadly the capital markets. If you look at the biggest trends taking place within investing, you're seeing a move towards rules-based or systematic, if you will, customized portfolios and customized solutions. That is one of the biggest trends you're seeing across the investment industry, all parts of the investment industry. That's manifesting itself in things like multi-asset class solutions portfolios, model portfolios, direct indexed portfolios, structured products, basket trades. All those are some manifestation of that more systematic, personalized type of investment strategy. Across all those areas, the necessary ingredients are frameworks to define the investment opportunity set. How do I think about sector sizes, geographies, styles, factors in a systematic way? That is what MSCI does. That is the core of what we do. On top of that, you need consistent ways to think about the drivers of risk and return. That is what our factor models do. You need multi-asset class risk management and performance management solutions. That is what our multi-asset class risk and performance analytics tool do. You need these frameworks to span all asset classes. We are unique in having everything from benchmarks through to risk models, risk frameworks, and risk management tools across all asset classes. We are uniquely positioned to help drive this transformation towards customization. The exciting thing for us is not only does that mean we can do more for asset managers that are pivoting their business model, and that's our largest client segment, but we are seeing tremendous opportunities in client segments where we've historically been small, and that's areas like wealth management, areas like broker-dealers, hedge funds, the trading community more broadly, insurance companies, corporates directly. These are all outsized growth areas for us. We have been ramping up our innovation geared towards those use cases and those client segments. We are quite bullish about that opportunity set. The way we are going to get there is, as I alluded to, doing more with our existing, well-established asset manager client bases, asset owners that are also pivoting in this direction, but ramping up. We have been doing this, the solutions geared at helping wealth managers, insurance companies, hedge funds, broker-dealers, the corporates directly, the trading community, banks. We are seeing that traction. We are quite encouraged and see that trajectory to drive those long-term results. You alluded to the profit, long-term EBITDA targets that we have. It is important to keep in mind that everything we do is, we are developing IP-based solutions that we generally develop once and sell many times to many users. There is inherent operating leverage, and that gives us the ability to both reinvest in the business significantly, and that is particularly the case with AI today, while driving attractive profitability growth. We are confident in that dual mandate that we have to drive sustained strong top-line growth, but also in reinvesting in the business sufficiently to fuel that growth while delivering attractive profitability growth. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Great overview. Now, obviously, we need to think a little bit more short-term. The 3Q sales improved a bit, or very nicely, actually. You certainly sounded more optimistic on the call. Now, with less than a month left in the fourth quarter or the year, actually, and given that you're here at a Reg FD event, how are things tracking at the moment, and how should we be thinking about 2026? Yeah. Yeah. You're right. We had solid Q3 results. We had record Q3 levels for recurring sales and recurring net new, or close to, in index, and analytics are two largest client segment or two largest product segments. That was fueled by not only traction in many of these newer client segments, with the newer solutions I alluded to. That's something that gives us a lot of confidence. We also got strong traction with asset managers. You know, there have been a number of factors at play that have contributed to the slowdown in overall growth over the last few years. Everything from, you know, some of the noise we've seen in sustainability and climate. We've seen some noise in the commercial real estate space, some pressure, particularly a year or two years ago with active asset managers. That has led to some slowdown. We are in a position now where we have been rolling out solutions. We have been getting traction, enhancing our go-to-market with many of these client segments that I alluded to earlier, and at the same time, enhancing our value proposition to active asset managers to help them, as I alluded to in the last question, transform their business model. There is going to continue to be, you know, some noise in there. Overall, we remain very encouraged. I think you heard Henry's comments on our third-quarter earnings call that we are seeing traction on many of these new solutions, and those are going to help fuel momentum and sustained growth well into the future. Obviously, we don't provide guidance or commentary specifically on Q4 2026 around operating metrics, but I will say we are bullish, and we're encouraged about the momentum we're seeing across the business. I had to try. And then quickly on the other side, you touched upon a little bit already, but where do you think we should still be worried about maybe sales being a little bit slower or retention declining? Do you actually think retention has normalized after the last couple of years of a little bit of more chop? Listen, we've been engaging more holistically and strategically with our largest clients. That's something we've talked about in the past, but a big part of our go-to-market, but also our product roadmap, has been delivering holistic solutions to these organizations. By doing that, we have a much broader relationship where we can add value across many different frontiers. That is inherently helpful to retention rates, and helps us to help clients grow in certain areas where they might be looking to rationalize in other areas. We do think we're in a pretty good place across most of our client base, particularly our largest clients. As I alluded to, you know, we'll continue to see some lumpiness in results in places like sustainability and climate. I think there's still gonna be some noise in places like commercial real estate, and we'll see, and I've alluded to this before, you know, potentially some elevated cancels with asset managers in Europe, particularly, in the near term here. As I alluded to in the last question, we're encouraged by the momentum, and we remain bullish about the trajectory of recurring net new and recurring sales where we do see strong engagement and strong demand for our solutions. Okay. Good. Last one from a big picture across the business kind of perspective, but pricing, obviously, always a topic that people are interested in. Seems like following a period of higher inflation a few years ago, things have a little normalized. Do you think this is a good way to think about 2026 as well? As you alluded to, I would say the contribution to recurring sales from price increases has been pretty consistent overall at the firm level over the last couple of years. That was slightly lower than it was in 2023, when we were in a slightly higher inflationary environment. Overall, across the business, there are differing dynamics at play, and the contribution has fluctuated a bit in each product area and across client segments. On whole, the contribution's been relatively consistent. Our approach to price increases has been relatively consistent. We do focus on, beyond just the overall pricing environment, we are heavily focused on client usage. How much are our clients using our tools? What are they using them for? Client health, that is an input. Then probably most importantly, the value that we are delivering to clients. It is important to underscore that many of the enhancements, the innovations, that we're making to our products and solutions, the way we monetize those is through price increases in certain parts of the business. That increase in innovation, enhancements that I alluded to earlier, that's something that will continue to help support price increases. Price is going to be an important part of the growth going forward. It's one where we remain quite confident we've got the opportunity sets and the ability to deliver value to clients such that we can generate more value for them than even the price increase that we're pushing through to them. I'd say across the business, there will be varying dynamics, but overall, I'd say the approach is gonna be pretty consistent, looking forward here at this point. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Getting a little bit more to the segments, starting with the larger segment, which is index. Look, the business had been growing double digits for a long time as I was following the company, but things have softened, I guess, last year, last couple of years. Now people worry that we'll not grow that fast anymore, in the double digits. Can you maybe just unpack how we get back to that double digit range? Yes. It is important to keep in mind, yeah, that to your point, the index subscription growth has slowed over the last several years gradually. If you look at probably the biggest driver of that slowdown, it has been the sustainability module or ESG index module. That's something that was growing back in probably five years ago or so. That module was growing in the 40%-50% type subscription run rate growth area. That was a huge driver of helping us drive elevated subscription growth within index. That has gradually slowed down. We do not break it out discreetly, but you can see in the ESG and factor category within that index run rate bar that we report, that that has slowed meaningfully down into the single-digit growth range. That fluctuation alone has been a meaningful driver of the slowdown. The other thing I would highlight is, we've seen a growing contribution from those other client segments that I alluded to in your first question. We have seen more and more of not only the overall subscription run rate, but the growth coming from those areas like wealth management, broker-dealers, hedge funds, the trading ecosystem. These are our client segments. As I alluded to before, we've been historically small. We've generally, in the past, taken tools that we developed for that active management process and licensed them to those client segments. There's still a long way to go on that front. What we have been doing is developing toolkits, data sets, solutions that are a little bit more geared towards those specific use cases. We are very excited, on the heels of many of the new solutions that we've been rolling out around things like the custom index ETF module, our sustainability and factor methodology module, our AAUM constituency data, our venture-backed index offering. We are rapidly releasing data sets that are geared towards some of these other use cases, and we know there is demand there. We continue to have confidence about the long-term trajectory within index subscription. We see tremendous opportunities across many dimensions, both on the product side but also the client segment side. We are definitely looking forward to the future. Okay. Good. Can you go into the opportunity in custom indices specifically? Sure. I don't think you just mentioned it, but I know it's the number one investment area of that you guys have. Maybe just talk about, you know, it seems like you're winning there. Why are you winning, and how do we think about this opportunity in general, which I think you think is still pretty early? It is. It is without a doubt. And going back to your first question, when I talked about that big picture view of what's driving the industry and our business, systematic, personalized portfolios and strategies, you can very efficiently implement a personalized systematic strategy via an index. An index is effectively a basket of securities with weights or some systematic algorithm on top of it, that determines a portfolio. We are seeing tremendous opportunities around that, that bigger trend. I alluded to this earlier, manifests themselves in all parts of the industry. You are seeing broker-dealers creating things like over-the-counter derivatives, like a total return swap. You are seeing banks develop structured products with customized outcomes or personalized views on the market. You are seeing direct index portfolios. You're seeing wealth organizations develop models that, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, bring in customized views, reflecting their house views and research views, or even the personal views of the end client. You're seeing institutions increasingly put money against custom mandates. For all of those use cases, our content can be an integral ingredient. That's why we get so excited about what we call custom indexes. Custom indexes is a bit of an oversimplification. Yes, a lot of it is fueled by our development of custom indexes, but some of it is custom data sets. Some of it is services that we can deliver. We have been, as you alluded to, actively investing in this category to fuel that demand. We think we are uniquely positioned to drive that opportunity set. We're uniquely positioned because at the core of what MSCI indexes are, they are a framework to do a systematic asset allocation. How am I gonna allocate my assets across geographies, sectors, countries, sizes, styles, factors, climate considerations? We give those ingredients that are already used for an asset allocation exercise that can naturally be used to pick overweights, underweights, bets, custom outcomes. We are also the standard in things like factors. We're the standard in things like climate objectives in sector classification. The combination of being that common language, being embedded in the policy benchmarks and that asset allocation of the world's largest investors makes us a natural complement, natural provider of tools for custom indexes. You throw on top of that what AI is enabling us to do, and so creating things like custom baskets, together with the investments we've made in our custom index construction capability, not only in doing simulations, but ultimately productionizing indexes, we are very, very excited about the opportunity on custom indexes. That's not only on the subscription side, but it's also importantly fueling a lot of the growth on the asset-based fee side. Okay. Very good. Another topic that you kind of alluded to already. I am not sure what else to add here, but it is really about what you said about new customer sets. It is still kind of an index for the most part, but obviously new customer segments like wealth, hedge funds, and banks have helped on the index side, I believe. The question really is, is it enough to offset maybe some of the challenges that we are all seeing on the asset management side? Yeah. They are big opportunities. We're early on those opportunity sets. They will, over time, as I alluded to, contribute more and more. They will be outsized growth areas. Just from a weighted average basis, they will contribute more and more to the overall growth. We do need to continue to fuel the growth with asset managers. Yes, there are pressures on active managers. There is structural change taking place, but we are in a position to help these organizations transform their businesses. You are seeing them move into more of these systematic strategies, more solutions. We are seeing them raise active ETFs, many of which are systematic in nature. For sure, we need to continue to add value to those organizations. In a world of AI, there's also a growing demand and thirst for all that content that we deliver on the index side. That's definitely the case with active managers. We are looking to grow not only in these newer client segments that are gonna be higher growth, but continuing to fuel growth with asset managers. That is an important part of not only our growth algorithm, but the broader investment ecosystem. We can play a meaningful role there. Okay. Fair enough. All right. Shifting gears to analytics for a minute here. That's been, I want to say, maybe I shouldn't say, but it's been very strong. I was going to say surprisingly strong, but over the last couple of years. The question really is, is it sustainable? Where's it coming from? I think some people worry that hedge funds in particular and the growth we've seen there has really fueled the growth. Is that right? Are you seeing any slowdown in any trends there? What should we be aware of here? Yeah. So we've been encouraged by the growth on analytics. We've had now several years of higher growth than we had seen in the past. It's been quite resilient. It's been quite stable. Listen, a big part of it is from hedge funds, but we don't view that as a bad thing. Hedge funds have been our highest growth client segment. That has been heavily driven by success with our factor models. And so when you look at our investor presentation and look at the analytics subscription base, we have been seeing solid double-digit growth with our equity analytics. A lot of that is fueled by traction with hedge funds. It is also traction with broader investors, broker-dealers, asset managers. We're seeing strong demand for our factor content beyond just hedge funds. We have been very successful in licensing more and more content and continuing to innovate in solutions that are helping, and are at the backbone of how many of these large multi-strap hedge funds actually manage risk and manage their portfolios more broadly. We see more and more opportunity to do that. We do not view that as a bad thing. It is not only that. We have been seeing strong traction with things like our AI insights. We have been seeing strong traction with many of the enhancements we have made to our fixed income analytic capabilities. We have been benefiting from our enhanced APIs and modern data distribution and access to our analytic engine that is making it easier for clients to consume more and more content. We continue to be quite excited about the opportunity in front of us on the analytics and think there is definitely sustained momentum even beyond hedge funds, although we do continue to see attractive opportunities to do more with hedge funds. Okay. All right. Unfortunately, moving back to things that have not been so stellar is obviously sustainability and climate. You mentioned it earlier. That business has continued to slow from the peaks in 2021, 2022. Any turn on the horizon, and on the flip side, could that business actually go negative? How should we think a little bit more shorter term into 2026? Sure. There are varying dynamics at play across sustainability and climate. If you remember, we renamed the segment from ESG and climate to sustainability and climate. That was driven in large part to reflect that we are doing a lot more than just ESG and ESG ratings. ESG ratings is always going to be a very important part of our solution set, but we are increasingly delivering solutions to clients to help them understand other sustainability factors and the financial risks associated with other considerations. As I alluded to, there are parts of what we are doing where we're seeing tremendous engagement. Areas like our geospatial asset location data sets, some of our broader physical risk insights, and physical risk solutions that we're delivering, you see tremendous traction across many other climate considerations. This is not only in the sustainability and climate segment, but also in the index segment. We're still seeing pretty robust growth of new climate indexes, climate index-based products out there, strong interest there. The approach to sustainability is evolving over time. That manifests itself differently in different client segments, different locations. As we've talked about before, in the U.S., you are seeing a little bit of hesitancy around launching new sustainability strategies, broadcasting how you as an organization are integrating sustainability for a whole host of reasons. We have seen more pressure within the Americas. In Europe, we've seen evolving views on how to incorporate sustainability from, in large part, a regulatory standpoint, where you're seeing differing regulations focused on everything from emissions to physical risk to broader sustainability objectives. Those can be competing between country, region, different regulators, different organizations. I think that has created some hesitancy. I think we're gonna continue to see the dynamics that we've seen in recent quarters play out in the near term here. There's going to be choppiness in the growth rate. The important thing to keep in mind is this is an integral part of the investment process. We are hearing loud and clear from our clients that this is something that is important to them. It is a financial risk they know they need to focus on. They have demand to see broader views of sustainability beyond just traditional ESG. They're looking at things like resiliency and transition, energy transition. They're thinking holistically about physical risk. These are all areas where we can help them, and we are helping them. I think given the breadth of our solution, our leadership position, we are actually solidifying our position as a leader in the space. We are doing more and more for clients in what we believe is a big long-term opportunity set. We do believe we are well positioned for the long-term. We are solidifying our position even stronger today. In the short term here, we do expect the dynamics we have been seeing in recent quarters to continue. Okay. Maybe to round it out, let's quickly touch on the, I guess the other segment, which is mostly real estate and private, private markets. Clearly there's a lot of enthusiasm on private markets in particular. We've seen some big deals in the space recently. We could probably talk for 30 minutes about all the dynamics here in this very evolving market. Maybe just can you sum up what you're doing here, if you need to have more assets or capabilities in the space, and if and when we should actually see a bigger contribution to the growth of the overall company? Yeah. From the private market in particular, like we can skip real estate probably, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, we do see very active and attractive opportunities on the real asset front. It goes hand in hand with what we're doing across broader private markets here. Yeah, to your point, we could spend a long time on this front. This is an area where we are heavily focused. We remain very excited. We think we have the capabilities right now to deliver those must-have solutions that the industry needs. We are uniquely focused on and uniquely positioned to deliver them. You have seen us announce a lot of these, very actively rolling out everything from our family and suite of benchmarks across the private asset space to more recently our PACS, our private asset classification standard. You've seen us roll out private credit risk scoring types of tools that are out there, deeper transparency insights, workflow solutions that help our clients extract more information from the rich data that they are getting and that we have on their behalf, and then helping deliver solutions that are gonna underpin and are critical for things like liquid products out there, better risk management, targeted climate-type solutions. We have been for the last several quarters actively rolling out this wide range of tool sets that we've been working on since we acquired Burgiss. We are actively ramping up our go-to-market, or we have been ramping up our go-to-market, to strongly position ourselves to deliver those frameworks we know the industry needs. They need a systematic way to think about the addressable opportunity set. How do I think about the total universe of private markets? How do I think about the risks that I take by allocating to real estate versus private equity, within private equity growth versus LBO versus VC? How do I think about private credit and the risks I take there? How do I think about the liquidity risk I'm taking? Importantly, the value that the manager is providing to me where I'm paying significant fees. We are very bullish about this opportunity set. We've been actively rolling out the tools and ramping up our go-to-market in areas like wealth managers and GPs in addition to our established client segment of LPs, such that we're at a point where we are very excited about the outlook there and very excited about our positioning in establishing these standards. Okay. All right. We have just over one minute left. I wanna give you maybe a final CFO-type question on both expenses and capital allocation. Maybe again, as we think about next year, just remind us how we should be thinking about expense philosophy in general. Of course, on capital allocation, you've been very selective, but anything that any capabilities you feel like you need to add, you've picked up, you stepped up repurchases recently. Again, just, maybe with one minute left, expenses and capital allocation that we should, we should be taking away, from a financial picture perspective. Yeah. Just I'll hit the second question first quickly. No change to our approach to capital allocation. You know, I think we continue to selectively look at bolt-on accelerator acquisitions. I think we generally feel like we have the capabilities that we need to pursue these very attractive growth opportunities I alluded to earlier, and so we do not need to do any acquisitions. We are not looking to do anything big or transformative, but there can be areas where we can bolster the content set that we have, the solution we deliver to our clients around areas like private markets, maybe pieces of the client ecosystem. Generally our focus is gonna be on continuing to repurchase shares because we are big believers in the long-term opportunity set here. On the expense side, again, no change to our approach here. We very actively financially manage the business, and we are going to deliver on that dual mandate of driving long, investing to drive long-term growth, while delivering attractive profitability growth. I think Henry used the term, Godsend when he was talking about AI. AI touches so much of what we do, and it is very CFO-friendly. I can tell you that AI is already starting to deliver very attractive efficiencies, productivity benefits for us. Our intent is to invest that, reinvest that into the business to fuel these attractive growth opportunities. We are very confident about our ability to drive attractive growth and profitability and invest in these critical investment areas for us. Excellent. Good way to end it. Andy, thanks very much for coming. Hope to have you back next year. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Appreciate it.