Moody’s profit rises on strong analytics growth, lifts forecast

Moody’s is leaning harder into data, forecasting and compliance tools just as investors and borrowers are navigating a shakier market. The credit-ratings company said first-quarter profit rose to $661 million, or $3.73 a share, from $625 million, or $3.46 a share a year earlier, while raising its full-year adjusted earnings forecast to $16 to $16.60 a share from $15 to $15.60.

The strongest signal came from Moody’s Analytics, where revenue increased 8% to $926 million in the quarter. Moody’s Investors Service also posted a record, with revenue of $1.15 billion, up 8% from a year earlier. Together, the results show a business benefiting from both steadier bond issuance and the kind of nervousness that pushes customers toward research, risk models and decision tools.

That mix matters because Moody’s sits at the center of credit appetite. When companies and governments borrow more, the ratings business improves. When volatility, private credit concerns and geopolitical uncertainty make market participants more cautious, demand often shifts toward the analytics and intelligence products that help them price risk, test assumptions and stay in compliance. Moody’s latest quarter suggests those two engines are working at once, even if neither is accelerating dramatically on its own.

The company also is trying to make itself more valuable in artificial intelligence workflows. On April 21, Moody’s said it had expanded its partnership with Microsoft to embed its decision-grade credit intelligence into Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, Researcher and Excel. Moody’s said its connected intelligence spans 600 million entities and 2 billion ownership links, and chief executive Rob Fauber said the company has served as an intelligence layer for financial professionals for more than 115 years.

The strategy gives Moody’s a way to turn deep proprietary data into recurring demand at a time when clients want faster answers, not just historical ratings. That helps explain why the company can raise its outlook even with broader borrowing activity under pressure.

Investors have been cautious, too. Moody’s shares were down about 10.67% year to date in recent market data, closing at $455.35 on April 17, well below the all-time closing high of $538.45 reached on January 15. Moody’s, which employs about 16,000 people across more than 40 countries, scheduled a 9:00 a.m. ET conference call on April 22 with Fauber and chief financial officer Noémie Heuland, with a replay available through April 29. The quarter suggests Moody’s is no longer just a barometer of credit markets, but a growing profit engine for risk analytics in an uncertain economy.