穆迪 (MCO) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Moody's Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

大家好，歡迎參加穆迪公司 2023 年第四季和全年財報電話會議。現在我想通知大家，本次會議正在錄製中。 （操作員說明）

I will now turn the call over to Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

我現在將把電話轉給投資者關係主管 Shivani Kak。請繼續。

Thank you, and good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Shivani Kak, Head of Investor Relations. This morning, Moody's released its results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023 as well as our outlook for full year 2024. The earnings press release and the presentation to accompany this teleconference are both available on our website at ir.moodys.com.

謝謝您，早安，謝謝您今天加入我們。我是 Shivani Kak，投資者關係主管。今天上午，穆迪發布了2023 年第四季度和全年業績以及我們對2024 年全年的展望。收益新聞稿和本次電話會議的演示文稿均可在我們的網站ir.moodys.com 上獲取。

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 in U.S. GAAP.

在本次電話會議中，我們也將提供非公認會計準則或調整後的數據。請參閱我們今天上午提交的收益新聞稿末尾的表格，以了解本次電話會議期間引用的所有美國公認會計準則調整後指標之間的對帳情況。

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 meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In accordance with the act, I also direct your attention to the Management's Discussion & Analysis section and the risk factors discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and in other SEC filings made by the company, which are available on our website and on the SEC's website.

我請您注意安全港語言，該語言可以在我們的收益發布結束時找到。今天的言論可能包含 1995 年《私人證券訴訟改革法案》含義內的前瞻性陳述。根據該法案，我還請您注意管理層的討論與分析部分以及我們在表格中的年度報告中討論的風險因素截至2022 年12 月31 日的年度10-K 以及該公司提交的其他SEC 文件，這些文件可在我們的網站和SEC 網站上找到。

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.

這些與安全港聲明一起提出了可能導致實際結果與任何此類前瞻性聲明中包含的結果存在重大差異的重要因素。我還想指出，今天早上媒體成員可能會以只聽模式通話。

I'll now turn the call over to Rob.

我現在將把電話轉給羅布。

Thanks, Shivani. Good morning, and thanks to everybody for joining today's call. We're here from a snowy New York City. I'm going to start with some highlights from 2023 and then discuss our expectations for 2024. And after my prepared remarks, Steve Tulenko, who's the President of Moody's Analytics; and Mike West, the President of Moody's Investor Service, will be joining me, along with Caroline Sullivan, our Interim CFO, for the Q&A portion of the call.

謝謝，希瓦尼。早安，感謝大家參加今天的電話會議。我們從白雪皚皚的紐約市來到這裡。我將從 2023 年的一些亮點開始，然後討論我們對 2024 年的期望。在我準備好的發言之後，穆迪分析公司 (Moody's Analytics) 總裁 Steve Tulenko 說：穆迪投資者服務公司 (Moody's Investor Service) 總裁 Mike West 以及我們的臨時財務長卡羅琳·沙利文 (Caroline Sullivan) 將與我一起參加電話會議的問答部分。

And before we get into it, I have some very exciting news. As you may have seen this morning, we announced the appointment of Noémie Heuland as our new Chief Financial Officer, and she's reporting directly to me. And Noémie brings a wealth of knowledge to Moody's after nearly 25 years in senior roles at global public companies, including most recently as CFO of Dayforce, formerly Ceridian, and over a decade with global enterprise application software provider, SAP, during which it transitioned to a global software as a service business model.

在我們開始討論之前，我有一些非常令人興奮的消息。正如您今天早上可能已經看到的，我們宣布任命 Noémie Heuland 為我們新任首席財務官，她直接向我匯報。 Noémie 在全球上市公司擔任高級職務近25 年，包括最近擔任Dayforce（前身為Ceridian）的首席財務官，並在全球企業應用軟體提供商SAP 工作了十多年，為穆迪帶來了豐富的知識。轉變為全球軟體即服務業務模式。

So as CFO, she's going to lead the global finance organization that includes accounting and controllership, financial planning and analysis, financial systems, investor relations, strategic sourcing and procurement and tax and treasury. And her firsthand experience in scaling high-growth, category-leading public software companies, along with her extensive global experience, I think, really make her the ideal CFO for Moody's as we invest in and grow our subscription-based Analytics businesses and continue to expand our ratings business around the world. So it's an exciting time for Moody's. And I look forward to Noémie jumping in beginning April 1. And of course, she's going to be a regular fixture on this call going forward.

作為首席財務官，她將領導全球財務組織，包括會計和控制、財務規劃和分析、財務系統、投資者關係、策略採購以及稅務和財務。我認為，隨著我們投資和發展基於訂閱的分析業務並繼續在全球範圍內拓展我們的評級業務。因此，對於穆迪來說，這是一個令人興奮的時刻。我期待著 Noémie 從 4 月 1 日開始跳槽。當然，她將成為今後這次電話會議的常客。

Before we get into the results, I also want to thank Caroline Sullivan, who is here with me, for her immense contributions and support over the last few months as Moody's Interim CFO. And Caroline will remain as our Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller.

在我們公佈結果之前，我還要感謝與我同在的卡羅琳·沙利文 (Caroline Sullivan)，感謝她在過去幾個月擔任穆迪臨時首席財務官期間做出的巨大貢獻和支持。卡羅琳將繼續擔任我們的首席會計官和公司財務總監。

So with that, moving on to our results. 2023 really was a defining year for us here at Moody's. We delivered 8% revenue growth. We grew adjusted diluted EPS by 16%. And we were an early mover in GenAI adoption and innovation, launching our first-ever GenAI-enabled product in December.

就這樣，繼續我們的結果。對我們穆迪來說，2023 年確實是具有決定性的一年。我們實現了 8% 的收入成長。調整後攤薄每股收益成長了 16%。我們是 GenAI 採用和創新的先行者，於 12 月推出了首款支援 GenAI 的產品。

And I have to say that the energy and excitement across the organization really was palpable throughout the year as we launched new products, we entered into strategic partnerships with some of the world's leading tech companies and we increased the gap in our Chartis RiskTech100 #1 ranking. And as we grew, we also increased our margin by over 100 basis points for the year, all while investing across the firm in technology, in products and in people.

我必須說，隨著我們推出新產品，我們與一些世界領先的科技公司建立了策略合作夥伴關係，我們擴大了Chartis RiskTech100 #1 排名中的差距，整個組織全年的活力和興奮確實是顯而易見的。隨著我們的發展，我們今年的利潤率也增加了 100 多個基點，同時整個公司都在技術、產品和人員方面進行投資。

And amidst what was a pretty challenging operating environment for our financial services customers, MA delivered ARR growth of 10% with retention rates in the mid-90s. And looking at the three reporting lines of business in MA, that's Decision Solutions, Data & Information and Research & Insights, they delivered ARR growth of 11%, 10% and 7%, respectively.

對於我們的金融服務客戶來說，在一個相當具有挑戰性的營運環境中，MA 實現了 10% 的 ARR 成長，保留率保持在 90 年代中期。看看 MA 的三個報告業務部門，即決策解決方案、數據與資訊以及研究與洞察，它們的 ARR 成長分別為 11%、10% 和 7%。

And as we have upped the pace of product development to meet the strong market demand for tools to better manage risk and to digitize and transform workflows, for 2024, we expect MA revenue to grow to approximately 10% with ARR growth in the low double-digit percent range.

隨著我們加快產品開發步伐，以滿足市場對更好地管理風險、數位化和改造工作流程的工具的強勁需求，到2024 年，我們預計MA 收入將成長至10% 左右，ARR 成長率將在低位雙倍增長。數字百分比範圍。

MIS, meanwhile, delivered 19% growth in the quarter and 6% for the full year. Corporate Finance, Financial Institutions and Public, Project and Infrastructure Finance, they all achieved double-digit revenue growth compared to 2022 on gradually improving market conditions. And I think I used the phrase fragile when describing the markets back on our third quarter earnings call.

同時，MIS 本季成長 19%，全年成長 6%。企業融資、金融機構以及公共、專案和基礎設施融資，在市場條件逐步改善的情況下，與2022年相比均實現了兩位數的收入成長。我想我在第三季財報電話會議上描述市場時使用了「脆弱」這個詞。

And this turned out to be true for the fourth quarter, where despite a very active November, December issuance was more muted than we had expected. And we've seen a very constructive start to the year. And consequently, our revenue expectations for 2024 are in the high single to low double-digit percent range for MIS. And I'll touch on this a bit more on the call as well as I'm sure some asset-specific issuance guidance.

事實證明，第四季度的情況確實如此，儘管 11 月的發行非常活躍，但 12 月的發行量比我們預期的要低迷。今年我們看到了一個非常有建設性的開局。因此，我們對 MIS 2024 年的收入預期處於高個位數百分比到低兩位數百分比範圍內。我將在電話會議上更多地談到這一點，以及我確定一些特定於資產的發行指南。

So looking out over 2024 and beyond, we're really excited about the great momentum in the business and the tremendous growth potential that we've got in front of us. And to capitalize on these opportunities, we're accelerating and increasing the level of organic investment this year in three critical areas: that's GenAI, new product development and platforming and technology.

因此，展望 2024 年及以後，我們對業務的強勁勢頭和擺在我們面前的巨大成長潛力感到非常興奮。為了利用這些機會，我們今年將在三個關鍵領域加速和提高有機投資水平：GenAI、新產品開發以及平台和技術。

And this is a deliberate investment program to fully capture the power of AI across our business, to expand the reach and connectedness of MA solutions and accelerate the technology enablement of the ratings agency, all to deliver on our ambitious medium-term targets.

這是一項經過深思熟慮的投資計劃，旨在充分利用人工智慧在我們整個業務中的力量，擴大MA 解決方案的覆蓋範圍和連通性，並加速評級機構的技術支持，所有這些都是為了實現我們雄心勃勃的中期目標。

Now our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged: first, invest in our business whenever we see great opportunities, and we are, in fact, doing that; and second, return capital to stockholders. And this year, we expect to nearly double the amount of capital we return to our stockholders through dividends and share repurchases.

現在我們的資本配置重點沒有改變：第一，看到好的機會就投資我們的業務，事實上我們也正在這麼做；第二，我們看到好的機會就投資我們的業務。第二，向股東返還資本。今年，我們預計透過股利和股票回購向股東返還的資本金額將增加近一倍。

And that brings me to our EPS guidance. We're anticipating adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $10.25 to $11 for 2024. This incorporates a little bit wider range at the beginning of the year to capture some of the uncertainty around issuance. And we would expect this to narrow during the course of the year.

這讓我想到了我們的 EPS 指導。我們預計 2024 年調整後攤薄每股收益將在 10.25 美元至 11 美元之間。這包括年初的更大範圍，以捕捉發行方面的一些不確定性。我們預計這一數字將在今年內縮小。

And of note, as you compare 2024 EPS guidance to 2023, you might remember we had some outsized tax benefits in the first half of last year that resulted in a 2023 effective tax rate of 16.9%. And for 2024, we're expecting the rate to be in the range of 22% to 24%. And if you look through the 2023 benefit at the midpoint of our 2024 range, our 2024 adjusted EPS represents 24% growth rate since 2022. And that's in line with the low double-digit percentage growth that we've targeted over the medium term.

值得注意的是，當您將 2024 年每股收益指引與 2023 年進行比較時，您可能還記得我們在去年上半年獲得了一些巨額稅收優惠，導致 2023 年的有效稅率為 16.9%。到 2024 年，我們預計該比率將在 22% 至 24% 之間。如果你以我們2024 年範圍的中點來查看2023 年的收益，我們的2024 年調整後每股收益代表自2022 年以來的24% 增長率。這與我們在中期設定的低兩位數百分比成長目標一致。

Now looking at 2023, I want to take a moment to touch on a few data points that highlight what a powerful franchise we have and also put our 2023 accomplishments into some perspective, amidst, as I said, what was a very challenging operating environment for many of our customers last year.

現在展望2023 年，我想花點時間談談一些數據點，這些數據點強調了我們擁有多麼強大的特許經營權，並從某種角度審視了我們2023 年的成就，正如我所說，在一個非常具有挑戰性的營運環境中去年我們的許多客戶。

And despite relatively modest MIS rated issuance growth of about 5%, we generated approximately $450 million in incremental revenue growth across our entire company. And today, we have a base of recurring revenue of over $4 billion while our more transactional-oriented revenue model across a $74 trillion universe of rated debt gives us upside as debt velocity improves. And together, this underpins our confidence in accelerating our revenue growth to the high single to low double-digit percent range in 2024.

儘管 MIS 評級的發行成長率相對溫和，約為 5%，但我們整個公司的增量收入成長約為 4.5 億美元。如今，我們的經常性收入基礎超過 40 億美元，而我們在 74 兆美元的評級債務中以交易為導向的收入模式，隨著債務週轉率的提高，為我們帶來了優勢。總之，這支撐了我們在 2024 年加速收入成長至高個位數到低兩位數百分比範圍的信心。

And over the years, we have really built a customer base that's almost like no other company with 97% the Fortune 100 and 87% of the Forbes 1000 being a Moody's customer today. And the world's leading companies turn to us. They trust our market-leading solutions. And that gives us a tremendous base to sell into.

多年來，我們確實建立了一個幾乎與其他公司不同的客戶群，如今 97% 的財富 100 強企業和 87% 的福布斯 1000 強企業都是穆迪的客戶。世界領先的公司都向我們求助。他們信任我們市場領先的解決方案。這為我們提供了巨大的銷售基礎。

This shows up in the many external accolades and awards that we've received. We had over 150 last year alone. And I want to give a special shout-out to our MIS team as we were awarded Best Credit Rating Agency for the 12th year in a row by Institutional Investor. That is great stuff.

這體現在我們獲得的許多外部榮譽和獎項中。光是去年，我們就有超過 150 個。我想特別讚揚我們的 MIS 團隊，因為我們連續 12 年被《機構投資者》評為最佳信用評級機構。那是很棒的東西。

And I think we all understand our market-leading position in ratings. But we've also built a market-leading position with our MA business. And for the second year in a row, we were ranked #1 in the Chartis RiskTech100. And that was supported by category wins in strategy, banking and insurance and a number of solutions categories ranging from climate risk to credit risk to financial crime data and a number more.

我想我們都了解我們在評級方面的市場領先地位。但我們也透過 MA 業務建立了市場領先地位。我們連續第二年在 Chartis RiskTech100 中排名第一。這得益於策略、銀行和保險領域的勝利，以及氣候風險、信用風險、金融犯罪數據等一系列解決方案類別的勝利。

And understanding the critical importance of attracting and retaining the best talent in this environment, we continue to lean into our culture to make this the kind of place where the brightest minds want to build their careers and help our customers address some of the world's great challenges.

我們深知在這種環境中吸引和留住最優秀人才的重要性，因此我們將繼續融入我們的文化，使這裡成為最聰明的人才希望建立職業生涯並幫助我們的客戶應對世界上一些巨大挑戰的地方。

So to sustain our growth, you frequently hear about the investments that we make in our solutions to help our customer make better, more informed decisions about risk. And we achieved a number of important milestones in 2023, too many to get into on this call. But I am going to focus on just a few of the highlights.

因此，為了維持我們的成長，您經常會聽到我們在解決方案中進行的投資，以幫助我們的客戶做出更好、更明智的風險決策。我們在 2023 年實現了許多重要的里程碑，本次電話會議無法一一列舉。但我將只關注其中的幾個亮點。

In ratings, we continue to expand the markets we serve through Moody's Local. We also developed dedicated teams in digital finance and private credit so that we're at the forefront of opportunities in the global debt markets. In private credit specifically, we're coordinating across our ratings franchise so that we have the engagement, the methodologies and the analytical and commercial resources to be the agency of choice for players in this market, ranging from BDCs to alternative asset managers, insurance companies and debt funds.

在評級方面，我們繼續透過穆迪本地擴大我們服務的市場。我們還建立了數位金融和私人信貸領域的專門團隊，使我們處於全球債務市場機會的最前沿。具體在私人信貸領域，我們正在協調我們的評級業務，以便我們擁有參與度、方法論以及分析和商業資源，成為該市場參與者（從 BDC 到另類資產管理公司、保險公司）的首選機構和債務資金。

To further address the private credit opportunity, we added more than 12,000 unrated entities to our CreditView research service in November. That triples the breadth of our coverage and provides a new runway for growth for our research business.

為了進一步把握私人信貸機會，我們在 11 月在 CreditView 研究服務中增加了超過 12,000 個未評級實體。這使我們的覆蓋範圍擴大了三倍，並為我們的研究業務的成長提供了新的跑道。

Another growth opportunity in our Research & Insights business that many of you have heard about is our Research Assistant product. That's our first GenAI-enabled product that we launched commercially on December 1. And it's the first of a number of GenAI-enabled tools that we're developing. And we're excited about the initial customer feedback and early traction with this product. And I'm sure we're going to touch on this a bit more in the Q&A.

你們許多人都聽說過我們研究與洞察業務的另一個成長機會是我們的研究助理產品。這是我們於 12 月 1 日推出的首款支援 GenAI 的產品。它也是我們正在開發的眾多支援 GenAI 的工具中的第一個。我們對最初的客戶回饋和該產品的早期吸引力感到興奮。我相信我們會在問答中更多地討論這一點。

We also continue to enhance and expand our massive company database in important ways to create valuable early warning signals for our customers and address the increasing demand for third-party risk management. And there were really three elements to that in 2023 that I'll call out.

我們也繼續以重要方式增強和擴展我們龐大的公司資料庫，為我們的客戶創造有價值的預警訊號，並滿足對第三方風險管理日益增長的需求。我將在 2023 年提出三個要素。

First was integrating our predictive analytic tools and credit scores on over 450 million companies into Orbis; the second was expanding our coverage of over 1 million AI-curated and scored new stories a day that are available on companies in Orbis; and third, leveraging our investment in BitSight. Over the course of 2023, we integrated over 6 million cyber scores into Orbis. And that number continues to grow.

首先是將我們的預測分析工具和超過 4.5 億家公司的信用評分整合到 Orbis 中；第二個是將我們的覆蓋範圍擴大到超過 100 萬個 AI 策劃的內容，每天都會獲得新的故事，這些故事可在奧比斯的公司中找到；第三，利用我們對 BitSight 的投資。 2023 年，我們將超過 600 萬個網路分數整合到 Orbis 中。而且這個數字還在持續成長中。

Across Decision Solutions, we developed new solutions and integrated more data sets to expand the utility of our offerings. And in KYC, our new entity verification tool combines real-time registry content with our Orbis data to help our customers identify risky shell companies and minimize the potential for fraud and sanctions risk. With the launch of our most recent Sanctions360 tool, we're the only one in the market who can look through multiple complex layers of corporate hierarchies and ownership structures to identify potential sanctions breaches.

在決策解決方案中，我們開發了新的解決方案並整合了更多資料集，以擴展我們產品的實用性。在 KYC 中，我們新的實體驗證工具將即時註冊內容與 Orbis 資料結合，幫助我們的客戶識別有風險的空殼公司，並最大限度地減少潛在的詐欺和製裁風險。隨著我們最新的 Sanctions360 工具的推出，我們成為市場上唯一能夠透過多層複雜的公司層級結構和所有權結構來識別潛在違反制裁行為的工具。

In banking, we integrated climate analytics into a broad range of workflow solutions from loan origination to portfolio management to stress testing. And in insurance, in just a year, we more than doubled the number of customers using our cloud-based Intelligent Risk Platform. That's a versatile cloud-based risk analytics platform that enables customers to analyze hundreds of millions of commercial and residential locations.

在銀行業，我們將氣候分析整合到從貸款發放到投資組合管理到壓力測試的廣泛工作流程解決方案中。在保險領域，短短一年內，我們使用基於雲端的智慧風險平台的客戶數量就增加了一倍以上。這是一個基於雲端的多功能風險分析平台，使客戶能夠分析數億個商業和住宅地點。

And it's not just being used by insurers. We're attracting a diverse set of customers who have a tangible and growing need for our more sophisticated climate data and analytics. I have to say, I'm proud to report that at the end of January, we signed one of the world's largest banks as a new customer of our climate and catastrophe modeling solutions to support the in-depth climate analysis for required regulatory disclosures and stress testing.

而且它不僅僅被保險公司使用。我們吸引了各種各樣的客戶，他們對我們更複雜的氣候數據和分析有實際且不斷增長的需求。我必須說，我很自豪地報告，一月底，我們與世界上最大的銀行之一簽約，成為我們氣候和災難建模解決方案的新客戶，以支持所需監管披露和的深入氣候分析。壓力測試。

And underpinning all of this is our ongoing foundational investments in the business. And these investments will enhance our ability to integrate our data estate across all of our customer use cases more efficiently and more effectively.

所有這一切的基礎是我們對業務的持續基礎投資。這些投資將增強我們更有效地整合所有客戶用例中的資料資產的能力。

So I hope as you get a sense, there are a lot of exciting things that are happening here at Moody's. And as I take a step back to consider the many opportunities for growth ahead, I really am energized by all that's in front of us. And there are three things that we are doing to really drive future growth: that is land new customers, expand customer relationships and then innovate continuously to deliver more value.

因此，我希望您能意識到，穆迪正在發生很多令人興奮的事情。當我退後一步考慮未來的許多成長機會時，我真的為我們面前的一切感到充滿活力。我們正在做三件事來真正推動未來的成長：那就是吸引新客戶，擴大客戶關係，然後不斷創新以提供更多價值。

And I just touched on the breadth and quality of our existing customer relationships. We've got a fantastic customer base, especially in financial services, where we've been developing relationships for literally decades, landing new customers, expanding relationships and innovating with a proven track record of growth. And in recent years, we've been successful in growing these relationships further and diversifying into new areas like KYC and supplier risk management.

我剛剛談到了我們現有客戶關係的廣度和品質。我們擁有出色的客戶群，尤其是在金融服務領域，幾十年來我們一直在發展關係、吸引新客戶、擴大關係和創新，並取得了良好的成長記錄。近年來，我們成功地進一步發展了這些關係，並多元化進入了 KYC 和供應商風險管理等新領域。

In fact, our net expansion rate in the financial services sector stands at a healthy 109%. And I think that's a pretty clear indication of our ability to deepen relationships and deliver value. And now leveraging GenAI and our broader content sets and capabilities, expanding and deepening these relationships will continue to be a significant opportunity for us.

事實上，我們在金融服務領域的淨擴張率維持在 109% 的健康水準。我認為這非常清楚地表明了我們深化關係和創造價值的能力。現在，利用 GenAI 和我們更廣泛的內容集和能力，擴大和深化這些關係將繼續成為我們的重要機會。

Now building on these successes, we've got a great opportunity to expand in new customer segments, supporting new use cases. While Financial Institutions account for about 70% of ARR in MA, there's been very good demand coming from newer relationships beyond the financial services segment with 14% new sales compound annual growth rate over the last 2 years in these sectors. And that's the corporate and public sector. And over that period, we've established significant relationships with major companies in the United States and Europe, who are leveraging our expertise for customer and supplier risk assessment.

現在，在這些成功的基礎上，我們有一個很好的機會來擴展新的客戶群，支援新的用例。雖然金融機構約佔 MA 的 ARR 70%，但金融服務領域以外的新關係帶來了非常好的需求，過去 2 年這些產業的新銷售額複合年增長率為 14%。這就是企業和公共部門。在此期間，我們與美國和歐洲的大公司建立了重要的關係，他們利用我們的專業知識進行客戶和供應商風險評估。

Our ratings business also has some opportunities to serve existing and new customers. I think those as kind of the markets of tomorrow. We've expanded our footprint in domestic and emerging debt markets, where the growth is faster than it is in more developed debt markets. And interesting data point, the Moody's Local initiative in Latin America, which you've heard me talk about, is a great example of doing that, where organic revenue grew 22% in 2023.

我們的評級業務也有一些機會為現有和新客戶提供服務。我認為這些都是明天的市場。我們擴大了在國內和新興債務市場的足跡，這些市場的成長速度快於較發達的債務市場。有趣的數據點是，穆迪在拉丁美洲的本地計劃（您已經聽過我談論過）就是一個很好的例子，該計劃的有機收入在 2023 年增長了 22%。

So these land-and-expand opportunities are supported by major secular trends that are driving demand for our offerings. And I would cite a few of those. We're poised to capitalize on the content unlock opportunity from GenAI enablement and innovation, the widespread digitization and transformation programs across banks and insurers, the growing demand for third-party risk management solutions and the ongoing growth of the private credit sector.

因此，這些土地和擴張機會得到了主要長期趨勢的支持，這些趨勢推動了對我們產品的需求。我想引用其中的一些。我們準備充分利用 GenAI 支援和創新帶來的內容解鎖機會、銀行和保險公司廣泛的數位化和轉型計劃、對第三方風險管理解決方案不斷增長的需求以及私人信貸行業的持續增長。

And with our wide-ranging capabilities that we've put together to deliver this holistic view of risk, I think we are uniquely well positioned at the intersection of these trends. So I can assure you that we reflected a lot on these opportunities as we entered our annual operating plan cycle this fall. And not dissimilar to past years, we were challenged to prioritize and balance organic investments with operational efficiency and productivity initiatives.

憑藉我們廣泛的能力來提供這種全面的風險視角，我認為我們在這些趨勢的交叉點上處於獨特的有利位置。因此，我可以向您保證，當我們今年秋天進入年度營運計畫週期時，我們對這些機會進行了許多反思。與過去幾年沒有什麼不同，我們面臨優先考慮並平衡有機投資與營運效率和生產力計劃的挑戰。

On the efficiency side, we expect to generate savings from resource redeployment, alternative staffing models, automation and GenAI enablement and geolocation strategies. And we're prioritizing investment spending on areas that are enabling us to deliver at our current growth rates, including SaaS-based product development, sales deployment, operational resiliency and ratings workflows. And these initiatives are really funded within our -- what we think of as our regular pace of operating margin expansion.

在效率方面，我們希望透過資源重新部署、替代人員配置模型、自動化和 GenAI 支援以及地理定位策略來節省成本。我們將優先投資於那些使我們能夠以當前成長率實現目標的領域，包括基於 SaaS 的產品開發、銷售部署、營運彈性和評級工作流程。這些舉措實際上是在我們的營運利潤擴張的常規步伐內提供資金的。

But as we exited the initial sprint around GenAI innovation last year, we reflected on the opportunities ahead of us. We considered the deep customer relationships that I've just touched on, our unique data assets that you hear us talk about, the market trends that I just mentioned, together with our growth strategy. And we proactively upped the organic investments that we started in the summer of last year. And we are increasing our budgeted operating expenses for 2024 by an additional $60 million in three primary investment areas.

但當我們去年結束圍繞 GenAI 創新的最初衝刺時，我們反思了眼前的機會。我們考慮了我剛才提到的深厚的客戶關係、您聽到我們談論的我們獨特的數據資產、我剛才提到的市場趨勢以及我們的成長策略。我們積極增加了去年夏天開始的有機投資。我們還將在三個主要投資領域額外增加 6,000 萬美元的 2024 年預算營運支出。

First, and I'm sure this isn't particularly surprising, is GenAI. We're increasing product-related investments across MA that will continue to build on our early-mover momentum from 2023 and investments across the company and initiatives to accelerate employee adoption and improve productivity. On the product side, we have a few really interesting things that are moving ahead fairly quickly.

首先，我確信這並不特別令人驚訝，那就是 GenAI。我們正在 MA 範圍內增加與產品相關的投資，這將繼續鞏固我們從 2023 年起的先發勢頭以及整個公司的投資以及加速員工採用和提高生產力的舉措。在產品方面，我們有一些非常有趣的事情，而且進展得相當快。

So CreditLens, which is our flagship banking origination solution, will be the next to launch a GenAI-enabled capability to generate a credit memo within seconds, leveraging the digitized information about borrowers and their credit facilities that is stored natively in our software. And we're going to be saving loan officers and credit professionals countless hours compiling information and generating the first draft of the documents that are produced with virtually every commercial loan. We've got our first beta customer already. And we are currently in preview with a number of other customers.

因此，我們的旗艦銀行發起解決方案 CreditLens 將成為下一個推出 GenAI 功能的產品，利用我們軟體中本地存儲的有關借款人及其信貸便利的數字化信息，在幾秒鐘內生成貸項憑證。我們將節省信貸員和信貸專業人員無數的時間來編譯資訊並產生幾乎每筆商業貸款都會產生的文件初稿。我們已經有了第一個測試版客戶。我們目前正在與許多其他客戶進行預覽。

I'm also very encouraged by our new GenAI-enabled commercial real estate early warning system that we believe will significantly enhance commercial real estate portfolio monitoring capabilities for both lenders and investors. And I actually just sat through a demo of this in the last week or 2. And the early warning system integrates a wide range of our datasets.

我也對我們新的支援 GenAI 的商業房地產預警系統感到非常鼓舞，我們相信該系統將顯著增強貸款人和投資者的商業房地產投資組合監控能力。實際上，我在上週或兩週內剛剛完成了這個演示。預警系統整合了我們的廣泛資料集。

It enables the evaluation of news events in real time, running scenarios and calculations that link together market forecasts, listings and property data, tenant data and valuation and credit models. And again, the early feedback has been very positive. And we're already looking to extend these capabilities beyond just commercial real estate.

它可以即時評估新聞事件、運行場景和計算，將市場預測、清單和房地產數據、租戶數據以及估值和信用模型聯繫在一起。再說一遍，早期的回饋非常積極。我們已經在尋求將這些功能擴展到商業房地產之外。

Now from an internal perspective, we've rolled out GitHub Copilot and some other GenAI tools to more than 1,500 engineering professionals across the company. And as a result of our experience last year, we've specifically planned for efficiency gains in our engineering budgets in 2024. We're also rolling out our next generation of AI-enabled tools for our sales teams across the company over the next several months. So that's the first area.

現在從內部角度來看，我們已經向全公司 1,500 多名工程專業人士推出了 GitHub Copilot 和其他一些 GenAI 工具。根據去年的經驗，我們專門計劃在 2024 年提高工程預算的效率。我們還將在接下來的幾年中為全公司的銷售團隊推出下一代支援人工智慧的工具幾個月。這是第一個區域。

The second area is product development. And as part of our land-and-expand strategy in MA, we are building on the success and momentum of our KYC business, which has grown to over $300 million of ARR in just a few years. And I think those of you who've been on this call for a while, you've heard me mention before that our -- that Know Your Customer is probably too limiting of a term for this business as it continues to expand.

第二個領域是產品開發。作為我們在馬薩諸塞州土地擴張策略的一部分，我們正在 KYC 業務的成功和勢頭的基礎上再接再厲，該業務在短短幾年內已增長到超過 3 億美元的 ARR。我想那些參加這個電話會議一段時間的人，你們之前聽過我提到過，隨著這項業務的不斷擴張，「了解你的客戶」這個術語對於這個業務來說可能過於限制。

So this year, we're increasing investments to develop solutions focused on the growing market demand really for solutions to serve their customer and supplier risk needs. And we're especially encouraged by recent wins with a number of large government and Fortune 100 customers. So this year, we're going to make investments in product, technology and data and go-to-market capabilities to be able to scale in these customer segments.

因此，今年，我們增加了投資來開發解決方案，重點關注不斷增長的市場需求，真正滿足客戶和供應商風險需求的解決方案。最近與許多大型政府和財富 100 強客戶的合作讓我們深受鼓舞。因此，今年，我們將在產品、技術和數據以及上市能力方面進行投資，以便能夠在這些客戶群中擴大規模。

The ratings ecosystem also continues to evolve. In early January, we were just provided with the very first -- we just had the very first rating on a tokenized bond fund. And while digitized -- or sorry, digital finance is still nascent, we're going to be ready to help our customers delivering our ratings on the platforms wherever they are going to issue. So that's second.

評級生態系統也在不斷發展。一月初，我們剛剛獲得了第一個評級——我們剛剛獲得了對代幣化債券基金的第一個評級。雖然數位化——或者抱歉，數位金融仍處於萌芽階段，但我們將準備好幫助我們的客戶在他們要發行的平台上提供我們的評級。所以這是第二個。

And then third is around technology platforming. So we're building on the platforming work that we highlighted in our Innovation Open House event back in September. And as we explained then, this work is critical to strengthening the interoperability of all of our data estate and improving the synergies across our solutions.

第三是技術平台。因此，我們正在以 9 月的創新開放日活動中強調的平台工作為基礎。正如我們當時所解釋的，這項工作對於加強我們所有數據資產的互通性和提高我們解決方案的協同作用至關重要。

By investing in our platforming and engineering capabilities, we're going to accelerate our time to market, enhance the customer experience, better enable cross-sell and upsell and deliver engineering efficiencies. The faster this work gets done, the sooner we will realize the revenue and efficiency benefits, so we have decided to hit the accelerator.

透過投資我們的平台和工程能力，我們將加快上市時間，增強客戶體驗，更好地實現交叉銷售和追加銷售，並提高工程效率。這項工作完成得越快，我們就能越早實現收入和效率效益，因此我們決定加速推進。

The same is true in ratings, where more tech-enabled workflow is really key to the quality, speed, efficiency and compliance. And we've been on a journey to modernize, digitize and automate our systems. We've made some good headway. But there is still more work to be done.

在評級中也是如此，更多技術支援的工作流程對於品質、速度、效率和合規性至關重要。我們一直致力於系統現代化、數位化和自動化。我們已經取得了一些良好進展。但還有更多工作要做。

Optimizing our data estate and moving more of our workflow into cloud-based applications really has never been more important, given the promise of AI and the digitization of financial markets. So here, too, we decided to accelerate our efforts. And this will be critical in achieving our medium-term margin targets.

鑑於人工智慧和金融市場數位化的前景，優化我們的數據資產並將更多工作流程轉移到基於雲端的應用程式中確實變得前所未有的重要。因此，我們也決定在這方面加快努力。這對於實現我們的中期利潤目標至關重要。

So now let me turn to our issuance outlook very briefly. We're expecting more constructive market conditions in 2024. And I'm sure, as you have all seen, it was a very busy start to the year, over $150 billion in investment-grade issuance in January alone. Underpinning our MIS revenue growth outlook of high single to low double digits is an increase in MIS rated issuance in the mid- to high single-digit percent range.

現在讓我簡要談談我們的發行前景。我們預計 2024 年將出現更具建設性的市場狀況。我確信，正如大家所看到的，今年的開局非常繁忙，僅 1 月份投資級發行量就超過 1,500 億美元。支撐我們的 MIS 收入成長前景為高個位數到低兩位數的是 MIS 評級發行量在中高個位數百分比範圍內的增長。

For corporates, we expect that leveraged finance will grow faster than investment-grade issuance, which should be favorable to revenue mix. And our outlook is built on the macroeconomic assumptions that are detailed on Page 20 of our webcast deck and notably incorporating a soft landing here in the U.S. and rate cuts starting in the second quarter of this year. And I imagine we'll dive deeper into both our issuance and macroeconomic assumptions in the Q&A session.

對企業而言，我們預期槓桿融資的成長速度將快於投資等級發行，這應有利於收入組合。我們的前景是建立在我們網路廣播第 20 頁上詳細介紹的宏觀經濟假設的基礎上的，特別是美國的軟著陸和今年第二季度開始的降息。我想我們將在問答環節更深入地探討我們的發行和宏觀經濟假設。

But before moving off of MIS, I do want to highlight that early last year, we committed to reviewing our medium-term guidance for MIS revenue growth once we saw a sustainable improvement in the debt markets. And I'm happy to share that following 6% revenue growth in 2023 and the expectation of at least high single-digit growth in 2024, we have updated our medium-term growth target for MIS, revenue growth target for MIS to be in the mid- to high single-digit percent growth range.

但在離開 MIS 之前，我確實想強調，去年初，一旦我們看到債務市場的可持續改善，我們就承諾審查 MIS 收入成長的中期指引。我很高興與大家分享，繼 2023 年營收成長 6% 以及 2024 年至少實現高個位數成長的預期之後，我們更新了 MIS 的中期成長目標，將 MIS 的營收成長目標調整為中高個位數百分比增長範圍。

Now moving back to our 2024 annual guidance. Moody's revenue is expected to grow in the high single to low double-digit percent range. The Moody's adjusted operating margin is projected to be in the range of 44% to 46%. That's about 100 basis points of margin improvement at the midpoint. And the Moody's revenue and adjusted operating margin guidance ranges incorporate the variability of that MIS transaction-based revenue and then balanced against the subscription base in MA, where nearly 95% of our revenues are recurring.

現在回到我們的 2024 年年度指導。穆迪的收入預計將在高個位數百分比到低兩位數百分比範圍內成長。穆迪調整後營業利潤率預計在 44% 至 46% 之間。中點利潤率提高了約 100 個基點。穆迪的收入和調整後的營業利潤率指引範圍納入了 MIS 基於交易的收入的可變性，然後與 MA 的訂閱基礎進行平衡，其中我們近 95% 的收入都是經常性的。

In regards to MA, we're guiding to a tighter range of approximately 10% growth -- revenue growth and low double-digit growth in ARR. Now MA's adjusted operating margin is expected to be in the range of 30% to 31% this year. That's absorbing the impact of the incremental organic investments that I just talked about. In the medium term, we expect MA's adjusted operating margin to be in the mid-30s percent range. And as I have discussed with a number of you, the path to that target is not exactly linear.

就 MA 而言，我們的指導是在約 10% 的更嚴格增長範圍內——收入增長和 ARR 的低兩位數增長。目前，MA今年調整後的營業利益率預計在30%至31%之間。這正在吸收我剛才談到的增量有機投資的影響。從中期來看，我們預計 MA 調整後的營業利潤率將在 30% 左右。正如我與你們中的一些人討論過的那樣，實現該目標的路徑並不完全是線性的。

For 2024, MIS's adjusted operating margin is expected to be in the range of 55.5% to 57.5%. That is a 200 basis point improvement versus 2023 at the midpoint. And that is solidly on track towards the medium-term target of low 60s percent.

2024 年，MIS 調整後的營業利潤率預計將在 55.5% 至 57.5% 之間。與 2023 年的中位數相比，提高了 200 個基點。這正堅定地朝著 60% 以下的中期目標邁進。

Our expenses overall are expected to grow in the mid- to high single-digit percent range. A couple of factors worth noting. First, we closed out our 2022/'23 geolocation restructuring program at the end of 2023. Caroline can talk more about that. Second, we expect depreciation and amortization expenses of approximately $450 million in 2024. That's an increase of approximately 20% as compared to 2023.

我們的整體支出預計將在中高個位數百分比範圍內成長。有幾個因素值得注意。首先，我們在 2023 年底結束了 2022/'23 地理位置重組計畫。卡羅琳可以詳細討論這一點。其次，我們預計 2024 年折舊和攤提費用約為 4.5 億美元。與 2023 年相比增加約 20%。

And that growth is largely related to the cumulative effect of our shift towards developing exclusively SaaS-based solutions starting back in 2021 and coupled with the increased capital expenditures associated with the three primary areas of incremental organic investment that I just talked about. And we're expecting free cash flow of between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion and adjusted EPS to be in the range, I said earlier, of $10.25 to $11, again a 24% increase at the midpoint versus 2022, looking through those tax benefits that I touched on.

這種成長很大程度上與我們從2021 年開始轉向專門開發基於SaaS 的解決方案的累積效應有關，再加上與我剛才談到的增量有機投資的三個主要領域相關的資本支出的增加。我們預計自由現金流將在19 億美元至21 億美元之間，調整後的每股收益將在我之前說過的10.25 美元至11 美元的範圍內，與2022 年相比，中點再次增長24 %。我觸及了。

So I'll wrap up by just saying it was a really great year for us here in 2023. I'm expecting an even more exciting one ahead. I'm energized by our strategy. We've got fantastic engagement across the company. And we believe that now is the time to invest in the opportunity that's in front of us, to fully embrace the power of AI across our business, to accelerate the build-out of our technology platform and to bring together our content to build new solutions with unique value propositions that will accelerate growth.

最後，我想說的是，2023 年對我們來說真是偉大的一年。我期待著更令人興奮的一年。我們的策略讓我充滿活力。我們整個公司都積極參與。我們相信，現在是投資擺在我們面前的機會的時候了，在我們的業務中充分利用人工智慧的力量，加速我們技術平台的建設，並將我們的內容整合起來構建新的解決方案具有加速增長的獨特價值主張。

So with that, I welcome Caroline, Steve and Mike to join me for Q&A. And operator, please open the call up to questions.

因此，我歡迎卡洛琳、史蒂夫和麥克加入我的問答環節。接線員，請打開電話詢問問題。

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

（操作員指令）我們的第一個問題來自高盛的George Tong。

I wanted to ask about your planned incremental strategic investments in GenAI products and platforming. Can you talk a little bit more about the timing of these investments as well as benefits you're expecting and the margin impact for 2024?

我想問一下你們計劃對 GenAI 產品和平台進行增量策略投資的情況。您能否詳細談談這些投資的時機以及您預期的收益以及對 2024 年利潤率的影響？

Yes, George. I might start by -- maybe I'll just give you a little more insight into kind of what's in those three main components. And then we'll talk about some of the timing and margin impact. As it relates to GenAI, we've got a generative intelligence team. We've stood up an MCO infrastructure. We've got some incremental engineering costs. We've got additional licenses. I mentioned, GitHub Copilot. We will get the benefit of that, but we had costs upfront. And of course, we have incremental cloud costs and token costs relating to large language models.

是的，喬治。我可能會先讓您更深入地了解這三個主要組件的內容。然後我們將討論一些時間安排和利潤影響。就 GenAI 而言，我們有一個生成智能團隊。我們已經建立了 MCO 基礎設施。我們有一些增量工程成本。我們有額外的許可證。我提到過 GitHub Copilot。我們會從中受益，但我們需要預先付出成本。當然，我們還有與大型語言模型相關的增量雲端成本和代幣成本。

On the product development side, really it's about the build-out of our customer and supplier risk offerings for the corporate and public sector. And that's data, workflow and go-to-market. And then on technology and platforming, as we talk about building out that MA platform, it's things like engineering around single sign-on and entitlement so that, as I said, we can get those benefits faster. Let me turn that over to Caroline and see if you want to just help George around the timing of all of that.

在產品開發方面，實際上是為企業和公共部門建立我們的客戶和供應商風險產品。這就是數據、工作流程和上市。然後在技術和平台方面，當我們談論建立 MA 平台時，它就像圍繞單一登入和權利進行工程，以便，正如我所說，我們可以更快地獲得這些好處。讓我把這個問題轉給卡洛琳，看看你是否願意在這一切的時間安排上幫助喬治。

So we anticipate, if you look at both MIS and MA, to deliver -- MIS has delivered an operating margin in 2023 of 54.5%, roughly in line with our target of 55%. And in 2024, we're expecting adjusted operating margin to increase by about 200 basis points. MA's margin is going to remain consistent with what we saw based on 2023. Without that $60 million that we talked about in Rob's comments related to the investments, MA margins would have been on track to increase and expand by 120 basis points.

因此，如果您同時查看 MIS 和 MA，我們預計 MIS 到 2023 年的營業利潤率為 54.5%，大致符合我們 55% 的目標。到 2024 年，我們預計調整後營業利潤率將增加約 200 個基點。 MA 的利潤率將與我們在 2023 年看到的情況保持一致。如果沒有 Rob 在與投資相關的評論中談到的 6000 萬美元，MA 的利潤率將會增加並擴大 120 個基點。

Your next question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

你的下一個問題來自於東尼卡普蘭與摩根士丹利的對話。

Rob, I wanted to take a step back for a second and not asking about '24 at all, just in general. Where do you think a normalized level of issuance is? How much upside is there from here to get back to a more normal growth environment and maybe particularly with rates at maybe a higher level than they have been in the last couple of years?

羅布，我想退後一步，根本不問“24”，只是一般性的。您認為常態化發行水準在哪裡？從現在開始，要回到更正常的成長環境，尤其是在利率可能高於過去幾年的水平的情況下，還有多少上升空間？

So maybe a couple of ways to kind of triangulate around this. I think as far back as 2022, as you remember, we had that significant decline in issuance from the pandemic years. On the call, I talked about how total -- when we look at total global issuance, it was modestly below what was a, I'll call it, kind of a 10-year average from, at the time it was, I think, 2012 to '22, excluding the 2 pandemic years. And I think total issuance in 2022 was something like 5% below that average. So it's not a big number.

因此，也許有幾種方法可以圍繞這個問題進行三角測量。我想，正如你所記得的，早在 2022 年，我們的發行量就比疫情年份大幅下降。在電話會議上，我談到了全球發行總量，我認為它略低於當時的 10 年平均水平。 ，2012 年至 22 年，不包括 2 個大流行年份。我認為 2022 年的總發行量大約比平均值低 5%。所以這不是一個大數字。

And remember, that was in the context of like a 30% decline in issuance that year. But we drilled down, and I think we made the point that corporate issuance was something like 15% below that long-term average, excluding the pandemic. And if you actually drilled even further and got into leveraged finance, it's even farther. And as you know, corporate issuance, and in particular leveraged finance issuance, is quite favorable to our revenue mix.

請記住，那是在當年發行量下降 30% 的背景下。但我們進行了深入研究，我認為我們指出了公司發行量比長期平均值低 15% 左右（不包括疫情）。如果你真的鑽得更遠並進入了槓桿金融，那就更遠了。如您所知，企業發行，特別是槓桿融資發行，對我們的收入結構非常有利。

So it's interesting, Toni. Now as you as you kind of go forward and we look at where 2023 ended relative to that average, it's roughly in line. Corporate issuance was closer to in line, I'd say, modestly below that long term. And with 2024, actually issuance will be slightly above that long-term average. And that holds true for corporate issuance, where obviously we have a little bit stronger growth expectations. So from that aspect, I think you might say, "Well, we're getting back to something that feels more like a normalized level of issuance."

所以這很有趣，托尼。現在，當你繼續前進時，我們看看 2023 年相對於平均水平的結束情況，它大致是一致的。我想說的是，企業發行量更接近這個水平，略低於這個長期水平。到 2024 年，實際發行量將略高於長期平均。對於企業發行也是如此，顯然我們對企業發行有更強的成長預期。因此，從這個方面來看，我想你可能會說，“好吧，我們正在回到一種感覺更像是正常化發行水平的狀態。”

The caveat to that, I guess, this idea of debt velocity. So over that period of time, there's been an enormous amount of debt issued, right? So the stock of debt has grown significantly. And when we look at annual issuance as a percent of the total stock outstanding, that's what we think of debt velocity, that number still looks a good bit lower than the averages over, call it, the last decade, which would imply that there's still room for issuance growth.

我想，對此的警告是債務週轉率的想法。那麼在那段時間裡，發行了大量債務，對嗎？因此，債務存量大幅增加。當我們將年度發行量佔已發行股票總數的百分比視為我們對債務速度的看法時，這個數字看起來仍然比過去十年的平均水平低很多，這意味著仍然有發行增長空間。

And the last thing I'd say is if you look at where structured finance is at the moment, that's significantly below kind of that 10-year average for reasons that we may get into later in the call. But hopefully, that gives you some insight.

我要說的最後一件事是，如果你看看目前結構性融資的狀況，你會發現它明顯低於 10 年平均水平，原因我們可能會在稍後的電話會議中討論。但希望這能給您一些見解。

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

你的下一個問題來自巴克萊銀行的馬納夫·帕特奈克（Manav Patnaik）。

Maybe I could just ask about 2024 in terms of the cadence of issuance you've assumed either first half or the back half. And then maybe just some color on how we should think about your non-transaction piece of the MIS business, how that should grow, I guess, this year?

也許我可以問一下 2024 年的發行節奏，你假設的是上半年或下半年。然後也許只是一些關於我們應該如何考慮 MIS 業務的非交易部分的一些顏色，我想今年應該如何成長？

Manav, I think I might ask Mike to give us some color around how to think about first half, second half. And then I might be able to put kind of a finer point on that.

馬納夫，我想我可能會請麥克給我們一些關於如何思考上半場和下半場的資訊。然後我也許可以對此提出更詳細的觀點。

Yes. Thanks, Manav. So first of all, I think we're expecting here issuance in the first half to be stronger than in the second half. And that's a common pattern if you actually look over previous years. Some of that is due to the constructive conditions that we're seeing at the moment with spreads tightening and sentiments improving. And these issuers are trying to lock in the rates that they want before any potential volatility.

是的。謝謝，馬納夫。首先，我認為我們預計上半年的發行量將強於下半年。如果你真正回顧前幾年，這是一個常見的模式。其中部分原因是我們目前看到利差收緊和情緒改善的建設性條件。這些發行人正試圖在出現任何潛在波動之前鎖定他們想要的利率。

Some of it is actually seasonality that we see each year, given that we do expect a slowdown in the second half through summer, and sometimes it tails off when we get into December. The other important factor when you think about issuance is that some of those more frequent issuers in investment-grade, in corporate and the banks tend to come earlier in the market to secure their funding and manage their balance sheets. Infrequent issuers, on the other hand, can be opportunistic and will wait for those opportunities and windows that they see fit.

其中一些實際上是我們每年都會看到的季節性因素，因為我們確實預計下半年到夏季經濟會放緩，有時進入 12 月時會放緩。考慮發行時的另一個重要因素是，一些更頻繁的投資等級、企業和銀行發行人往往會更早進入市場，以確保融資並管理資產負債表。另一方面，不頻繁發行的人可能會投機取巧，並會等待他們認為合適的機會和窗口。

Consistent with the comments I've just made is what we've discussed with, with the market. And just picking up on Rob's comment, structured finance actually tends to be more balanced between the first half and the second half. So while we do expect our first half to be busier, we do expect that activity will continue into the second market. So Rob, I don't know if you want to just put a firmer point on that one.

與我剛才發表的評論一致的是我們與市場的討論。剛剛聽完羅布的評論，結構性融資實際上在上半年和下半年之間趨於更加平衡。因此，雖然我們確實預計上半年會更加繁忙，但我們確實預計第二市場的活動將持續下去。羅布，我不知道你是否想在這一點上提出更堅定的觀點。

Yes. And I know people want to have a good sense for informing their models. So last year, as Mike said, issuance was more front-end loaded. We had a rising rate environment. Something like, I don't know, call it, 56% of 2023 annual issuance was in the first half of the year. And while we do expect a rate decline in the second half of the year, as Mike said, we still think that issuance will be front-end loaded. And our current assumption for issuance is pretty similar to the pattern that we saw in 2023.

是的。我知道人們希望有良好的判斷力來為他們的模型提供資訊。因此，正如麥克所說，去年的發行更多是前端加載的。我們面臨利率上升的環境。比方說，我不知道，2023 年發行量​​的 56% 是在今年上半年。正如麥克所說，雖然我們確實預計下半年利率會下降，但我們仍然認為發行將是前端加載的。我們目前的發行假設與我們在 2023 年看到的模式非常相似。

Now then we got to translate it to MIS revenue. And the impact there is a little bit less pronounced in terms of first half, second half. And I would say that we're expecting just a little over half, maybe low 50s percent of MIS revenue in the first half. And that's a little lower than the issuance mix. Why? Because banks are the ones that tend to issue and do more front-end loading of their issuance. And there are different economics for infrequent bank issuers. So hopefully, that gives you a sense. One of the things, Manav, I might say just specifically for the first quarter, I'd say we expect probably close to 30% of annual issuance and probably closer to somewhere between 25% to 30% of MIS annual revenue.

現在我們必須將其轉換為管理資訊系統收入。而且上半場、下半場的影響稍微不那麼明顯。我想說的是，我們預計上半年 MIS 收入只會佔一半多一點，也許只有 50%。這比發行組合略低。為什麼？因為銀行是傾向發行並且在發行時進行更多前端加載的機構。對於不頻繁發行的銀行來說，也有不同的經濟效益。希望這能給你一種感覺。其中一件事，Manav，我可能會專門針對第一季度說，我們預計可能會接近年度發行量的 30%，並且可能接近 MIS 年收入的 25% 至 30%。

Your next question will come from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank.

您的下一個問題將來自德意志銀行的 Faiza Alwy。

So I wanted to ask about MIS margins. I think, Rob, you alluded to some investments. But maybe put a finer point around that. Because I would have thought you would have better sort of margin flow-through, given the revenues that you're expecting. So is it all investments? Is there some mix? And just give us a bit more color around those investments.

所以我想問MIS利潤率。我想，羅布，你提到了一些投資。但也許可以對此提出更好的觀點。因為我以為，考慮到你所期望的收入，你會有更好的利潤流動。那麼都是投資嗎？有混合的嗎？請給我們更多關於這些投資的色彩。

I can take that question. So just to follow on to what Mike and Rob just said about the phasing of our revenues, because of that, we are forecasting higher margins in the first half of the year versus the second half of the year. So that's what we will see for MIS. But overall, we're expecting adjusted operating margins to increase by 200 basis points.

我可以回答這個問題。因此，按照麥克和羅布剛才所說的關於我們的收入階段性的內容，因此，我們預測今年上半年的利潤率將高於下半年。這就是我們將看到的 MIS。但總體而言，我們預計調整後的營業利潤率將增加 200 個基點。

Your next question will come from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.

您的下一個問題將來自加拿大皇家銀行資本市場的 Ashish Sabadra。

I just wanted to better understand how we should think about the ROI for the strategic investments. Obviously, the investments that you made in the prior year has accelerated the MA revenue growth. I was wondering, how should we think about the growth accretion from these investments? And maybe just a follow-up on that one is how should we think about the GenAI monetization in '24 but also midterm?

我只是想更了解我們應該如何考慮戰略投資的投資報酬率。顯然，您上一年的投資加速了 MA 收入的成長。我想知道，我們應該如何看待這些投資帶來的成長成長？也許這只是一個後續問題，我們該如何考慮 24 年以及中期的 GenAI 貨幣化？

Yes. Maybe I'll start with that and then hand it to Steve. I'd say just in general, as you think about the return on these investments, I would say that we're investing in the highest growth parts of our business. So GenAI products, that's going to augment growth across our SaaS and hosted solutions. And Steve will touch on that in just a second.

是的。也許我會從這個開始，然後交給史蒂夫。我想說的是，一般來說，當你考慮這些投資的回報時，我會說我們正在投資我們業務中成長最快的部分。 GenAI 產品將促進我們的 SaaS 和託管解決方案的成長。史蒂夫稍後會談到這一點。

We're investing, as I talked about, in enhanced solutions for corporates and the public sector around customer and supplier risk. And I had that data point that we've had 14% CAGR in terms of sales growth over the last 2 years from those sectors. And we think we can even enhance that growth at scale as we invest in products specifically for those customer segments.

正如我所說，我們正在投資為企業和公共部門提供圍繞客戶和供應商風險的增強解決方案。我的數據表明，過去 2 年這些行業的銷售複合年增長率為 14%。我們認為，當我們投資專門針對這些客戶群的產品時，我們甚至可以大規模地促進這種成長。

And then lastly, platforming, we expect revenue growth from our SaaS and hosted solutions to grow something like low-teens this year. That's in line with our medium-term targets. And the growth has been even higher in Decision Solutions. It's been more like high-teens from SaaS and hosted solutions we're looking for this year. So I think there's a pretty strong case for investment in these high-growth parts of our business. But Steve?

最後，在平台化方面，我們預計今年 SaaS 和託管解決方案的營收成長將達到十幾歲左右。這符合我們的中期目標。決策解決方案的成長甚至更高。我們今年正在尋找來自 SaaS 和託管解決方案的青少年。因此，我認為有充分的理由對我們業務的這些高成長部分進行投資。但是史蒂夫？

Yes, just a couple other comments. We're doing what we do well: developing good, solid product development pipelines; creating new product life cycles to generate revenue growth and support customer value propositions; continuing to invest in the sales force. And then what we've said today is making even more an incremental investment in GenAI, and especially in areas where we think we can land new blue-chip customers maybe outside of financial services.

是的，還有一些其他評論。我們正在做我們擅長的事情：開發良好、可靠的產品開發管道；創建新的產品生命週期以產生收入成長並支持客戶價值主張；繼續投資於銷售團隊。然後我們今天所說的是對 GenAI 進行更多的增量投資，特別是在我們認為我們可以在金融服務之外吸引新的藍籌客戶的領域。

We have such a tremendous franchise with the financial services sector, we see great opportunities and have demonstrated great growth trends with some new customers in corporations that may be are nonfinancial in their orientation or public sector entities. I think you'll see lots of new products coming online this year in the GenAI space in particular. Rob mentioned a couple that are coming down the pike in the next quarter or so, maybe quarter -- second or third quarter.

我們在金融服務領域擁有如此巨大的特許經營權，我們看到了巨大的機會，並在一些可能是非金融方向的公司或公共部門實體的新客戶中展示了巨大的成長趨勢。我想今年你會看到很多新產品上線，尤其是在 GenAI 領域。羅布提到了一些將在下個季度左右（也許是第二季或第三季）出現的情況。

We are actively engaged throughout the product development and engineering teams to build more value propositions and leverage GenAI to support our customers and help them not just do their business faster and save some money but be more effective and be more productive when they're doing it, actually make better decisions, develop better analyses.

我們積極參與整個產品開發和工程團隊的工作，以建立更多價值主張，並利用GenAI 來支持我們的客戶，不僅幫助他們更快地開展業務並節省一些資金，而且在他們開展工作時提高效率和生產力，實際上做出更好的決策，進行更好的分析。

And the Research Assistant, which we've launched already, I would expect you'd start to see some contributions in the Research & Insights line toward the end of this year. Because as the sales start to ramp up, ARR growth numbers will start to move as well. So seeing -- we expect to see actual contributions in the numbers before we turn the page on 2024.

我們已經推出了研究助理，我預計您會在今年年底開始看到研究與洞察系列中的一些貢獻。因為隨著銷售額開始上升，ARR 成長數字也將開始改變。因此，我們希望在 2024 年翻開新的一頁之前看到實際的貢獻數字。

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm with UBS.

您的下一個問題來自瑞銀集團的 Alex Kramm。

This is actually a direct follow-up to the prior question. Because Rob, I think a couple of quarters ago, I asked you about this GenAI being potentially part of your guidance already for this year in terms of revenue contribution. So it would be helpful to give a little bit more specificity in terms of both revenue and ARR. What are you actually budgeting in terms of contributions here for the year since you obviously raised some pretty high expectations?

這其實是前一個問題的直接後續。因為羅伯，我想幾個季度前，我問過您，GenAI 可能會成為您今年收入貢獻指導的一部分。因此，在收入和 ARR 方面提供更多具體資訊會有所幫助。既然您顯然提出了一些相當高的期望，那麼您今年的捐款實際預算是多少？

And maybe just related to that, I mean, you mentioned some early feedback. So just obviously very interested in your ability -- or signs of your ability to actually upsell people and people not just coming back to you and saying like, "Look, you're asking for more money all the time. Of course, you should enhance all products, but we're not going to be willing to pay up as much as you think you can." So a little fleshing out there would be helpful.

也許與此相關，我的意思是，你提到了一些早期的回饋。顯然，你對你的能力非常感興趣，或者你有能力向人們推銷產品，而人們不僅僅是回到你身邊說，「看，你一直在要求更多的錢。當然，你應該增強所有產品，但我們不會願意付出你想像的那麼多。”所以稍微充實一下會有幫助。

Alex, thanks for the question. So I think we've learned a good bit over the last few months as we've been engaging with customers, as we've been signing customers, as we've been building the pipeline. And all of that is informing how we're thinking about our guidance. I think, Steve, why don't I hand it to you just to give some insight into what we've learned and how we're -- how we think about that then following through the MA business?

亞歷克斯，謝謝你的提問。因此，我認為在過去的幾個月裡，我們在與客戶接觸、與客戶簽約、建立管道的過程中學到了很多。所有這些都告訴我們如何思考我們的指導。我想，史蒂夫，我為什麼不把它交給你，讓你深入了解我們所學到的知識以及我們如何思考這一點，然後繼續開展 MA 業務呢？

Yes. So just a quick short answer to your question, Alex, is the Research & Insights line is where you'll see the biggest contribution coming from GenAI-related products because that's where we've got a product in-market already. Sales cycles take some time to develop. We are seeing some pretty interesting patterns, to Rob's point. It's interesting, the -- maybe investment managers and hedge funds that are smaller teams, a little bit more agile and able to make a decision right now are the ones that are buying this product literally right away.

是的。因此，Alex，對您的問題快速簡短地回答一下，您將在研究與洞察系列中看到 GenAI 相關產品的最大貢獻，因為我們已經在市場上推出了產品。銷售週期需要一些時間來形成。對於羅布來說，我們看到了一些非常有趣的模式。有趣的是，也許投資經理和對沖基金是較小的團隊，更加敏捷並且能夠立即做出決定，他們實際上是立即購買該產品的人。

So our first sales that are coming in are coming in from these players where the boss is sitting at the table with the people who are the users, the boss, maybe a user. And they're saying, "Wow, this is really going to make a difference. Let's just do it right now." Some are locking into multiyear agreements, by the way. So they're believers in this as a productivity enhancer for them.

因此，我們的第一批銷售來自這些參與者，其中老闆與用戶坐在桌旁，老闆，也許是用戶。他們說：“哇，這真的會帶來改變。讓我們現在就做吧。”順便說一句，有些公司正在簽訂多年協議。所以他們相信這可以提高他們的生產力。

On the other side of the spectrum, where we have big customer relationships with large banks, we're engaging very differently. The character of the conversation is a lot more like what we've seen over the years in the software and workflow sales dynamics. So we're engaging very senior levels. They're talking about leveraging what we're doing as a transformational tool to change the way they do business.

另一方面，我們與大型銀行有著廣泛的客戶關係，我們的參與方式也截然不同。對話的特徵更像是我們多年來在軟體和工作流程銷售動態中看到的情況。因此，我們正在聘請非常高級的人員。他們正在談論利用我們正在做的事情作為轉型工具來改變他們開展業務的方式。

They see the opportunity to cut cost, maybe lower their cost of goods sold, maybe lower their -- increase productivity through platforming and using our capability as an element in their platforming efforts, like what we're doing in terms of leveraging GenAI throughout the organization. And we're seeing project -- transformation projects, where people are looking forward to working with us, evaluating us very, very intentionally.

他們看到了削減成本的機會，也許可以降低銷售商品的成本，也許可以透過平台化來提高生產力，並使用我們的能力作為他們平台化工作的一個要素，就像我們在整個過程中利用GenAI 所做的那樣組織。我們正在看到轉型項目，人們期待與我們合作，非常非常有意識地評估我們。

And we're engaging with scores of users, for example, to get a reading on can they really make a difference leveraging this tool or can we make a difference leveraging us in their organization? And we're seeing some really interesting conversations, often at the C-level. So this isn't your run-of-the-mill add-on to the research service, which we've been doing for decades.

例如，我們正在與大量用戶互動，以了解他們是否真的可以利用此工具帶來改變，或者我們可以在他們的組織中利用我們帶來改變嗎？我們看到一些非常有趣的對話，通常是在 C 級別。因此，這並不是我們幾十年來一直在做的研究服務的普通附加內容。

This is a, "Gosh, this might really change the way I do investment research. This might really change the way I think about doing credit research at scale." And that's one of the reasons we're very excited about that dynamic. So the first couple of months have been interesting. Smaller, faster decisions are happening. And people are buying the product at a rate that's above our normal rate of sales patterns. The patterns are faster than normal. And at the top end, we're seeing really good engagement in a way that I say -- I think is going to be quite profound for us.

這是“天哪，這可能真的會改變我進行投資研究的方式。這可能真的會改變我對大規模信用研究的看法。”這就是我們對這種動態感到非常興奮的原因之一。所以前幾個月很有趣。更小、更快的決策正在發生。人們購買產品的速度高於我們正常的銷售模式。這些模式比正常情況要快。在高端，我們看到了非常好的參與度，我認為這對我們來說意義深遠。

Your next question will come from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets.

您的下一個問題將來自 BMO 資本市場部門的 Jeff Silber。

I think earlier in the call, you gave a little color on cadence for first half versus half versus second half in terms of revenues and margins for MIS. And I'm wondering if you could do the same thing for the MA division.

我認為在電話會議的早些時候，您就 MIS 的收入和利潤率方面對上半年與下半年的節奏進行了一些說明。我想知道你是否可以為文學碩士部門做同樣的事情。

Caroline, do you want to take that?

卡洛琳，你想接受這個嗎？

Sure. So for MA, we see a slightly different picture to MIS with regards to both revenue and with regards to expenses. So for -- if we start at the fourth quarter for MA, we recorded just under $800 million of MA revenue. And we're expecting just above $800 million in Q1 and then steadily ramping up by $20 million to $25 million through quarter 4.

當然。因此，對於 MA 而言，我們在收入和支出方面看到的情況與 MIS 略有不同。因此，如果我們從 MA 的第四季開始，我們記錄的 MA 收入略低於 8 億美元。我們預計第一季的營收略高於 8 億美元，然後在第四季穩步增加 2,000 萬美元至 2,500 萬美元。

The MA margin will kind of follow a similar path. However, Q1 will be influenced just by some seasonality to our expenses associated with our annual compensation programs with our employees. So we'll see higher payroll taxes associated with the vesting of employee stock grants and bonus payments. But then the margin is expected to follow a similar pattern to revenue, steadily ramping from a couple of percentage points below our full year guide of 30% to 31% in the first quarter to a couple of points above it by the time we get to Q4.

MA 利潤率將遵循類似的路徑。然而，第一季將僅受到與員工年度薪酬計劃相關的費用的一些季節性影響。因此，我們將看到與員工股票授予和獎金支付相關的更高的工資稅。但預計利潤率將遵循與收入類似的模式，從第一季 30% 至 31% 的全年指導值以下幾個百分點穩步上升，到Q4。

And while we're on the topic of -- now that we've covered MIS and MA calendarization, maybe let me just add a little bit in terms of thinking about then, kind of pulling this together and thinking about what it might mean for adjusted diluted EPS. So we've got a little bit front-end loaded issuance pattern that we talked about, the cadence that Caroline just touched on.

既然我們已經討論了 MIS 和 MA 日曆化，也許讓我在思考當時的情況下添加一點，將其放在一起並思考它可能意味著什麼調整後的稀釋每股收益。因此，我們已經討論了一點前端加載的發行模式，卡羅琳剛剛提到的節奏。

From an adjusted diluted EPS standpoint, we think that the first quarter will be our strongest quarter in terms of absolute adjusted diluted EPS, followed by the second quarter. And maybe the easiest way to think about it is this. If you take the average quarterly EPS at the midpoint of our full year guide, and I think that's somewhere between $2.60 and $2.70, then given the stronger front half issuance that we've talked about, we'd expect first quarter EPS to be something like $0.15 to $0.20 higher than that average for the first quarter.

從調整後稀釋每股盈餘的角度來看，我們認為第一季將是我們調整後稀釋每股盈餘絕對值最強的季度，其次是第二季。也許最簡單的思考方式就是這樣。如果您以我們全年指南的中點計算平均季度每股收益，我認為該數字介於2.60 美元和2.70 美元之間，那麼考慮到我們已經討論過的強勁的前半部分發行量，我們預計第一季度每股收益將達到比第一季的平均水平高出 0.15 至 0.20 美元。

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

您的下一個問題來自 Craig Huber 和 Huber Research Partners 的電話。

Mike or Rob, I'm curious, with the ongoing massive problems out there in the commercial real estate market out there, I'm curious what your thought is on the potential impact for CMBS issuance for this year, ratings there, and also more importantly, on your banking client, potential impact this year for the commercial real estate market out there.

麥克或羅布，我很好奇，隨著商業房地產市場持續存在的巨大問題，我很好奇您對今年 CMBS 發行、評級等的潛在影響有何看法重要的是，對於您的銀行客戶來說，今年對商業房地產市場的潛在影響。

What are you sort of expecting for issuance there as well? And just my quick housekeeping question, what was the incentive comp in the fourth quarter, please, and also for the full year last year?

您對那裡的發行有何期待？我想問一下，第四季以及去年全年的激勵補償是多少？

All right. We'll get Caroline teed up on that incentive comp question. I think, Craig, commercial real estate, actually if you think about it, kind of threads through a bunch of parts of our business in terms of impact to the ratings business. And it's not just the CRE sector but the banking sector and then the tools needed by folks in the market and sales cycle. So let me start with Mike.

好的。我們會讓卡羅琳準備好解決激勵補償問題。我認為，克雷格，商業房地產，實際上，如果你仔細想想，就對評級業務的影響而言，它貫穿了我們業務的許多部分。不僅是商業房地產領域，還有銀行業，以及市場和銷售週期中人們所需的工具。讓我從麥克開始。

Thanks, Craig. So on the structured finance, just to try and put that into context, I mean, we are anticipating overall that structured finance will grow mid-single digit. And when you look into that, there's different types of assets. And when we think about CMBS, let me just pick on CMBS first for your question, we believe that will still be muted, given what's going on in the CRE market, particularly in office. It is a viable funding alternative to bank finance, particularly as borrowers face restrictive lending standards.

謝謝，克雷格。因此，在結構性融資方面，我的意思是，我們預計結構性融資總體上將實現中個位數成長。當你仔細研究時，你會發現資產有不同類型。當我們考慮 CMBS 時，讓我先針對您的問題選擇 CMBS，我們認為考慮到 CRE 市場（尤其是辦公室市場）的情況，這一點仍然會被忽視。它是銀行融資的一種可行的融資替代方案，特別是在藉款人面臨嚴格的貸款標準的情況下。

But I do want to emphasize that when we look at our structured finance business, that we are expecting still a active market in ABS and CLOs. I'm very happy at some point on the call to talk a little bit more about CLOs. RMBS, on the other hand, again muted because of the asset formation, which we expect to improve as the year goes on. But with that, I might just pass to Steve and talk about the MA side of CRE.

但我確實想強調，當我們審視我們的結構性融資業務時，我們預計 ABS 和 CLO 市場仍然活躍。我很高興在電話會議上談論更多有關 CLO 的事情。另一方面，由於資產形成，人民幣支持證券再次表現疲軟，我們預計隨著時間的推移，資產形成將有所改善。但說到這裡，我可能會轉向 Steve 談談 CRE 的 MA 方面。

Yes. So I mean, I think we've been talking a lot in the firm and with our customers about the impact of, I'll call it, stress in the CRE sector, particularly the office sector. And we all know many of the causes there. We've had really good interest from our banking customers especially. We launched -- you may remember at the Innovation Day back in September, we highlighted the CreditLens CRE module, which was really a credit decisioning tool, software application that combines all of our data and analytics capabilities in the commercial real estate space to help lenders do their jobs more effectively.

是的。所以我的意思是，我認為我們在公司內部以及與我們的客戶已經就商業房地產行業（尤其是辦公行業）壓力的影響進行了很多討論。我們都知道其中的許多原因。尤其是我們的銀行客戶對我們非常感興趣。我們推出了——您可能還記得在9 月的創新日上，我們重點介紹了CreditLens CRE 模組，它實際上是一個信貸決策工具、軟體應用程序，結合了我們在商業房地產領域的所有數據和分析功能，以幫助貸方更有效地完成工作。

And we've seen really good growth there in the banking segment. That was one of the big drivers of growth for us. So I would say that's exactly what you would expect. As people start to be more aware of risk, they start to call us a little bit more. And this is one of those dynamics in MA, where risk goes up, people call us more often. Risk goes down, they start to think about taking more chances, so maybe looking for more alpha perhaps. So we get calls there, too. So the CRE segment and the CRE, I'll call it, stress is something that we find an attractive dynamic for the business overall.

我們看到銀行業的成長非常好。這是我們成長的重要推動力之一。所以我想說這正是你所期望的。隨著人們開始更加意識到風險，他們開始更多地打電話給我們。這是馬薩諸塞州的動態之一，風險上升，人們更頻繁地打電話給我們。風險下降，他們開始考慮抓住更多機會，所以也許會尋找更多的阿爾法。所以我們也在那裡接到電話。因此，CRE 細分市場和我稱之為 CRE 的壓力是我們發現對整個業務具有吸引力的動力。

Yes. There's almost like a tipping point, where when there's too much stress in the banking system, it can ultimately become a headwind for us. As Steve said, when there's the need for real insight and better understanding around credit, that's a positive. And I think what we saw in March of last year was just about going over that tipping point. Caroline, do you want to answer the second part of Craig's question?

是的。這幾乎就像一個轉折點，當銀行系統壓力過大時，它最終可能會成為我們的阻力。正如史蒂夫所說，當需要對信用有真正的洞察力和更好的理解時，這是積極的。我認為我們去年三月所看到的情況正是要跨越這個臨界點。卡洛琳，你想回答克雷格問題的第二部分嗎？

Sure. Craig, with regards to incentive comp, for the fourth quarter, we recorded about $100 million. So that got us to about $400 million for all of fiscal 2023. And just with regards to 2024, we expect incentive comp to be between about $400 million to $420 million, so think about $100 million to $105 million per quarter.

當然。克雷格，關於激勵補償，第四季我們錄得約 1 億美元。因此，我們在2023 財年全年的激勵金額約為4 億美元。就2024 年而言，我們預計激勵補償將在4 億至4.2 億美元之間，因此每季約為1 億至1.05 億美元。

Your next question comes from the line of Owen Lau with Oppenheimer.

你的下一個問題來自劉歐文和奧本海默的台詞。

So going back to your MIS revenue guidance, you guided to high single-digit to low double-digit percentage, which is higher than your peers at mid- to high single digits. And I know you have limited information about your peers. But could you please try and talk about some of the potential drivers for the difference?

因此，回到您的管理資訊系統收入指導，您指導了高個位數到低兩位數的百分比，這高於您的同行中高個位數的百分比。我知道你對同儕的了解有限。但您能否嘗試談談造成這種差異的一些潛在驅動因素？

Yes, I think, Mike, why don't I hand that to you?

是的，我想，麥克，我為什麼不把它交給你呢？

Yes. So Owen, thank you for your question. I'll start at the macro level, and as Rob mentioned, overall constructive outlook for 2024. And underpinning this is that, first of all, market uncertainty that we've experienced over the last couple of years starts to subside. And if you think that transmission is to a lower execution risk in the primary markets and also improved secondary trading, that leaves more opportunity for issuance. And that's what we're seeing at the moment.

是的。歐文，謝謝你的提問。我將從宏觀層面開始，正如 Rob 所提到的，2024 年的整體建設性前景。支撐這一點的是，首先，我們在過去幾年經歷的市場不確定性開始消退。如果你認為這種傳導會降低一級市場的執行風險，並且改善二級市場的交易，那麼就會留下更多的發行機會。這就是我們目前所看到的。

We have an assumption around a rate decrease in the second quarter. And that's unchanged despite some of the CPI print today. We've already seen that spreads have come in meaningfully, both in investment grade and sub-investment grade, which leaves the market open for the rating scale from investment grade down to the lower-rated credits. And that's important as one of our expectations here is that leveraged finance improves and recovers during the year from historical lows over the last couple of years.

我們對第二季利率下降有一個假設。儘管今天公佈了一些消費者物價指數，但這情況並未改變。我們已經看到，無論是投資級別還是次投資級別，利差都已顯著增加，這使得市場對從投資級別到較低評級信用的評級範圍保持開放。這很重要，因為我們的預期之一是槓桿融資將在今年改善並從過去幾年的歷史低點恢復。

In here is also the 10% increase in the refinancing walls, we talked about that on the last call, and a modest recovery in M&A. That's still uncertain, but there's certainly sizable dry powder and cash on the corporate balance sheet. There's also a backdrop here. Even though we've got moderating economic growth, we are assuming an avoidance of a deep recession and, therefore, economic resiliency and looking towards that growth in 2025 as people think about deploying long-term capital.

這裡還有再融資牆增加 10%，我們在上次電話會議上談到了這一點，以及併購的溫和復甦。這仍然不確定，但公司資產負債表上肯定有大量的乾火藥和現金。這裡還有一個背景。儘管我們的經濟成長放緩，但我們假設可以避免嚴重衰退，因此經濟具有彈性，並在人們考慮部署長期資本時期待 2025 年實現成長。

At the same time, as spread comes in, that is also a key assumption in our default study. And as we get over that peak default period during the year, as spreads come in, that is a more favorable environment for the lower end of spec grade. So that's underpinning a lot of our macro picture. But Rob, do you want to add anything?

同時，隨著利差的出現，這也是我們違約研究中的關鍵假設。當我們度過今年的違約高峰期時，隨著利差的增加，這對於規格等級的低端來說是一個更有利的環境。因此，這支撐了我們的宏觀前景。但是羅布，你想補充什麼嗎？

Yes. And we can -- if people want to get into the asset-level guidance, we're happy to do that in another question. I also -- I think it was Manav that asked a question about recurring revenue in MIS. And maybe let me just come back to that. That continues to be -- our view on that is it continues to be in that kind of low to mid-single-digit range for revenue. This ties in part to first-time mandates. Obviously, first-time mandates are what build the stock of rated issuers that we surveil, so just a little insight there.

是的。我們可以——如果人們想了解資產層面的指導，我們很樂意在另一個問題中這樣做。我還——我認為是馬納夫問了一個關於管理資訊系統經常性收入的問題。也許讓我回到這一點。我們的觀點是，它的收入仍然處於低至中個位數的範圍內。這在一定程度上與首次授權有關。顯然，首次授權是我們所監控的評等發行人存量的基礎，因此我們只提供一點見解。

We saw a pretty significant slowdown in first-time mandates since, I'd say, third quarter of 2022. In the fourth quarter, first-time mandates were about in line with the fourth quarter of 2022. We are expecting that to start to pick back up. And that's not surprising, given what you see as our expectations for high yield and leveraged loans. And so that will support a slight uptick, I think, in recurring revenue growth for MIS.

我想說，自 2022 年第三季以來，我們看到首次授權數量顯著放緩。第四季度，首次授權數量與 2022 年第四季大致一致。我們預計這將開始撿起來。考慮到我們對高收益和槓桿貸款的預期，這並不奇怪。因此，我認為，這將支援管理資訊系統的經常性收入成長略有上升。

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research.

您的下一個問題來自 Wolfe Research 的 Scott Wurtzel。

Just wanted to go back to the Research Assistant, understand it's only been a couple of months since you launched the product, but wondering if you could maybe share some feedback since the launch and anything you've learned about the product in the last couple of months.

只是想回到研究助理，了解自您推出該產品以來只有幾個月的時間，但想知道您是否可以分享自推出以來的一些反饋以及您在過去幾年中了解到的有關該產品的任何信息幾個月。

Yes. Thanks, Scott. I would say we are happy about a couple of things. One, the product development process, the work we did in engineering and product development to get this thing out happened more quickly than maybe some of our previous product launches. So we're really excited about some of the changes we've made and we were able to get to market faster. That's partially because of the fact that we're leveraging GenAI tools and partially because we have some platform engineering elements that make us able to move a little bit more quickly. So that's one good note.

是的。謝謝，斯科特。我想說我們對一些事情感到高興。第一，產品開發過程，我們在工程和產品開發方面所做的工作比我們之前的一些產品發布要快。因此，我們對我們所做的一些改變感到非常興奮，並且我們能夠更快地進入市場。這部分是因為我們正在利用 GenAI 工具，部分是因為我們擁有一些平台工程元素，使我們能夠更快地採取行動。這是一個很好的說明。

In terms of take-up among customers, it's early days. Oftentimes, these -- the initial stage of the sales cycles, I would measure in months. But we have more units in the first 6 weeks than we've seen among virtually any other product we've launched in the past. So the people are making buying decisions quickly. Remember, we started with a December 1 commercial launch. So they're making decisions within 6 weeks. Oftentimes, you would look at a sales cycle being measured in months. So that's a really good sign.

就客戶的接受程度而言，現在還處於早期階段。通常，這些——銷售週期的初始階段，我會以月為單位來衡量。但我們在前 6 週內推出的產品數量幾乎比我們過去推出的任何其他產品都要多。因此，人們正在迅速做出購買決定。請記住，我們從 12 月 1 日開始進行商業發布。所以他們將在 6 週內做出決定。通常，您會看到以月為單位的銷售週期。所以這是一個非常好的跡象。

And again, I mentioned earlier that we're really encouraged by the engagement at the senior levels. CEOs, I literally know one of the largest banks in the United States, we were the topic of conversation at the CEO's table within the last few weeks, where they literally were thinking and talking about this as one of the elements in their transformation program, COOs, senior levels of investment managers at banks and insurance companies, where I'm talking to people and our sales reps are talking to people at a different level than we've seen in the past. So I would say we're very encouraged by that.

我之前再次提到，我們對高層的參與感到非常鼓舞。執行長們，我確實了解美國最大的銀行之一，過去幾週我們是執行長餐桌上談話的話題，他們實際上正在思考和談論這一點，將其作為其轉型計劃的要素之一，首席營運官、銀行和保險公司的高級投資經理，我正在與人們交談，而我們的銷售代表正在與與我們過去所見過的不同級別的人交談。所以我想說我們對此感到非常鼓舞。

Those sales cycles, I think, will go faster than maybe they might have in previous product launches. But you still need to engage with people and their technology groups, their cyber groups, their compliance groups to make sure when you're making this big of a decision that's this transformational that you've got all your bases covered. So we're pretty encouraged by that. Hopefully, that's a good sense for color on the demand environment.

我認為，這些銷售週期將比以前的產品發佈時更快。但您仍然需要與人員及其技術團隊、網路團隊、合規團隊合作，以確保當您做出如此重大的決定時，您已經考慮到了所有的基礎。所以我們對此感到非常鼓舞。希望這對需求環境中的色彩有良好的感覺。

Your next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel.

您的下一個問題來自什洛莫·羅森鮑姆 (Shlomo Rosenbaum) 和施蒂菲爾 (Stifel) 的線路。

I just -- I wanted to ask a little bit, we talked a lot about GenAI. But I wanted to ask about general sales cycles. Like what are you seeing? Are things -- cycles getting shorter, staying the same, getting any longer? What do you see more on a sequential basis? And then I just want to touch back on the last question about incentive compensation and ask if there's any change in the mix of the incentive compensation between the two units, just getting back to kind of the margin expansion in MIS.

我只是想問一點，我們談了很多關於 GenAI 的問題。但我想問一下一般的銷售週期。就像你看到了什麼？週期是否變得越來越短、保持不變、或變得更長？按順序您看到更多什麼？然後我想回到關於激勵薪酬的最後一個問題，並詢問兩個部門之間的激勵薪酬組合是否有任何變化，只是回到管理資訊系統的利潤擴張。

So on the sales cycle -- thanks, Shlomo. In the spring last year, we got a lot of questions around, are you seeing elongated sales cycles? And I think we gave a pretty good sense for what we were seeing. Sales cycles were lengthening maybe just a little bit, nothing material, measuring in a matter -- in a number of days perhaps. But we were also seeing higher price points in the proposal and richer value propositions composed in that proposal. So it was consistent with what we would expect.

關於銷售週期－謝謝，什洛莫。去年春天，我們收到了很多問題，您是否看到銷售週期延長？我認為我們對所看到的情況有了很好的認識。銷售週期可能只是延長了一點點，沒什麼實質的，以一個問題來衡量——也許是幾天。但我們也看到該提案中的價格點更高，而該提案中包含了更豐富的價值主張。所以這與我們的預期是一致的。

I'd say that trend has actually extended through 2023. So we're running right around the same numbers we were in the spring. I looked at this closely the other day. So sales cycles are maybe slightly longer than they were maybe a few years ago, but only because we're seeing bigger price points and richer value propositions, so pretty happy about that. Let's see here, anything else on sales cycles? Yes, that's probably a good way to finish that one, yes.

我想說，這種趨勢實際上已經延續到 2023 年。因此，我們的數字與春季時的數字相同。前幾天我仔細看了這個。因此，銷售週期可能比幾年前稍長一些，但這只是因為我們看到了更大的價格點和更豐富的價值主張，對此感到非常高興。讓我們看看，還有什麼關於銷售週期的事嗎？是的，這可能是完成那個的好方法，是的。

And then on the question on incentive comp, we're not seeing anything materially different between the segments compared to '24 versus '23.

然後，在激勵補償問題上，與 24 年和 23 年相比，我們沒有看到這些細分市場之間有任何實質差異。

Your next question comes from the line of Seth Weber with Wells Fargo.

您的下一個問題來自富國銀行的賽斯韋伯 (Seth Weber)。

I guess, I just wanted to follow up on the MIS margin question again. I'm trying to just balance some of the investments that you're making versus some of the investment spend that you're doing versus longer-term technology benefits, cost saves there. Can you just remind us or update us on how we should be thinking about incremental margins for the MIS business going forward, if there's been any change to just the incremental margin framework for that business?

我想，我只是想再次跟進 MIS 保證金問題。我試圖平衡您正在進行的一些投資、您正在進行的一些投資支出以及長期技術效益和成本節省。如果 MIS 業務的增量利潤框架發生任何變化，您能否提醒我們或更新我們應該如何考慮未來增量利潤？

Yes. And maybe I'll also go back a little bit to fourth quarter MIS because I think we've been getting some questions about that. And what -- I think fourth quarter to me really illustrated the tremendous operating leverage that's in the business. And if you look at -- to give you a sense of what we were seeing in the fourth quarter for MIS and then I'll take it forward into 2024 and beyond, revenues came in lighter than we had expected. Expenses came in almost exactly online in terms of what we had budgeted.

是的。也許我還會稍微回顧一下第四季度的管理資訊系統，因為我認為我們已經收到了一些關於此的問題。我認為第四季對我來說確實說明了該業務的巨大營運槓桿。如果你看一下——為了讓你了解我們在第四季度所看到的 MIS 的情況，然後我將其推進到 2024 年及以後，你會發現收入比我們預期的要少。費用幾乎完全按照我們的預算在網上支付。

I think it was something like 1.5% expense growth over the prior year quarter. So essentially, the entire revenue miss dropped right down to adjusted operating income. And again, that's what we love about this business. And think about what was going on, this was in the last few weeks of the year. There's virtually nothing we can do in regards to the expense base at that point. The majority of our expense base in MIS is people.

我認為與去年同期相比，費用增加了 1.5% 左右。因此，從本質上講，整個收入損失直接下降到調整後的營業收入。再說一遍，這就是我們熱愛這項業務的原因。想想發生了什麼，這是在今年的最後幾週。那時我們對費用基礎幾乎無能為力。我們管理資訊系統的大部分支出基礎是人員。

Also, we have obviously a constructive view on 2024 issuance. And you've heard us talk about in the past that we try to think about, are things cyclical or structural, and we saw that as a brief air pocket in issuance. And so that then did -- again, that dropped right to adjusted operating income. It was not an expense issue. And then you see 200 basis points of margin expansion from that jumping-off point at the end of the year.

此外，我們對 2024 年發行顯然有建設性的看法。你過去曾聽我們談論過我們試圖思考的事情是週期性的還是結構性的，我們認為這是發行中的一個短暫的氣穴。因此，調整後的營業收入又下降。這不是費用問題。然後你會看到利潤率從年底的起點開始擴大 200 個基點。

And I would say this and, Mike, feel free to add, so we've got our low 60s percent margin target. We still feel very comfortable about that. We believe that this 200 basis points is solidly on track for that. But we are investing back in that business. I talked a little bit about in my prepared remarks.

我想說的是，麥克，請隨意補充，所以我們有 60% 的低利潤率目標。我們對此仍然感到非常放心。我們相信這 200 個基點已完全步入正軌。但我們正在對該業務進行投資。我在準備好的發言中談了一些。

In particular, we've been investing in resources in some of these areas like domestic debt markets, like digital finance and private credit, make sure we've got the resources. And then we've also been investing in the technology. It's so important for us to get the technology enablement of the analytical teams for a variety of reasons that I touched on the call. Mike, anything to add to that?

特別是，我們一直在國內債務市場、數位金融和私人信貸等領域投資資源，確保我們擁有資源。然後我們也一直在技術方面進行投資。出於我在電話會議中提到的各種原因，獲得分析團隊的技術支援對我們來說非常重要。麥克，還有什麼要補充的嗎？

Not really, but just on the technology element, it's about driving efficiencies in the future by investing today and having a very well-controlled business. So that's the only point to add.

不是真的，但只是在技術元素上，它是透過今天的投資和擁有良好控制的業務來提高未來的效率。這是唯一需要補充的一點。

Yes. The bottom line is, as we get more technology enablement and we have surges in issuance, we'll be better able to handle that without having to add people.

是的。最重要的是，隨著我們獲得更多的技術支援並且發行量激增，我們將能夠更好地處理這個問題，而無需增加人員。

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Meuler with Baird.

你的下一個問題來自 Jeff Meuler 和 Baird 的對話。

It's Steven Pawlak on for Jeff. I guess, going off that last point, you talked about the GenAI tools that you're deploying internally. Can you describe some of the ones that have gone live? What efficiencies are being harnessed? Where do you think you can get the most benefit towards the medium-term targets from those GenAI tools? And then is there like an enterprise-wide committee handling decisions to build or deploy? Or are some of these things being handled within individual departments?

史蒂文·帕拉克 (Steven Pawlak) 替補傑夫 (Jeff)。我想，從最後一點開始，您談到了您在內部部署的 GenAI 工具。您能描述一些已經上線的項目嗎？正在利用哪些效率？您認為您可以在哪些方面從這些 GenAI 工具中獲得實現中期目標的最大收益？然後是否有一個企業範圍的委員會來處理建置或部署的決策？還是其中一些事情是在各部門內處理的？

Yes. Steve, do you want to start?

是的。史蒂夫，你想開始嗎？

Yes, yes, sure. So we're doing a lot of the innovation work and trying to accelerate the innovation work through a central team, a team that is really a pretty agile team. Sometimes it's bigger, it gets bigger and smaller, depending on which project we're working on. That team is in MA, where we're doing a lot of the experimentation and then getting -- developing value propositions that we can use externally and internally. I'll just give you a simple example.

是的，是的，當然。因此，我們正在進行大量的創新工作，並試圖透過一個中心團隊來加速創新工作，這個團隊實際上是一個非常敏捷的團隊。有時它會更大，也會變得更大或更小，這取決於我們正在從事的專案。該團隊位於馬薩諸塞州，我們在那裡進行了大量的實驗，然後開發出可以在外部和內部使用的價值主張。我只給你一個簡單的例子。

Summarizing a PDF, which is something that you would expect you could do with GenAI tools, you might be able to do that with some tools that are offered through external folks, not just through Moody's. But leveraging that so you can use it in an industrial-strength way, make it a part of your compliance apparatus, make it a part of the way in which you build products, the way in which you do your job every day requires some engineering work as well.

總結一下 PDF，這是您希望使用 GenAI 工具可以完成的事情，您也許可以使用外部人員（而不僅僅是穆迪）提供的一些工具來完成此操作。但是，利用這一點，您可以以工業強度的方式使用它，使其成為您的合規工具的一部分，使其成為您構建產品的方式的一部分，您每天的工作方式都需要一些工程設計工作也一樣。

So we're summarizing maybe a 300-page document. We're developing summaries across multiple documents at once. We're incorporating a document that you're reading today into our other GenAI tools in order to generate inference across not just what you might get from the OpenAI models we're working with Microsoft on but also through the content that you're introducing to your analysis right now and right here.

所以我們正在總結一份可能有 300 頁的文件。我們正在同時開發多個文件的摘要。我們正在將您今天閱讀的文檔合併到我們的其他 GenAI 工具中，以便不僅可以從我們與 Microsoft 合作的 OpenAI 模型中獲得的信息，還可以通過您介紹的內容生成推理現在就在這裡進行分析。

So an experiment that could see being very helpful for the folks in MIS might be I am doing work on this particular industry. There's three or four documents I might be interested in reviewing. And maybe I can incorporate them into understanding -- reading them more quickly, taking in, gathering data from that much more quickly.

因此，我正在這個特定行業開展的工作可能對 MIS 人員非常有幫助。我可能有興趣查看三到四份文件。也許我可以將它們融入理解中——更快地閱讀它們，更快地吸收、收集數據。

So the central team is there to create critical mass in terms of engineering and then roll out tools in a compliant way in a way that's been tested from an industrial-strength perspective and is consistent with all of the normal processes that we would want to adopt as a rating agency, where it's appropriate.

因此，中心團隊的職責是在工程方面創造臨界質量，然後以合規的方式推出工具，這種方式已經從工業強度的角度進行了測試，並且與我們想要採用的所有正常流程一致作為評級機構，在適當的情況下。

Yes. Just maybe a couple of points for MIS. I mean, we're pretty excited about the potential of GenAI in the ratings business and internally with obviously leveraging the Moody's Copilot. But we also do envisage that using GenAI across the workflow and doing that to actually enhance our compliance as well as improving the overall efficiency in the business and seeing that GenAI that Steve just referenced as an enabler to human judgment in the ratings process. So again, exciting opportunities for MIS to navigate with this technology.

是的。對 MIS 來說，也許只有幾點。我的意思是，我們對 GenAI 在評級業務和內部明顯利用穆迪副駕駛的潛力感到非常興奮。但我們也確實設想在整個工作流程中使用GenAI，這樣做實際上可以增強我們的合規性，提高業務的整體效率，並看到史蒂夫剛才提到的GenAI 可以作為評級過程中人類判斷的推動者。再說一次，MIS 擁有利用這項技術的令人興奮的機會。

Yes. And the only thing I would add, and I've said this when this comes up, is that we're going to be deliberate and transparent in the rating agency in terms of how we leverage generative AI. We're in dialogue with our regulators to make sure that they understand how we're going to do that.

是的。我唯一要補充的是，當這個問題出現時我已經說過了，我們將在評級機構中在如何利用生成人工智慧方面保持深思熟慮和透明。我們正在與監管機構進行對話，以確保他們了解我們將如何做到這一點。

Your next question comes from the line of Heather Balsky with Bank of America.

您的下一個問題來自美國銀行的希瑟‧巴爾斯基 (Heather Balsky)。

Just with regards to your midterm margins, you talked earlier about that you didn't -- that the path wasn't necessarily going to be linear to get there. But can you help us bridge kind of as we think out over the next couple of years how it could look, especially given some of these areas that you're investing in? And how comfortable are you kind of, if the opportunity presents itself, would you spend more now for top line growth or, I guess, just the commitment to those margins, given what you're seeing in the environment?

就中期利潤率而言，您之前曾說過，實現這一目標的路徑不一定是線性的。但是，當我們思考未來幾年的情況時，特別是考慮到您正在投資的某些領域，您能否幫助我們建立橋樑？如果機會出現，您是否會感到放心，考慮到您在環境中所看到的情況，您現在會花更多的錢來實現收入增長，還是我想，只是對這些利潤的承諾？

Heather, thanks for the question. So I think that's what you're seeing us do, right? And we've got to make -- the investment has got to come before the sales. And ultimately, the revenue growth comes. And I feel like we have some ambitious medium-term targets that mean that we're going to continue to accelerate revenue growth in the MA business.

希瑟，謝謝你的提問。所以我想這就是你看到我們所做的，對嗎？我們必須做到——投資必須先於銷售。最終，收入成長到來。我覺得我們有一些雄心勃勃的中期目標，這意味著我們將繼續加速 MA 業務的營收成長。

And so we're making the investments that we talked about today to be able to support GenAI, product development and platforming, which we think are going to support that acceleration for the reasons we talked about. We continue to feel comfortable with those medium-term targets, particularly the -- I mean, you mentioned the margin. It's just that in this case, the investment is coming before the ARR growth.

因此，我們正在進行今天討論的投資，以便能夠支援 GenAI、產品開發和平台化，我們認為這將支持這種加速，原因就是我們討論的。我們仍然對這些中期目標感到滿意，特別是——我的意思是，你提到了利潤率。只是在這種情況下，投資是在 ARR 成長之前發生的。

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan.

您的下一個問題來自摩根大通的安德魯·斯坦納曼（Andrew Steinerman）。

This next is for Caroline. Could you just talk more about the 20% increase in D&A? Is there any change of accounting assumptions or methods? And will D&A kind of stay in this general vicinity as a percentage of revenues?

接下來是卡羅琳的。能詳細談談 D&A 增加 20% 的情況嗎？會計假設或方法是否有變更？ D&A 在收入中所佔的百分比是否會維持在這個水準附近？

Yes, let me just -- I'll start with that and then I'll turn it over to Caroline. I think, in general, what you're seeing with D&A represents the -- we've been talking about the investments that we've been making in our SaaS products. You've seen some increased capital expenditures over the last few years. That's now starting to come through in the form of capitalized software. And I also talked about the higher growth rates that we are seeing with those SaaS products.

是的，讓我——我會從這個開始，然後把它交給卡羅琳。我認為，總的來說，您在 D&A 中看到的情況代表了——我們一直在談論我們在 SaaS 產品中的投資。在過去幾年中，您已經看到資本支出增加。現在，這一點開始以資本化軟體的形式體現出來。我還談到了我們在這些 SaaS 產品中看到的更高的成長率。

And I think that's -- you want to be able to look at those two things together. Across all of MA, we're expecting our hosted and SaaS solutions to be growing in kind of the, call it, low double digits to parts of the MA portfolio, like Decision Solutions, we expect to be growing more like high-teens. And that's where that investment in software development is going. Caroline, do you want to talk a little bit about it from an accounting perspective?

我認為，你希望能夠將這兩件事放在一起考慮。在整個 MA 中，我們預計我們的託管和 SaaS 解決方案將以低兩位數的速度成長，而 MA 投資組合的某些部分（例如決策解決方案）我們預計將成長得更像十幾歲。這就是軟體開發投資的去向。卡洛琳，你想從會計的角度談談這個問題嗎？

Yes. So certain development costs linked to the SaaS-based solutions are capitalized and then they're depreciated over the useful life of those underlying assets. And that's usually around 4 to 5 years. And that's all in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

是的。因此，與基於 SaaS 的解決方案相關的某些開發成本被資本化，然後在這些基礎資產的使用壽命內進行折舊。這通常是 4 到 5 年左右。這一切都符合美國公認會計準則。

Okay. And should it stay in this vicinity, D&A as a percentage of revenues, going forward?

好的。未來 D&A 佔收入的百分比是否應該保持在這個附近？

Yes. I think if you look at it as a percent of revenues, I mean, obviously, we're bumping up the CapEx here a little bit. But I think as we get to the increase in revenue growth, then corresponding increase in capitalization should stay relatively in line from a percent -- I think a percent of revenue basis.

是的。我認為，如果你將其視為收入的百分比，我的意思是，顯然，我們會稍微提高資本支出。但我認為，當我們實現收入成長的成長時，資本化的相應成長應該與收入的百分比保持相對一致——我認為是收入的百分比。

(Operator Instructions) And your next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

（操作員說明）您的下一個問題來自 Craig Huber 和 Huber Research Partners 的路線。

My follow-up here, for 2024, can you just talk a little bit further about your outlook specifically for investment grade, high yield, maybe bank loans and financial institutions in terms of a debt issuance outlook for this year that's embedded in your overall company outlook? And then also, can you maybe just throw in there, what is your cost ramp assumption over each of the 4 quarters for the rest of the year?

我的後續行動是 2024 年，您能否進一步談談您對投資等級、高收益、也許是銀行貸款和金融機構的展望，以及嵌入到您整個公司的今年債務發行前景外表？另外，您能否順便問一下，您對今年剩餘時間的 4 個季度中每季的成本成長假設是多少？

Craig, I'll take the first part of your question before handing off. If I go by segment, the investment-grade issuance growing at 5%, that comes off a 20% growth last year. Underpinning this, steady uptick with regard to upcoming maturities. M&A is supporting in certain key sectors, but I would see that as a variable to the upside. As I mentioned earlier, the spreads at the moment are creating favorable conditions at the higher end of the rating scale and down into the Baa. So that's really on investment grade.

克雷格，在交接之前我將回答你問題的第一部分。如果按細分市場劃分，投資級發行量增加了 5%，而去年增長了 20%。支撐這一點的是即將到期的債券的穩定上升。併購在某些關鍵領域提供了支撐，但我認為這是一個上行變數。正如我之前提到的，目前的利差正在為評級範圍的高端和 Baa 評級的高端創造有利的條件。所以這確實是投資等級的。

For corporates, high yield, again back to this market uncertainty that's subsiding, spreads have come in materially over the last 12 months. There's been some delayed refinancing that's now coming due. And these tend to be higher-quality, spec-grade issuers that will get that opportunity to come into the market, should those spreads remain favorable and again, still coming off a low base, as Rob highlighted earlier.

對企業來說，高收益再次回到了市場不確定性正在消退的情況，利差在過去 12 個月大幅擴大。有一些延遲的再融資現在即將到期。正如羅布早些時候強調的那樣，如果這些利差仍然有利，並且仍然處於較低的基礎上，這些往往是質量更高、規格級的發行人，他們將有機會進入市場。

Leveraged loan, driven primarily by refinancing, including the amend and extends. There is also a refinancing in the public market of certain deals that got done in the private market, which is nice to see. And again, these tend to be more sensitive at the lower end. So as spreads again come in at lower end, market access to those around the single Bs is there. So again, 20% for the leveraged loan.

槓桿貸款主要由再融資驅動，包括修改和延期。公開市場上也對私募市場上完成的某些交易進行了再融資，這是很高興看到的。同樣，這些在低端往往更加敏感。因此，當利差再次進入低端時，單一 B 附近的市場准入就在那裡。再次強調，槓桿貸款的利率為20%。

FIG, on the other hand, as we mentioned, a heavy proportion of FIG is frequent issuers. We've kept that relatively flat. There are some different variables there. There's some different central bank support facilities that will start to shrink in '24, therefore, leading banks to come to the capital markets. And that will also be a focus on their buffers and broader capital needs but stable year-over-year.

另一方面，正如我們所提到的，FIG 中很大一部分是頻繁發行者。我們保持相對平穩。那裡有一些不同的變數。因此，一些不同的央行支援設施將在 24 年開始收縮，導致銀行進入資本市場。這也將是他們的緩衝和更廣泛的資本需求的重點，但同比穩定。

PPIF, mid-single digit, largely made up of infrastructure financing and access by some of the larger U.S. PFG issuers. When we think about the transition of monetary policy and the tightening that has occurred, that we will probably see an increase in infrastructure projects that are really long-dated as they want to lock into some lower rates going forward. I touched on structured finance earlier at that mid-single-digit percentage. And you've got to look inside structured finance to look at the different asset classes but really ABS leading in that particular area. So hopefully, that helps.

PPIF 為中個位數，主要由基礎設施融資和一些較大的美國 PFG 發行人提供的融資組成。當我們考慮貨幣政策的轉變和已經發生的緊縮政策時，我們可能會看到長期基礎設施項目的增加，因為他們希望未來鎖定較低的利率。我早些時候曾談到結構性融資的中個位數百分比。你必須深入結構性融資內部，了解不同的資產類別，但 ABS 在該特定領域確實處於領先地位。希望這會有所幫助。

I'll now turn the call back to Rob for any closing remarks.

現在我將把電話轉回給羅布，讓他發表結束語。

Okay. One public service announcement for those of you in Europe. We're looking forward to seeing you at our London event in our offices on February 29. I know that Steve and Shivani and some of our other senior leaders from Moody's Analytics will be there to provide a spotlight on our MA business like we did in New York in September of last year. So with that, I'm going to bring the call to a close. Thanks, everybody, for joining, and we'll talk to you next quarter. Bye.

好的。為歐洲的人們發布的一項公共服務公告。我們期待在 2 月 29 日在我們的辦公室舉行的倫敦活動中見到您。我知道 Steve 和 Shivani 以及穆迪分析公司的其他一些高級領導將在那裡重點關注我們的 MA 業務，就像我們在去年九月的紐約。那麼，我將結束這通通話。感謝大家的加入，我們將在下個季度與您交談。再見。

This concludes Moody's Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. As a reminder, immediately following this call, the company will post the MIS revenue breakdown under the Investor Resources section of the Moody's IR homepage. Additionally, a replay will be made available after the call on the Moody's IR website. Thank you.

穆迪公司 2023 年第四季和全年財報電話會議至此結束。提醒一下，在本次電話會議之後，該公司將立即在穆迪投資者關係主頁的投資者資源部分發布管理資訊系統收入明細。此外，穆迪投資者關係網站將在電話會議結束後提供重播。謝謝。