S&P Global (SPGI) Q2 2026: Ratings Profit Up 28% in Final Pre-Spin Quarter

S&P Global's last quarter as a five-division company was a strong one on the reported numbers: revenue rose 10.4% to $4.15 billion and operating profit 16.8% to $1.81 billion. Yet the shares fell about 5% the day it was reported — a gap between the filing and the market's reaction that section 2 takes up. The more consequential number is what walked out the door on July 1. Mobility supplied 11.1% of second-quarter divisional revenue and only 5.4% of divisional operating profit, so removing it lifts the divisional margin from 45.6% to 48.5%. What remains is a company that draws 71.0% of divisional operating profit from Ratings and Indices — 67.1% on the reported basis that still includes Mobility — two franchises that rise and fall with debt issuance and equity market levels.

Reading note. Mobility Global Inc. (NYSE: MBGL) separated on July 1, 2026, with S&P Global shareholders receiving one MBGL share per SPGI share held at the June 15 record date. From the third quarter, Mobility's historical results will be restated as discontinued operations for all periods. The figures in this 10-Q are the last presented on the old basis, so they will not match future comparatives. Where guidance figures appear below, they come from the July 28, 2026 earnings release and call — a 10-Q contains no forward guidance — and are labelled as such.

1. Consolidated Balance Sheet

1-1. Major asset items

There is no inventory line. This is a service business, and the balance sheet shows it: goodwill and intangibles together are $52,043 million, or 82.7% of total assets. That balance fell $703 million in six months, driven almost entirely by $551 million of amortization plus a $69 million goodwill reclassification into held-for-sale assets for Energy's geoscience and petroleum engineering software portfolio.

The cash jump needs care. Financing brought in $1,986 million of net proceeds from senior notes that Mobility Global issued on May 19 in connection with the separation — $650 million at 5.05% due 2029, $650 million at 5.45% due 2031 and $700 million at 6.05% due 2036. Disposal proceeds added $361 million. The debt obligation became Mobility Global's sole responsibility on July 1, while the cash sat on S&P Global's June 30 balance sheet.

The 10-Q does not disclose how cash was split at separation, so the exact amount S&P Global retained cannot be verified from this filing. What can be observed is that on the July 28 earnings call — not in this filing — the company raised its 2026 buyback target by nearly $3 billion to more than $7 billion, having already spent $1.5 billion in the first half, and said it expects to issue roughly $2 billion of new debt in the second half to help fund it. That last point matters: the buyback is not being financed out of retained Mobility cash. Leases are unremarkable: right-of-use assets of $392 million against a $578 million undiscounted total of future lease payments.

1-2. Debt versus operating liabilities

Total debt was $15,170 million, up from $13,088 million. Roughly $1,981 million of that is the carrying value of the Mobility notes that transferred on July 1, so continuing debt is closer to $13.2 billion. Short-term debt of $2,572 million breaks into $825 million of commercial paper and $1,747 million of 2027 notes that have rolled inside the twelve-month window. Those two notes carry 2.95% and 2.45% coupons — a weighted average of 2.59% — so refinancing them at today's rates is a potential cost step-up; management's full-year guidance for net interest expense of $365–385 million (from the earnings release, not the 10-Q) implies H2 will be only modestly above the $182 million booked in the first half.

One quiet cushion, though not a recognized asset: the fair value of total borrowings was $13.1 billion against $15,170 million of carrying value, 13.6% below book. That discount exists because much of the debt is legacy low-coupon paper issued before rates rose — 1.25% notes due 2030, 2.3% notes due 2060. The company owes cheap money, and it would cost less than book to retire it. Debt to controlling equity is 0.48x, and the sole financial covenant in the credit facility, an indebtedness-to-cash-flow ratio capped at 4:1, has never been exceeded.

On the operating side, unearned revenue — cash collected before the service is delivered — was $3,929 million, down from $4,088 million. Accounts payable was flat at $611 million. Accrued compensation fell from $988 million to $581 million, the normal first-half pattern as prior-year bonuses are paid. Remaining performance obligations, the contracted work not yet performed, stood at $5.8 billion, with about half expected to convert to revenue within twelve months.

1-3. Capital structure

Paid-in capital (common stock $415 million plus additional paid-in capital $44,547 million) totals $44,962 million against retained income of $25,618 million, up 8.2% from $23,666 million. But treasury stock of $38,307 million now offsets 85% of paid-in capital. The result is that controlling equity rose only $374 million in six months — from $31,127 million to $31,501 million — despite $2,613 million of attributable earnings. Buybacks and dividends together absorb most of what the business earns.

Sitting outside equity is $5,024 million of redeemable noncontrolling interests, of which $5,022 million is CME Group's 27% stake in the S&P Dow Jones Indices joint venture. This is not ordinary minority equity. CME Group can require S&P Global to buy at least 20% of its share at fair value at any time, and can put the entire interest within fifteen days of a change of control. A $116 million revaluation of that interest was charged directly to retained income in the second quarter.

2. Consolidated Income Statement

2-1. Core profit metrics

The headline 21.9% first-half operating profit growth overstates the trend. It includes $186 million of disposal gains — $172 million from the January sale of the Enterprise Data Management and thinkFolio businesses, $11 million from the Centennial, Colorado facility, and $3 million tied to the OSTTRA sale. Strip those out and first-half operating profit rose 16.1%, with a 43.6% margin rather than 45.9%. The second quarter on the same basis was +16.3%.

Underlying operating leverage is the real story. Ex-gains, every 1% of revenue growth produced about 1.6% of operating profit growth. The reason is a cost base that barely moved: the segment expense line — compensation, technology and strategic investments — rose 5.1% to $1,943 million against 10.4% revenue growth. Adding "other segment items" (mostly acquisition amortization and disposal gains) takes total divisional costs to $2,283 million, up 4.5% from $2,184 million. The broader 4.5% total-cost measure grows well under half the rate of revenue; the 5.1% segment expense line is just under half. Note also that 2025 operating profit included $11 million of equity income from unconsolidated subsidiaries in the quarter, which is zero in 2026 after the OSTTRA sale — so this year's growth came despite losing that line.

The gap between 13.5% growth in attributable net income and 17.7% growth in diluted EPS is entirely buybacks. Diluted share count fell 3.5% to 295.5 million, and shares outstanding at period end fell 3.4% to 294.8 million. Separately, the company reported adjusted diluted EPS of $4.83 against GAAP $4.12; that adjusted figure excludes amortization of acquisition intangibles and acquisition and disposition-related costs. That amortization was $275 million in the quarter and $551 million in the first half, against $537 million a year earlier — an annual run rate above $1.1 billion on this pre-spin basis, and a recurring consequence of the 2022 IHS Markit merger, not a one-off.

None of which is how the market read the quarter. Revenue of $4.15 billion beat a consensus near $4.09 billion, but a pro forma net income per share figure of $4.08 circulated widely against estimates as high as $4.75, and the stock fell roughly 5% on July 28. The $4.08 and the $4.83 are not the same measure — the company's own adjusted EPS of $4.83 was up 16% and broadly in line with the prevailing consensus — and part of the sell-off appears to have been a like-for-like comparison problem created by the separation restatement rather than a deterioration in the business. The more durable complaint was the outlook: full-year adjusted EPS guidance of $17.50–$17.75 landed below where expectations had been sitting. A reader working only from this 10-Q would see none of that, which is precisely the limitation of a filing-only view.

2-2. Divisional results and revenue mix