All right. Good morning, everybody who's started on time here. Thank you everybody for joining us at Barclays' 24th Annual Global Financial Services Conference. My name is Manav Patnaik. I cover business and information services for Barclays, a lot of the financial information services companies, and one of them includes MSCI. So very happy to kick off our contribution to the conference today with Andy Wiechmann, CFO of MSCI. Andy, thanks for being here.
Absolutely. Happy to be here. Great event. Great turnout, and fun to be jumping into it in September here.
Exactly. Andy, maybe just a broad high-level question. Obviously, the markets have a lot of macro noise, rate noise, geopolitical noise to decipher, but for your business specifically, what is kind of the overall sentiment and some of the observations you're getting from your clients and how they're interacting with you?
Yeah. So it's a dynamic environment. There is not only the macro geopolitical dynamics that you alluded to, there's the AI change taking place, but there are structural changes taking place within the capital markets and the investment industry. You're seeing this move towards more systematic investing, is the term we use. You see that manifest itself in more multi-asset class portfolios, things like direct indexing, basket trades, the total portfolio approach. You're seeing it in structured products, fixed index annuities, and all of these parts of the investment industry, you're seeing these shifts. As you all know, you're seeing higher allocation and intense scrutiny around private markets and private asset investing. Those are all things that impact our business. So you have those broader dynamics you alluded to on top of the structural changes taking place in the investment industry.
It's a busy time for us, and we're seeing strong engagement from our clients. The exciting thing is there are opportunities out there, and you are seeing many parts of the investment industry thriving, capitalizing, taking advantage. We are in the epicenter of providing those tools and solutions that can help them take advantage of those trends that I alluded to earlier. For those that need to restructure, we're providing those frameworks, those tools, those solutions, the support they need to transform their business models. All parts of the industry we are heavily engaged with. We're seeing attractive opportunities. As we mentioned on our second quarter earnings call, we've got a very attractive pipeline of opportunities out there. Business is busy. As we were talking about earlier, we see a lot to do.
There are a lot of demands, and the opportunities are ours for the seizing here, so we're excited.
Got it. Just to follow up maybe a little bit specifically on that, so a couple of years ago, there was a lot of budgetary pressures, or that was the headlines with your clients, and put some pressure on your business. How would you characterize the budget specific, I guess, to the areas you're targeting?
Yeah. Listen, there are secular pressures on traditional asset management, which I think we're all aware of, and I alluded to. That's not new. That's something that's been around since the financial crisis. It was probably most acute in 2022, 2023, 2024. I think given the runs that we've seen and some of the stability we've seen in equity markets, it's been helpful to active management. It's more constructive than it was a couple of years ago. Those secular pressures still persist, and as I alluded to in your last question, there are areas where organizations need to change. They need to restructure. We can help them, but there are pressures on those organizations. It's generally more constructive. Then layered on top of that, we have seen, over the last couple of years, the last 18 months, a rotation into international markets.
We've seen tremendous flows into international markets, and that's something that cyclically benefits us as well, given our core franchises on the index side are anchored to international investing, emerging markets, developed markets outside the U.S., global investing. That's also added to the opportunity set in front of us.
Got it. When we talk to our clients, I think they still complain about the budgets and the budgetary pressures, but is there an aspect of you kind of taking more of the existing wallet by innovation, or how would you characterize any shift in that aspect of things?
Yeah. To that point, for sure, we do see those pressures, as I alluded to, with traditional active managers is kind of the epicenter of that pressure. We continue to grow with these organizations, and we can unlock additional value through a couple of channels. One is we can be helpful in making them more efficient in how they operate. We can help them replace internal systems, we can help them displace other providers and save money in consolidating providers. Probably most importantly, we are in the areas where they want to move to. We can help them build those strategies, those approaches, those teams that are in areas where they can attract assets, charge higher fees, really differentiate themselves in the market.
We are both helping on the efficiency side, but we're also we call ourselves a revenue center, and you've heard us talk about moving more towards the front office with a lot of these organizations. Not just being a benchmark, a middle office enterprise risk solution, but actually something that is used by the CIO, the portfolio managers, the research analysts day-to-day in developing their portfolios, in making better decisions, and ultimately delivering better returns for their clients.
Got it. Maybe just to put some kind of qualitative numbers around that. I could argue that maybe the street got ahead in terms of expectations for the net new number last quarter. From your perspective, how do you think that trended versus your expectations, and what does that tell you about the environment today?
Yeah. Listen, the market is ultra-focused on our recurring net new every quarter. We see it, you alluded to it. I understand why. Our subscription run- rate growth is a core part of the franchise and a key indicator of the momentum of the business and the opportunities in front of us. We believe we've had good momentum. As I alluded to, we have attractive pipeline of opportunities. If you look at our year-to-date recurring net new, it's up 24%- 25% over last year. If you look at the trailing 12 months of recurring net new as of June 30, it's up 20% over the prior LTM period. We have good momentum. We're delivering recurring net new that is well ahead of our current subscription run- rate growth, which means we're accelerating. We're accelerating at a nice pace.
There's going to be periods where it can be a little lumpy, as you all know. We don't overly focus internally on the timing one quarter to the next quarter here, but overall, we see that pipeline building, we see attractive momentum, and we see enormous opportunities, so we're confident about the momentum in the business.
Got it. I know, like you said, the quarters can be lumpy or some timing move, but anything seasonal about the remaining second half of this year that we should keep in mind or comps versus last year?
No, nothing that I would call out specifically other than what I alluded to with the very attractive pipeline in front of us, and that is something that is anchored to real opportunities. We monitor that full inventory of opportunities at different stages. I would say across most areas of the company, we have a very attractive building pipeline. There is going to be some lumpiness quarter to quarter, especially on large deals. It is just the nature of our business. Even in the second quarter, it still was up, I think, 8 and change percent over the prior year. As I said, year- to- date, we are up 24% - 25% compared to the prior year. We are confident about the momentum, excited about the outlook. If you look at what underpins that, what is driving it, these are driven by those secular trends I alluded to earlier.
On the index side, we are seeing good momentum in custom indexes, and that cuts across many different use cases, many parts of the investment industry. Yes, we have had some big wins with hedge funds, but it is a lot more than that. We see it with broker-dealers on structured products, over-the-counter derivatives. We see it as custom benchmarks and active ETFs with asset managers. We are seeing it in areas like insurance, as I alluded to, with fixed index annuities and within wealth. There are many layers to these secular trends that are fueling our business, and indexation, even within market cap indexes, continues to grow very attractively. You see private assets. If we look at the subscription run- rate growth as of June 30 this year compared to June 30 of last year, you have seen a nice increase with index, nice increase across private assets.
The trends that are fueling private assets are both industry trends, but it is also the progress that we have made in innovating and delivering solutions. We are confident that there is good momentum there. You can even see the acceleration across client segments. Yes, we have seen very strong growth with hedge funds, but over that last year, we have also seen accelerations with asset managers. We have seen accelerations with asset owners. We have seen acceleration with broker-dealers. We see it across big parts of the company, in big addressable markets where we are delivering solutions that are mission-critical, and we have been ramping up our go-to market.
Got it. I want to get back to the NPI and these secular trends you talked about. First, the other thing or the other item that the market pays a lot of attention to is your fee rate on the index side. I know typically, that trend has been kind of steady down, but it had ticked up a bit in the last quarter in particular. I know there were two or three different factors. I was just hoping you could help us appreciate that again.
Yeah. We did see between Q1 and Q2 a notable step down in the basis points. I do want to start with an underscore, and I mentioned this on our earnings call. Our primary focus is driving run- rate growth and ultimately asset capture with our ETF partners here. It is not to sustain the basis points. What we saw between Q1 and Q2 was more than $400 billion in AUM growth in equity ETFs linked to our indexes. That is the largest amount we have seen in a quarter. So extraordinary growth in AUM linked to our indexes and ETFs over that three-month period. What drove that drop in basis points was extraordinary growth in lower fee hyperscale ETFs out there that just are at lower fees. It was purely a mix shift, or almost entirely a mix shift-driven drop in fees.
It was not our partners dropping their fees and ours dropping. It was just lower fee products that attracted a massive amount of assets over that three-month period, so we saw a drop in the weighted average basis points. That is something we believe is healthy. If you look at the run- rate growth in ABF run- rate growth was 25% growth. If you look at even the growth in asset-based fee run- rate from the first quarter to the second quarter, I think it was north of 8% just quarter-over-quarter. Again, our big focus is on driving that run- rate growth, not just preserving or not preserving the basis point fees. We continue to believe there is a massive opportunity to continue to drive both the asset growth in index link products, but also our run- rate growth.
We think we are very uniquely positioned to capture a significant amount of the market share of new flows into ETFs. But partnering with the largest providers, positioning ourselves for those areas of innovation where there is higher growth, and oftentimes there can be higher fees as well.
Got it. I think that the mix shift obviously anecdotally makes sense. I think maybe some of us underestimated how much it could impact it. Could you help us with a little bit of the mix in the business? How much is your flagship versus these emerging indices?
Yeah. It really is dependent on how assets move in any given quarter. The asset growth that we saw, again, in the past quarter was heavily anchored to developed market products. We saw tremendous flows, but also asset appreciation in developed market products. Those oftentimes, especially the hyperscale ones, so the biggest ETFs linked to our indexes covering developed markets are ones that oftentimes have lower fees. You will see when there is big growth there, that is going to weigh on the overall basis points. Similarly, if we saw tremendous growth in emerging markets, we saw tremendous growth in non-market cap-weighted products. Those will tend to be generally on average, not always the case, but on average higher fees. That will cause resilience in the basis points. It is worth noting, we definitely do not cheer for this.
As I said, our goal is run- rate growth, but you did see this happen back in late 2021 and 2022. When assets decline, or if assets decline, you can see the basis points rise. The basis points is not an indicator of the health of the business. Ultimately, it is that run- rate growth that we are focused on. As I alluded to, there are different products that tend to have different fee loads.
Got it. Just one more item in here, which also I think goes to you are looking for the run- rate growth, not for the basis points.
Yeah.
Just your BlackRock contract. Can you just talk about, I think we had quantified the impact of that in the next two years. Just remind us of what is in the base, what is left, and then just a little bit on why you did that with BlackRock as well.
Yeah. So just as a quick reminder, we signed a new agreement with BlackRock extending for 10 years out. It was largely reinforcing, underscoring the power of the mutual relationship that we have that has benefited both of our organizations. As part of that, we did adjust the fee construct on a subset of products out there. The rationale was we had certain floors, and we have generally floors in our fees in certain categories of products. As they declined their fees over time, which is naturally the case in the ETF market, our capture of the overall economics was growing. It was growing to levels that were unintended, and part of that is a function of just the assets growing so significantly, that we were capturing a significant portion of the overall fees in these products.
And so we did, again, in certain products, adjust lower our fee level, and they were on some of those bigger products, as I alluded to. The overall impact to the basis point fees was 0.1 basis point adjustment. That was measured as of December 31 of last year. So as of December 31, 2025, the overall basis points, with the fee adjustment, would come down by 0.1 basis points, but it takes place in two phases. The first phase occurred in the first quarter of this year, so there was a 0.05 basis point impact. Then similarly, there will be about the same impact, in the first quarter of next year in 2027. Again, those adjustments were based on the assets as of, December 31, 2025. So those two-step adjustments. Other than that, as I said, we extended the agreement 10 years, very healthy relationship.
We see a tremendous trajectory of growth, and we are paving the way in new markets that we believe can be very big. It is not just areas like custom indexes, it is areas like Europe, where you are seeing the ETF market grow at an outsized pace. Our capture of flows into ETF products linked to our indexes has been really, really exciting. It has been significant. So this is 30%- 40%, even sometimes higher than 40% capture of all new flows into European-listed ETFs are going into products linked to MSCI indexes. It just creates tremendous opportunities to establish that ecosystem, that pays dividends for a long time to come and translates through to a lot of derivative opportunities, in other over-the-counter markets, listed derivatives, the market-making community, with hedge funds. So it is an exciting frontier for us.
Got it. If you can go back to the topic of innovation, new products, NPI, you refer to it a lot. You guys have always been an innovative company, but it feels like the last 18 months, maybe there was a shift in how you approach NPI. Maybe you over-indexed one area. I was just hoping you could help us appreciate what has been going on at the company there.
Yeah. It's an excellent point. It has been a deliberate focus of ours. As you alluded to, over-indexing. We had this extraordinary growth in sustainability and climate. We had a tremendous amount of innovation around that offering, and it was not only within our sustainability and climate segment, but it was also sustainability indexes, sustainability analytics tools, climate risk solutions, even within private assets. We as an organization, as of a couple of years ago, as you alluded to, not only shifted to other areas, but we put a deliberate focus on the pace of innovation. That's something that has been driven by Henry at the top, but Alvise, our Chief Product Officer and Head of Client Segments, has been driving that as probably his key initiative as an organization.
We have been really supercharging the pace of new product releases, new product introductions, but also doing it in a way that is capitalizing on the market changes we alluded to and taking advantage of AI. AI has enabled us to invest more, within the same expense base. It's allowed us to moderate the pace of run the business growth even more than we have in the past, increase the amount of change of business investments. What we call investments is the change of business, so those discretionary spend areas, and drive a faster pace of innovation, as well as enhance our go-to-market in many of these client segments that I alluded to, where we've had a deliberate focus on building and growing. You can see that AI benefit within our headcount. Over the last year, our headcount has been roughly flat.
It's been pretty flat over the last year. That's even with acquisitions. As you know, we've done several acquisitions over the last year, and so even with those acquisitions, we've had flat headcount. That has led to us being able to invest more. Even though overall headcount is flat, we are investing more in a lot of key areas, and we have been hiring, which means we are restructuring in many areas. You've seen us reduce heads in many parts of our data, our technology organizations, but also across all functions at the organization. That has been something that has accelerated in recent quarters. Actually, I would call out that we have elevated severance on the year but also in the third quarter here.
Because of that elevated severance, as well as the very, very high AUM levels in ETFs and other index products linked to our indexes, which continue to hit new all-time highs, we are tracking towards, for the third quarter, adjusted EBITDA expenses of, I'll call it the high $330 million. We're probably, for the year, going to be tracking towards the higher- end of our expense ranges. But again, this is driven by actions that are positioning our overall expense base to be lower growth, structurally better for the future, moderating that pace of the run the business expenses, and allowing us to innovate more. It's just leading to higher severance for us in the near- term here. But these are all exciting things, and they're also translating through to revenue opportunities for us as an organization.
Got it. Just to quickly follow up on that point, thank you for that update. The severance, I guess, eventually leads to some cost savings down the road. Can you just help us qualitatively at least understand what that could imply?
Yeah. In the past, our run the business expenses have been growing, and it depends on the year you look at, mid- to even high- single-digit type of growth rates. We are able to, with this restructuring that I'm alluding to, the AI-enabled efficiencies, productivity enhancements, to be able to bring that down to low- single-digit type of growth rates. To your point, this is something that gives us a structural cost advantage going forward. It allows us to drive even more operating leverage in the business, positions us better to invest more, but also creates a more attractive profitability profile going forward. As I said, this year, we are seeing elevated severance expense.
As we alluded to before, we see some elevated expense from acquisitions that we've done, and then the AUM-driven comp adjustments that are not only in our annual incentive plans but also in some of our stock-based compensation, leading to elevated expenses this year, but position us very well going forward here for more moderate expense growth.
Got it. Yeah, that's really impressive. Mid- to high- single- digits and low- single- digits. Just to maybe put that into perspective, just to clarify, Henry in the past has said, obviously, AI has been a godsend.
Yeah.
But he's also said that he's not going to show us the margin, like he's going to keep it for himself to invest in the business.
Yeah.
So before we all start modeling low- single- digits and show some crazy margins, just some perspective on that.
Yes. Yeah. No, thank you for highlighting that. So again, it's low- single-digit run the business expenses, not our total expense base. So again, our dual mandate and what we are committed to is driving top-line growth, very attractive top-line growth, and we are accelerating that growth. So accelerating from where we are, and continue to believe there's upside to drive faster growth than where we are in the trajectory that we're on. And we're doing that through increased investment. That increased investment, it is enabled by the lower run the business expenses. But we can do that while also delivering attractive profitability growth in the business. Our goal is not to drive faster margin expansion. Our goal is to drive faster profitability and free cash flow growth. And so yes, the message we've been giving is no change to the overall financial algorithm of the company.
Continue to drive faster top-line growth, and very attractive profitability and free cash flow growth. Although AI is enabling us to drive even faster top-line growth, and ultimately that will trickle through to higher bottom-line growth and higher free cash flow growth. But it's not to push through all those AI savings down to the bottom- line. It's to reinvest them and accelerate that algorithm to make a more attractive trajectory on both the top- line and the bottom- line.
One of the, I guess, the AI-driven benefits on the top- line has been the new product innovation you talked about. I don't remember the stats, but I know you can help us, but the whole this year you've produced in one quarter as many as all of 2024.
Yeah.
Off your mind, just how do we think about how that converts? Like what the sales pipelines now look like, and because it's some impressive numbers, but like
Yeah
how do we start modeling that?
Yeah. The stat is the contribution to new recurring sales in the first half of this year is 40% from new products. The contribution to new recurring sales from new products in the first six months of this year is 40% higher than the contribution from a year ago. If you look at the number of new products that we've released, it is multiple. We're on a trajectory for multiples of where we were a couple of years ago in terms of the number of new products that we've released. For sure, that has been a big contributor to the acceleration in growth that you've seen over the last year.
And if you look at the places where this is most noticeable, you saw it earlier, it is on the index side, where you have seen our growth accelerate from mid- 8% to over 11% in our recurring subscription run- rate. For sure, there are secular trends fueling that, but a lot of that has really been driven, and cyclical benefits, as I alluded to earlier, but a lot of that has been driven by new products that we have been releasing. The other place where we have seen the acceleration is on the private asset side, and that is probably the place where we have had, in terms of number of new releases, some of the most new product introductions, enhancements to our services, solutions. So we have got tremendous momentum on the private asset side. So those are areas where we continue to fuel that pipeline of innovation.
You are seeing us come out with new frameworks, new content sets, importantly, new services and solutions that are, as I alluded to at the beginning, helping our clients transform how they operate, and capitalize on some of these shifts that are taking place in the investment industry. All that is translating through to ultimately a faster top-line growth for us.
Got it. Let us just touch on some of the potential risks of AI, I guess, to a certain extent. Look, I think on the index business, we all agree there is benchmark asset, probably not much disruption there. On the analytics side is where often there is a little bit of a debate, and then you have the sustainable side where people feel like you could be disrupted, but you are using AI to your benefit to expand. So I was just hoping for analytics and sustainability, if you could just walk through how you see the risks there.
Yeah. Listen, the industry is changing. Technology is changing. We need to move extraordinarily fast. But these are net opportunities for us. If we sit on our laurels, listen, it can impact us, and that is not just the case in analytics and sustainability. That is the case in every part of our business. But we are seeing AI as a net opportunity, particularly in those areas that you highlighted. So those standard benefits being the industry standard, that common language that you alluded to on the index side, we see much of that on the analytics side as well. So our factor models where we have had the highest growth we have seen in a long time, it is a combination of us being the generally accepted framework that people focus on and think about when they think about factors, market factors, but also innovation.
Creating new frameworks around those factors, new insights around the factors, and that is stimulating additional demand for us, and that is something where we are just getting started. You have heard us talk about our Basket Builder, which we have just come out with, our Signal Library, micro sector insights. These are all things that are enabled by AI for us and creating tremendous demand. When you think about the multi-asset class risk part of our business, one, a big underpinning there is our factor framework, so that reinforces the demand there. The other thing to highlight is we have extremely unique content and proprietary models that are built on proprietary data. The one big differentiator for us on the multi-asset class side and the enterprise risk and performance side is our private asset risk models.
That is built on the truly proprietary, unparalleled data that we get via our private asset segment. We have Private Credit Model, Private Equity Model, Private Infrastructure Model, Real Estate Model. These are things that cannot be replicated. We also benefit enormously from the fact that, one, we are a leader, so we sit on the portfolios of companies that manage $50 trillion +, and we sit on every part of their investment portfolio, and so we have deep insights into the market. We have also developed a very unique, robust, trusted framework that allows investors to understand the performance and risk and optimize their portfolios, using really unquestioned models around every instrument type, every security type that the world's largest investors sit on. Those are not things that AI is going to replace. AI is going to supplement.
We have not seen AI as a replacement for us in analytics. As I alluded to, if anything, it has been stimulating more demand, and it is creating opportunities actually to take that content that we have and expand the wallet with our clients. Some of the big opportunities that we have seen and continue to see, some of those attractive opportunities we see in the pipeline are really also bringing that tremendous content we have for risk and performance to the investment office, and we are helping many organizations who are starting to become more systematic, embarking on a total portfolio approach, want their investment teams to be thinking about systematic drivers of risk and performance, and be more calculated about how they build portfolios. We are helping them develop those tools and solutions that their investment teams use.
It is much more of a net opportunity for us, and AI is unlocking all of that. As you alluded to on the sustainability and climate side, listen, we are standard there as well. There is a big part of that business that is organizations that have made commitments, organizations that are communicating to their clients, and we are the trusted name to represent what their climate position is, what their climate exposure is, their climate risk. Think about ESG factors and considerations in a way that systematically assesses financial risk to their portfolios, very unique relative to others. AI has enabled us to not only enhance those signals, enhance those insights, and do it in a more efficient way, but it is allowing us to add additional insights.
As you see us expand and grow at an outsized pace in areas like physical climate risk, our GeoSpatial asset location data set, even understanding exposure to geopolitical and macro risks, even AI exposures, which is kind of an emerging risk that revolves around the broader sustainability investing. The tool, the AI available to us, the data that we're getting access to is enabling us to unlock additional insights, and create opportunities for us. We don't today see AI as a threat, but more of an opportunity. We do need to move quickly and innovate, and the opportunity is ours. But it's one where we as an organization feel confident about our position and the opportunity in front of us.
Maybe just going back to the severance point that you mentioned, should we think about that as weighted towards one segment or the other, or is it broad-based?
Yeah. As I alluded to, the big areas where we see that data surround our data and technology organization. Those are some of the places where we see some of the biggest benefits from AI and some of the retooling and restructuring. Those are oftentimes heavily weighted towards our bigger segments, so analytics, also even on the index side to a certain extent, but it does, to your point, it touches all parts of the business. So I don't want to be too specific at this point. It is pretty broad-based, and relates to us kind of retooling much of the infrastructure and processes that we have, not only in one segment, but across the organization.
Got it. I wanted to quickly touch on private assets. You mentioned earlier that's one area you're seeing a lot of acceleration-
Yeah
and new product, et cetera. Can you just help us? Is that a lot of Burgiss? How important is the Moody's partnership? Are there other areas? I don't know how you can bucket them, but.
Yeah. So we've seen a modest acceleration on the real asset front. There's probably a good chunk of that has been us enhancing the management team, the focus there, reinvigorating the new product introduction machine, as we were talking about earlier. There have been some green shoots within the commercial real estate space, which are probably helpful. It's early days on that, but we do see good momentum there, and we've released some very cool insights and products that are getting traction within real estate. But as you alluded to, the area where we've probably seen the most momentum is around the PCS side, which is the old Burgiss business. We've accelerated from, granted not where we want it to be, but from I think 12%-13% subscription run- rate growth up to north of 16% in the most recent quarter. That is definitely stimulated by a couple factors.
One is a lot of the frameworks and tools that we've released over the last couple of years, enhancements to what we have been doing. And so we now have those tool sets out there that we think the industry needs around classification standards, around benchmarks, risk models, liquidity insights, importantly, connecting those to the total portfolio. So allowing investors to understand their total portfolio that has a meaningful private asset allocation, insights into value, so nowcasting more real-time indexes, whole host of tools to help understand exposure within private assets and get at the heart of the value that managers are providing. And so we've got the tools out there. We are also benefiting, to be candid, from the fact that the industry is now recognizing the importance of these tools.
And so you are seeing many private asset investors who are concerned about their exposure to software companies within their private equity investments. They're concerned about their exposure to private credit and the risk that they might be taking that they're not aware of, and what that means also for the liquidity when they can expect to get distributions, or if they decide to sell their position, how easily they can get out of a position on a private equity or private credit fund. And so there's a bigger focus from private asset investors, and you're seeing that predominantly at places where MSCI can be helpful. So pension funds, insurance companies, wealth management organizations. These are all areas where we historically have not had a big footprint. But they have used our tools on the public asset side or on the total portfolio side.
We've got great momentum there, continue to be very bullish about the outlook, and believe the growth can be well ahead of where it is right now on the PCS side.
Got it. We have two minutes left, so maybe a kind of capital allocation broad question. Many times you've mentioned the industry's changing fast, the world is changing fast, technology's changing fast. How is that altering your capital allocation priorities or even weights within that?
Yeah, I'd say no major changes to our approach to capital allocation. We are fortunate that we believe we have most of the capabilities, most of the content, most of the data that we need to drive this revolution in how investors build portfolios and invest ultimately. Our primary focus is on organic investment, driving organic investment. From an M&A standpoint, we will continue to look, but the acquisitions that we do will likely be bolt-on accelerators, so the types of acquisitions you've seen us do over the last couple years. These are acquisitions that accelerate the things that we are already working on. So we're not looking to add a whole new vertical, a whole new business segment. We don't feel like we need to diversify our business because of pressures in one specific area.
But there are oftentimes unique opportunities to accelerate what we're doing, which is what you've seen us do on the custom index side, what you've seen us do within the private asset side, where we've been able to build out technology capabilities, but also data insights into areas like pre-IPO private companies, and leveraging AI to do pre-investment due diligence and analysis, so expand our value proposition into a broader part of that investment process. So you'll see us continue to look at those. It doesn't need to be acquisitions. We are very actively engaging in partnerships as well, partnerships with data providers, other technology providers, our clients, as ways for us to continue to broaden that value proposition. As you know, oftentimes the best investment we can make, and we continue to be laser-focused on it, is not only investing organically in ourselves, but buying our stock back.
That is one where we will continue to look for those opportunities to in size buy our stock back at attractive prices.
Okay. I guess we are just almost out of time, so that is a good place to end. Thank you, Andy, for your time. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Good to see you all. Appreciate it.