Moody's Corporation · MCO · FY2025 Q1 · Calendar Q2 2025

Moody’s Q1 2025: AI Momentum, Lowered Guidance

Moody’s current analysis supports a mixed thesis: private-credit demand, AI-enabled products and risk-management workflows remain growth drivers, but the lowered and widened guidance shows that macro-sensitive issuance and execution risks are material.

Reported Before market openNYSEFinancial Services $84.01B market cap
80quality score

Earnings scorecard

Reported versus consensus
Reported EPS — Consensus $3.56
EPS surprise — Reported versus consensus
Reported revenue — Consensus $1.88B
Revenue surprise — Reported versus consensus

Market reaction

prior-close to event-session close
Stock move +4.0% Event window
SPY move +2.6% Same window
Abnormal move +1.4% Stock minus SPY
Volume 1.0× Versus trailing sessions
Subsequent drift +13.3% Up to 20 sessions
MCOSPY benchmark

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Transcript intelligence

What changed

The tone shifted from the prior quarter’s confident, maintained-outlook stance to a more cautious outlook. Management now highlights market volatility and tariff uncertainty, while advancing AI products, CAPE Analytics integration and private-credit initiatives.

Guidance delta

Management widened and lowered full-year guidance amid market volatility and tariff uncertainty, compared with the prior quarter's maintained outlook.

Key takeaways

  • Management described record Q1 revenue and a 51.7% adjusted operating margin.
  • Private credit supported growth across ratings and analytics, while AI products expanded the analytics offering.
  • The company lowered and widened guidance as market volatility and tariff uncertainty affected issuance expectations.
  • Cost-efficiency efforts target a 49–50% full-year operating margin.

Management priorities

  • Roll out AI-driven tools including an automated credit memo, early warning system and KYC AI agent.
  • Integrate CAPE Analytics into catastrophe models for insurers.
  • Expand CreditLens adoption and scale the Maxsight corporate platform.
  • Deepen the MSCI partnership around private-credit risk benchmarks.

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Earnings History

Estimate Beat Miss Match
MCO REVENUE earnings history estimate and actual scatter chart 9 reported fiscal quarters and 4 future estimate-only quarters. Q4 '23 estimate $1B Q4 '23 actual $1B, miss Q1 '24 estimate $2B Q1 '24 actual $2B, beat Q2 '24 estimate $2B Q2 '24 actual $2B, beat Q3 '24 estimate $2B Q3 '24 actual $2B, beat Q2 '25 estimate $2B Q2 '25 actual $2B, beat Q3 '25 estimate $2B Q3 '25 actual $2B, beat Q4 '25 estimate $2B Q4 '25 actual $2B, beat Q1 '26 estimate $2B Q1 '26 actual $2B, beat Q2 '26 estimate $2B Q2 '26 actual $2B, beat Q3 '26 estimate $2B Q4 '26 estimate $2B Q1 '27 estimate $2B Q2 '27 estimate $2B
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Analyst Consensus ?

ConsensusBuy32 ratings
Bullish1856.3%
Neutral1340.6%
Bearish13.1%

Analyst 52W Price Targets

$485.07Current
$321Low
$501.11Average
$620High

Latest persisted target per named analyst; persisted current price from FN2's market snapshot as of Oct 17, 2026. Not an FN2 forecast.

Firm-level rating actions

FMP grade actions identify the grading firm, not a named analyst.

FirmRatingPrior ratingActionDate
RBC Capital Outperform OutperformMaintainOct 16, 2026
JP Morgan Overweight OverweightMaintainOct 14, 2026
BMO Capital Market Perform Market PerformMaintainOct 13, 2026
Morgan Stanley Equal Weight Equal WeightMaintainOct 7, 2026
Mizuho Neutral NeutralMaintainJul 27, 2026
Show 27 more rating actions

Named analyst price targets

Upside is calculated against the persisted current price $485.07. FMP does not supply a rating on these named-analyst rows.

FirmAnalyst52W targetPrice when postedUpsideDate
JefferiesSurinder Thind$560$483.69 +15.4%Oct 16, 2026
Morgan StanleyToni Kaplan$470$452.32 -3.1%Oct 7, 2026
Mizuho SecuritiesSean Kennedy$530$488.89 +9.3%Jul 27, 2026
UBSAlex Kramm$505$473.95 +4.1%Jul 23, 2026
Robert W. BairdAnalyst unavailable$572$477.81 +17.9%Jul 23, 2026
See 90 more

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Company context

Snapshot as of publication

Moody's Corporation operates as a global leader in risk assessment, divided into two main segments: Moody's Investors Service and Moody's Analytics. Moody's Investors Service is dedicated to issuing credit ratings and providing detailed assessments for a diverse range of debt obligations and the entities that issue them. This encompasses corporate, financial institution, governmental, and structured finance securities across approximately 140 nations. These ratings are made publicly available through press releases, digital media, and real-time financial information systems.…

Historical context

All MCO earnings

Financial Services peers this season

Latest reports in the same sector

Latest beats and misses

Who reports next

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Sources

  1. Earnings call transcript and parsed analysis · 2026-05-11T10:29:34.698584+00:00
  2. FN2 earnings calendar · 2025-04-09T19:45:17.765045+00:00
  3. Polygon adjusted daily market bars · 2026-10-17T07:00:41.329742+00:00
  4. Financial Modeling Prep analyst price-target consensus and quote snapshot · 2026-10-17T07:00:41.327048+00:00

Methodology

Reported and consensus figures come from FN2's earnings event records. Market reaction and volume are calculated from daily adjusted bars around the event; abnormal move subtracts the SPY move over the same window.

Analyst target low, average, and high values are derived at request time from each named analyst's latest persisted FMP target. The current-price marker comes from FN2's persisted market snapshot. They are sell-side estimates, not an FN2 valuation or recommendation.

Transcript intelligence is a structured synthesis of the current and prior earnings-call analyses. Missing values stay missing and are never estimated.

By FN2 Research · Updated · As of 2026-10-17. For educational purposes only; not investment advice.