Moody’s Corporation
MCOHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYMoody’s Corporation reads as an High Velocity (composite 70/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $451M across 0 disclosed transactions, down 86% vs the prior cycle · primary market Financial Infrastructure, ranked #8 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$451M
vs $3.2B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
N/A
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
70
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $8.6B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 33d
- 29 acquisition-history signals
- 233 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 11 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 3 spin pre-registrations
- Latest event 28y ago; heavily discounted
- 11 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 11 activism filings
- Latest activism 7.7y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 11 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 1 auditor change
- Latest event 18y ago; heavily discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 233 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $84.7B
- 10-Q 33d ago
- 4 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $3,511M · Peak count: 4
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | $227M | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | $221M | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $3M | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | $97M | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | 3 | $2.2B | $726M | N/A |
| 2020 | 4 | $897M | $224M | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Bolt On20%
- Technology Acquisition20%
- Geographic Expansion20%
- Tuck In20%
- Platform20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- bolt_on
- geographic_expansion
- technology_acquisition
- platform
- tuck_in
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“The 2013 acquisition of Amba Investment Services is illustrative of Moody’s strategy to pursue selective, bolt-on acquisitions and expand product and service offerings for our customers.”
“Both companies will help the Company pursue its objective to be the world’s foremost authority and services provider in credit risk-sensitive markets.”
“The 2011 acquisitions of Barrie & Hibbert and majority stake in the companies of Copal Partners advanced Moody’s strategy.”
“competition for customers and market share has spurred more aggressive tactics by some competitors”
“Selective, bolt-on acquisitions that accelerate the ability to scale and grow Moody’s businesses;”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Financial Infrastructure
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $186.1B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $98.1B
- Recent vs prior
- +90%
- Issuer rank in market
- #8 of 186
- Share of market capital
- 1.7%
Valuation positioning
MCO trades at a +4.0-turn premium to the Financial Infrastructure peer median of 17.4×.
- EV / Revenue
- 10.8×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.4×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 17.4×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fair Isaac CorpFICO | 25.4× | 13.1× | 2.9× | $2.3B | N/A |
Msci Inc.MSCI | 24.5× | 15.1× | 3.0× | $3.2B | $755M |
Moody’s CorporationMCO | 21.4× | 10.8× | 1.4× | $7.9B | $451M |
S&P Global Inc.SPGI | 17.4× | 8.7× | 1.5× | $15.7B | $2.6B |
| 16.2× | 8.2× | 3.2× | $13.1B | $10.3B | |
| 10.1× | 3.9× | 1.2× | $2.4B | $372M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Financial Infrastructure. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)262026-02-18
- 10-Q (quarterly)852026-04-23
- 8-K (event)2332026-04-22
- Proxy / DEF 14A622026-03-04
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)112018-09-10
Signals on file
- elevated
Auditor change
2008-03-051 Item 4.01 filing on file; certifying accountant change.
- elevated
Spin registration
1998-06-183 Form 10-12 filings on file; pre-spin registration.
- elevated
Activism on file
2018-09-1011 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Spin/Carve candidate
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.