SPGI's potential Capital IQ Pro spin-off is strategically sound, shifting focus to high-margin data ownership over UI competition.

There are rumors that S&P Global may sell Capital IQ. As a major shareholder of S&P Global, what does that mean?

They say that S&P Global is considering spinning off its flagship data and research platform, Capital IQ Pro, in a move that could create a multi-billion dollar standalone company.

Well, nothing is certain here, but this would be a big move for S&P Global, and I think it's already justified.

For example, if we look at what Capital IQ Pro actually is, it is a desktop application that is primarily a user interface for interacting with all of S&P Global's data. S&P Global will retain the data, and all of its own data, and will sell this desktop application and user interface.

One way to look at it is that S&P Global doesn't want to be like Spotify, it wants to be like the music production companies. They want to be the ones who own the actual data. They don't really care about the user interface or how people view or consume data.

They are not really interested in getting into conflicts with other user interfaces. Capital IQ Pro has little of the data it collects itself and contains that is proprietary, but the vast majority of the platform's data comes from S&P Global.

Therefore, S&P Global will retain its market intelligence business and its own data, but will simply get rid of this front. I think this makes sense and is consistent with S&P Global's previous moves.

S&P Global has increasingly made it clear that it wants to be neutral towards user interfaces. They simply want to be a data and metrics company. S&P Global prefers to host and profit from a huge data repository, which you can find any way you want.

You can use "ChatGBT", "Cloud", or any other type of extension you want, or other interfaces, or even use "Capital IQ". They don't care how you access their data as long as you use their data.

S&P Global is moving towards higher-margin data businesses, which I believe are less competitive than the battle of user interfaces that they have to sell to the end user. Even if they spin off Capital IQ, S&P Global is likely to remain a huge customer of the platform.

So overall, I think this is a good move and in line with their strategy.