The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Ryan Griffin - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research - Analyst
: This is Ryan filling in for Jeff. Just had a quick question. Did the SPAC boom create any incremental need to issue debt? And if so, do you know what
the contribution of the SPAC frenzy was to debt issuance or your Ratings revenue in the first quarter?
Question: Judah Efram Sokel - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Analyst
: You mentioned $21 million of ESG revenues in the quarter. I was trying to think about does that number reflect your total ESG initiatives. Or is it
possible that there is some level of ESG products and services that are kind of embedded in other products that might just be increasing, reinforcing
the value of those products but not necessarily driving incremental revenues or necessarily unpacked in that $21 million revenue number?
Question: Judah Efram Sokel - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Analyst
: Okay. Great. No, that's really clear. My other question is just about Platts. You highlighted all the different commodities that you've expanded into,
certainly expanding, diversifying beyond just petroleum. And in the past, you've talked about not being too worried about peak oil, that it's still
many years away, a couple of decades potentially. But I was thinking about it maybe from the other perspective, which is that maybe a move away
from petroleum could be beneficial for you guys just from the standpoint that quarter after quarter, it seems that the other -- some of the other
asset classes are growing faster than petroleum for you.
And now you've broken out shipping, which is another potentially fast-growth area. So is it a situation that maybe as the market moves into some
of these other asset classes, your growth rate could pick up in Platts? Or is it just perhaps cannibalizing itself and it will stay the same in that
Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst
: I just wanted to get an idea of the scale of the technology transformation program that's going to be involved in integrating all the technology
programs across the 2 companies. So I'm wondering if there's any way to quantify that in terms of how you're tracking it in terms of number of
projects or teams and just to get a sense of how does it compare in scale with the S&P Global platform initiative that you've been working on.
Question: Sameer Kalucha - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division - Analyst
: Great. And just a quick follow-up on that. I mean you've been working together over the past 5 months with all teams interacting with each other.
Any surprises you have come across in the things you described in terms of work streams in like infrastructure and data or analytics flows between
the 2 companies?
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