Moody's Corp. (MCO)
Financials · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
Moody's Corp. trades at $519.02, which is 46% above the $281.59 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure it screens as expensive, which is not the same as saying it will fall.
Our moat model scores it 84 out of 100, which is a wide moat. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 35.0 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About Moody's Corp.
Moody's Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an integrated risk assessment firm in the United States, the rest of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates through two segments, Moody's Analytics (MA) and Moody's Investors Service (MIS). The MA segment develops a range of products and services that support the risk management activities of institutional participants in financial markets. This segment also offers credit research, credit models and analytics, economic data and models, and structured finance solutions; data sets on companies and securities; and cloud-based SaaS subscription solutions supporting banking, insurance, and know-your-customer workflows. The MIS segment publishes credit ratings and provides assessment services on various debt obligations, programs and facilities, and entities that issue such obligations, including corporate, financial institution, and governmental obligations, as well as structured finance securities. It also provides ratings, investment research, compliance and third-party risk, supplier risk, trade credit, business intelligence sales and marketing, financial and regulatory reporting, balance sheet management, capital management, credit portfolio management, and model risk and governance solutions; Maxsight, a unified risk platform; lending suite, origination, and monitoring solutions; and property, casualty, and sustainable insurance underwriting solutions. The company serves the financial, banking, insurance, corporate, public, and asset management sectors. The company was formerly known as Dun and Bradstreet Company and changed its name to Moody's Corporation in September 2000. Moody's Corporation was founded in 1900 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
MCO passes 3 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
5 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Warren Buffett, BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC$10.76B · 4.1% of book
- Chris Hohn, TCI Fund Management Ltd$6.25B · 13.8% of book
- John Armitage, Egerton Capital (UK) LLP$674.30M · 7.5% of book
- Valley Forge Capital, Valley Forge Capital Management, LP$574.62M · 17.0% of book
- Chuck Akre, AKRE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC$543.62M · 8.9% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is Moody's Corp. (MCO) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $281.59, MCO at $519.02 is 46% above fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own MCO?
5 of the institutions we track reported a position in MCO in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is MCO's P/E ratio?
MCO trades at 35.0 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for MCO, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.