MSCI's Crown Jewel Is the Wide-Moat Index Business

Since going public in 2007, MSCI has become a leader in providing data and software to asset managers and asset owners. Its crown jewel is the index segment, which makes up about 55% of overall revenue and 70% of operating profit. Through early leadership in non-US indexes, MSCI boasts about $17 trillion in benchmarked assets. Because index data is critical to stakeholders that benchmark to MSCI, its index subscriptions have strong retention and pricing power.