5 High Growth Financial Stocks To Buy

4. S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 90

Quarterly Revenue Growth YoY as of December 30, 2022: 40.70%

S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) is a New York-based company that offers credit ratings, benchmarks, analytics, and workflow solutions globally. It operates through six segments – S&P Global Ratings, S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P Global Commodity Insights, S&P Global Market Intelligence, S&P Global Mobility, and S&P Global Engineering Solutions. On January 25, S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) declared a $0.90 per share quarterly dividend, a 5.9% increase from its prior dividend of $0.85. The dividend is payable on March 10, to shareholders of record on February 24. 

On February 13, Argus analyst John Eade increased the price target on S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI)’s shares from $380 to $400 and maintained a Buy rating. The company’s performance has been better than the market in the past quarter, and the analyst believes that the double-digit earnings growth rate will return this year. 

According to Insider Monkey’s third quarter database, 90 hedge funds were long S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI), compared to 84 funds in the prior quarter. Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management is the largest stakeholder of the company, with 8.7 million shares worth $2.6 billion. 

Andvari Associates made the following comment about S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:

“S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) is another company we own that is part of a duopoly in the business of credit rating. S&P and Moody’s have roughly equal market shares and rate more than 90% of all bonds worldwide. The service provides high value for the cost. A company that chooses to issue debt without a rating will pay an interest rate that could be higher by half of a percent. The cost of a higher interest rate far exceeds any savings gained by not using the services of S&P.

We think of S&P as a toll road that earns fees from its customers in exchange for cost-effective access to capital. As such, the company has extraordinary margins and pricing power and requires little of its own capital to grow. Even after fully reinvesting in its business, S&P still has an excess of cash. In 2021, S&P produced $3.5 billion of free cash from $8.3 billion of revenues. The company returns the majority of its free cash to investors in the form of dividends and share repurchases.”