So, what I think will happen in the future is we’ll see the technology line start to flatten out as we get to peak amortization and then things start to move down in that regard. But again, really, really great control over three of the cost items. And then in technology, we just have to continue to invest. So, hope that helps you out.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kelsey Zhu with Autonomous. Your line is now open.
Kelsey Zhu: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So, CTS, including CUSIP, grew by 9%. I was wondering what the growth rate would look like for the original CTS business and CGS. And then I think when you acquired the asset, you were guiding for a mid-to-high single digit growth for CUSIP. Is that pretty much still the goal going forward? Thanks.
Phil Snow: Yeah. Hey, Kelsey, it’s Phil Snow. Yes, I’m happy to provide those numbers. So, the CTS — the Content & Technology Solutions business, which is now part of Data Solutions, that grew at close to 11% on a year-over-year basis, which actually, if you compare it to last year, it was a little bit lower, but almost the same. So, I would characterize this year as being a very good year for CTS and really speaks to the value of our data and the myriad of ways in which we deliver it to the market. The CUSIP Global Services business, or CGS, grew a little — from an ASV standpoint, grew slightly under the growth rate of the firm. So, I think you’d probably have a pretty good idea of the size of that business based on data we’ve given in the past. So, I think you should be able to triangulate everything that you just asked me pretty well.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm with UBS. Your line is now open.
Alex Kramm: Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. Just coming back to the guidance for a second. You talked about these, like, two halves. So, maybe you can be a little bit more specific around maybe like the near-term trajectory here. I know it’s early in this current quarter, but maybe what are you seeing? How are the pipelines shaping up? And then, maybe more specifically, clearly, some of these banks have delayed hiring. So, I’m just wondering, if we assume that some of these hires that didn’t come in the 4Q maybe now come in the second quarter, is there a dollar amount that you feel like slipped in the fourth quarter that could come? So, just trying to figure out some of the swing factors maybe in the near-term here.
Helen Shan: Hey, Alex, it’s Helen. Yeah, I’m happy to try to answer that question, so thank you. You’re right, we’re early in the year, and — but we have greater visibility, of course, in our first half. So, I’ll talk to that specifically. We are expecting current market conditions in the first half, but I’m going to go by firm type here. So, when you talk about buy side, we actually finished the year quite strong with both asset owners and hedge funds. So, the three things that we see right now in the pipeline is, one, we’re continuing to gain traction in the middle office. So, building off of some of the great wins we had in the asset servicing space, we would expect that to continue. Second, we’re seeing strong demand in the data feeds business, so both for company data, as well as our data management solutions, where we’re really leveraging the strength of our concordance for content for clients.
We had two significant wins, one in real-time, one in tech data, both displacing competitors. And as a result, we’re getting inbound discussions around that. So that’s also filling up our pipeline. And then, third, as Phil mentioned earlier, the strength in offerings we have in the front office are also gaining traction. Part of our GenAI enhancements will be supporting that. And so, we expect to be able to get greater market share in that space. And we actually think that will help on the retention front as well. On the banking, you’re absolutely right. We are seeing — we’re going to have a challenging H1 comparison, Alex, because the banking workforce reductions really didn’t impact us until our second half, because they came through more in the early spring timeframe.
And we also expect most of the impact potentially from any reductions from Credit Suisse to happen more in the early calendar year as well. So, that’s going to impact our H1 results. There have been some positives in the capital markets activity, but we’re not building a recovery in the first half. So, to your point, we do think that there will be a potential uplift in the second half, but not in the first half. We actually did fine in banking overall, because we had two huge wins: one in equity research in bulge bracket, and the other in a large investment bank. And then wealth, I already spoke to. We have more activity. Our land and expand strategy is working pretty well. We are finding when we’re there, we’re building on both feed and our CRM solution.
So, we expect to see continued cost rationalization, but the pipeline looks decent as we are starting our new year.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Faiza Alwy: Yes. Hi, thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask about GenAI. Phil, you mentioned a number of new products that you’re working on. And so, I’m wondering, how you’re thinking about the timing of commercialization of these products? And do you view this as a new product revenue opportunity? Or should we think about it more as something that’s going to help improve retention? And relatedly, it seems like there is a number of smaller new companies that are out there that are introducing GenAI products that folks seem to be willing to pay for. How should we think about your approach to M&A to enhance your position within GenAI products?
Phil Snow: Great. Yeah, thanks, Faiza. I was hoping someone would ask about this. So, I have a lot to say here. We’re all in on GenAI and AI. The thing that I’ll probably stress first for everyone is the value of data. We believe strongly that the winners in this environment are going to be the ones that have the broadest suite of data and the most well-connected data, the most trusted data, and the data that can be source-linked back to where the answers came from. And that’s what FactSet has always been about and really at the foundation of what we’re building here. So, to answer your question a little bit more, we believe it’s going to be a combination of things. So, we are working on a lot of pilots, and I would anticipate that some of those will be coming to market this year.
I do believe that it’s going to radically improve the experience of most FactSet users that are using the workstation and, as you pointed out, really help increase retention and maybe drive new desktops, right, at the clients we serve. But we also think there’s going to be an opportunity for new products. One of those really is just off-platform, essentially. So, we’re thinking carefully about this. But there are lots of ways for us to take all of the valuable data we have, bundle it up with some GenAI capabilities and deliver it to clients. So, we’re going to create a great experience for clients on our platform, where they’re able to search, converse with FactSet, go mile deep for their particular workflow. But we also recognize that some of the larger firms out there are going to want to build some of their own environments.
So, as we’ve always been, we plan to be a pretty neutral here in the ecosystem and provide the best of both worlds. But it’s still early days. We’re still thinking about this very carefully, but we’re very excited about the potential opportunity for us.
Operator: Thank you…
Linda Huber: It’s Linda. We’ve had an effort to go out to talk to many clients early on in this process, about 25 of them. So, maybe Phil and Helen, you might want to speak a little bit more about the clients.
