3 of Bill Ackman's New Stock Picks Are Interesting: S&P Global Trades 28% Below Its High While Visa and Mastercard Sit Near Theirs

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) closed Friday at $418.80, about 28% below its 52-week high of $579.05. Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA) closed the same session about 3% and 5% below their own highs, respectively.

It's a striking gap, because these three businesses have a lot in common. All of them collect fees on activity flowing through their systems (card payments for the two networks, debt ratings and index licensing for S&P Global), and none of them takes on lending risk to earn those fees.

And as of this week, all three share a prominent new shareholder. Pershing Square, the investment firm run by billionaire Bill Ackman, disclosed stakes of about $1.1 billion in each in its second-quarter 13F filing.

Why has one of the three spent the past year falling while the other two sat near record highs?

Image source: Getty Images.

S&P Global: a harder year than the business deserved

Some of the gap is mechanical. On July 1, S&P Global completed the spin-off of its Mobility division, the auto-data business best known for CARFAX, handing shareholders one share of the newly independent Mobility Global for each S&P Global share they owned. Those shares trade around $20 as of this writing. Add them back, and an investor who held through the separation is down closer to 24% from the high, not 28%.

The rest is a rerating -- the market paying less for each dollar of earnings -- and it traces to the company's growth mix.

Second-quarter revenue, excluding the now-spun-off Mobility business, rose 11% year over year to $3.7 billion, and the headline businesses were excellent. Ratings revenue climbed 17% to $1.3 billion, accelerating from about 13% growth in the first quarter, while Indices, the business behind benchmarks like the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), grew revenue 20% to $534 million.

"We delivered another strong quarter, with record results in two of our benchmark businesses," said CEO Martina Cheung in the earnings release, pointing to those two divisions.

However, the other half of the company is moving much slower. Market Intelligence, a division nearly as large as Ratings by revenue, grew 6% in the quarter, and the Energy division grew just 2%.

S&P Global's non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share still rose an impressive 23% to $4.83, helped by expanding margins and buybacks. Also worth noting: the company has repurchased $1.5 billion of stock this year and expects to top $7 billion for 2026.

Visa: the definition of steady

Visa's latest quarter, its fiscal third of 2026 (the period ended June 30), showed why the market rarely lets the stock get cheap. Net revenue rose 14% year over year to $11.6 billion, payments volume grew 10% in constant dollars, and processed transactions climbed 10% to 71.7 billion. Adjusted earnings per share rose 11% to $3.32, and GAAP net income came to $5.6 billion.

There's no cycle to argue about in those numbers. Visa's growth comes from billions of consumers spending a little more and swiping a little more often -- activity that tends to grind higher through most economic backdrops.

Mastercard: the same quarter, essentially

Mastercard's second quarter looked remarkably similar. Net revenue rose 14% year over year (12% in constant currency) to $9.3 billion, and cross-border volume grew 12%. Notably, the company's value-added services revenue (the security, analytics, and consulting it sells around its network) climbed 20%.

The two card networks run on the same engine of steady consumer spending, with faster-growing services layered on top. The market can model their next quarter with unusual confidence, and it seems happy to pay up for that confidence.

Steadiness gets the premium

That, I'd argue, is what separated the charts. Visa and Mastercard deliver roughly 14% growth quarter after quarter from a single dependable source. But S&P Global's biggest business, Ratings, depends on how much debt companies choose to issue, an activity that can swing sharply from year to year. The index business tied to the S&P 500 is steadier, but it is also far smaller. And about half of the company's revenue is growing 6% or slower right now.

The valuations reflect that difference. Visa and Mastercard both trade at about 31 times their earnings over the past year. S&P Global trades at about 25 times, and at roughly 24 times the midpoint of its own 2026 adjusted earnings guidance.

Sure, the networks earn their premium. Their growth is steadier, and steadier growth may always cost more. But S&P Global's chart overstates what went wrong. Part of the decline left with the spin-off, and the company just posted records in its two most important divisions while growing adjusted earnings per share 23%. In short, the discount looks deserved. The size of it, arguably, no longer does.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Mastercard, Mobility Global, S&P Global, and Visa. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.