Bolsa Mexicana de Valores, S.A.B. de C.V. (BOLSAA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ramón Güémez, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning. Thank you. Welcome to Bolsa Mexicana de Valores First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Before proceeding, I would like to provide a brief safe harbor statement. This presentation contains forward-looking statements and information related to Bolsa that are based on the analysis and expectations of its management as well as assumptions made and information currently available at Bolsa. Such statements reflect the current views of Bolsa related to future events that are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors could cause the current results, performance or achievements of Bolsa to be somewhat different from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, among others, changes in general economic, political, governmental and business conditions, both in a global scale and in the individual countries in which Bolsa does business, such as changes in monetary policies and inflation rates, in prices, in business strategy and various other factors. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary considerably from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, or targeted. Bolsa does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. I would also like to remind participants that today's call is being recorded, and a replay of this call will be available online on April 24 at Bolsa's corporate website, www.bmv.com.mx. During this call, all figures are in Mexican pesos and compared to the first quarter of 2024 unless stated otherwise. This call is intended for the financial community only, and the floor will be opened at the end to address any questions you might have. Joining us for today's call are Jorge Alegría, CEO; Claudio Vivian, Chief Information Officer; Roberto González, Chief Post-Trade Officer; Gabriel Rodriguez, SIF ICAP CEO; José Miguel De Dios, Managing Director of the Derivatives Market; Luis René Ramón, Managing Director of Commercial and Marketing; Juan Manuel Olivo, Capital Formation Director; our new FP&A and IR Director, Hanna Rivas; and myself, Ramón Güémez, CFO. I would like to turn the call over now to our CEO, Jorge Alegría.

Thank you, Ramón, and good morning, everyone. I hope you are all doing well today. As you know, we released our earnings results yesterday evening to provide comprehensive details on our first quarter of 2025 on our results, which we will be discussing during this call. The copies of our press release and slide deck are also available at bmv.com.mx under the Investor Relations tab. During today's call and this time, I will first review our ongoing initiatives and then briefly comment on our financial results and the comprehensive and the competitive asset as well. Finally, we will conclude with some Q&A session, where you can ask any questions via the conference call line. To start with on the new central counterparty for bonds, the CCP services we are launching. As you may recall, we received the authorization last December. We are currently running daily tests for clearing, risk management and settlement on our quality assurance testing system to guarantee the correct operation of these new CCP services. Additionally, the first DRP test was recently executed. We have a couple of more pending with the participation of the Mexican authorities as well, so the testing period should be finished around August. Initially, the CCP will start clearing [indiscernible] and these should start sometime in Q3. We already have 3 large Mexican interdealer brokers connected, and even though that they have yet to receive approval from the authorities for their internal rules and regulations regarding to the CCP. Additionally, we also have the 2 [indiscernible] clearing members undergoing currently the onboarding process. On a second stage, we should start on first Q '26. The CCP service will start clearing repos and other government securities where we expect also it is going to be a very well-received service. On the liquidity alternative for Asigna, our derivative clearinghouse, with the recent market volatility, we have received a new interest and renewed interest from the Mexican authorities to have this up and running sooner rather than later. As you know, this initiative will allow us to receive securities as variation margin instead only cash, which is the way it works now. I am happy to tell you that we have found a mechanism similar to the collateral transformation services delivered in other jurisdictions, which used to all the stakeholders. So in essence, [indiscernible] Mexican pension funds will deliver securities to the clearing members, which would then, through a trust fund repo them for cash, which in turn would be delivered to Asigna to cover these daily variation margins that otherwise would not be fulfilled in cash. Currently, 3 derivative clearing members are in the process of finalizing the corresponding manual contracts with trust fund. We expect to have this new structure ready and operational during this year. With this change, we expect to attract volume from the OTC market where the pension funds are active and also from other international markets where they are also active, where only dollar collateral is accepted. So this is an important advantage being in Mexico as a Mexican institutional investor to be able to place Mexican peso collateral in these times of high volatility. Another topic on which I want to give you an update is the new fee schedule for equity trading. First of all, we received some comments from the authorities and we expect to have final approval in the coming weeks. A positive aspect to highlight is that we have not seen a relevant impact on our market share, which remains around 78%, 80%. However, as we monitor the market and we are in very close contact with our customers, we are following the comments regarding our competitor's lower fees. Considering this, we will implement our new fee schedule once it is approved, but we will do so gradually so not to reduce fees more than we would need to. And of course, we will keep posted on this. Let me follow on another fee structure comments that after listing also to feedback from our customers and our end users to promote retail market that is one of our strategic guidelines, specifically in the SIF, in the international market section, we submitted a proposal to reduce our conversion fee at Indeval. On the other proposal, trades below $5,000 would be free of charge of this conversion fee, eliminating the minimum requirement. We are not expecting a material impact, and on the other hand, we think this will be very helpful for Mexican brokers to promote [ vehicle ] trading in the global market segment that have been quite successful. We are expecting formal approval from the authorities also in the coming weeks. On the advance of the simplified listings initiative, we have submitted the required changes to our internal rules and models to the authorities. Regarding the new regulations for hedge funds, they have not been published yet, and we know our colleagues from the industry are working hard with the Mexican authorities to have these new rules in place soon. Let me move on our new efforts on Market Data. One of the efforts we are doing, and we will talk a little bit more in the coming sections, but we partnered with IPC powered by Beeks to offer virtualized colocation services. Today, for our colocation products, our customers must place a physical server in our primary site. Under this new model, customers will, so to speak, rent a virtual space on a server, making this process a lot easier. We believe this will help bring new participants, increase the participation of current ones and help us to improve trading on the equity segment. And we expect this -- to have it ready by Q3 2025. In the derivatives market, we have been showing also several advances. We are focusing on the launch of the new products during Q2, such as listing the mini dollar contract and the ESG index contract already approved by the authorities. We have also new products launched for the Derivatives segment to list futures on individual stocks, international names like Tesla, Facebook, Google, Apple, which are highly liquid in the international segment on the SIC. We'll have now futures and options in the index there in the, hopefully, coming weeks or months where we are pending final approvals from the authorities after a lengthy negotiation process. And finally, we are also looking in the same segment to have ready sometime this year, hopefully options on ETFs on the international segment as well to be approved soon. Additionally, we have seen a successful transition from the 28-day TA interest rate to the new funding TA or TA [indiscernible]. We are now seeing regular volumes, especially in the very short end of the curve, which volumes on the first coupon or the first, second coupons are growing every week. As you may know, we also list this very short segment of the stock market recently with very good results in volumes. Transformation for our post-trade services and this is an important endeavor that we are fully committed. In 2024, we launched the post-trade transformation program aimed at evolving from isolated internal systems to fully interconnected next-generation platforms. A key milestone in this journey is the adoption of NASDAQ platform solution or our Central Securities depository, CSD, Indeval, and for our equity central counterparty, the CCP. Building on this foundation, we have recently expanded the platform's capabilities to include bonds and derivative CCPs as well. The plan is to give and to go live with the derivatives platform solution in 2026 while the equity and bond CCP, also the Indeval are planned to be deployed in early 2027. We have also launched a proof of concept for data platforms to strengthen our real-time data and tailor-made reporting capabilities, positioning us to deliver even greater value to market participants in all the post-trade segments. And now let me move to our key financial highlights in the following slides. So for the first Q 2025 key financial highlights, we can see this quarter, we are showing also and continuing to show positive numbers, led by strong operating results in all business lines was also helped by the exchange rate. Revenues, EBITDA and net income are all growing 17%. Revenues were a little over MXN 1.1 billion. EBITDA reached MXN 640 million with a 57% margin and net income was MXN 437 million. Earnings per share was MXN 0.78, up 18% when compared with the first quarter of 2024. As I said, a very good quarter and in line with the positive results we had in the last quarter. Let me move to the next slide to review each business line. Our revenue distribution remains balanced and well diversified. Capital formation or the listing of equity, debt and alternative securities as well as its annual maintenance contributed this year with 12% of BMV Group's revenue. Transactional business, which consists of equity trading and clearing, derivatives trading and clearing, and OTC trading, generated 35% of the revenue. Information services made up of data, analytics, indices, valuation on financial risk management services had an 18% weight. While the CSD, Central Securities Depository, Indeval, which is responsible for custody, settlement and global market services, mainly with our cross-border transactions activity, participated with 30% of the revenues. Now please turn to Slide 6 to cover the equity trading and clearing segment. The revenue in our Cash Equities trading division was up 4% when compared with the 2024 number, while average daily traded value, which reached MXN 17.3 billion, grew 19%. The difference in growth rates is explained by the MXN 7 million nonrecurring income last year. Without this, revenues would have been growing 16%. Trading in the local market grew 6%, while the global segment, or SIC grew 42%, including a 35% increase in the number of trades. Our market share for the quarter was 78%, similar to the fourth quarter in the previous year. While on the other hand, clearing in the CCV, revenue was up 13%, while the total average daily trading volume for both Mexican exchanges were up 22%. These indicators grow at a different rate because the growing trade which have been higher in the last quarter and require registration but not clearing so then we have a lower fee on that particular transactions. Let us go to the next slide to review Derivatives. Revenues for our Derivatives trading and trading segment increased 13%. In MexDer, they grew by 12%, led by higher trading in our Mexican peso-dollar futures, while in Asigna, they grew 15%, reflecting growth in margin deposits. The average daily notional value for dollar futures reached $341 million daily, up 21%, while the open interest increased 38% compared to 2024 annual average. And on the other hand, the average daily notional value for swaps decreased 11% compared to the same period in 2024, reaching around MXN 3 billion daily. However, while open interest experienced another trend, the volume of contracts decreased. Most of the contract activity is concentrated on maturities shorter than 6 months. In Asigna, the average margin deposits were MXN 48 billion for the quarter, growing 15%. Let's discuss now on the next slide the OTC trading results. Moving to SIF ICAP, the OTC trading revenues increased MXN 15 million or 8% with growth in Mexico and in Chile. SIF ICAP Mexico grew 60% or MXN 8 million, while SIF ICAP Chile, the growth was 5% or MXN 7 million. On the next slide, we have the Capital Formation numbers, where we can see listings revenue increased MXN 2 million or 11%, mainly driven by 2 types of securities, warrants and short-term bonds. On 1 hand, the issuance of warrants in the first Q 2025 more than doubled in value compared to the first Q of last year. And on the other hand, the amount of short-term bonds grew by over 20% compared to the same period in the first Q of 2024. And on the maintenance segment, revenue was up 6% for the quarter, explained by the growth of outstanding issuance when comparing by the end of 2024 with the previous year. So let me now move to the central securities -- to the CSD depositories, Indeval, on Slide 10. Indeval revenue is growing 25%, driven by an increase in assets under custody, conversions, settlements and a number of cross-border transactions as well as a favorable exchange rate. Total assets under custody are growing 11%, reaching MXN 40.9 trillion. As we have mentioned before, growth in the local market is explained by the pension market reform, 19% year-on-year on government bonds as well, which grew 15% year-on-year and also a relevant growth in our cross-border settlements due to the higher volatility observed in the case of SIC and the global market. Finally on Slide 11, Information Services. Our Information Services revenue composed for -- of Market Data and Valmer reached MXN 205 million. This is MXN 36 million or 25% more than in the first quarter of 2024. This growth is explained by our vendor Valmer adding MXN 12 million and explained also by nonrecurring events of the first Q of '24. Also, depreciation of the peso affected this number as well. As I said, we are showing a good start of the year. And as you know, we have seen a lot of volatility in the market lately. Of course, in the short term, this is good for our business, not necessarily in the medium term. But so far, in the short term, we are expecting to continue to see this strong trading activity. Let us move to our expenses and operating expenses for 2024. Operating expenses 2025 reached MXN 585 million. This is an increase of 14% or MXN 66 million, which are mainly explained by MXN 21 million in personnel costs. This is basically due to our annual salary increments and additional variable compensation from SIF ICAP positive results. MXN 20 million in technology expenses due to the evergreen projects aimed at ensuring our platforms run smoothly, securely and along with the investment we are making the segregation and that we made already on the segregation of the post-trade infrastructure. MXN 7 million in sub-custody as the value of the assets under custody observed increase which also, as we explained before, generate additional revenue in Indeval. MXN 7 million in consultant fee related to FX fluctuations on HR-related expense and MXN 7 million in promotion, which is marketing as part of our 2025 and onward investment strategy aiming and enhancing our client engagement and fostering stronger relationships. MXN 3 million in other expenses, reflecting the increase on the put-related costs we have on SIF ICAP. Our total expenditure for the quarter was 32 -- our total capital expenditure, sorry, for the quarter was MXN 32 million, in line with our projected and investment plans which will help us to interact better with our customer and improve our market services. Before we finish, let me comment on a couple of points. First, it is important to emphasize that along with the outstanding results obtained during this quarter, our operation has performed smoothly, our systems functioning properly and furthermore, significant progress has been made on the ongoing initiatives, reflecting a steady advance in line with established objectives. I am also glad to confirm that our next 2 -- during our next shareholders' assembly, we will be proposing the cancellation of 32.9 million shares that we have purchased up to December 2024 and are so far held in treasury. And additionally, the appointment of the new Secretary of the Treasury has contributed to strengthening relationships with the government authorities and enhancing collaboration with them. We will continue to work closely with all of them and do our best to have our projects move as quickly as possible, both for the improvement of our company and on behalf of the Mexican securities industry. And last but not least, I want to congratulate our brand-new Investor Relations Director and Financial Planning Director, Hanna Rivas. Welcome, Hanna, on your promotion to this role, and I am confident she will do an excellent job as she has been doing for the last years with the company and will be your main contact person between the investors and the Mexican exchange. So with this, thank you very much for connecting today, listening to my remarks. And alongside with my colleagues here, we will more than gladly address any questions that you may have. Thank you very much for your time.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ernesto Gabilondo with Bank of America.

Welcome, Hanna. Congratulations in your results. Strong revenue growth, EBITDA growth, net income growth, so congrats for the quarter. I have 3 questions from my side. The first one will be on your new pricing structure. So we have been seeing the more benign impacts from BIVA from what we have originally expected. So how should we think about Bolsa's new pricing structure? You mentioned in your remarks that you were waiting for the regulator's approval. But wouldn't it make more sense not to implement an aggressive pricing structure and to continue monitoring BIVA's performance to see if you need to apply an aggressive pricing structure? Related to this, is there a deadline to implement the Bolsa's new pricing structure once you receive the approval from the regulator? And I also remember that we have already incorporated an impact of around MXN 27 million -- MXN 20 million per quarter or roughly MXN 110 million in 12 months from a potential discount from your side. So as you were saying, you would monitor and do a gradual implementation. So just wondering how should we think about the potential impact. Then my second question is on your OpEx growth. We are aware of your technology investments this year. However, we think OpEx came a little bit higher. So just wondering if it is also explained by the impact of year-over-year related to FX? Or if we should expect OpEx to be this as a new normal growth throughout the year. And also linked to this question, should we expect revenue outpacing OpEx growth throughout the year? And for my last question, it's more related to something in the accounting. Why did taxes paid jump around 25% on the cash flow statement?

Thank you for your questions. Let me address the first one, and I'm sure gladly, Ramón will -- with the rest of the team will cover the other 2 related, the OpEx and taxes. Yes, regarding the pricing structure, we can implement that gradually. The way we are planning to do it is -- and observing the market reaction, we don't need to put all the different alternatives on our pricing schedule at the same time. So we are not expecting to be aggressive there. And as you mentioned, so far, the impact hasn't been as big, so we can have the flexibility of managing that during the rest of the year. Although we are expecting to have this approval in the coming weeks, usually, there are some periods that may go between 3 to 6 months to be applied. So we have also -- we are expecting to have some flexibility there on the application of the fee schedule. And yes, you mentioned something about MXN 100 million potential impact. That was mentioned last year, I believe, in October last year. That's the potential impact that we may have shown during 2025, if we were trying to match our competitor's pricing, which hasn't been the case so far for this year, right? I hope I answered your question on that. And I'll turn over the next question on OpEx higher for the quarter to Ramón.

Part of our OpEx growth comes -- yes, it is also affected by the FX around MXN 17 million. And it is in line with what we are expecting and what we had announced especially with the technology investments and with the new promotion expenses. So if you recall earlier when we announced our plan for the year, we said we could see -- we would be investing even if we would see a slight drop in margins. So I would say, for the time being, yes, consider this our ongoing OpEx. Also consider or keep in mind, SIF's variable compensation. So if we see good results from SIF ICAP, you will see personnel expenses going up as well. And regarding taxes, it's -- Q1 is where we made the annual payment in taxes. So it's just the difference from the provisional payments we made throughout the year to the final settlements that are coming in the tax filings. Part of it is explained by the greater net income, and the other part is just the cash settlement that comes with the final filing.

Okay, perfect. Just a follow-up...

Ernesto?

I'm sorry. It looks like he disconnected. Our next question comes from the line of Yuri Fernandes with JPMorgan.

Congrats on very good quarter. I have just a follow-up on expenses on Ernesto's question. And I totally agree, Ramón, like you were very clear on this. I just -- I'm not sure about the trend for the year because I think in the fourth Q, the message was that expenses would grow above inflation but like 1 point above inflation, something like this. And if we annualize the first Q and keep like all the full year flat, we get like to an 8% increase versus 2024. And I guess like the first Q, there was FX. You had like more technology costs, consulting fees like many, I would say, uneasy comps. But just trying to understand, it's like, okay, this is the run rate or will this increase from here? I understand there is variable compensation that can influence this. But just trying to understand if the former message on expenses growing 1 point above inflation or something like this is still valid, or if you believe like now it's slightly more than that. So that's the first question. And just a second one. You mentioned in the presentation, many small projects, right, on Derivatives, like single stores, like options on ETFs, like many, many different things. And I understand many of those things are small, like it's not like the same as the fixed income counterpart. But do you have any estimate on potential revenues of those things like by project or in aggregate? Like how much more revenues can we get on all those small projects that you all have been doing?

Yuri, thank you for your question. If we see how it -- how expenses are coming, I would say that the way growth is coming, we would expect this current rate of expenses. And yes, there would be above inflation. Just if we are -- if it's -- depending on how the exchange rate moves, that is affecting us. If we keep getting growth from Indeval, the custody fees or sub-custody fees would continue to increase. So those would be, let's say, above what we had expected, while at the same time, being somewhat offset by our -- some of them are being offset by revenues. So I would -- I will keep the current rate -- the current level of expenses for future quarters. And regarding revenues from the Derivatives contracts that we mentioned, don't lose any sleep over that. They're not -- as you know, Derivatives is a small portion of our revenues. We were not expecting significant revenue yet, but we're trying to start to generate more interest in the retail market and generate more movement in Derivatives, but it will not be a game changer.

Yuri, this is Jorge again. Thank you for the question. The -- one of the most important lines of marketing is to develop the retail segment in the Mexican market. And this is just the initial steps of launching more suitable products for retail, especially the tech stocks or highly liquid stocks in other markets. This is going to be an effort that is just starting. So no very meaningful revenue expected for this year, but it's part of a much longer and bigger strategy to grow the retail segment in both Cash Equities and Derivatives.

No, perfect, guys. And again, congrats. I think revenue is growing faster than expenses is what we have been waiting for years. So I think it's a good thing. Thanks for the clarifications.

Our next question comes from the line of Carlos Gomez with HSBC.

Congratulations on the results, and welcome to Hanna. We look forward to talking to her. A question on your capital allocation. You have been very active in terms of buybacks. Do you expect to continue to distribute as much capital as you have in the past? Or given that you have, as mentioned earlier, all these projects, you have perhaps more expenses, you might retain some more capital in the coming years as an investment phase? And the second question is the impact of the movement both in the exchange rate and in the international markets. I mean, we have seen in the past when there have been depreciation of dollar assets, you have had the least activity in the global segment of your market. How has the experience been so far with events after, let's say, at the beginning of April?

Carlos, on the first question on the capital allocation, our plan is, yes, to continue with the -- with our buyback program, depending on, obviously, on stock performance. We have seen our stock perform well lately so we will continue. But it's dependent on our price of our stock. And we're set to pay our dividend on the 12th of May. And we have a reserve of up to MXN 500 million for this year. So far, we have purchased less than planned, as I said, because of performance. And regarding the impact of the FX, could you repeat the question, please?

The activity that FX depreciation generates on the SIC market, is that your question, Carlos?

Yes, my question is more, again, in the past, when we had a big appreciation of the peso, and then you had, therefore, a decline in peso. Expressing peso -- of the value of the foreign assets, we had a reduction in activity. Now we have had this peso relatively stable, but the value of foreign assets is decreasing because of the movements in international market. Have you seen something similar to what we saw in 2023 happen to you?

Not yet. Maybe my colleagues can comment on that as well but not yet. I think what we are seeing this -- all the recent activity due to, first, volatility. We are seeing some capital reallocation, I think, as well. The pension funds are still growing in terms of assets under management. We believe that what we have been hearing, they are also analyzing different alternatives on how to structure their portfolios in the -- with all the several changes we are seeing in the behavior of different markets. But so far, we haven't seen any additional higher or lower activity related to this. I think we can explain all the activity recently is more due to market volatility and the FX impact so far, but nothing we can see as a new trend in the market or a different trend.

Our next question comes from the line of Edson Murguia with Summa Capital.

The first one is related to initiative with NASDAQ. I know Jorge mentioned that NASDAQ technology will be used in bonds and other type of part of the post-trade and other parts of the businesses at Bolsa. But my question regarding the NASDAQ technology is, are you expecting or the plan is to use more NASDAQ technology in other parts of the businesses from Bolsa perspectives? And my second question is regarding the MXN 3 million in other expenses, if I remember correctly about the put option with SIF ICAP. I was wondering if you can give us a little bit more color. Why is this MXN 3 million production? Is it premium? What is the rationale behind this?

Yes, sorry. Your second question was related to the put-in cost. Let me go over the first one very briefly, and maybe Roberto can mention something. Yes, we are using NASDAQ technology for all the post-trade division that will allow us to have not only more robust services but also new kind of services that may be foreseen to be provided in the future, the technology and services in this segment is advancing faster. Yes, we are using NASDAQ. If we understood correctly, if we are planning to use NASDAQ technology in other segments, so the answer is we don't know yet. We are analyzing and doing a proof of concept for Market Data. Management as well, but it's just so far a proof of concept. And the -- we are upgrading on the front end for the trading engines for the Derivatives segment. One of the alternatives we are analyzing is NASDAQ as well, among others, but we haven't made any decision there for -- to use more NASDAQ technology. They are obviously considered and they will be participating eventually in any potential decision. But so far, we are focused on executing and delivering the post-trade segment where we are, as you can see, focusing our main efforts. Let us move to your call put question for SIF ICAP, if I recall correctly, that was your next question?

Yes, exactly.

We have -- in SIF ICAP Chile, we have a partner. He holds 20% of the shares. SIF ICAP has 80%. And we had [ put and close ] sign for those 20% of the shares and they're revalued with a performance formula. So according with the -- as we go on with the results, we have to update the value of this option. So this is where -- it's a direct result of SIF Chile's positive performance.

Okay. And last, regarding the time line of these new initiatives, the new mini USD, the index and so on, what would be the time line to be operational or to be in the market for the retailers? Or what will be the time because it's my understanding that there are some processes with the regulators that it's not overdone. So what do you expect? Is it going to be by the end of 2025? Are you expecting for the next quarter 2026? Just to figure out what will be the time line of those initiatives?

Sure, Edson. Related to the new index future contracts on the mini-dollar future contract, those are already authorized. We are in the -- now we are in the marketing and implementation phases for those new contracts. This, again, we are focusing on a more retail-oriented strategy there. And from -- actually, this week's comments with the Mexican Central Bank, the contracts and correct me if I'm wrong, but the option contracts for the SIC individual names, technology names should be approved. I mean, we are aiming to do a second Q launch, no later than third Q launch for this new set of options. So yes, it has been a long time negotiating, but now we are now not almost ready to go but also it looks like after this -- the launch of this first set of new contracts in the market, we will be able to launch more under the same circumstances on the same terms and conditions much faster than before because now, let's say, the first ones were approved. So the next ones, including ETFs on the international segment should be approved much more faster. But we are aiming for second Q launch, no later than third Q launch.

Our next question comes from the line of Kaio Prato with UBS.

I had 2 quick from my side, please. A few on top line. The first is in terms of the Information Services line, we saw it improving by more than 20% year-on-year. I understand all the impacts from the FX here, but just wondering if this is only related to FX or if there are any other drivers on that just to understand what can we expect going forward. And finally, after a good quarter especially on maintenance as well, I would like to hear from you what are the expectations for the year, both in terms of leasing and maintenance. Perhaps we can expect better numbers than we were previously forecasting by the fourth Q.

On Information Services, part of it is related to FX, the part of Market Data. And as for Valmer, you have a portion that -- Valmer had a weak result in Q1 of 2024. It's actually an accounting issue. So if you look at history, the past book last year, you're going to see that Q1 for Valmer was bad and then Q2 was good. You have to take the average of the 2 to compare. So Valmer, they have a good quarter with growth from new products -- from new customers and new products, new movements, while Market Data was mostly FX. With regard to the maintenance line, as you know, maintenance is -- maintenance fees are built in advance in Q1 and amortized throughout the year. So if you look at historical data, you're going to see they're relatively constant throughout the year. And we would expect them to continue that way. So that should be a very constant number. It could have a slight decline if you have some cancellations throughout the year. But for practical purposes, what you're looking at in Q1 should continue for the next quarters.

We have no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much again to all of you. We look forward to having another great quarter in the months to come. And thank you again for your assistance. If you need any other questions, please reach out to us now that Hanna is fully onboard. And if nothing else, we will have the next call next July. And thank you very much for attending.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.