CME Group Inc. (CME) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody. We'll go ahead and get started with our next session. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy. I cover capital markets here at Raymond James. And up next, we have CME Group. On CME's behalf, we have Mike Dennis, Global Head of Fixed Income, and we have Adam Minick, Head of Investor Relations. Gentlemen, welcome.

Thanks.

Thanks for having us.

So maybe just to kick things off, for the benefit of folks in the room who are a little bit less familiar with CME Group, just spend a few minutes describing the company as you see it today.

Sure. So first of all, thank you for having us. It's a great conference. We're really happy to be here. So for those who are less familiar, CME Group is the world's leading derivatives marketplace. So our business is made up of several components. So first and foremost, the futures and options products. Participants use these products for trading and hedging. The vast majority of our revenue comes from transaction fees. So the breakdown of CME's revenue is roughly 1/3 from fixed income, which is Mike's business, 1/3 from equities, FX and crypto and 1/3 from the commodities business, which is energy, agricultural products and metals. In addition to that, we have a large and growing proprietary market data business as well as cash trading platforms in both fixed income as well as foreign exchange. Now customers tend to come to CME Group for a few reasons. So the first and most important is the deep liquidity in our benchmark products. The second is the world-class risk management expertise within our clearinghouse and then also the speed, reliability and flexibility of our electronic trading platform, which is called Globex. And then finally, the significant capital efficiencies that we're able to give our customers, who are trading multiple products on the exchange. For those in the room from the investor perspective, I'd say we're probably known for demonstrating consistent growth over time. We're coming off 4 consecutive years of record volume. 2025 is also off to a very good start. From a financial perspective, we're probably best known for operating a very high-margin business. We had 68% operating margins last year. We consistently show very strong expense discipline, good operating leverage, strong cash flow generation really throughout different economic cycles and also for having the highest dividend yield in the exchange space.

Terrific. Appreciate that. So Mike, you're one of the newer members of the CME Group management team, and you had previously spent 6-plus years at one of the biggest future clearing firms. Can you talk about your journey from the customer side to CME Group?

Sure. Yes. And thanks, Patrick, and happy to be here. Thanks, everyone, for joining. So just to give a bit of background and talk about how I found my way to the CME Group, and we can start kind of back -- I grew up in Chicago. So the CME was a familiar name to me as well as all the exchanges in Chicago, but I actually started my career in investment banking, which was God awful. And so I quickly wanted to pivot away from investment banking and get into capital markets. And I thought where could I have a front row seat into the capital markets, and that was at the CME Group. So after banking, I quickly moved into working for a market-making group on the floor of the CME Group, where we traded interest rate products, which ironically I'm managing that product set today. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth on Eurodollar futures at the time and options and treasury futures and options and also some of our cash markets. So just to fast forward after I exited my trading career, I spent the last 12 years working in the prime brokerage and clearing space where I continue to interact with the CME Group just through more of the clearinghouse, the risk management side of the equation. So on the clearing side, I established some really deep connections with some of our clients. And I also established a pretty deep connection with a lot of the staff at the CME Group. So about 4 years ago, I had the opportunity to join the CME Group Board. And I can tell you that from the first Board meeting that I had, I was incredibly impressed with the leadership of the CME Group and kind of their vision for the futures of markets. And so I very much enjoyed my time working in the clearing and prime brokerage space, but I really want to take on some new challenges and kind of grow on a larger platform and be challenged a little bit more. So the transition was very smooth for me. I knew a lot of the customers. I knew a lot of the FCMs. I knew a lot of the staff at the CME Group. So I was able to hit the ground running. And in my current seat, looking after the fixed income franchise, I'm focused on 4 pillars: futures and options, OTC IRS, our cash markets, which include BrokerTec and treasury and repo clearing. And the overarching theme amongst those 4 pillars is growth.

Terrific. I appreciate that background. And then maybe shifting a little bit, what are CME's key priorities as we kind of kick off 2025?

Yes. So some of the things that I'm going to share are similar to themes you've heard us talk about in the past. One of the biggest ones being a focus on international growth. So this has been an outsized growth area for CME Group for a decade plus now. We tend to grow about 3% faster outside the U.S. than within the U.S. Last year, it was about 5% faster. But we're doing this through a combination of things. So one is moving our physical presence to where our customers are. So today, over 60% of our frontline sales force is located outside the U.S. We're focused on improving access to our markets. And maybe most importantly, we're focused on new client education. Another priority for the year is going to be around product innovation. This is another one that you've heard us talk about in the past. But last year, in 2024, we generated $300 million from products that were launched in the past 5 years. We're constantly working with our clients to develop new products. Just last week, we launched a Micro Ags complex that did over 350,000 contracts in its first week. On Friday, we announced the upcoming launch of Solana Futures, which will debut on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Mike's area has had a bunch of new products, things like credit, mortgages, et cetera. There's a lot to look forward to there. We also continue to make progress to advance our strategic partnership with Google. By the end of this year, we intend to have migrated all of our non-ultra-low latency sensitive applications into the cloud. And then finally, we have an ongoing priority around new customer acquisition. And this includes both institutional as well as retail clients. We've gotten a lot of questions in the one-on-ones so far today about our ambitions in retail and maybe there's some color, Mike?

Yes. No, I think retail is a very important segment to us, and it's a growing segment. And I think if you look at the retail landscape and how it's evolved over the last 15 years, it's changed dramatically. And the way I kind of look at retail is when you looked at Amazon, when it first started, they sold books and CDs. And so some of these retail platforms are kind of came out with just fractional shares, came out with crypto and they're trying to expand their products and services to keep people sticky and on their platform. And so we've seen a lot of inbound calls to the CME Group on how people can put futures on their platform. And for us, we feel very, very confident in their ability to do that because marketing to the retail trader and more so education has increased dramatically. I think we're all really good at cooking now and really good at DIY projects because we watch all these videos. Well, it's the same in the retail space. So a lot of these firms are doing a lot to educate clients on how to trade these products, and we've been partnering up with them. And so we do see a lot of these clients looking to put futures on their platform. And I think the other thing that's changed dramatically over the last 15 years is risk management -- how firms do risk management. And I think there's a lot of technologies that are in place to do real-time risk management to do auto liquidation futures. And so we're really happy to see the uptick in retail.

All right. Terrific. And then maybe focusing on fixed income and rates a little bit here with Mike and being lucky to have you attend here. The rates complex and rate futures, in particular, saw really strong growth the last several years. 2025, maybe a little bit more mixed start. Volumes were a little bit, I think, down 11% in January, then they were up 11% in February, and you had a very strong treasury roll period in February. Can you kind of talk about the dynamics that you're seeing right now in treasury -- in rate futures and your expectations for the remainder of the year?

Yes. No, it's a great question. I appreciate it. So the futures and options markets were very active in November and December. And it wasn't -- we weren't all that surprised to see people take a pause, especially with the new administration coming in. And obviously, the new administration is here and they're kind of moving fast and furious. But when I look at our treasury complex, ADV is up 10% year-over-year as well as open interest is up 10% year-over-year. And additionally, our treasury options volumes are up significantly, close to 31% year-over-year, while open interest is up close to 33%. So despite kind of a softer start in short-term interest rates, which is our SOFR complex, volumes continue to hang tight and hang steady. We see about 5 million futures roughly and futures and options trade a day. And we believe that a lot of the talk around the tariffs, the tax bills, geopolitical risk, DOGE, the government efficiency program is going to continue to allow us to do well. On February 25, we had the highest volume day in company history. And there wasn't really that big of an announcement or that big of an event. There was just general risk management practices taking place in the market, and that's what we do. We provide exchanges and clearinghouses for risk transfer. And so for us, one stat that I always like to talk about is large open interest holders. And to me, that is a reflection of people that are holding true risk and keeping positions open on our books. And so we set a record in September of last year, and that large open interest holder stat has remained steady into this year. And so when volatility does come into the markets like what we saw last week, we're poised well for growth.

And then within your rates franchise, you also have a cash rates business, the inter-dealer broker rates platform, BrokerTec. It performed pretty well so far in 2025. What do you attribute that to? And what's been your approach to turning around that business?

Great question. To me -- I just want to be clear that for me, BrokerTec is all about growth, how do we grow BrokerTec? And I'm excited about some things that we're thinking about as it relates to BrokerTec. But the team has done a very good job of staying out in front of clients. There's been some new client acquisition. But when we look at BrokerTec, our share fell slightly in Q2, about -- in Q4, about 1.2% and January is better. We've had ADV up 29% month-over-month. In February, I think we just put the February numbers out this morning. We're up 9% ADV month-over-month. So a lot of it is just in getting out in front of the client, explaining the value proposition. And then some of it has been new client acquisition. One thing I do want to highlight around BrokerTec is we always talk about U.S. Treasury actives. We always talked about cash, government securities that trade on the platform. But BrokerTec is a little bit more than that. We have a very big business as it relates to U.S. dollar repo and European repo, and we started to expand our repo capabilities where we have dealers that now interact with clients to trade repo. And I'm excited about what lies ahead for BrokerTec when we look at the treasury clearing mandate, which just got moved last week, but we're excited to see if people will change their behavior on how they access the cash markets with the treasury and repo clearing mandate.

And then you mentioned the interest rate swap business is also within your remit. How has that business been performing? And what type of customers using that service at CME Group versus clearing at LCH?

Yes. No. It's -- to me, I would say out of those 4 pillars, BrokerTec and OTC IRS is where I really wanted to try to grow a little bit more. And I personally have been in front of all the banks, a lot of the dealers, a lot of the asset managers, a lot of the hedge funds kind of explaining the value proposition. And so last year, we set multiple records in our OTC IRS business. It was a record year in terms of both revenue and trade count, and we're going to look to continue to build upon this momentum. One of the things that I want to highlight is our portfolio margining program, which is a little over $8 billion a day in margin efficiency. So if someone is trading a swap that clears that CME Group, and they're trading futures and options against it, we see clients enjoying a little bit more than $8 billion a day in margin savings. And so coming from a banking background, capital, risk-weighted assets, Basel III end game, these are all some of the topics that are front and center for a lot of folks. And so we want to continue to highlight our value proposition. And we've started to see some green shoots out of the gate. We've seen some hedge funds and asset managers turn to us to engage with us on our portfolio margin program. So it's an area where I want the team to spend a lot of time focusing on an area that I really want to try to grow.

And maybe just following up on that point, there's been a lot of conversation about a competitor coming into rate futures and arguing that they can offer portfolio margin efficiencies by doing cross margin between rate futures and interest rate swaps. Are you able to kind of turn the table to some extent and say we have the dominant or the leading rate futures franchise, you will get all sorts of margin efficiencies if you clear your interest rate swaps at CME Group?

Short answer, yes. Yes. The short answer is yes, but that's the first thing I thought about when I joined the CME Group is like we already have this built. It's a proven concept. People are taking advantage of it. I think -- are taking advantage of the margin savings now. I think the one thing that sometimes gets lost is if you look at our collateral that's in our clearinghouse for U.S., for OTC interest rate products, it's $40 billion. And I would say 80% of that collateral is tied to U.S. dollar swaps. And if you look at the 8-ish -- $8 billion a day in portfolio margin savings program, 90% of that is attributed to U.S. dollar swap activity. And so I want to continue to highlight that. And people -- I think some people may have muscle memory and transacting with other venues and other clearinghouses. But being out in the community and talking to a lot of these clients, they're very much interested in. So I agree with your point. We definitely want to continue to push that team.

So CME's application to clear cash treasuries has been published. What will approval mean, especially as the clearing mandate itself has been delayed by a year?

Yes. So me again. What I will say is that we're pleased that our application has been published for public comment, and we look forward to working with the SEC on final approval. We're moving into a new business for the CME Group, and we're excited to explore this new opportunity with our clients. Regarding the mandate, we continue to push on getting our application approved, and we continue to act as a resource for our clients as they kind of navigate the regulatory change.

And then speaking of Washington, D.C., obviously, a lot of changes underway right now. How do you see them -- the change that you're kind of aware of at this point impacting CME? And then maybe a little bit of an oddball question, but we have the SEC, we have the CFTC. If they try to do something disruptive, like combine the 2 major U.S. regulators, do you see that ever happening? And if you do, like how would that impact CME Group?

Yes. So I guess, first, at a very high level, the new administration says that it intends to be -- it wants to promote a business-friendly environment. And so that should be a positive for us. But if we think about specifics underneath that, one of the things that we're hearing a lot from our customers is that they expect to have a more crypto-friendly agenda going forward. We saw signs of this just a couple of days ago on Sunday with the comments about a strategic U.S. crypto reserve. At CME Group, our crypto volumes, while it is a relatively small part of our overall portfolio, we were up over 200% last year and through the first 2 months of this year are up another 80%. I mentioned earlier the upcoming launch of Solana Futures later this month. And so crypto is going to be an area where we're going to continue to monitor it. It could provide some growth opportunities depending on kind of how regulation shakes out. When it comes to things like tariffs, we've seen that these policies can move very quickly. It's unclear how this is all going to evolve. We will likely have some customers, who are directly impacted by the tariffs, I think physical commodities, for example. And I think our job is to make sure that we continue to be a trusted venue for effective risk management for those customers. As far as your question about CFTC and SEC, I think that idea of consolidating regulators has been floated a number of times in the past, and it's never really gained much traction, but we are in a different environment now. So we'll see.

What's driving the strength -- I guess, switching gears away from rates, maybe letting Mike off the hook for a minute here. So what's driving the strength of your commodities businesses, ags, energy, metals in both 2024 and 2025? And how much of this improvement in volumes do you see as cyclical versus structural?

Yes. It's a good question because commodities, really energy, ags and metals were our 3 fastest-growing areas of the business in 2024, and they're all up another 20% plus so far through February of this year. It's hard to point to one specific area that's driving that growth. It's extremely broad-based. So it's not driven by one particular product or customer segment or geography. When we look at the customer segment growth, it's actually growing in every single segment, the fastest-growing area being the buy side. When we look at it on a regional breakdown, it's growing in every single region, with EMEA being the fastest growth area. So I think we have some confidence about the sustainability and durability of that growth because of the broad-based nature of where it's coming from. So I guess the harder question is what's driving that? Certainly, part of it is going to be geopolitical uncertainty. I'm not only talking about like wars and conflicts, but also things like trade policies and tariffs. There's also economic uncertainty, things like different interest rate policies in different regions around the world. And finally, weather uncertainty. Things like changing weather patterns, more extreme weather events, that all plays into physical commodities and the need to hedge and risk manage those products. As far as strategic things that we're doing to grow that business, I'll come back to product innovation. We talked about Micro Ags. We recently launched a 1 ounce gold contract. We're continuing to build out new options expiries. There's still a lot of innovation that can take place on the commodity side. We're also building out new delivery points around the world to make sure that we're in the places where we can best serve our customers. And then finally, we're seeing a lot of customers who want to increase their exposure to noncorrelated assets. And so this is why we've seen a lot of global hedge funds, for example, moving into commodities-focused strategies.

CME recently disclosed $60 billion in daily margin savings across all asset classes compared to your prior disclosure of $20 billion in margin efficiencies and rates specifically. What are the other key components of those customer margin savings besides rates?

Yes. So on the rates one, Mike touched on this a little bit. I'll just start with that, if you don't mind. It's really broken down in 3 areas. The first is going to be $12 billion to $15 billion in savings just within the interest rates FNO complex, another $8 billion that Mike mentioned on the portfolio margin savings between futures and options and cleared swaps and then about $1 billion between futures and cleared cash treasuries at DTCC FICC. So that's a little over $20 billion. That's about 40% of the total, $60 billion. There's another 40% coming from the equities complex, and that one is a combination of, again, those base offsets between futures and options within equities, but then also cross margin savings between our futures and options and products cleared at the OCC. The other 20% is going to be our other 4 asset classes as well as some margin offsets that occur between different asset classes.

And then speaking of cross margining, CME recently expanded the agreement with DTCC for the cross margin offsets with cash treasuries. Can you provide more color on how that agreement came about and what kind of additional efficiencies you would expect from it?

Yes, for sure. So just to kind of level set with folks in the room. So right now, the CME Group has a clearinghouse and futures and options are cleared there and DTCC FICC is a clearing venue for cash government securities. So anybody who's trading 2-year cash -- for example, a 2-year fixed income cash instrument, U.S. government security versus a 2-year future at the CME group, those are cleared at 2 different clearing houses. And we have an agreement right now where we look at both positions collectively and offer a margin -- offset a margin savings. And that's roughly what we said earlier about $1 billion. Now those margin offsets are only available to what we would call house accounts, people who are facing the CME directly and people who are facing DTCC FICC directly. What we have announced is we're going to kind of cascade that down or expand that to customer accounts. So now if you're a customer of a prime broker or a bank that has access to both the CME and FICC, those folks will be able to offer those margin offsets to their clients similar to the margin offsets that we see today within core futures and options and OTC IRS versus futures. And so we're excited about that. Our reasoning for doing that is as clients prepare for the clearing mandate, there's going to be a lot of activity that's going to be now subject to clearing. And so we want to make sure that clients are getting margin efficiencies and offsets from products that are very much risk aligned.

How is CME thinking through pricing right now and maybe from a couple of different dimensions? On the one hand, you theoretically have pricing power with some of your long-standing customers and the value that you provide them leads to you guys accruing some pricing power. But maybe as you expand into new customer segments, you mentioned retail earlier, can you use pricing discounts as a means to really establish a foothold there?

Yes. Yes, it's a good question. And pricing is something that we're always looking at. I guess I would describe our approach to pricing as being very tactical. So we tend to look at the composition of each individual product market. We look at the health of the customers in that market, the balance of those customers. We look at what are the ways those customers could replicate this exposure in a different market, and we want to make sure we're priced competitively against those other venues. We always want to be careful to avoid raising prices too much because we don't want it to negatively impact our volumes. So as a network-based business, higher volumes benefit our customers through tighter bid-ask spreads, and they benefit CME Group through the high incremental margins that we get on each additional trade. I think when investors look at our pricing, they're often focused only on that transaction fee and specifically the rack rate transaction fees, but it's also important to consider other factors such as liquidity provider programs, volume tiers, other incentives that might impact that price. And then we also want to think about some of the other pricing levers we have like market data fees and collateral fees, both of which increased this year. You asked about retail in particular, that tends to be an area where retail incentives are focused more on market data than they are the face rate transaction fee. We have a few different retail market data incentive programs in place right now. The goal there being to get our market data in front of those retail customers to get them familiar with our products and to eventually convert them into futures trading. And this has certainly been an area where we've been investing more in recent years as to the earlier conversation, we see retail as a growth area going forward.

All right. Terrific. Well, we covered a lot of ground. So I think we can wrap it there. But thank you, everybody, for joining us, and there'll be a breakout session downstairs.