Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right, everyone. Welcome back to the 2025 Global Exchange & Trading Conference. My name is Patrick Moley. I cover the exchanges, online brokers and trading companies here at Piper Sandler. It's my pleasure to welcome our next guest, Lynn Martin of Intercontinental Exchange. Lynn has been President of NYSE since 2022. She also serves as Chair of Fixed Income and Data Services business. Lynn, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So it's been a volatile first start or start to the year. People were very optimistic, I think, coming in around IPO environment and the capital markets activity picking up again. It seemed to slow down a bit, but it does seem like maybe things are opening back up again. So from the beginning of the year to now, how is sentiment among companies in the IPO pipeline kind of trended? And what's your outlook for the rest of the year?

Yes. I mean when we started the year, there was a tremendous amount of optimism around this being the year to finally break open the IPO markets. I think that sentiment really continued through probably mid-March. You saw a variety of large companies flip public, indicating their intentions to list in the market. And then we had April. April was quite the volatile time. I think we've all lived through that. And a variety of the companies that were planning to list that month obviously pushed their plans. They're still going to go public. They just wanted to see, particularly some of the more international companies, what the tariff debate was going to look like when the plane landed. Encouragingly, though, if I think about 6 of the companies that did push on us, 2 went public just before Memorial Day, Hinge Health and Mountain. And this morning, we have Circle going public in what I can only characterize as a blowout IPO for that deal. That deal, in particular, upsized twice. It raised the range once and it priced $3 above the range last night and the first indications have it up 30% off of that offering price. So I think the public markets are ready for the right companies irrespective of market conditions. I feel like there's been this narrative in the market, particularly for the last 2 years, in particular, it's a bit false that companies can't go public. You look at the companies that went in 2024, you look at the successes of like Rubrik and Reddit and those types of companies, they were ready to go. They went and they've done extraordinarily well with their market caps tripling. So the companies that we're seeing come live on us now, they're public market ready. It's how when we think about attracting companies, it's why we're so deliberate about our listing standards. It's why we're deliberate in talking about how not every company qualifies for the NYSE given our listing standards. But when they do, they have tremendous success, and we keep showcasing that.

And you mentioned earlier just the international companies having a little bit of uncertainty there around the tariffs. You're known for, at least in the futures business, your international presence. Given the dynamic macro backdrop we've seen here, how do you feel like the futures business is positioned in this environment? And what are you hearing from customers in terms of their concerns and how this might impact them going forward?

Yes. If you look at the other sides of my business and of course, the futures businesses, there's a trading side of the businesses, which tend to do extraordinarily well in volatile times and uncertainty because people need to manage risk. And if I look at our futures businesses, you take 3 big buckets. You take the energies business, you take the interest rate business and you take our equity index business, we've made the deliberate decision to curate the portfolio in a more global holistic approach. So if you look at our energy franchise, for example, that continues to go from strength to strength. In that portfolio, we curated it not just to look at the international supply and demand for energy. We looked at the other macro trends in the market, including globalization of gas, including environmental and the transition from brown to green. And when you layer in the macro factors that are talked about every day, things like AI and demand for power and how to do that in a sustainable fashion, I can't think of a franchise that is better positioned to allow companies to hedge exposure and manage risk through those macro transactions or macro environments. You see that in our volumes, but importantly, you really see that in our open interest. I know my colleagues, Warren Gardner, CFO, and prior to him, Scott Hill, always pointed investors towards open interest as the sign of strength of our franchise. You look at something like our energy open interest, our energy open interest is up 6% year-on-year. It's up almost 10% versus where we ended 2024. So to me, that means people are putting more trust in our platform and in our products as the price as the way to hedge exposure.

And do you think -- I mean, in terms of the mix of customers that have been trading energy, have you -- what does it look like in terms of commercial participants versus maybe the speculators that have come in given some of the volatility we've seen in those markets? How has that kind of evolved to shape that open interest growth?

Yes. Well we've deliberately curated that portfolio over the 20 years that we've been in the business. And it's been really focused on the institutional players, the people who are really looking at supply and demand those folks who have liquidity want to be in that ecosystem. They know that if someone is going to hedge their position, it's going to be on our platform. So that really helps build the liquidity. And we've continued to see market participation, amount of participation, particularly if you look at like our environmental complex increase double digits for year after year after year. So our strategy is working in that market to be more focused on the commercial players, the institutional players who are really looking at the supply and demand dynamics.

So shifting gears, the mortgage business has been a big focus area recently. I know you don't oversee the mortgage business, but there's a lot of optimism around being able to take the data exhaust from the mortgage business and productize it and sell it across the exchange business, the data business, you've launched mortgage rate lock index futures. How do you think about the ability to kind of leverage that mortgage data and be able to drive revenue growth across the other areas of the business?

Yes. Mortgage is the latest evolution in our playbook that we've really run since the company was founded 25 years ago, which is to take good technology and apply it to analog processes. I can't think of a more analog process and the process of buying a house, particularly in America. It's pretty challenging and very paper-based. And I see some of you in the audience smiling because clearly, you've been through that process, and we all have the scars to show for that process. A natural output of applying good technology in an analog process is data. So when we look at the mortgage opportunity, there is the opportunity to apply that good technology to make the process much more efficient to drive down the cost for the end user. But the other really positive side effect is we're sitting on a tremendous amount of data, particularly when you consider that 65% or so of all new home origination -- mortgage origination actually happens through our network. If you think about servicing, it's around the same, but not a strong overlap between the businesses. So we think there's a long-term opportunity there. Rate lock futures was the first really there. Also, another low-hanging fruit was taking the data that we had and applying it to our prepayment models and then commercializing our prepayment models, but then also making the prepayment models that influence our fixed income valuations that much stronger because we have that real-time or near real-time information around prepayments. So we think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there. Our mortality indicators are the latest iteration of that opportunity.

And do you feel like in terms of the pace of being able to roll those products out, how quickly do you think that's going to come? And do we need to see like a more favorable mortgage environment before you're able to really get the interest in that, that you want?

I don't know that you need to see a more favorable mortgage environment to get the interest. Any time there's a new data set, and we've done this time and time again with our fixed income and data services business. Any time there's a new data set, you need to articulate to the user how it fits into their current bucket of risk management first. And the conversations we're having around mortgage is, wow, this has been something that's been needed for a long time.

All right. Moving on, we just spoke with 2 of the brokers. They talked a lot about 24/7 trading and the strength that they're seeing there. You announced, I think it was late last year that you were going to extend weekday U.S. equities trading to 22 hours a day on Arca. What are your thoughts just overall on 24/5 trading, 24/7 trading? What's driving the demand? And what role is ICE going to play going forward?

Yes. So we took the deliberate approach when we announced the extension of our electronic trading hours to do what we always do at ICE, which is follow the clearing house. So from our perspective, the most important thing for us to step in was to add reliability and resiliency around the ecosystem. An important part of that is the trade certainty that occurs at DTC every day. So DTC extended their hours to 22/5. So we said, okay, we'll go 22/5. And we're working with them on 23/5. So from our perspective, the most important thing, particularly after last August is to add that reliability and resiliency to the ecosystem to allow someone the certainty of when they actually transact on us to know they're going to have it in their portfolio. They're going to see it settle in their account and they're operating under the resiliency of our trading infrastructure.

And if we -- once we get -- I mean, I guess, how quickly do you think this would proliferate?

Yes. So we did receive approval from the SEC for our extended trading hours, but we're taking a deliberate approach to how we roll it out. Not to get into equity market microstructure too much, but there is the consolidated tape for lack of a better description. Importantly, that is where the trading bands for each name are set based on the prints that occur there. Some work has to be done on that before we can roll it out to our matching engines and to our community because we think as part of the ecosystem, it's really important to have those limit up, limit down breakers on every name to add certainty to not allow a name to trade in a very erratic fashion, which after talking to many CEOs in the market, they tend to agree with that.

So you also have a very big presence in options. I think that the next -- if we go 24/7 in cash equities, options would probably be the next thing to follow. I think recently, Hester Peirce said that they might host a roundtable to look at options market structure again, which hasn't been looked at in a while. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that now is a good time for them to kind of take a second look at the options market?

I think it's a good time to look at everything with a clean sheet of paper, and I'm incredibly optimistic as to what we're hearing in D.C. for the pragmatic approach there. They're looking at a variety of market structures, options being ones, looking at it from a very pragmatic standpoint. I mean there are 18 options markets. There are 19 equities exchanges. That's a lot. Every time a new entrant comes in, there is a cost to a company based on the way the rule set works to have to connect to that exchange, to evidence best execution. So I applaud the SEC, this SEC for looking at everything from more principles based on what we're trying to achieve with investor protection being at the forefront.

And you mentioned the new exchanges coming to market, the options volumes since 2019 have more than -- or I think they've more than tripled if you look at year-to-date figures. Retail has been a big part of that. How is the competitive landscape in options exchanges kind of evolved? And what role has retail really played in like in driving the competition?

Yes. The 0 days till expiry options has really been a favor of retail. Really since COVID, retail participation, both in options and in equities has driven the outsized volumes and a variety of other market structure enhancements like the move to T+1 have also driven the rise in activity as well as trading activity as well as messaging activity. So in this last bout of volatility we had, for example, we saw 3x the amount of incoming order messages on our platforms that we saw versus COVID. I mean that's crazy. When I look at COVID, our peak days was around 350 billion incoming order messages. This past April, we processed 1.1 trillion messages on a couple of days, all with a 30 microsecond average response time, which is pretty remarkable. Retail is a big part of what's driving that, but also people responding to retail is another big part.

Zero DT, you mentioned that's been primarily focused on index options, but there is a push to maybe see if we could get additional expiries to kind of grow that market on the single stock side. What are your thoughts on that? And what role would ICE play in Zero DT of single stocks if it did grow?

Yes. I mean we've got the 2 options exchanges. So to the extent that, that is what the market wants, we will certainly support that at its launch. We're very customer-driven. We tend to listen to what the market wants, where we're -- we spend a lot of time with customers across the ecosystem. So as that proliferates throughout the names in the market, I don't know that it will be on every name, but certainly some of the more actively traded names, I could see 0 days till expiry options coming relatively soon, which will be an interesting -- it will be interesting to see the side effect on the message traffic that I just...

I would think so.

Manage.

So moving on, there's a lot going on in Texas right now. I don't -- I mean it's getting some media attention, but you recently reincorporated NYSE Chicago to Texas. Texas Stock Exchange is launching next year. NASDAQ announced they're opening a regional headquarters. There was some legislation passed that is trying to attract more capital markets activity into Texas. What are your thoughts on that -- on what's going on down there? And how are you positioning yourself to kind of play into that, the changes that have been going on there?

Yes. I think Governor Abbott is a uniquely business-focused governor and some of the moves he's made with the bills that have gone through the state legislature, we applaud and strongly support things like financial transaction tax ban, things like some of the shareholder rights issues that tend to challenge some public company CEOs. I -- Texas is our largest state by amount of listing. So again, we follow the playbook that we always follow, which is let's go talk to our customers about why more and more of them are moving to the state of Texas and why some have made the decision to reincorporate from Delaware LLC to be a Texas-based company. And that's really what led us to say, okay, we've got a medallion. Let's move it. We can do it pretty quickly, and we are proud to have one company dual list from launch, a notable company, DJT. And now I think we've got about 5 dual listed, and we've got double digits more to go. So the conversations we're having are incredibly positive.

Yes. And what -- so you say you have double-digit listings of companies currently listed on NYSE that want to switch -- they want to do -- they want to dual list or they switch list.

Dual list.

Okay. Is there a desire for them to move the primary listing there? What are the hurdles? Or what are the conversations?

Yes. I mean our market model has been curated over 233 years. We've been around once or twice. So the volatility dampening that the DMMs do on the floor has a significant amount of value. And every time there's a lot of volatility in the market, it continues to showcase the positive effects that the DMMs have on dampening volatility in stocks. That's why the companies are like, I really like that model. So I'd like to keep that model, but also show support for the state of Texas.

Do you think there'll ever be a world where you'll see a big migration of companies switch to primary listing if they can get that support in Texas because there...

Honestly, I don't know. My job is to curate the portfolio to make sure we're ready for it, and we're ready for it.

Okay. Another big topic of conversation today has been around tokenization in crypto. I think one -- I remember Jeff Sprecher being up here a few years ago and saying that he always was intrigued by crypto, but never wanted to put the ICE brand name behind anything. In the more favorable regulatory backdrop that we have here, could you see yourselves diving deeper into crypto? And then a follow-up to that on tokenization, but I'll leave that there.

I think it depends on the rule set is really where we come out, and there hasn't been a whole lot of regulatory clarity. Now you see the Stablecoin bill going through or winging its way back and forth, hasn't yet been approved. That's interesting to us. But we've been early, very early on the crypto side with our investment in Coinbase as ICE, with what we did with Bakkt. So you would argue probably we were a bit too early on some of those initiatives. But -- and we've recently announced the partnership with Circle that we're looking for use cases for USDC and USYC. So it's a fast-moving space now, though. So we're optimistic about its future.

Okay. And then on tokenization, what are your broad thoughts on tokenization? And where do you think frictions exist today in traditional financial markets where this can kind of improve overall market structure, whether it's collateral management or collateral mobility or just tokenizing equities, what do you see as the biggest benefit to tokenization?

Yes. I mean collateral movement is certainly a strong use case and one that's interesting to us given our clearing footprint. But I always come back to what problem are we solving. And I don't -- I think with tokenization, there are some problems to solve any process that's that analog to digital transition that we've always prided ourselves on is our areas. But as the world moves more and more towards efficiency, I'm not 100% sure where tokenization will play a role, particularly when you consider that the market structures that we have operated under have been continuously and thoughtfully refined and made much more efficient.

Sure. All right. So with the time we have left, I think we got time for one more. What do you think the biggest storylines will be in the exchange space over the next decade, whether it's AI or tokenization, 24/7 trading? What are the things that you think people will be -- look back and say, why that really had the biggest impact on the space?

AI will certainly be one of those. I think responsible adoption of AI will be most important. How do we protect market integrity while adopting additional automation and AI. I mean we've been using AI for more than a decade with the North Star of adding transparency and deliberately making processes more efficient. We do that across our footprint, but we do it very deliberately so as not to sacrifice data integrity and data protections, which has been our hallmark because we understand how important a source of truth and how important data can be to driving AI. I think probably globalization will be interesting, an interesting trend to watch. You've seen more and more companies move to the U.S. because of the valuation appreciation that has occurred in our capital markets. So it will be interesting to see how that story continues to unfold.

Great. All right. Well, I think that's time, Lynn. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.