Nasdaq, Inc. (NDAQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. I think we might be live. Lars, Ed, can you hear me?

I can hear you, Jeremy.

Thank you.

So good morning, everybody. I'm operating under the assumption that we are live, and everybody is kind of tuned in and can hear me. Welcome to the Americas Select Conference here at Barclays. I'm Jeremy Campbell, the analyst that covers the exchanges, brokers and asset managers here at Barclays. A little bit of a unique time frame where we're doing this virtually, instead of sharing a pint this evening over in London. But today, it's my pleasure to welcome Lars Ottersgård back to the Virtual Americas Select Conference here for the second year in a row. Wish we can be chatting in person, but appreciate you taking the time today to be here virtually nonetheless.

Thank you very much.

For those of you that don't know, Lars is the Head of Market Technology here at Nasdaq. And we also have Ed Ditmire with us from Investor Relations at Nasdaq as well.

So before Lars, I guess, we can dive into Market Technology, I just first wanted to -- I think it would be useful for folks to discuss how Nasdaq as a whole has kind of evolved over the years since you joined the team back in 2006. What are the main changes that you've seen in the organization as a whole?

I think there's been some very major changes going on in a couple of steps. So if you go back to 2006 and Nasdaq was a pure equity market in U.S., in 2008, it really started to become the international player it is today. So Bob Greifeld, our CEO at the time, went on to a journey to make Nasdaq not only a global company by acquisitions like OMX, where I come from, but also Philadelphia Exchange and others, so it became a full international player and also went from a pure equity player to a cross-assets player working in many different asset classes. Also going from a pure marketplace to now having also technology business, the clearing solutions, CSDs, et cetera. So I think that was a remarkable shift, and it went on in high pace, I'd say, 15 years but Nasdaq's at 50 years anywhere else, I think. So it's been quite a dramatic journey until Bob left and Adena took over. When Adena took over in 2017, we went into a strategy work, and I think we then have a new pivot of our business. So the strategy that Adena laid out was to continue to invest in our marketplaces on a transactional business, but increase our efforts into the nontransactional business, so that's investing in our data and analytics business and the Market Technology business that I'm part of. So we are moving away from the traditional exchange to truly become a technology and data company, using our own technology also to run marketplaces, clearinghouse, et cetera. So I think it's been a remarkable journey from the big and fantastic equity exchange it was to now being a truly global, multi-asset and technology company we are today.

And maybe we can just talk a little bit more about the technology and data offerings and how they've changed, even just since you've been there. And maybe even how client engagement around these type of data offerings has also changed a little bit.

So I think you're referring to the market tech business now mainly. And I think, obviously, there's been a dramatic change during those years on what technology was. Primarily, we started as a provider of big, robust trading and clearing technology to marketplaces. That was the legacy, that's where we come from. Very strong technology for that, but also monolithic and very tailor-oriented, tailor-built. During the year, we have embraced new technologies. We have broadened our technology portfolio to a wide range of solutions that we offer to the traditional clients, but we also broadened our target group of clients moving away from only marketplaces, exchanges, clearinghouses, et cetera. We call it MIOs, by the way, market infrastructure operators, but also now addressing much more banks and brokers buy-side and what we also call new markets or nonfinancial markets with technology. The technology itself has, of course, changed a lot, from the old traditional technologies to more modern architecture, micro services, platform based, and of course, cloud, machine intelligence and the DLT and other technologies coming. So it's been quite a fantastic journey.

Yes. And you mentioned Adena's strategic pivot. We're about, what, 3 years in now at this point toward nontransactional businesses at Nasdaq? Again, in your seat as the Head of Market Technology, can you give us kind of a sense for what that's meant for the outlook of your business itself?

I mean we have had a good journey with Market Technology also prior to these people. But of course, we became much more aggressive in what we wanted to achieve with our technology business. So from being a stable, reliable provider of core technology to this niche industry, we saw that we cannot do -- by investing in technology, we could grow our business rapidly. We have a lot of know-how and competence that we didn't really leverage to a maximum previously. So by getting more focus on Market Technology, we can modernize our technology in a faster pace to make sure that our clients can get full access to the new technologies out there, like DLT or cloud, machine intelligence, et cetera. But it could also start to address new customer segments with our knowledge and our technology. So that is opening up a completely new addressable market opportunity for us.

Got you. And then obviously, a lot changed, especially in the Market Technology business that you referenced. But I guess -- and you kind of maybe touched a little bit on this, but what are some of the key offerings or trends that make you the most excited or optimistic that might arise over the next 5 or 10 years here?

I think flexibility and automation goes together to some extent. Technology is going to be much more nimble. Solutions are going to be faster to implement, but also faster to adapt to circumstances. I think the move away from old traditional on-premises implementations to, over time, SaaS services will give a much bigger flexibility for all users of this technology and ability to adapt to new trends and new opportunities, but it's also going to connect communities. So instead of living in isolated islands, the technology will help us connect and do it in an efficient manner, which will create new opportunities, access to marketplaces that was potentially difficult to access before, new -- completely new types of marketplaces emerging. And I think it's all bottom up. It's all driven by the technology development we see in the market.

So I think right now, market tech is right around like 15% of Nasdaq's total revenue or so. If we're both sitting here, hopefully in person next time, in about 10 years at this point, what do you expect the segment's revenue contribution could look like as a proportion of overall Nasdaq?

I will be very cautious. I think we're quite public on what we see our growth are. So yes, it will grow a little bit faster, hopefully, than the whole company of Nasdaq. But I don't want to give you a prediction of how much we will be. But as we say, we aim to grow, over time, 8% to 11% annually with the Market Technology business, which is slightly higher growth than the total company's. We will hopefully take a bigger, bigger part of the business. Yes.

So Ed was furiously trying to hit the mute button over on his computer right now to the answer to that question. And obviously, we're conducting this conference virtually as a result of what's going on with COVID-19 globally. And so I just wanted to maybe dig in a little bit to some of the impacts that the pandemic has had on the Market Technology business, both maybe on the challenging side, and then maybe also talk about potential opportunities as well. So maybe we'll kind of start first here on the challenging side. And I know on the last earnings call, Adena recently mentioned that she saw risk to achieving the aggregate medium-term growth of the 5% to 7% top line in the nontransactional segment. And market tech, as you kind of just relayed here, is expected to grow 8% to 11% over the intermediate term. It'd be great to just get some color on some of the challenges you're facing here in this market. And maybe kind of see if we can break down what might be in the more transitory versus a little more permanent type of caps.

Okay. So first of all, I think I remain very optimistic that we will maintain our 8% to 11% growth over time. I'll say it's over time because the Market Technology investment and growth are not a short play. It's a long-term play, and I feel very optimistic about the overall growth opportunity for our business over time. Now the challenging point. Yes, we are hit by the circumstances we're in. I will be lying if I didn't admit to that. So yes, we do have some challenges. It comes in different flavors. So luckily, we have -- a very large part of our business is solid marketplace, solid companies that are not really in a situation where we see them disappearing as clients. So we have a very strong core base. But the focus, of course, now has gone from innovation and new investments to handling the day-to-day business, all -- many having a large part of their employees working remotely instead of on-site. Volumes that has -- in markets doubled in some places or at least growth of 150% all-time highs before, high volatilities and so on. So the focus has been to make sure that a decline -- that the day-to-day operation has been working flawlessly. And that, of course, has taken away some of the focus on new investments and both on -- to some extent, an ongoing project, but also to start new projects. But it is not -- I don't see this to be problems that are long-term problems. It is -- and we don't know how long it will be, but it is a more of a blip in the curve because they have been focused on other things right now, but the longer-term sentiment is still there. In the new markets, I need to -- that's a slightly difference. This is -- that's majority of my clientele. In the new investment there of new markets, there, I think, we will see a slower pace because of -- it's, by definition, a lot of innovation and new market models that are the driver of this. And to some extent, there's also a number of start-ups, et cetera, that are challenging -- challenged to find risk capital. So there, I do see a slowing down of the pace. But again, I have not seen any signs that this means this is not coming back. So it's -- I think it's a shorter or longer. I don't know how long it will be halt in the growth rather than a long-term impact.

Got you. So maybe -- is it fair to think that maybe companies and customers of yours are thinking about their expense base in this market and trying to manage through the kind of unique situations we're in? And maybe it sounds like you think it's more of like a delay than anything else at this point. Is that fair to characterize?

Yes. Yes. I don't see any signs that people are giving up on what they believe are the right way in the future. So no, it's more a delay than -- and it will impact us short term, but it will -- I don't see any reason. On the contrary, I think our strategy and what we're moving towards are rather emphasized by what is happening right now.

Got you. And then maybe just how conversations with the customers have changed. Are they demanding new things because we're now in kind of a unique situation where you have all these workforces kind of working remotely? Or have things like the terms of the duration of any of the contracts changed as a result of where we're at right now?

I would say the interaction has changed dramatically because we have to do it like this over soon instead in place. So that's a big impact. But I think a lot -- start from a work relationship point of view, it's gone all really well. So we continue to run projects together. Yes, the pace may not be as efficient as if you can meet and have workshops together and you have it over video instead and so on. So to some extent, the pace of projects are a little bit slower, but it continue, and the clients have been very adaptable and working remotely. When it comes to contracts, first of all, a very large part of our contract portfolio is long-term contracts. Normal contract times are 5, even up to 10 years long contracts. And the clients are happy with them. We have not experienced a lot of pressure on changing those contracts. I actually instead have had clients that have just recently agreed to a new 10-year contract. So I think it's a long-term focus in this industry that are still prevailing. I have, as I said, in the start-up part of my business, which is a very small part still, but high-growth opportunity. There, we definitely see that maybe there is harder to find capital. And some of the contract negotiations are not so small as they would have been otherwise.

Okay. And is this kind of opening up kind of new lines for innovation or usage of your technology solutions? Or are you seeing increasing demand from clientele that, again, may not -- we talked about the delay that might hit here. But if we think about the forward outlook, what do you think this does in the necessary technology of, again, things like this to -- does it kind of aggregate demand from the client side?

I absolutely think this is something that will -- when we look back to this, we will say this has been playing in our favor, if I dare to say that. I shouldn't say that. But because what our clients, our experience is that, for instance, cloud. To have modern dynamic architecture, the ability to work -- use dynamic upscale and downscale in very dramatic times like this, the ability to work remote, have systems that are designed to be operated remote, is something that I think is going to drive this industry to continue to invest into modern architecture and cloud based and even, as I truly believe, SaaS solutions where we operate the solutions for them. So this is rather pushing in that direction. That is a general statement. In other areas, we see where clients have manual operations where they may have built up competence centers in India, for instance, or China, wherever, it doesn't need to be India. And suddenly, you see that you're actually exposed. If these people get sick, what are you going to do? So the trend of automation that's already underlying in our industry is rather emphasized than anything else. So I think this is actually short term, we see some challenges. Longer term, this show us that our strategy of building robust platform based, scalable, cloud-enabled and SaaS solutions are the way forward.

Got you. And then in terms of your customer base, obviously, you kind of mentioned earlier, market infrastructure operators go buy on the sell-side and the nonfinancial markets. First, I think probably we should define these markets for the people that are watching on this webcast here. So maybe we'll spend a couple of minutes here just discussing who these customers are and what they're looking for from Nasdaq.

I only look at the business at 3 plus 1 segments, to say that. So I have -- the absolute biggest part of my business is still what we call MIO or market infrastructure operators. So that is marketplaces, the exchanges. It is clearinghouses, it is depositories and it's actually regulators in the world. So these are the core of the business. And what we provide to them is everything you need to run a market. So everything from trade, trading solutions to clearing solutions to CSD solutions, settlement solutions to risk solutions, whatever have you, surveillance, et cetera. So we have the full suite portfolio to these clients, what they need to operate marketplaces again. The second segment for me is the banks and broker space. And in that space, they really have 3 offerings. So one offering is that we are the provider of surveillance -- trade surveillance solutions to 165 client of all the biggest banks and brokers in the world today globally. So that is a core business of that. Secondly, we also provide trade risk solutions to manage trade risks. And thirdly, we also provide a marketplace technology for dark pools or the type of institution you have. So we have clients like, I don't know if I can name them, but they have a number -- Goldman Sachs, for instance, is a client of ours that have been public. So that is the third segment. So those are 2 customer categories. On the buy-side, which is for Nasdaq, a very important and big opportunity especially for our data business, it is still a rather small business, but we do provide surveillance technology monitoring how portfolio managers and trades are being handled in the buy-side community. And then we have the fourth segment, and we call it different in nonfinancial markets or new markets. So this is -- this new type of markets popping up over the world that are not traditionally part of the capital markets industry, but it could be, for instance, a real estate market or health care data markets, et cetera, that is coming and growing opportunity for us. And there we provide similar solutions as we do for the traditional marketplaces, but adapted to different structures. So for instance, interesting aspect, I'm sorry for being long here.

No. That's great.

In that marketplace, it's not -- maybe the products are not so defined. So there you need to find products that will be using new interesting search engines instead of the traditional trading solutions.

And then maybe just -- since we've defined these markets at this point, are any of them -- I think you talked about maybe some capital challenges in the more higher-growth, nonfinancial market-type thing. But what are the challenges that across these verticals that we're seeing in this kind of COVID-19-type crisis? And I think you talked about some innovation and stuff like that solutions on some of the other areas. But maybe is there anything to call out here in these verticals that is kind of unique to them given kind of the environment we're in these days? And then we'll talk about a more normal environment that we hopefully return to at some point in the not-too-distant future.

No. I think I'm not sure it's anything really unique with them. I think it's to some -- but if you take a very -- we announced the Skytra deal quite recently, where Airbus is setting up a market to handle risks with the fluctuating ticket prices in the market. So that's an exciting investment that Airbus is doing, and they continue to do. But you all read the paper and see that Airbus need to look at their costs. And so far has had no impact on my business, but that is a typical example of what we see COVID is causing. So I think short term, it's mainly a funding challenge. And I also think many of those markets are to reimagine old structures. And right now, maybe that's not the time to when people work from home remote and the funding are short to do that. So I think we will see a little delay before this continue. Having said that, on the opposite side, I think this is also showing that old structures, nondigital ways of operating, could benefit from being digitalized and handling more in a digital way as marketplace is down for a long time now than it has been traditionally done. So I think it can also drive this type of innovations when times are coming back.

On the market infrastructure operator side, have there been any breakdowns for people that weren't running something like your platform that are coming to you as a result of where we're at right now and saying, "Hey, look, we've had a little bit of a clunky internal operation here. Now let's open up a dialogue with Nasdaq and see if it makes more sense to move it toward a more SaaS-based solution?"

In the MIO space, I will say, that has been limited there. But I definitely see it in the banks and broker space, some interest of maybe our robust, very reliable technology and processes and where you're operating could be of interest. So yes, we have seen, to some extent, an increased interest. I also think that -- and I'll knock on wood now, we went through this crisis very, very good. Our clients managed really well with more or less with our help. But our technology was robust and the support has been very robust. So I think from a brand perspective, we definitely have proven that we are a good partner for our clients.

And then maybe just in a more normal environment. What are the needs and challenges that maybe differ across the different client segments that we just talked about?

I think from the MIO space, it's definitely a couple of things that is looked for. One is cost to continue to be cost efficient. The other one, which has been really emphasized during this stage is the ability to be nimble and adjust to circumstances. So I think what will be important is flexibility in many ways. So having big, clunky monolithic solutions that are difficult to upgrade or introduce new functions with or very fast improved performance, et cetera, is not going to be where the future is. So I think looking at more nimble solutions, less monolithic solutions, hopefully, cloud-enabled even SaaS, that is something that this industry is going to look for. Looking at the banks and broker side, I think it's automation to look at areas where they can continue to automate in an even faster pace, both in the regtech space, KYC, AML, where a lot of manual intervention is still part of it as well as in the back office area of the businesses. And in the new markets or the nonfinancial market, it is really about understanding what are the benefits of going digital and how can we set up marketplaces in a more capital market type of setup in an efficient way. And I don't think it means that they will set up CCPs in that structure. That's where DLT and this technology comes into play. But definitely, the idea of having two-sided pricing, marketplaces operating, creating a lot of area -- valuable data that then can be used for business decisions, et cetera. It's something that they are looking for.

And then I think, in your view, which customer vertical has like the largest opportunity? I think last year, when we were chatting in London, I think you had mentioned the buy-side. But just wanted to see if that was still kind of your thoughts today.

I think I mentioned that from a Nasdaq perspective, and I still think buy-side from a complete Nasdaq perspective, is an extremely important and relevant growth opportunity for us. If I look from Market Technology, I will say that I believe we have big opportunities to take bigger partners toward the banks and brokers community. The whole area of regtech, also in the execution services space or transaction space, I really think we can do more for that whole community. The fastest-growing areas, I still believe will be, the nonfinancial markets and the new markets but it's coming from very low levels and innovation. So I think for the years to come now, I think the banks and broker space should be a very important part of our business growth.

And then in the nonfinancial market, you mentioned Skytra with Airbus. But can you just remind us what some of the other kind of more popular use cases are for kind of this new kind of creating a market with the Nasdaq technology?

We see initiatives in how to securitize and trade real estate in different ways. We see health care data coming up as a very important asset and maybe even more so in the wake of what we're going through. Something that is -- have global interest and it's difficult to access today and price, et cetera. We see reinsurance space where you can go in and out of risk in a more dynamic way than you've done before. So there are several areas. I think it's difficult to point at certain indices. Of course, the whole area of sports betting and gaming is actually an area where we see quite a number of interesting discussions going on. So -- but it's hard to say that this industry, that industry, the key one, it's more what we are -- what is our core assets, what are we really good at, and that is actually to provide all the ingredients to have a well-functioning marketplace. So electronic marketplace. So we have the technology. We have the processes and routine. We have the regulatory knowledge and operational skills. So that's -- if you need those components, whatever industry you're in to set this type of markets up, then we're definitely there. So I don't point at a particular industry because we see opportunities in many different industries.

And then how do you characterize like the sales force interaction is between what's inbound to you from either companies or consortiums looking to make markets that aren't there anymore versus what -- is your sales force going on and saying, "Hey, this is inefficient, and we think you can do it better. Here's why."

They're building that up. So I think I said already last year in these meetings that the whole idea of new market started, to some extent, on inbound requests. And it continued to come a lot of inbound questions on could your technology be valuable for me? But we are gradually now building up both marketing capability as well as sales resources to start to go after certain areas with our technology in the nonfinancial market space. Right now, we may not staff up as quick as we had planned to because of the COVID situation, but we're definitely already in that process and have staffed up. So it's both combination marketing as well as pure salespeople.

Got you. And then I think a little over a year ago or maybe just last year, your division, in particular, acquired Cinnober, which is a competitor in the space of yours. Where are we today? And how does that acquisition kind of changed your team's capabilities? And what's been the feedback from your customer base at this point?

That was a scale acquisition to a large extent. So if you look at some of -- when we do acquisitions, we either look for some strategic assets that really upgrade our capability, broaden our capability. So it could be, for instance, machine intelligence capability within. Cinnober was 80%, 90% overlap with what we're doing, so that was more about scale. So they're extremely good technical people with knowledge that are -- to some extent, the niche knowledge. They know this industry. They knew the technology that this industry requires. So it takes a week, and they're fully productive on our technology. So it's an extremely good scale impact. Then they had a portfolio solutions that, to some extent, overlap our solution but in some areas, we're complementary. So what we have done there is that we have selected what are the solutions from the old Nasdaq portfolio and from the old Cinnober portfolio that are going to be our prime offering as we go forward. And then we are consolidating, so then we have cost synergies. When it looks at the clients, I would say that the absolute majority of our Nasdaq's traditional historical clients as well as Cinnober's clients that they came on board with have been positive and seen the benefits of this being a scale game because it's all about having the money to invest, to continue to develop the technology and to be able to deliver it to our clients. So it's been a very successful integration. And so far, I think the majority of our clients are happy with this integration.

Yes. And I appreciate your color a little bit on what you're looking for in different types of M&A. But maybe what is the M&A landscape or pipeline potential -- for potential M&A look like today? And how do you think about like a buy versus build type mindset here?

Yes. Our prime approach to grow our business is organic. So we do a lot of investments internally. We build very solid business cases, so we don't just run away and build. But then based on those, we do organic internal investments. So that is our prime way overall. Having said that, we are always going to be open for acquisitions when they are strategically made sense. So we're going to buy, as I said, assets that are broadening our capability or complementing our capability in the strategic direction we're moving into. So that -- and that will be more opportunistic than be running around and looking for these opportunities. So that's the truth. And then we have very strict ways of making sure that we don't run away and do any stupid acquisitions with return on invested capital, et cetera, so a very rigorous process to do this.

The investor base appreciates that. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the P&L, a little bit for your division here. I know some of the new disclosures Nasdaq now puts around your business, that being annualized recurring revenue and new order intake. Since those dialed in are more likely financial investors that may be a little less familiar with some of these metrics, can you just give us a high-level overview of why you have these metrics and what they kind of mean for your business?

So the order intake is a very simple measure. That's the value of all contracts we signed during a certain period. Normally a quarter, we show this to the market. So that includes both completely new clients, the value of those contracts as well as renewals of already existing clients. So that number was something that was very important in -- if you go back 10 years, when it was a very stable group of clients and we make -- was very much about making sure we have those long-term big contracts continue all the time. But we continue to show that the value of all -- everything we signed during the quarter. But we realize that, that doesn't really give you the full -- it's not transparent now. You don't know if it was just an extension of already existing client or a completely new client, and therefore, it's very hard to judge, was this good or not. So that's when we introduced the ARR, which is giving you two things. One, the insight into what is really the recurring revenue as we go forward. And that is important because if that grows quarter-over-quarter, you could assume that our underlying business has a very healthy growth. The second is this also shows how we're succeeding in a transformation from traditional technology on-prem to a services-based company going to managed services and SaaS solutions to our clients, because that is per definition, recurring revenue. So I think the ARR is to show both those, how healthy is really the underlying business growing and how well is the transition to services-based recurring business going? So those are the 2 measures that we normally talk about in the marketplace.

And then your annualized recurring revenues, I think it's about 70% or 80% of Market Technology revenue right now. But as you kind of look forward maybe 5 or 10 years, how high do you think the ARR contribution of the overall market tech revenue stream could get on a go forward?

I mean if we succeed with our strategy, which I'm totally convinced we will, it will grow higher, but it will not be 100%. There will always be some services that are not recurring. It could be advisory resources, it could be some special setup somewhere. But definitely, north of 90% is what we are aiming for.

And then I think just let's pivot a little bit over to the margin profile. I think in the first quarter of this year, the margins in your -- the op margins in your business were about 10% or so. I know '18, '19 were big years for investing in this business. But now as we kind of sit here in 2020, when do you think we're going to start seeing some of the margin benefits of kind of -- especially the SaaS migration and other efforts really kind of fall to the bottom line? And how much does this kind of pause button we've gotten here on the top line perhaps impact the margin profile over the very near term?

First of all, margin is extremely important for us. So I'm not like a start-up where it's all about growth. I'm part of Nasdaq, so margin is core of what we're focusing on. So we take strong measures in making sure that our margins are going to develop positively. Now when we had this challenges coming over us and I see pressure on my revenue growth, it will be hard to continue to see a strong growth in the margin short term. But I definitely -- having said that, I see already now the impact of the investments that we're making. So under normal circumstances, I would have been very, what you say, comfortable stating that we will see good margin improvements already this year. But with the circumstances we're in, it's a bit hard to predict where we will actually end up in this. But we see the impact, and I definitely see us going to start to improve our margins as we go forward.

And then in the years 2, 3, 4 from here at this point, is there an element of like maybe this delay in this backlog that we're having because of the environment we're in right now? Do we see kind of a potential for it to kind of slingshot a little bit on the margin side? So it looked a little bit maybe artificially depressed a little bit in the very near term, but maybe we see that ramp up a bit faster than you might have otherwise seen in the out-year time frame.

Here on, I must be cautious on how to predict. But the margin, the way I see our margin improving is going to be on a slope. It's not going to be step jump up because it comes by selling to new clients with a new technology or with SaaS services that have higher margin than we have on some of the traditional business. And it comes from renewing, replacing the old technology, and this is a journey over many, many years. So it will be a gradual improvement of the margins.

Got you. And then maybe just a little bit of a different pivot, and that's a little bit perhaps out of the more traditional market tech wheelhouse, but this is a European-centric conference. And the ESG theme over in Europe has rose to prominence there and kind of traveled across the Atlantic here to the U.S. investor base to become more kind of increasingly important globally. What role does Nasdaq play in the ESG ecosystem? And how do you think that might evolve over time?

I think we take ESG -- we see ESG being a very important business opportunity and obligation, I would say, to the society. So I think we, as a corporate, try to implement ESG measures in how we operate and how we manage. But we also with our special position in the marketplace, try to help corporates improve on ESG and take the steps forward. So we have advisory services in ESG space where we try to help our clients in the engagement of ESG. We have software, report software. We work on board evaluation compliance tools, in the range of ESG. We give Investor Relations and insights in the area. So there are numerous way where we try to push for this. We believe it's going to be a standard component in how you evaluate companies. So I think it's part of our obligation to make sure that the publicly traded companies are fully educated and aware of this importance and opportunity it constitutes. So I think both as an ESG for our own business, but also in a role of making sure that ESG becomes a component in how you evaluate companies and how we can help corporates evolve in this space is important for us.

So is it fair to think that there are other, obviously, players out there that have focused on the buy-side and relationships in the ESG and the rating system on the buy-side? But Nasdaq might sit in a really kind of unique nexus point where you have all these corporate relationships to help them be aware of what the ESG scoring systems are and maybe initiatives they could pursue to help them kind of improve their scoring. Is that right?

I actually believe you're right on that. I think we are in a very good position to have a big impact on this. And also coming from the Nordics and to be a little bit European here, I think the Nordics ESG in the Nordics are maybe one step ahead in some instances. So I think the awareness and the importance of ESG is definitely in the organization.

And then I think we're going to try to open up for questions. I'm not 100% sure how this is going to work. But if you have one, please feel free to submit them, and I will ask Lars in the couple remaining minutes here that we have. And while we're trying to queue those up, maybe, Lars, just wanted to kind of leave on this. We've spoken a lot today on Market Technology business and how the division has kind of flexed its muscles. But how do you think about technology as a common thread throughout the entire Nasdaq ecosystem, especially in a world where the lines between kind of data and analytics and technology all kind of starts to blur with one another?

Now I think technology is the enabling driver of the whole corporate, the whole Nasdaq organization. So whatever we do, it includes technology. And you're absolutely right. Data is the common denominator that the people that can create, own, access and use data are going to be winners in the future. So that is something where we, besides market tech, where we focus on the technology. We have our data business, which is a large focus area for us, where we make a lot of investments in being better and better equipped to provide data to clients, but also to ingest and create valuable data for, for instance, buy-side to be used through companies like eVestment that we acquired a number of years back. So I think technology is -- we say we are a technology company that run marketplaces. That is how we see our future going forward.

Great. Well, it doesn't look like we have any questions queued up here. But Lars, thank you so much for being here today. Ed, you as well. And really appreciate it, and thanks so much.

Thank you very much, Jeremy.

This is where I would normally clap, but there's nobody here.

Thank you.

Thank you.