Tradeweb Markets Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 1, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rush Street Interactive First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.

Operator

Please note that this conference call is being recorded today, May 1, 2024. I would now turn the call over to Kyle Sauers, Chief Financial Officer.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our Q1 2024 earnings release that can be found under the heading Financials Quarterly Results in the Investors section of the RSI website at ruststreetinteractive.com. Some of our comments will be forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward looking statements are not statements of historical fact and are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should or other similar phrases and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We assume no responsibility for updating any forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. During the call, we will discuss our non GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. In particular, we will be discussing adjusted EBITDA, which we define as net income or loss before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, share based compensation, adjustments for certain one time or non recurring items and other adjustments that are either non cash or not related to our underlying business performance.

Speaker 1

A reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our Q1 2024 earnings release and our investor deck, which is available in the Investors section of the RSI website at ruststreetinteractive.com. For purposes of today's call, unless noted otherwise, when discussing profitability, EBITDA or other income statement measures other than revenue, we're referring to those items on a non GAAP adjusted EBITDA basis. With me on the call today, we have Richard Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer. We will first provide some opening remarks and then open the call to questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Kyle. Good afternoon and welcome to our Q1 2024 earnings call. We are pleased to report that we began 2024 with the same strong momentum with which we ended 2023. First quarter revenue was $217,000,000 up 34% year over year and EBITDA was $17,000,000 representing a $26,000,000 improvement year over year. Both of these figures represent quarterly records by a wide margin, something our team is very proud of.

Speaker 2

We were able to achieve these milestones by continuing to focus on the quality of our product experience and the ability to efficiently acquire and retain high value players. Said simply, we are adding players to our platform more quickly. Players on average are higher value. We are finding these new players more efficiently than ever and we are driving meaningful profitability from this impressive growth. During the quarter, both Icasino and online sports grew over 35%, demonstrating balanced growth across our product verticals.

Speaker 2

This is a continuation of what we saw last quarter and continues to be driven by both rapidly increasing player counts and improving player values. The results of efforts to continually differentiate our user experience and offer a high quality experience that engages and retains players on our platform. In North America, we again achieved a new record in monthly active users. For the Q1, MAU growth was 20% year over year. Going back to beginning of Q4 last year, we have seen our growth in North American MAUs accelerate monthly in each of the last 6 months.

Speaker 2

In Latin America, our MAUs continued to grow rapidly during the Q1 as we were up 72% year over year. It is noteworthy that this growth in users across our markets did not come at expensive player value as we increased both North American and LatAm Art Mal in the Q1. Next, there are a few market specific takeaways to highlight. While we experienced growth across all market vintages, our newer markets continue to drive outsized revenue growth. In Latin America and in U.

Speaker 2

S. Canadian markets launched since 2021, revenue grew 78% year over year in Q1. This growth across newer markets led to our revenue contribution from markets other than Illinois and Pennsylvania to reach 57%, up from 47% during the Q1 of 2023. As a reminder, our operating margins in Pennsylvania and Illinois are lower due to arrangements with our land based partners in these states. Thus, as our percentage of revenue contributed from other markets increases, our overall margin should expand, which is what we saw in Q1.

Speaker 2

Our newest market, Delaware, continued its strong early performance that we highlighted during our last earnings call. For Q1, our annual GGR run rate increased and was nearing $70,000,000 The $10,000,000 increase from the $60,000,000 level we shared on our last call was driven by a strong end to the quarter. We ran over 4 times the rate of the previous operator during the month of March, with around 75% of this GGR attributed to Icasino, similar in market proportion to other states where both Icasino and online sports betting are allowed. We achieved this level of scale with a focused marketing spend and approach, validating our belief that players appreciate our differentiated product and respond to our focus on a high quality and trustworthy customer experience. While on the topic of Delaware, many of you have seen that there has been a bill introduced to expand online sports betting to additional operators.

Speaker 2

We are actively involved in discussions on this topic and have support from key stakeholders in the state, leading us to feel positive on the current structure remaining in place. In the event there is a change, I'll remind you the lobbying effort only applies to online sports betting. While our newer market continues to the strong growth, we also saw a resurgence from some of our more mature markets. During the quarter, our 3 largest online casino markets in North America, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, each had their highest year over year revenue growth rates in the last 2 years. Our focus on the iCasino experience is resonating with new and existing customers driving very solid growth in these existing markets.

Speaker 2

Turning to our LatAm operations. We continue to be extremely pleased with our performance in Colombia and Mexico. Our Rush Vet brand is resonating with customers as evidenced by our year over year MAU and Art MAU growth. This translated to year over year revenue increases of 84% in Latin America with a lot of room for continued growth as we invest in both these markets. In terms of marketing approach, while our strategy has not wavered, our execution continues to improve.

Speaker 2

We target the highest ROI opportunities with the emphasis on attracting the highest value players to our platform and retaining them by offering them a high quality experience. And this is working. Specifically, I'm very proud that we have continued to deliver results in driving greater efficiency in our marketing costs. In fact, in Q1, we had our highest number of first time depositors ever as a company and the highest in North America since our launch in New York the Q1 of 2022. And we've been able to do this while lowering our CPAs to less than half of what they were a year ago.

Speaker 2

One of our unique strategies for acquiring customers is our Betrivers network, which we use to engage players and keep the Betrivers brand top of mind for our players. In light of the strategy, we were excited to recently announce the renewal of our partnership with sports broadcasting legend, Mike Francesca, who is a staple on our Betrivers network. Subsequent to quarter end, we were also proud to announce our partnership as a title sponsor for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Dash 4 cash race. The BetRivers 200, which took place on April 27 at Dover Motor Speedway, marked the first time in Delaware history that fans could place mobile sports wagers from inside a sporting event. This historic event came on the heels of our online sports betting launch in the state and served as a unique opportunity to promote our brand while also investing locally in Delaware and supporting an unforgettable event at the same Raceway.

Speaker 2

Lastly, we furthered our commitment to returns based marketing through the announcement of the hiring of Brian Sapp as the company's 1st Chief Marketing Officer. Throughout his career in the gaming and mobile industries, Brian has repeatedly led marketing teams to deliver successful brand and data driven campaign that scale businesses, while achieving growth and profitability goals. Our entire team is very excited to have Ryan on board. On the new markets front, we continue to be excited about a variety of opportunities opening up across the Americas. Our next likely market launch will be Peru, which we anticipate to be later this summer.

Speaker 2

We are finalizing our plans and strategy and we are very excited about this opportunity. As a reminder, Peru is about 2 thirds of the population of Colombia with a slightly higher GDP per capita. We believe we are well positioned for success there given the market adjacencies and overlap with Colombia and established teams in Colombia we will leverage. As for other regulating markets in LatAm, we continue to evaluate a range of opportunities. The regulations for Brazil have been beginning to roll out.

Speaker 2

So as they are published, we are reviewing and assessing them. We will continue to share updates about these markets, which as noted in the past, typically include both online casino and online sports betting, playing to our demonstrated strength of multiproducts, markets and labs in America. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Richard. 1st quarter revenue was $217,400,000 up 34% year over year driven by strong growth of over 35% year over year across both our iCasino and online sports betting products. As Richard highlighted previously, our Q1 results were also strong across market vintages and geographies. We continue our trend of positive EBITDA for the 4th consecutive quarter and reached a record $17,100,000 up from negative $8,700,000 during the prior year period. We were able to achieve these results through the increased flow through we're able to capture as our business scales and our operations and marketing continues to optimize.

Speaker 1

As previously mentioned, our top line growth was the result of growth in both the number and value of our user base. In North America, MAUs reached 176,000 up 20% year over year, while ARP MAU was up 9% year over year to $3.55 Our Latin America metrics were also up with MAUs reaching 224,000 during the quarter, representing a 72% year over year increase and Art Mile reaching $43 a 4% increase over the prior year period. We continue to find the right ways to efficiently bring new players find that BetRivers or Rush Bet experience, they will dedicate a large share of their entertainment wallets and keep returning for years to come. For the quarter, gross profit margin increased 160 basis points sequentially to 33.7%. As Richard highlighted, revenue from the markets other than Pennsylvania and Illinois accounted for 57% of revenue during the Q1, the highest percentage since we've been public and a trend that we expect to continue.

Speaker 1

As evidenced by our strong growth in MAUs and ARP MAU, we're very pleased with the impact of our marketing spend in Q1. For the quarter, advertising and promotions were 37,800,000 which is up single digits sequentially, but down 23% from the same period last year. As a percentage of revenue, this equated to 17%, which is down from 30% in the Q1 of 2023. Our current thinking is that marketing spend is likely to be up sequentially in the Q2 and Q3 compared to the Q1 with a bigger step up in Q4. Of course, given our success in finding cost effective and unique ways to drive customer acquisition, we'll continue to remain flexible with our plans.

Speaker 1

G and A for the Q1 was 18,300,000 equating to 8.4 percent of revenue. As highlighted in our last call, much of the run rate increase in G and A was absorbed in Q1 due to annual compensation adjustments. Going forward, we continue to believe that our full year G and A expense as a percentage of revenue will be below 2023's 8.8 percent due to the leverage we experience as the business scales. We ended the quarter with $191,000,000 in unrestricted cash, an increase of $23,000,000 during the quarter, and we continue to have no debt. Following on our strong first quarter results, we are raising both our full year revenue and EBITDA guidance for 2024.

Speaker 1

We now expect full year revenue to be between $810,000,000 $860,000,000 which increases the midpoint to $835,000,000 up $35,000,000 from our initial guidance. We expect full year EBITDA to be between $50,000,000 $60,000,000 which increases the midpoint to $55,000,000 up $15,000,000 and up 38% from our initial guidance. And as a reminder, our guidance includes only those markets that are live as of today. And with that, operator, please open the lines for questions.

Operator

Absolutely. Our first question will go to the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question and great quarter. Just looking at the back half, kind of the updated guidance implies some sort of a deceleration, but you do have easing comps. You get a benefit of a full year of Delaware. So can you just talk about what's going on there?

Speaker 3

And then can you give us an update on how holds are trending in April relative to March in 1Q? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Sure. Jed, thanks for the question. I would say, we feel like we put really, really solid growth numbers in the guidance here with revenue up something like 17% to 24% and EBITDA up $42,000,000 to $52,000,000 compared to last year. I'll remind you that we're when we put our guidance at the beginning of the year, we were above consensus and then just increased EBITDA and revenue again since the call before. I think on your question about implied revenue for back half of the year or the last three quarters of the year, a couple of things to have in mind.

Speaker 1

Obviously, there's a lot of factors that go into creating that guidance. There's different hold outcomes, growth rates in our newer markets. You referenced Delaware, which is going great, but obviously new for us. So, some variability there. We've got seasonality in the business both in sports more so in sports, but both in sports and iCasino.

Speaker 1

Maybe specific to your question, 2 things that I would point out. 1 is that, there's some tailwinds in the first half of the year for FX differences in Colombia last year to this year and those tailwinds go away in the second half of the year assuming exchange rates stay where they are. The other thing is our hold rates in sports and maybe to a lesser extent casino, but both of them were closer to the higher end of our expected ranges last year in Q2 and Q3. So the comps are a little bit tougher in Q2 and Q3 because of that reason.

Speaker 3

Got it. And then you did mention you're stepping up marketing in 2Q, I think. Can you just give us a reason for the marketing and how your ROI is trending? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. So I think we've mentioned in the prepared remarks that our so first of all, FTDs are at the highest rate they've been in the company's history. CPAs are half what they were this time last year. And trying to give some directional trends on marketing spend, but we because we're always looking for good ways to put money to use to bring in new players that are going to be valuable for us. We want to stay pretty dynamic on it.

Speaker 1

We spent less in Q1 than we had originally anticipated to. And we see a lot of opportunities, a lot of good places to put money to work. So I think the current thinking is that Q2 and Q3 would both be a little bit more than what we spent in Q1. Certainly, that could change. That's part of the reason for a range in our guidance.

Speaker 1

And then in Q4, the sports calendar going into the winter for I Casino, we'd expect it to step up a little bit further.

Speaker 2

Just adding on, Jay, that just we want to remain flexible and focus on investing where we see the best value. This gives us a chance to do that.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question goes to the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Good evening, everyone, or afternoon, depending on where you are. Thanks for taking my question. I know that Jed mentioned Delaware. And Richard, I'm not sure I heard a ton in your prepared remarks. Apologies if I missed it.

Speaker 4

But could you just give us a sense for how you're doing there and what your sort of outlook and expectations are?

Speaker 2

Sure. I think what we shared is that we went from last quarter, we had thought the run rate was around 60 dollars We'd be able to accelerate that to the run rate now being at a near $70,000,000 GGR for the year. I would say that we're having tremendous success. I think the quality of our casino product and the user experience we offer to our customer service is definitely being noticed by the players and we're seeing that dramatic improvement on performance versus what it was prior to us taking over the business at the end of December. We think the growth has been exciting.

Speaker 2

We think there's lots of things we're going to continue to do to try to grow that business, but it's unclear what the growth will look like moving forward. But we know that we are continuing to invest in some targeted marketing opportunities. We just recently held the last weekend, there was a big NASCAR race in Dover. We were featured sponsor along with the 3 racinos there. It was a great event, a lot of positive feedback from that, a lot of positive awareness for the brand and the activity that we're supporting there.

Speaker 2

So we feel very optimistic about the future, but we feel like it's a market that I think is far beyond what people expected it to be at for us.

Speaker 4

Right. And just one kind of bigger picture question about iGaming. I mean, we spend a great deal of time focusing on sort of the next product and product depth within sports betting. If we could shift the discussion to iGaming and are there sort of next product types or product categories that can provide a similar step function and performance like we've seen in sports betting. And

Speaker 2

I assure us

Speaker 4

what they are, we won't tell anyone.

Speaker 2

Yes. I think on a public call like this, I'll have to be a little bit careful of the specifics for competitive reasons. But I will tell you that we are unique in that we know how to manufacture fun as an operator. Most companies that are operators don't create it. They sort of license it from 3rd party suppliers.

Speaker 2

So having that capability, the technology in house, the design, understanding of how to create compelling user experiences, It's giving us a great low level of confidence that the next things we're rolling out are going to be it's very exciting for the customer. There's a couple of big ones coming down the pipeline that we've been working on very closely and we're very excited about. Again, I think most company strategies are to aggregate game libraries from as many third parties as possible. We do that probably better than many of our competitors, but it's not something that's unique to us. But where we really differentiate ourselves is the ability to create community features, sitewide community features, gamified features, social experiences that are unique to our site, offering ways for players to win in unique ways that aren't available elsewhere and creating a fun experience for players that they really can't repeat if they play somewhere else.

Speaker 2

So when you put all those things together, when you personalize experience, you offer these really exciting promotions, you develop experiences that are fun and that's what you want to create for this audience. And again, it's hard to do, but we think we've done it well in the past and the results have delivered exceptional returns for us. And we're about to launch new ones in the future later this year that we're equally or even more excited about.

Speaker 4

Okay. We'll stay tuned. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question goes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Afternoon. Thanks for taking my question and nice results and outlook. Kyle, your balance sheet is in a really strong position. It looks like based on end of quarter, your cash balance is the highest it's been in at least 6 quarters here. So, given the outlook of EBITDA, the cash balance, how are you thinking about uses of this, whether it's M and A, capital allocation?

Speaker 5

Can you kind of frame that out? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. I'll point out it wasn't that many quarters ago that you guys were asking about did we have enough cash and now we're generating plenty. So we're pretty excited and we're happy to be in that position and don't see that changing. I think in terms of use of the cash, obviously, we're always looking at the highest return opportunities and where those might be. And that conversation evolves and we continue to look at different things.

Speaker 1

I think the biggest thing that we've got to be ready for and have dry powder for is new market launches. So that's 1st and foremost. And I think the other thing that we continue to look at is M and A or tuck in acquisitions that could be additive to what we're doing.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Appreciate it. And then with respect to LiveDealer, where are we in that journey? And just kind of thinking or looking at your active users, are these customers that are interested in LiveDealer? Are they generally customers that are going to skew significantly more of their time towards slots.

Speaker 5

Could you kind of help us with that please?

Speaker 2

Sure. Hi. This live dealer is a great category. As you know, it's improving globally and it's certainly doing well in the U. S.

Speaker 2

We think there's an opportunity for us to do better than we have done in live dealer. We've put a lot of efforts into achieving some additional strategies there that will help us to deliver, I think, stronger growth in the live dealer category. One of the things we've done is we've been early to launch a live dealer in additional markets and we've also been able to diversify our vendors that we use and probably in a more than others have. So I think variety of content is helpful, but also the ways we're integrating the games and adding some side capabilities and side bets and other types of community features that will allow our players to sort of engage with the live dealer in a way that creates fun. Again, sort of the theme of the player experience from our standpoint is manufacturing fun for the players.

Speaker 2

So live dealer is a great category. We believe there's a lot of growth ahead in it for us. And we are working very diligently on creating an environment where we could sort of be one of the leaders in the live dealer category.

Speaker 5

Great to hear. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question goes to the line of Dan Politzer with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. In terms of the revenue growth, it looks like in the U. S. It accelerated in the Q1.

Speaker 6

I think it was your highest pace of growth in a number of quarters. So I mean, I assume that that's from Delaware, but to what extent are there other factors in there, maybe a reduction in promotions or even an acceleration in some of the markets you're in? If you could just kind of unpack that and maybe give some detail on how to think about the rest of the year as it relates to U. S. Versus LatAm?

Speaker 1

Yes. No, it's a great question, Dan. I think the growth is really very broad based. Certainly, Delaware has been a nice win for us. But to your point, in the U.

Speaker 1

S. And Canada, our highest growth rate, even excluding Delaware, it's our highest growth rate in many, many quarters. Obviously, Latin America is growing wildly. That's fantastic. Richard pointed out that in Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 3 of our largest markets, we had our highest growth rate in over 2 years, highest year over year quarterly growth rate.

Speaker 1

So, there's just a lot of really great things going on. We talked about the user count growing pretty significantly. And when you do that and you're also increasing the player value, it's obviously pretty powerful.

Speaker 6

Got it. And then in terms of the customers that you're seeing, the newer customers coming onto the platform, is your based on the data that you have and the intelligence that you get access to, are these new customers to iGaming? Are these customers that are maybe coming over from different peers in the market?

Speaker 1

Dan, is your question whether the people we're bringing on to the BetRivers or Rushbet platforms, if those are incremental players to online gaming or whether we're getting more share from someone who is already on a platform?

Speaker 6

Yes. Are they new to product or just more new to brand, as you kind of accelerate your in those markets and maybe take a little bit of share?

Speaker 1

Yes. I think it's hard to know for sure. I'll tell you that our growth in user counts obviously, the value of an iCasino player is greater than the value of someone who only plays sports. Someone who does both is far more valuable. We actually have a slide in our investor deck that we keep in there each quarter that just demonstrates that.

Speaker 1

But the user counts and the growth that we had this past quarter and even going back to Q4 is very balanced between players that are playing iCasino, playing sports or playing both. So I think there's an element of us bringing new people into the ecosystem, the gaming ecosystem and us getting more share. I think it'd be hard to suggest that, we're able to grow our average revenue per user like we did add as many users, and have them all be new to iGaming because it would have been pretty dilutive, I would imagine.

Speaker 6

Right. That's kind of what I was getting at. Okay. All right. Thanks so much for the detail and nice quarter.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question goes from the line of Bernie MacTiernan with Needham. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Hi, this is Stefanos Christa calling in for Bernie. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to ask on Mexico continuing to show strong growth. Just wanted to ask on the timing and path to profitability there. Thank you.

Speaker 2

I'll start. We're still having a great success in that launch period. We've referenced Columbia in the past, but if you were to update the information, we're about 2 times the Colombia launch revenue over the same time period. So you can see we've accelerated at a really nice pace relative to where we were in Colombia. We know how great the story of Colombia has unfolded for us in recent years.

Speaker 2

And I think in terms of the profitability, we actually have crossed the threshold and we're profitable in the Q1 on a contribution basis for Mexico.

Speaker 3

That's great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question goes to the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hey, good afternoon guys. I want to stay on Mexico. Good to hear profitability there. I guess how much of that do you think is attributed to product and the assortment you guys are offering from a user experience standpoint? Also thinking about the largest operator there that has dominant mark share, had some legal issues, had some issues with their tech partner?

Speaker 7

I guess, how much of that competitive dynamic is also helping?

Speaker 2

Hey, Ryan. It's Mexico is a complicated market. There's a lot of quality operators there and some quality experiences. I do think that we've done a really nice job of building the right functions that you need to localize the product in the proper way to optimize our results before we started to spend too aggressively. I would say that as a casino first operator with the quality of our casino, it does stand out when players play versus other products in the marketplace.

Speaker 2

But even the sports book, as you know, in Colombia, our sports book revenues are larger than our casino. And our sports book quality is very good for that market and that region. And I think we've been able to do some things in that market that really are high quality. We brought some cemium parlay to the market that many of the local Mexican operators didn't offer in their solution. The registration flows that we've offered are unique.

Speaker 2

We've added some tools that others don't have in the market to make it a easier experience for users to register and make a first deposit. We have a seasoned marketing team that's doing a lot of really good promotions and advertisements reaching audiences in the right places at the right times. We see a lot of growth ahead for us in that market. And there's some exciting promotions we're running with some unique features we have in our as you probably know, we have a unique tournament system we've built and there's some clever ways that we're using that to engage customers in an experience that isn't available anywhere else. And when we give you something like that where the players enjoy that and are engaged with us on a frequent basis, we have a chance to retain those customers and generate a higher wallet share for them.

Speaker 2

So I would say that, yes, there's a tough competitor there, owns a lot of market share, but they are declining in share, it appears. And companies like us are slowly growing share and expect to be able to have a long path ahead of growth for us there.

Operator

Our next question goes to the line of Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Hey, Richard and Kyle. Thanks for taking our questions and congratulations on a great quarter. I guess, Richard, first, there was some media noise in the quarter as reported by Bloomberg, which I think is still pretty credible that potentially you're seeking strategic alternatives and a possible sale of the company, I think DraftKings is still in the mix is maybe being inquisitive. So you probably won't comment on it, but I'm curious if you would and why you wouldn't just start a formal process if that's true? And the second question for Kyle, I heard the yes, you're asked, I guess, on your guidance and I get nothing wrong with being conservative and raising your numbers.

Speaker 8

I mean, that's awesome. But when you look back over the last 4 years, Kyle, you've grown your revenue sequentially from Q1 each quarter through the year end. And so I heard hold and seasonality and FX, but maybe if you could just double click again on your guide on the top line given that your Q1 is sort of 26% off the midpoint of your raise here. And it seems like that's a pretty conservative raise given that backdrop. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. I'll take that one first, Mike. And so I think you heard it. There's a bit of a tailwind more so in Q1 than it is in Q2, but still there in Q2, and then absent in Q3 and Q4 given where the exchange rate is right now for Colombia. And then Q2 and Q3 little tougher comparables with better hold last year.

Speaker 1

And I think the other thing just to keep in mind, it's a good point about if you go back and look at history and how our revenue has progressed throughout the year, I think the thing that is different at this point around that cadence is that we don't have 2, 3, 4 markets that are launching each year that are in the super high growth phase or maybe even had negative revenue in the Q1 that it launched and then turned positive that would have aided that kind of that sort of a cadence throughout the year. So we've put out a new revenue guide and increased it nicely. Certainly, we had a really nice first quarter. But we this is the it's the range that we're comfortable with given all the different factors. And obviously, like any quarter or any year, we endeavor to get on the phone with you guys the following quarter and post good results and raise those estimates if we can.

Speaker 2

Then I'll jump in on the first question.

Speaker 8

Yes. Thanks, Richard.

Speaker 2

Bruce, you got a follow-up here.

Speaker 8

No, go ahead.

Speaker 2

That's on the first question. I read the same article you referenced and hear the same speculation that you have. I can't respond to the rumors or speculation in the press from the press obviously on this call. But what I can say is that the Board and the management regularly evaluate all opportunities that we have and our goal is to always maximize shareholder value. As substantial shareholders ourselves, the management team, we're fully aligned with the shareholders.

Speaker 2

What we have built and continue to build is what we believe is tremendous value to our investors. And we have a lot of assets that are valuable to us just like they're interesting to other companies. And we will continue to evaluate all opportunities as part of our shareholder obligations.

Speaker 8

Richard, I get that, man. And you guys are definitely delivering and it doesn't look like you're getting necessarily a fair shake from the market here in terms of your valuation. I guess, why wouldn't you start a formal process on a strategic alternative, including the possible sale? Like why not be formal about it, I guess, Rich, is the question.

Speaker 2

Yes. We just as I said, I can't respond to that question in this public setting.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thanks, guys. Good luck.

Operator

Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time. So I'll pass the conference back over to Mr. Schwartz for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you again for joining us today. I'm really proud of our team and what they are achieving. Our executive team recently visited all of our offices and team members across the globe. We left those visits feeling inspired by the quality and the commitment of our teams. They're enthusiastic, passionate and fully aligned with our goals for the company.

Speaker 2

The best is yet to come. We look forward to updating you on our progress as we share our Q2 results in a couple of months. Thank you.

Operator

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

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Earnings Conference Call
Tradeweb Markets Q1 2024
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