CME Group Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings and welcome to the CME Group First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, April 26, 2023.

It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Adam Minick, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[Adam Minick, Senior Director, Investor Relations at CME Group]

Good morning, and I hope you're all doing well today. We will be discussing CME Group's First Quarter 2023 financial results. I will start with the Safe-Harbor language, and then I'll turn it over to Terry.

Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainty and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statements. Detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in the filings with the SEC, which are on our website. Lastly, on the final page of the earnings release, you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures.

With that, I will turn the call over to Terry.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thank you, Adam, and thank you all for joining us this morning. We released our executive commentary earlier today, which provides details on the first quarter of '23. I'll make a few brief comments on the quarter and current outlook, and Lynne will summarize our financial results.

In addition to Lynne, we have other members of our management team present to answer questions after the prepared remarks. John Pietrowicz is also on the call with us this morning. John will be staying on with CME through at least the end of the year as a special adviser to the company. Among other things, John's responsibilities will continue to be to work with Investor Relations activities, but this is the first for John to be on a call, not in the CFO role. So, John please don't jump in when Lynne is speaking. I'd like to thank you, John, for your over eight years as CFO, as well as your important work at CME prior to that. John has been a key part of our major milestone our company has achieved over the last 20 years, and we thank him for his many contributions to our business, and we look forward to continually working with John throughout the balance of the year.

With that, I will turn to a few comments regarding the first quarter, which was continued evidence of this new era of uncertainty. As I said in my Financial Times op-ed from February, risk management has been elevated from a supporting player to the star attraction as investors are managing portfolios with near constant market challenges. Following the best year in CME Group's history, first quarter 2023 average daily volume increased 4% from an extremely strong first quarter 2022 to 26.9 million contracts, and was just short of our all-time quarterly record average daily volume, in the first-quarter of 2020 of 27 million contracts. This quarter included our all-time highest single day volume of 66.3 million contracts on March 13th. All of this and other things have led us to the highest adjusted diluted EPS in the history of CME Group.

Throughout the entire quarter, there were shifting perceptions about the Fed's near-term rate path as well as significant banking concerns in March, and the continued development of the SOFR market-led to the increasing need for the management of interest-rate risk. This drove 16% growth in our interest rate ADV to the record 14.5 million contracts.

Record March SOFR futures ADV of 5.2 million contracts exceeded previous record seen in Euro-Dollar futures. And since quarter-end, we successfully completed the migration of our Euro-Dollar open interest to SOFR without issue on April 15th.

In addition, our past investments in building out our options franchises are paying off. With such turbulent macroeconomic backdrop, options are an increasingly important risk management tool. First quarter options ADV grew 26% year-over-year to a record 5.8 million contracts, including double-digit growth across interest rates, equities and metals [Phonetic] and 30% growth in non-U.S. trading activity.

First quarter options revenue grew 12% to a record $218 million. The first quarter was a great example of CME Group seamlessly doing what we are designed to do. The significant volatility spikes and associated turmoil affecting the banking sector in March further highlighted the systemic importance of sound risk management practices by institutional participants. There are no guarantees, but hedging can provide certainty and the significant first quarter activity highlighted that some of today's most important trades are to manage risk.

The future is more uncertain than ever, but we know we can expect a whirlwind of geopolitical and economic hurdles to persist, and we will continue to focus on innovating and offering market participants meaningful capital and operational efficiencies across a diverse and global relevant product set to manage their risk.

With that, I will turn the call over to our new CFO, Lynne Fitzpatrick to cover the first quarter financial results.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Thanks, Terry. CME had the best quarterly results in our history. During the first quarter, CME generated over $1.4 billion in revenue, up 7% compared with a strong first quarter in 2022. Overall revenue growth outpaced volume growth of 4%. Market data had a record revenue quarter up 9% versus Q1 '22 to $166 million. The need for our products and data to manage risk in an uncertain market environment continue to build on the strengths seen last year.

Expenses on an adjusted basis were $459 million for the quarter and $362 million excluding license fees, and approximately $12 million towards our cloud migration. CME had an adjusted effective tax-rate of 23.4%, which resulted in an adjusted net income of $882 million, up 15% from the first-quarter last year, and adjusted diluted earnings per share to common shareholders of $2.42, the highest adjusted quarterly net income and EPS in our history.

Capital expenditures for the first quarter were approximately $16 million. CME paid dividends during the quarter of over $2 billion, and our ending cash balance was approximately $1.7 billion.

The team at CME Group remains focused on providing the risk management products needed by our clients and driving earnings growth for our shareholders.

Before we open up the call for your questions, I'm going to briefly hand it back to Terry.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks Lynne, and before we get to your questions, as Lynne said, I want to take a few -- just a moment to acknowledge Sean Tully, who announced his decision to retire from CME Group in June of this year. Since joining us in 2012, Sean has been a strong leader for our financial products business and continuing to grow that in a period of tremendous growth and transformation. Especially I want to recognize Sean for his outstanding job that he and his team did in the interest rates to facilitate the successful transition from LIBOR to SOFR. This was no small feat, as many people on this call remember. We had many conversations prior to the transition about whether we're going to be able to transition over others going to do it. Sean and Aga and others did an amazing job of bringing 99.99% of the SOFR business here to CME Group and now is the largest contract in the world, so planting what Euro-Dollar futures used to be. It is really an amazing accomplishment.

Following Sean's retirement in June, Tim McCourt, who has been overseeing our equity index and foreign-exchange cryptocurrency business will assume Sean's responsibilities and lead the organization covering our financial and OTC products as well. I have the utmost confidence in Tim's ability to manage this broader portfolio. So, Sean, on behalf of everybody here, we'll have more accolades with you off the carbon. Thank you for everything you've done, and maybe you could say a few words to the people that you've been talking to for so many years.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Yeah, thank you so much, Terry. It has been an honor to work at CME Group these past 11 years, to work with you, Terry, and the entire outstanding team at CME, with all of our customers, with our investors, with our analysts and with our regulators. Together, we delivered enormous value to market participants, including several billion per day-in margin efficiencies and many new products including many new options, many new currencies in OTC swaps clearing, ultra 10-year futures, SOFR futures and options and CME term SOFR, and for investors in the first quarter of 2023, we delivered all-time record revenue for our rates business. The SOFR futures and options ADV exceeding the best ever quarter for Euro-Dollar futures and options ADV historically, as well as delivering a 9.8% compounded annual growth rate in revenue for the rates business since the first-quarter of 2012. Last, having worked closely with Tim McCourt in [Indecipherable] over the last several years, I am very confident that the financials business is in extremely capable hands going forward. Thank you to all of our customers, thank you to all of my colleagues and thank you again, Terry.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thank you, Sean. Appreciate it very much. With that being said, we're going to get into your questions now, and Sean will be participating in that. So, I'm sure you will enjoy his answers, as always. So, with that, we'll turn it over to you for your questions.

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Rich Repetto with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

[Rich Repetto, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Yeah, good morning, Terry and team. And first, I'd just like to echo your comments and congrats John P. and Sean as well on the transitions. Anyway, so, Terry, you brought up that risk management focus that you in your editorial, pretty timely with a banking crisis two weeks afterwards, but down at the FIA, we talked about sort of the longer-term impacts that it could have on risk management and utilization of the CME products. So, I was just trying to get an update after more time has passed, and just give some insight, I guess from Terry and Sean, about the conversations you have with risk management, focus on the mid-tier banks, what might change and what might it mean to the CME going-forward.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

It's hard to predict the future risk, but we did say down at the conference referring to in Boca, because of what's going on and because of -- if you look at history, so many things have gone on, and then returning to see our business grow, because people understand that they need to manage risk in order to do continue to stay in business for themselves. So, some of these second and third-tier banks who did not hedge some of their portfolios, this is a big push by not only Sean and Tim according to their teams, but also by Julie Winkler and her sales team to cross-sell. But again, I think what's important here is we talked about so many second and third-tier banks mostly will be doing swaps, which we think is actually fine for us because they are normally going to be doing a swap against the larger bank, and that larger bank will be doing the layoff with CME Group. So, we see that as a net positive, and that's kind of how we've been going through this internally with our own folks here, since we saw each other probably down in [Indecipherable] and putting more work into that.

So, Julie are her team have been doing that along with Sean and Tim, and I'll let them comment, but that is a big push that we're looking at to show people the benefits, even if you're doing a swap. We think there is a benefit to liquidity that we provide for the banks fully outside risks from the swap.

Sean or Tim or Julie, you want to add?

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

I will just say that we have initiated a sales campaign specifically focused on regional banks across the firm, and we are very focused on providing them with the interest-rate swaps and other products that they need in order to better manage their risk. We are very excited about offering them that, especially with our OTC straight swap clearing. And as Terry said, whatever swaps they do in addition to potentially increasing our OTC swaps clearing business, on the backside of those swaps will be hedged by larger banks, are they using our futures or the BrokerTec U.S. treasury platform. So, the better people manage risk, the better it is for themselves and the better it is for CME and CME shareholders.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

I would just add, I think the relationships with a lot of these regional banks has definitely been something we've been working on as we've got the term SOFR benchmark here at CME Group. This is a key asset of which these individuals, these firms needed access to this rate. And so, getting out licensing those firms up was an activity that we've been doing over the last year and a half, and so those relationships are not, I mean, are still relatively new, with the fact that we have them within our client outreach. It's a key part of this, and a lot of it is education and this is something that CME Group has a very long history of doing very well, and something that we'll continue to do with these firms.

[John Pietrowicz, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

[Speech Overlap] Yeah, definitely. And the focus on risk management have been more timely, and it's been great working with both Sean and John. Thanks.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks a lot, Rich, really appreciate it.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Dan Fannon with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Dan Fannon, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Thanks, good morning, and congrats to both Sean and John as well. My question is on market data. Obviously, the price increase that went into effect that drove some of the sequential growth, and I guess, record revenue, but you talk about also increasing subscribers. So just curious about, this is a good starting off, jumping-off point here for revenue, and then ultimately where are these subscribers are coming from, is it mostly retail? Or how we can think about momentum in the market data business?

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Well, I have Lynne to start and we will [Indecipherable].

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Sure, thanks Dan. So, if you look at that market data revenue this year, we did grow 9% off of the first quarter last year. Did you have the impact of the price increase which went into effect in January? As a reminder, that was about a 4% increase for market data. Also, within this line, you do have about $4 million in audit fees and catch-up payments for prior-period activity. These do tend to be more episodic. For comparison, there was about $1 million in these type of fees in Q4. So, it's a combination of that pricing increase as well as the increased subscriber count, which I can turn to Julie to talk about what you're seeing there.

[Julie Winkler, Chief Commercial Officer at CME Group]

So, thanks for the question, Dan. Certainly, last year, throughout 2022, we also saw continued strong demand for our professional devices and our real-time data. We offer the largest suite of proprietary data of anyone and, I think people especially post pandemic, have seen the value in that and the fact that we've continued to invest in the datasets that we offer and the technology and how they are receiving that data. So Q1, we saw just a continuation of that trend. And also, there's other aspects of the business, particularly as we think about organic growth under our non-display licensing. So, this is where people have needs to utilize our data and other algorithms and trading applications. And so, this is another part of the business up almost 9%. And alongside all this, we've set-up in the last two years, this dedicated sales team, and I'd be remiss without saying, ban is having an impact on the results, right. We are in a position where we historically, we had not been out there selling market data and explaining to people what was actually available, and I think we're starting to see some uplift from that as well. So, it is institutional users to your question, this is not coming from new retail participants.

[Dan Fannon, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Great, thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Alex Kramm with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Alex Kramm, Analyst at UBS Group]

Yeah, hey good morning, everyone. I feel like this is a throw away question that we ask every time after we have a big quarter like we had in the first quarter, but I guess it has to be asked every time. Obviously, with April off to a slow start, I know we see this again time-and-time again, you have a lot of volatility, a lot of changes in the environment and then things get a little bit quiet when people have to lick their wounds a little bit, but curious theory, if there's anything you would point to that speak to the underlying fundamentals of the market. Any particular slowdown in any particular client types or anything that what make you think differently around what you're seeing so far this quarter. I know it's hard to predict, but, I guess, it has got to be asked.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

And I appreciate that. Ultimately it does need to be asked and I think a couple different things here at play in April. April is historically one of the slowest months in the industry, and for whatever reason it's been that way for a number of years. Someone has the reason why that is the case. One of them, I guess, would be that we don't have a role in April. So that's one thing of interest, but one of the things I look at is really not just only our company, I look at the broader industry across the board, and I thought that we were the only one suffering in the lower-volume environment in the month of April, while everybody else was gaining, I'd be a little bit more concerned, and I'm talking apples-to-apples in the futures world. So that is not the case. Everybody is kind of on the same pace in April as they've been historically. So, this is nothing new, and it's a phenomenon that's gone on for years. When I was younger, we saw the months of August being traditionally a slower one because of European holiday shutting down and things of that nature.

Things just kind of move round a bit, and for whatever reason this happens to be the slowest month that we've seen in over the last several years. But you know what's interesting about April is we've got our metals complex has been up, our Ag complex is up, and our energy, say, 33% of metals Ag burn around 15% energy up just, over 3% for the month of April. So that is a bright sign. So, the beauty of CME Group, Alex, as you know, we're not just one asset class, we are a multi-asset class organization. So, when we do see slowdowns, we have said historically we see pickups in others, and I think this is an example of that, maybe not to the volume of $66.3 million, but we have definitely seen an uptick in other asset classes when others are down.

[Alex Kramm, Analyst at UBS Group]

All right, fair enough. I'll jump back-in the queue.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thank you, Alex.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Brian Bedell, Analyst at Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft]

Great, thanks, good morning. And also, congrats to John and Sean and Lynne as well. Question on -- it is a two-part question, but mostly focused on the debt ceiling negotiations, and the two parters are, number one, how do you see the negotiations as well as just the continued debate on the Fed cycle and the volatility that could occur in the tenure, and long into the curve impacting volumes. Maybe some commentary around that, and then I guess, and maybe that's for Sean. And then on the debt ceiling negotiations, maybe Terry, just your view of whether this time is similar to past negotiations when you think things will be reconciled well or is this time different, and then I guess, if we do have a default scenario, how would that impact the treasury futures.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

So this is purely a speculation question as best as you can imagine, Brian, because I've been around long enough to watch the 2011 debt negotiation literally go down to the last hour before the clock ran out on government spending, and there was a negotiation between then Speaker Boehner and then President Barack Obama. So, you never know what's going to happen. I can only tell you a few things. One of the things I'm saying to my folks here in the organization is when you look at the set-up today in Congress, one of the things I look at as far as whether this may or may not go, you can see so much right, so the speaker is going to propose a piece of legislation that has got massive cuts associated with it over the next 10 years. The President is not going to like that, and then in return the speaker is offering up $1.5 trillion in lifting to the debt ceiling, that is going to the legislation. It may pass the House, but if they lose five votes, then it doesn't pass the House. So pretty interesting dynamic right now. That probably won't go anywhere in the Senate or it probably won't go anywhere with the administration. So, then we go onto the next round of negotiations. So, let's think a little bit about how the negotiations that work in, in Washington right now. As you recall, if anybody is a student of politics, you saw that those 15 rounds of votes going for the Speaker of the House and in those 15 rounds, there was a handful of people that were trying to extract certain things for their benefit, maybe holding the speaker's feet to the fire, and certainly I was not part of it, but you can only assume what was going on because of votes finally got to a place, which means there was a negotiation going on.

So, I'm assuming that negotiation will continue on, but the difference this time is you're dealing with a much different Congress with Republicans holding the majority obviously in the House side, and then looking to extract a lot of cuts, whether you agree with it or not is not for me to make that decision. I need to tell you what I see, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't get something passed out of the gate, and but then [Technical Issues] historically people never wanted to go back to their districts, and be the person who did not vote for a debt ceiling lift which could hurt the U.S. economy or hurt the U.S. debts.

We had a downgrade in this country before, I'm not saying it's happening again, but there are people that they have from beliefs that you have to look at the long picture and would the government spending is out of control. These are not my words, these are theirs. So, I just want to make sure I say that. So, I think it's going to be a little bit more tricky than historical debt ceiling that we've seen. And as far as the Fed cycle goes, I'll let Sean comment on that, what it means to it and then maybe Sunil can comment about the treasuries and what it means if anything to us.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Yeah, thanks very much for the question and thank you, Terry. In terms of the Fed just looking at our futures markets, it's expected that the Fed will tighten by 25 basis-points at the upcoming FOMC meeting likely. And then over the next year and a half reduce rates by 200 basis points. So obviously there is a huge uncertainty built into that yield curve you know that people are going to need to manage. Going from this extraordinary tightening cycle, excuse me, to a very quick large easing cycle and the exact timing of that, it creates an incredibly uncertain environment where people are going to need to hedge risks. So, I think that that cycle will continue to be positive for us.

Bigger picture in terms of treasury issuance in regards to the debt ceiling, in the first-quarter of this year, the U.S. Treasury only issued $64 billion net of coupons. So, with a $1.4 trillion deficit, the treasury is not issuing a lot of coupons, and obviously $64 billion in new issuance is unsustainable. They've been driving down the treasury general account in order to be able to do that. So, I would expect a very large increase going forward in U.S. Treasury issuance in order to cover that very large deficit. And that would at some point provide a very nice tailwind for our business. And with that, I'll hand it over to Sunil.

[Sunil Cutinho, Chief Information Officer at CME Group]

I'll cover two areas -- one is operational and the other is risk. From an operational perspective, the Treasury Market Practitioners Group has put out a document on best practices on handling maturing securities and coupons. CME works with SIFMA and other industry bodies to actually align itself on the operational side. On the risk side we have handled these scenarios -- similar scenarios in the past. We don't take it lightly. And as Terry pointed out, we are also taking into account a different environment, a political environment. So, taking all of those into account, we manage risk with respect to our collateral and as well as our interest-rate market, both long end and the short end. And as an example, you can see that in March, it was one of the most stressful periods for rates and the clearing house, the CME Clearing House and its clearing members really managed that very well. So, I have no doubt they will do the same.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

So, Brian, I think your question is very relevant and deserves a lot of potential. We can only do what we can do here. We are here to manage risk for people who are analyzing the situation day in and day out. My comments as it relates to the 15 rounds to elect a speaker, could that play into the debt ceiling. People might say, well, there's nothing -- one has nothing do to with the other. You can only analyze what's the amount of information you have, and that's the limited amount of information we have right now. So, we are preparing us as Sunil and Sean have said to make sure that we are prepared for our clients to manage risks, and I agree with Sean. I think it creates a tailwind for us irrespectively on the outcome of how the government settles this one way or another. So, thank you for your question.

[Brian Bedell, Analyst at Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft]

That's a lot of great color, thanks. Thanks so much everyone.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Kyle Voigt with KBW. Please go ahead.

[Kyle Voigt, Analyst at KBW]

Hey, good morning. I just want to make sure I'm understanding the dynamics around the LIBOR transition correctly, because as you noted earlier in April, we did see a material step-down in Euro-Dollar futures open interest as the product transitions, but we didn't really see a commensurate step-up in SOFR futures open interest at that time. So, if we look at aggregate futures OI for the rates complex, it's not down year-on-year. I'm just trying to understand whether to interpret that change in OI trend over the past couple of months as more related to a short-term dynamic around the LIBOR transition or whether this is a result of the extreme interest-rate volatility we saw in March, and if that caused any deleveraging more broadly across your user base. So, any additional color, helping us understand what's kind of driving some of that OI changes in rates, specifically given the moving pieces here would be very helpful.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks, Sean, you want to start and then [Speech Overlap] John.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Very good question. Thanks, Kyle. The industry business just went through what is arguably the single largest transition in its entire history. And Kyle, I'm very glad to say that if you look at the year-over-year open interest for the interest rate futures and options complex is up 2%. Yes, it's only up 2%, but it is up 2%, having gone through that transition. You are correct, we saw a small uplift in the overall open interest, but only small. If you look at what we did on April 15th, is we converted each and every Euro-Dollar future and each and every Euro-Dollar option into its respective SOFR future and SOFR options. As you can imagine, there are participants who would have had offsetting positions between those two different instruments, and therefore those trades would have compressed. If you look at the first quarter -- another question we've gotten a lot historically is what was the basis trading or the spread trading between SOFR futures and Euro-Dollar futures, and that was in the first quarter about 150,000 contracts a day. So, we saw a compression. It was very uncertain from my perspective, and at my level, we do not see the individual accounts and the individual account positions. They are confidential inside the FCMs. So, we would not have known what level of compression we would have gotten through that process. And you can see the results. Again, I am heartened that overall open interest in listed futures and options is up year-over-year.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

And Kyle, I think some of the things you got to look at is also, you know, if you were ahead of concerns, did anybody else pick up open interest in a listed product such as SOFR, and while we didn't get it. And as I've said in my earlier comments, 99.99% of all open interest is here, excuse me, at CME Group. So, we didn't see that, and for whatever reason people did not take down risk or add risk, that is their decision as we said earlier, we are here to manage it. So, open interest fluctuations up and down are something that we've all seen historically in this business forever.

[Kyle Voigt, Analyst at KBW]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Owen Lau with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

[Owen Lau, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. So, CME has a strong balance sheet. Could you please give us an update on our M&A strategy, and any gaps that you would like to fill both locally and internationally, given that the valuation of many companies have come down quite a bit. Thank you.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Sure, thanks Owen. So certainly M&A is something that we are comfortable with, and we've used a number of different tools over the years from large-scale M&A to creation of joint-ventures to our most recent investment in the index joint-venture with S&P last year. We're always looking at what is out in the market and looking for opportunities for us to create value for our shareholders. We do feel that we are coming from a position of strength though, given some of our past transactions. So, we don't feel a pressure to act, unless we see something where we really can't create that value. So, I would say that nothing has changed in that regard. It's something that is part of our tool chest that we are happy to use when we see the right opportunity come up.

[Owen Lau, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Got it, okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Alex Blostein, Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group]

Hi, good morning, guys, thanks for the question. I was hoping you could spend a minute on competitive dynamics in the equity derivative space. Obviously, SPX options at CBOE have seen really nice growth and a lot of it has come from the Dailies. Understanding that it's a different product set than E-Mini and Micro E-mini futures for you guys, but are you seeing any evidence of substitution away from your complex. And if so, what sort of customer group is that mostly prevalent. Thanks.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks, Alex. Tim, you want to go ahead and address that.

[Tim McCourt, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Equity & FX Products at CME Group]

Thanks, Alex for the question. I think when we look at the option growth in the equity complex, it's certainly a growth versus growth story, and we're seeing very strong growth here at CME. When we look at the equity option accomplish in CME for options on futures, we've had a record Q1 ADV of over 1.3 million contracts, which is up 7% versus '22 full-year, and up 11% versus Q1 of '22. When we look at some of this growth, you can't ignore the multiyear trend of increasingly short-dated options coming to market as a result of the market wanting more precise risk management. The same day expiring options were 0 DTE is the latest step-in that trend where CME also has 0 DTE everyday of the week from the S&P output for five weeks. We continue to introduce products that are important to our customers, and we've seen very strong growth in those same day expiring options, they are up over 41% in Q1 versus the 2022 full-year volume.

But when we look at these expirations, it's important to note at CME, that we also have over 50% growth in Q1 versus '22 full-year in our options that are longer than one-week in expiration. The story at CME is not just the same day expiring option. We had very strong growth and growing open interest in our complex with the Q1 average open interest for equity options being 5.2 million contracts, up about 8% year-over-year. But also, let's look more broadly at CME. This is not just an equity option story. We have very strong options offering at CME, with a record Q1 ADV of 5.8 million contracts with 26% growth versus Q1 '22 across all of our options, and also set quarterly records not only in equity, but also interest rate options at CME. We've also had very strong growth in our metal complex options up about 24% and our non-US option ADV is up about 30% over the same period last year. So not only are we growing, we're certainly not seeing our participants turn to other markets because they can manage all of their option related risks here at CME.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Yeah, I'd just add, Tim talked more broadly. I mean this is such a differentiating factor for CME Group, where we've got core benchmark liquidity in every major asset class, not just in the future. But more importantly in the options. Options are critical because options actually create a stickier futures environment for customers because of the capital and operational efficiencies of the offsets in our clearinghouse.

Tim mentioned the success that we've had across the franchise as a whole. And just to repeat what Terry said at the top of the call, we have had a record revenue quarter of $218 million in Q1 of this year and that was broad growth across the entire franchise. And as it relates to the sticky value proposition, customers are using the story, particularly as it relates to options as a broader part of their overall set of risk management tools. And, yes, we're seeing a shift to shorter-dated options. We ourselves set a record in our weekly options across the franchise as a whole at 1.4 million contracts. But that actually was not what drove that record 5.8 million, that actually represents about 25% of our options complex and down from 30% last quarter. So, our growth is in term risk management tools out across the curve. End-users, open interest holders are biggest client segment growth driver for the entire franchise with buy-side that tells you who is using our products, and particularly, we saw that through [Indecipherable] particularly strongly in our energy complex and Henry Hub natural gas franchise. Not only did we see our natural gas options business up 16% against really difficult comps of last year, but we're seeing that business up again in April as Terry referenced energy up as a whole by 3% this year, in large part due to what we're seeing in Henry Hub gas options and futures. So, it's a broad-base story, it's one that differentiates us from our competitors. Its term open interest, and you know what open interest means to transactional revenues and volume and client capture. So, we're excited about that. We've had great success in building our front-end. We will continue to serve the needs of customers globally, and I think the data points we shared today speak to our strong strengthening franchise for futures and options.

[Alex Blostein, Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group]

Okay, thanks for all the detail, but just to be clear, you're announcing substitution with competitive products and equity options.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

That is correct. Right.

[Alex Blostein, Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Chris Allen with Citi. Please go ahead.

[Chris Allen, Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup]

Yes, good morning, everyone. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the pricing and rate per contract. I was wondering if you have any color what the price will look like in a full-quarter basis if the price increases had been there. And on the member mix shifting, is this just something you're seeing in the first-quarter of this year, where it has been a longer-term trend. I know you've had new sales efforts in different asset classes to whether it's regional banks or other players on FX and things like that. So just trying to get a better sense of the pricing trajectory moving forward.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Sure, Chris, this is Lynn. I'll start on that. If you look at the pricing increases overall, we saw a $0.013 increase on 23% increase in volumes sequentially. So, we saw a real strong capture there. What we're seeing if we look year-over-year where volume levels are a bit more similar going from about 26 million contracts a day last Q1, to nearly 27 million contracts a day this year, we saw a 3% uplift in RPC. So, if we take a step back and look overall, we still feel comfortable with that guidance we provided at the 4% to 5% increase based on the full-year assuming similar volume to 2022. We feel like that has really pulled through. What we're most excited about is we are seeing continued strong liquidity and tight bid-ask spreads across the products, and we're not seeing an impact to our markets based on based changes.

In terms of the changes on the member mix, that is going to ebb and flow. It depends on the product and it depends on the time. I don't see an overall long-term trend on that.

[Chris Allen, Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup]

Great, thank you.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Chris, you only saw two months out of a full-quarter impact. So, you'll see a full-quarter impact in Q2.

[Chris Allen, Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup]

Understood, thanks.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

[Ken Worthington, Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Hi, good morning. I wanted to follow-up on Alex's question on 0 DGE options. We're hearing more market makers are using them to Delta hedge. Is there any pricing advantage that you see in 0 DGE options versus futures. If so, why wouldn't this trend sort of continue, and do you have an estimate of how much of the E-Mini business is really used to Delta hedge by your institutional investors.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Yes, thanks Ken. So, I think it's an interesting question, right. One, I don't necessarily agree with the concept that 0 DGE options are replacement for futures. I mean fundamentally options are non-linear products that have very dramatically different risk profiles intraday, that do not line up with the one foreign movements of the index that our future does, so I don't think it's replacing because I think that is not necessarily a fit-for-purpose hedge and replace many options. The one thing that I will say, that's great is when we look at the totality of the equity ecosystem, our E-Mini complex at CME is the leading price formation for equity index products across the globe. As such, we are also the preferred hedge vehicle for the totality of index trading that goes on where that's hedging SPX options with us hedging OTC swaps, because that's hedging ETF activity. So, these are things that we all see that risk recycling into our market as the primary venue for equities. When we look at also at the market maker activity, relating to your question, from just what's publicly available as a function of RPC, trading those options in lieu of E-Minis, is not a cost-effective strategy for market makers with members at CME, and I don't necessarily think that is happening from the fundamental economics available at CME versus other venues.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

So can we appreciate your question. I appreciate your hearing but, I think there's some talking their book but I think Tim gave a pretty specific example about the true risk management, and what it is. So, thank you for that question though.

[Ken Worthington, Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Great, thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Michael Cyprys, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great, thank you, good morning. Continuing with the options theme, but with a different question here. Coming back to the strong and record options activity that you guys are seeing, can you just talk about the sustainability of this level of activity? How broad-based is that across your customer set, and what would you say is the opportunity for continued options usage across your customer set, and maybe you could talk about some of the steps that you're planning to take over the next 12 to 18 months around product development to drive continued growth in options from here.

[Derek Sammann, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Commodities, Options & International Markets at CME Group]

Yeah, great question. The reality is the growth of our options is accelerating growth in our futures. As we mentioned before, it's a sticky value proposition for customers that are using options in their portfolio hedging and the cross-margining efficiencies, they can't get anywhere else. To your question on the kind of spread of participation across our client segments, it is a broad set of participants that is driving growth. We, as I mentioned before, buy-side in a record quarter for us, our buy-side participation in options was up over 40%. Profits were up and kind of the mid 20%, we saw growth in retail, we saw commercials and banks participate, so this is broad-based participation. As I mentioned before, can't stress enough that the reason the customers are using options here is because they are adding increasing amounts of that to their portfolios out across the curve.

So, Tim mentioned the position that we have an open interest in the equity side of the business. We're seeing that growth across all our asset classes as well. What I think was mentioned briefly before that with the overall franchise being up at record levels, our non-U.S. growth is even faster than our growth in Saudi has grown at 30%. So, we see growth across client segments, we see growth across geographies.

When you actually look at the rates of growth out across the board, we saw our EMEA options business up 41%, our LatAm options customer business up 29% and our Asia-Pacific business up 16%. So as it relates to the sustainability, relates to the client efforts, related to front-end work we've done in CME Direct, which is our own front-end, we've got record participation and record revenue generation through our own front-end, which is expanding access to clients, either directly through our connection to us or for our partners as well. On top of that, we've been continuing to build options specific sales assets in our regions in Europe and Asia. We're seeing the fruits of that, Julie can speak to the sales campaigns that we execute in any given year, and the staff that we have, that's out not only training customers on how to access our front-end, but with a significant amount of educational resources that we're putting in place in Europe and Asia to draw more customers U.S. to increase their participation in options across-the-board.

So hopefully that addresses the kind of the growth and scale of the opportunity set. We continue to see outsized growth outside the U.S. and we'll continue to grow and develop those products that suit customer needs.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks, Derek. I appreciate. Thank you, Michael.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Simon Clinch with Atlantic Equities. Please go ahead.

[Simon Clinch, Analyst at Atlantic Equities]

Hi everyone, thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if I could just get some housekeeping numbers for you from -- in terms of the cash collateral versus non-cash and sort of what's the earned rate was on the cash collateral as well please.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Yes, sure. So, if we look at the cash collateral for this quarter, we earned $93 million on those balances. The average balances were down a bit from last quarter, but our return did increase from 32 basis-points to 33 basis-points. So, if we look at the averages, we look at Q1, we were at $109.6 million in average balances in cash. That compares to $117.6 million that we saw in Q4. On the non-cash collateral side, which may be helpful as well. We had average balances for Q1 of $99.2 million, that's up from $89.7 billion that we saw in Q4. And a reminder that those the earnings on the non-cash collateral comes through and our other revenue line.

[Simon Clinch, Analyst at Atlantic Equities]

Okay, great, thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thanks, good morning, everyone. I have a follow-up to Chris' question, but wanted to really focus in on the rates business. The rates RPC was down 1% quarter-on-quarter, despite the 1Q hikes. So, I'm wondering if you can comment on the underlying organic trends which impacted the blended RPC and explain why revenues per contract trended lower despite the hikes.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Yes, sure. Very happy to do that. If you look at the first quarter, and actually if you look at the year-to-date, now our treasury futures, overall year-to-date are only up 1% in terms of their volumes. So, the huge growth that we saw in the first quarter was driven by the short-term interest-rate futures. And as you know and as we have reported many times, the RPC on our stores complex is about $0.10 below our [Indecipherable] complex, so that massive increase that we saw on the short-end, driven by the SOFR futures and options as well as the huge growth, where we do have some volume tiers had led to a somewhat lower RPC. If you look at the RPC for SOFR futures and options, post the February 1st increase, SOFR futures and options RPC are now matching the historic levels of Euro-Dollar futures. So, we have delivered the volumes and the RPCs for those products. And that drop-in RPC relative to the much stronger growth, I mean stores is not a surprise, it's as expected.

[Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer at CME Group]

Yeah, and if I could just take it to the higher-level, Craig, if you look at the growth in volume versus Q4, our rates was up 47%, so that 1% decrease that you're seeing in RPC really shows that the changes in pricing including the roll-off of some of the SOFR incentive, all of that is offsetting higher volumes here is that you would see with that really strong growth in volume. So that RPC result was particularly strong in rates.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst at Bank of America]

Great, thank you.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thanks, Greg. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Our next question is a follow-up question from Rich Repetto with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

[Rich Repetto, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Yeah, just a follow-up for my friend, Derek in energy, and you've got to be breathing a little sigh of relief as the year-over-year comps dramatically go down from 1Q to 2Q. I think last year energy after the Ukraine crisis settled out, didn't settle out, but the impact sort of settled out. The volumes were down 23%, so I guess the question is, Derek, is can you just give us an update on energy overall with help of the energy complex, and you've seen 2 million or so ADB. But again, it will be much easier comps 2Q going forward.

[Derek Sammann, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Commodities, Options & International Markets at CME Group]

Yeah, thanks, Rich. That's a great point. If you look at actually the first quarter energy ADV at just below $2.1 million. When you compare that to the full-year of '22 that had that huge bump in that tough comp that we're facing in Q1 of this year. It's actually up 3% versus full-year '22, and is up 14% sequentially versus Q4. So, the trend is very much what we expected to see. Not only, and this is actually more important, if you look at the rebuild and restacking of our open interest, roughly about 1.9 million contracts open interest in our WTI futures, based and Brent followed that same trend to kind of drifted down over the course of year it came back up. So, we're seeing a nice resumption of participation from financial players, ETFs, financial players, hedge funds, asset managers, and we're seeing that reflected in the open interest trend. So, once we saw the kind of the deleveraging impact of higher margins begin to recede, that brought some financial players back in, we're seeing more ETF participation on broadening the complex as a whole. I think, two of the things we're most excited about in our energy business, you've heard us talk a lot about the centrality of WTI as the global benchmark for the crude oil market. We've seen that certainly in the record levels of exports. I think Q4, U.S. export of just over 4 million barrels a day that puts WTI squarely in the middle of global energy markets.

So, what are we doing about that? We not only are we seeing a resumption of activity WTI, but we have about five years ago, has seen a structural shift in the energy market. We recognize that WTI being a global benchmark, needed to be explicitly connected to the export community. So back-in 2018, we built a suite of products with all our crude grades contracts that are basis contracts that trade primarily in Houston and Permian, the Midland contract as a basis for our WTI contract. So, customers that are involved in either domestic or more in the export market are increasing their activity in those grades contract. The reason I mentioned that is because we just we're just setting below we just hit a recent record of open interest in those contracts of 490,000 contracts open. Again, those trade as a basis to our WTI contract. So, both reinforces WTI and explicitly connects WTI to the global export market. We set an individual day volume traded record on the 8th of February at 57,000 contracts. And the last point that I'd make on that is the significant participation is coming from commercial and physical players.

The last point that I think we want to be remiss in not speaking to is the Henry Hub franchise, similar story there with LNG facilities coming online in the U.S. and the success that we're seeing in the low-price gas development here in the U.S. Our Henry Hub franchise actually saw an increase on the future side in market share backup of a backup above 80% and competitive market, and we're seeing that serve as the primary basis point for trading and the pricing of LNG cargoes leaving the U.S. and increasingly replacing lost Russian gas to Europe and Asia. So, we think the volume trends are solid. Terry mentioned a little bit earlier in answering a separate question that our volumes in the commodity side generally are up in the second-quarter, and we're seeing energy follow that trend as well with the energy volumes so far month-to date Q2 in April up 3%, really led by Henry Hub. So, a lot to like in what's going on. Happy to take more of those questions offline. There's a lot of detail there, but we like the global basis position we have in both the natural gas market and crude oil market.

[Rich Repetto, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question is also a follow-up from Alex Kramm with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Alex Kramm, Analyst at UBS Group]

Yeah, hey thanks again, guys. Just wanted to squeeze in a couple of follow-ups on the SOFR LIBOR transition. One, I know this was a huge lift for both you guys, but then also the industry. So, a lot of resources went into that. So, now that it's basically behind us, just wondering, what's next? I guess when it comes to SOFR, I mean, do you think SOFR is being used like LIBOR in the past? What's different? There's still lot of education that you maybe need to do to fully educate about how SOFR is different or do you think that's all done. I guess the question is, can the SOFR floors even more and in the future. Then secondly, just a quick one. I think the OTC transition went on Friday; I think huge clearing volumes that we observed. I think you actually were charging for that. Maybe you can just clarify because I'm just wondering if we need to expect a huge OTC revenue number in the second-quarter, and maybe you can compare to maybe what we saw in the first-quarter in terms of run-rates, so we're not too surprised there. It seems like there may have been a good revenue day for you.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Yes, Alex. So, really good question. Really appreciate your pointing those out. So, two questions there. In terms of answering the first one in SOFR replacing Euro-Dollars or LIBOR. It's very clear from the first quarter with SOFR futures and options, beating the all-time best quarter in the 40-year history of Euro-Dollar futures and options. And SOFR futures and options are being used just as intensively and just as extensively as Euro-Dollar futures and options ever were. So that's a very positive sign. In addition to that, in terms of the long-term strategic positioning of the business, the interest rates business is better positioned today than it ever has been before. I would argue in its entire history. And a part of the reason there is the global banking system has turned to CME terms SOFR for lending. There are now more than $3.7 trillion worth of loans across the world, and I think now nearly 90 different countries that are based on CME terms SOFR that are based on CME's SOFR futures. So, $3.7 trillion worth of loans more than 2,400 in individual institutions that had been licensed which Julie mentioned earlier, gives us a huge opportunity relative to cross-selling opportunities and to increase our penetration of folks like regional banks where they have had to license our CME term SOFR and create that relationship with us through that.

So, I think that that's been a very positive for us, especially, again, you know, everyone knows, U.S. dollar LIBOR owned by ICE Benchmark Administration and under U.S. law under the LIBOR Act, and recently selected by the FCA in the UK. CME terms SOFR is the Safe Harbor. So, CME term SOFR will be used by ICE Benchmark Administration starting on July first in their U.S. dollar synthetic LIBOR in order to manage tough legacy contracts. So, we have replaced U.S. dollar LIBOR. That's a huge opportunity for us, and again, strategically better positioned. In terms of future growth, I'm hugely excited as I always are, as you've heard me on many years on this call. We redesigned when we launched SOFR futures and options. Particular, we redesigned the way packs and bundles, it's a technical issue, but we've redesigned our packs and bundles are quoted in the market and traded. That's going to make it much easier for us to launch hopefully later this year options on SOFR backs and bundles.

Those options on SOFR bundles, you've heard me say this before so many times, we love to have listed cleared standardized contracts that are lower total cost than the OTC equivalent. While options on packs and bundles are going be a listed cleared standardized lower total cost alternative to the swaptions market. The swaptions market isn't clear, so massively excited about that opportunity for the SOFR business that we didn't have with Euro-Dollars, because Euro-Dollars weren't originally designed with that in mind. When we designed the SOFR futures and options, we had that in mind from day one.

In addition to that, we're very excited about ESTR. Our ESTR futures are the most liquid European short-term, risk-free rate contract in the world, and we're very excited about our TBA futures and other features that we've launched. So, the pipeline that we have in front of us for further development is very strong, and I would say it's the strongest it's ever been.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

So just to put a finishing up on Sean's point, and I would never try to repay them because, go ahead.

[Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products at CME Group]

Sorry, OTC conversion in fees, I did miss that question, sorry. So, we did charge, you are correct, we did charge for that conversion. And it was a much lower charge than we normally charge, and I think we posted $10. So, it's $10 per swap. That is a published fee. So yes, we did charge for that event.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

But you know, Alex, you are right to point out about the conversion into our futures market and the growth thereof, but as you just heard from Sean, we believe that this is obviously an ongoing Marathon, and we will continue to build on to this franchise. But we are excited for the future and the distraction of moving Euro-Dollars to SOFR is over, which allows us to do the other things that John referenced, that's the exciting part from my standpoint where I look at this, so the growth is very exciting perspective going forward, so.

[Alex Kramm, Analyst at UBS Group]

Thank again.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And it appears we have no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

[Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at CME Group]

Well, I want to thank all of you for participating in today's call, and I especially want to thank my entire team at CME Group. The global employee base all throughout the world has been able to deliver the results that we were able to present to you today, and I think it's massively important to continue to drive opportunities and efficiencies for your customers, because as we do that, we will drive value to our shareholders. That's the equation we live by. We thank you all very much. I want to thank again my entire team, thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Participants

Corporate Executives

• Adam Minick, Senior Director, Investor Relations
• Terrence Duffy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
• Lynne Fitzpatrick, Chief Financial Officer
• Sean Tully, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Rates & OTC Products
• John Pietrowicz, Chief Financial Officer
• Julie Winkler, Chief Commercial Officer
• Sunil Cutinho, Chief Information Officer
• Tim McCourt, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Equity & FX Products
• Derek Sammann, Senior Managing Director and Global Head, Commodities, Options & International Markets

Analysts

• Rich Repetto, Piper Sandler Companies
• Dan Fannon, Jefferies Financial Group Inc.
• Alex Kramm, UBS Group AG
• Brian Bedell, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft
• Kyle Voigt, KBW
• Owen Lau, Oppenheimer Holdings Inc.
• Alex Blostein, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
• Chris Allen, Smith Barney Citigroup
• Ken Worthington, J.P. Morgan
• Michael Cyprys, Morgan Stanley
• Simon Clinch, Atlantic Equities
• Craig Siegenthaler, Bank of America Co.