BGC Group, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the BGC Group fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Jason Kasikis, head of investor relations. Please begin, sir.

Thank you and good morning. We issued BGC's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results press release and the presentation summarizing these results this morning. You can find these at ir.bgcg.com. Please note you can find additional details on our quarterly results in today's press release and investor presentation. Unless otherwise stated, any historical results provided on today's call compare only the fourth quarter of 2023 with the prior year period. Certain revenue figures are provided for the current period as indicated. We will be referring to our results on this call only on an adjusted earnings basis, unless otherwise stated. We may also refer to adjusted EBITDA. We may refer to our liquidity, which we define as cash and cash equivalents, reverse repurchase agreements, and financial instruments owned at fair value, less securities loaned and repurchase agreements. We define total capital as redeemable partnership interest, total stockholders' equity, and non-controlling interest in subsidiaries. Please see today's press release for results under generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Please also see the relevant sections in the back of today's press release with complete and updated definitions of any non-GAAP terms, reconciliations of these items to the corresponding GAAP results, and how, when, and why management uses such terms. Additional information with respect to our GAAP and non-GAAP results mentioned on today's call is available on our website at ir.bdcg.com and in our investor presentation. We refer to the company's technology-driven business as Phenix. Fenix's offerings include Fenix Markets and Fenix Growth Platforms. I also remind you that any information on today's call that is not historical are forward-looking statements. These include statements about the company's business results, financial position, liquidity, and outlook. Any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and except as required by law, BGC undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Any outlook and targets discussed in this call assume no material acquisitions buybacks, extraordinary transactions, or meaningful changes to the company's stock price. For discussion of additional risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see BGC's SEC filings, including but not limited to, the risk factors and special note on forward-looking information set forth in these filings and any updates to such risk factors and special note on forward-looking information contained in subsequent reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and Form 8-K. I'm now happy to turn the call over to Howard Lutnick, Chairman of the Board and CEO of BGC Group.

Howard Lutnick Thank you, Jason. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call. With me today are our Chief Operating Officer, Sharon Windyat, and our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Hoff. BGC had its best fourth quarter with record revenues and adjusted earnings. Our revenues improved over 18%. ending a strong year where we delivered accelerating year-over-year revenue growth each quarter. We expect favorable macro trading conditions to continue throughout 2024. With our global breadth and scale, we will continue to capitalize on interest rate and energy market volatility to higher fixed income issuance across both government and corporate bonds. We are pleased with the CFTC's recent unanimous approval for FMX, to operate in exchange for U.S. interest rate futures products, which are the largest and most widely traded futures contracts in the world. We intend to launch the FMX Futures Exchange in the summer of 24, and we plan to discuss our strategic partners and further details on or before our first quarter earnings call. I'd now like to turn the call over to Sean.