BGC Group, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to BGC Group Incorporated Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Jason Krasickas, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning. We issued BGC's second quarter 2024 financial results press release and the presentation summarizing these results this morning prior to the market open. You can find these at ir.bgcg.com. Except as otherwise specified, any historical results provided on today's call compare only the second quarter of 2024 with the prior year period, and we will be referring to our results only on a non-GAAP basis, which include the terms adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA. Please refer to today's press release, investor presentation, supplemental tables, and our website for additional details on our quarterly results and for complete updated definitions of any non-GAAP terms or reconciliations of these items to the corresponding GAAP results and how, when, and why management uses them, as well as relevant industry or economic statistics. The outlook discussed today assumes no material acquisitions or meaningful changes in our stock price. Our expectations are subject to change and based on various macroeconomic, social, political, and other factors, None of our targets or goals beyond 2024 should be considered formal guidance. Also, I remind you that information on this call contains forward-looking statements, including without limitation statements concerning our economic outlook and business. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause our actual results to differ from expectations. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For a complete discussion of the risks and other factors that may impact these forward-looking statements, see our SEC filings, including but not limited to the risk factors and disclosures regarding forward-looking information in our most recent SEC filings, which are incorporated by reference. Now, before opening the call, I would like to address some recent inaccurate statements made by FMX by the CME. Mr. Duffy, the CEO of the CME, mistakenly spoke of FMX seeking to clear U.S. treasuries in the U.K. We are not. FMX UST, identically like the CME's broker tech, clears U.S. treasuries at the FICC in the United States. The LCHs are fully approved CFTC derivatives clearing organization and holds $225 billion of interest rate swap margin, which is available for cross-margin efficiencies against futures. This is considerably more than the approximately $37 billion that the CME holds. SOFR futures are near perfect offsets for interest rate swaps, and FMX SOFR futures will produce enormous cross-margin efficiencies against the much larger LCH collateral pools. to which the CME does not have access. Over time, we expect our cross-margin efficiencies to be many multiples of theirs. With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Howard Luttnick, Chairman of the Board and CEO of BGC Group.

Howard Luttnick Thank you, Jason. Good morning, and welcome to our second quarter 2024 conference call. With me today is Sean Windyat, our Chief Operating Officer, and Jason Hoff, our Chief Financial Officer. BGC delivered record second quarter revenues and adjusted earnings with continued growth across our business and geographies. Our revenue growth of 12% delivered earnings growth of over 19%, demonstrating BGC's operating leverage. Higher revenues, along with improved profitability in our FMX and FENIX businesses, contributed significantly to our profit growth and margin expansion in the second quarter. We are excited about FMX, which continues to outperform its peer, FMX USP volumes were up 37%, and FMX FX was up 30%. FMX, together with its clearing partner, LCH, has full CFTC approval to open our futures exchange. Together with our 10 partners, Bank of America, Barclays, Citadel, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Jump Trading, Morgan Stanley, Tower Research, and Wells Fargo, we look forward to the launch of SOFR Futures, the largest notional futures contract in the world, in September next month. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Sean.