CME Group Inc.

And welcome to the CME Group fourth quarter and year-end earnings call. This call is being recorded. If you would like to ask a question during the call, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Peter. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. I'm going to start with the Safe Harbor language. Then I'll turn it over to Terry and John for brief remarks, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Statements made on this call and in the slides on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statements. More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in our filings with the SEC, which are on our website. Lastly, on the final page of the earnings release, you will find a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Terry.

Thank you, John, and thank you all for joining us this morning. We appreciate your interest in CME Group. We had strong tailwinds in Q4. We averaged more than 20 million contracts per day, which was up 31 percent compared to the prior year. For a full year, we had record volumes in four product areas, along with total options and electronic options volume. We made progress expanding our volume from global market participants during the year. In Q4, we had 22% volume growth from participants based outside the United States, totaling more than 4.8 million contracts per day. For the full year, we were up 18%. We launched a number of successful new products designed to solve customer needs during 18. Many of the new products were detailed in the executive commentary that we provided earlier this morning, but let me just highlight a few of them. First, the FX Link was launched in March of 2018 and won the Risk Magazine Award for Innovation of the Year. It is currently being facilitated by nine Futures Commission merchants, and the client base is growing. Liquidity is available across multiple currencies, with clients noting that the prices often match or better FX swaps. FXLink had a record day of 24,000 contracts in January of 19. As it relates to SOFR, it was launched in May of 2018, and average daily volume built steadily to 14,800 contracts per day in December, reached 18,000 in January, and is averaging 23,000 per day in February. Global participation has surpassed 105 firms, including major banks, buy-side, and proprietary trading firms. In November, we launched physical West Texas Intermediate Houston crude oil futures in conjunction with Enterprise Products Partners, the leader in crude infrastructure in the Houston area. The product has steady growth from November through February, and we think this offering will be a useful addition to our existing energy franchise. We were pleased to announce the next group acquisition in March and complete it in early November. The markets and optimization business each performed well during the fourth quarter. Our teams are working in a very collaborative way and we have made good progress on the integration planning so far. In terms of the most important components of the integration, we have let customers know that the broker tech migration to Globex will begin in 2020 And the EBS customer migration will begin in 2021. Turning to this year, volume has slowed across many global asset classes. We are averaging 17 million contracts per day this year. As I referred to earlier, Q4 was an exceptional quarter, and we saw high volatility. It's not unusual to see a market pause following periods of elevated volatility. It is worth noting our open interest is currently sitting at 129 million contracts. This is one reflection of the health of our business. Our options business is averaging 3.8 million contracts a day so far this year. The important part about this is that they're comparable to the levels of all of 2018. Options as a percent of the total volume has increased from 20.5% for 2018 to 22 percent in 2019. These are valuable tools in this environment. Several global issues are in the headlines, as many of you know, which could have an impact on any market, including Brexit, various trade negotiations, uncertainty around another potential government shutdown, or other government actions. As we know, markets like clarity, and we're hopeful that some of these issues I just outlined will start to get resolved. That being said, we do look closely at how our products compare to other alternatives, and we continue to be the leader. Our strategy has been very consistent over time. We focus on maximizing activity and bringing in new market participants to manage their risks. Launching new products and enhancing existing products We are intensely focused on expanding the core business and integrating the valuable components of the recent acquisition of the next group. Expense discipline is something I have been very focused on, along with my management team, and we will continue to do so. I would now like to turn the call over to John. I look forward to your questions in a moment. John?