CME Group Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the CME Group first quarter 2019 earnings call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Pescher. Please go ahead, sir.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with the Safe Harbor language, and I'll turn it over to Terry for brief remarks followed by questions. Other members of our management team will also participate. Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents on our website, they're not historical facts or forelooking 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. Also, on the last 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 today. We appreciate your interest in CME Group. My comments today, as John said, are going to be very brief, so we can get right into your questions. We released our executive commentary this morning, which provided extensive details on the first quarter. During our last call, I mentioned that we had strong tailwinds to finish the year. We had made the most of it also. Market conditions changed significantly from the prior quarter, and volatility did drop across virtually every asset class. Despite the change in the trading environment, we were able to post our third highest futures and options quarter in our history, while we kept our expenses relatively flat. More importantly, we continue to execute on our long-term strategy to attract new clients and to launch new innovative products. We had significant customer engagement. We ran strategic targeted campaigns, educating market participants on new non-core products and product extensions, as well as cross-selling through all our product lines and into new cash markets and optimization services. During the first quarter, all six product areas had an increase in their business from outside the U.S. We continue to launch innovative new products, tools, and services to support customer needs and to create capital and operational efficiencies for market participants. In Q1, we had multiple volume and open interest records, including SOFR futures, FXLink, Bitcoin futures, Treasury futures invoice spreads, copper options, and our new West Texas Intermediate Houston product. Within the next market business, the combined EBS and broker tech monthly revenues in Q1 came in fairly close to the Q4 results. This is despite, as I said earlier, much lower volatility. On the core futures and options side, our open interest rose from 118 million contracts in mid-March to more than 134 million contracts last week. And today, it sits just north of 132 million contracts, which is not too far from our peak in 2018. We remain very excited about the opportunities in front of us. With that short summary, we'd like to open the call for your questions. And based on the number of analysts covering us, we'd ask you to Limit yourself to one question and then get back in the queue. Thank you, and we'll take your questions.