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.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, it's star 1 to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal. Our first question is from Rich Rapetto from Sandler O'Neill.

Yeah, good morning, Terry. Good morning, John and team. I guess the first question has to do with the contribution from Next. And when we're looking at the rate per contracts, the revenue per million for EBS and BrokerTech, we're backing into what appears to be declines quarter over quarter in the mid you know, double digits, around 15%. I just wanted to see whether that's accurate and just general color on the next integration as well. But first, the revenues per million, please.

Yeah. Hi, Rich. This is John. You know, I think what you need to look at when you look at the rate per million is in the broker tech business, The two primary drivers of the revenue are treasuries and European repo. The U.S. repo is a small portion of the overall business at this time. So that's one thing to take a look at. Also, the sensitivity to volume at BrokerTech is less than it is, say, at EBS or CME Group. But when you look at, as Terry mentioned in his prepared remarks, when you look at the volatility environment in Q1 versus Q4, it is substantially lower in Q1 than in Q4. But when you look at the revenue for the quarter for the markets business, it held up remarkably well, and it was down only 3% sequentially. Sean?

Yeah, I mean, in particular, you need to look at the product mix, right? So you saw growth in the first quarter in European repo in particular. And the repo RPCs are much, much lower, as John mentioned, you know, than the outright treasuries, for example.

In terms of the integration question, Rich, you know, we're very pleased with how the integration is progressing. You know, we're on plan to achieve this year's synergy targets. We have a staffing event related to integration mid-year, along with a plan cutover for some administrative systems which will support the consolidation of the internal functions. And we're also on track to combine office space in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London by the end of this year, which will free up some leased space. And as we mentioned on the last call, you know, we are targeting customer migration to Globex with BrokerTech in 2020 and EBS in 2021.

And anything on the question was on the EBS capture as well?

In terms of the EBS capture, you know, I think when you take a look at, you know, when you take a look at the activity, you know, again, it's a mixed issue between the G10 activity and the rest of the business. So the more activity that occurs in spot G10, that tends to have a lower rate than CNH and the NDFs.

Got it. Thank you very much, John. All right. Thanks. Thank you.

Moving on, our next question is from Dan Fannin from Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. I guess a follow-up on just kind of the overall expense profile. You know, the first quarter showed a slow start versus your guidance. It sounds like, you know, the synergies are more back-end loaded. So we should just expect a ramp here. as the year progresses and I guess characterizing the volume environment in April is still not being, you know, all that robust, I guess, how should we think about kind of that build of expenses?

Thanks, Dan. And, you know, I think the, you know, when you take a look at our expense, you know, profile for the year, we are expecting to have a staffing event in the middle of the year. So we will be updating our synergies target at that time. And also, like I mentioned previously, we'll have some cutovers, some systems, and we're going to be consolidating some office space. So we'll have better clarity in terms of the synergy capture for this year. As the management team looks at synergies we're looking to accelerate the synergy capture as much as we possibly can in terms of the expense guidance yes we you know when you take a look we did have you know the first quarter was lower relative to the rest of the year but we will be having some ramp up in in work done on systems you know for the for the rest of the year so it's really more timing around projects as they get launched. But we'll be able to provide some more color with the second quarter call.

Got it. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Dan.

Our next question is from Ben Herbert from Citi.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Could you maybe just give us an update, sticking with NEXT here, just an update on the cross-sell efforts through particularly their non-U.S. channels?

Hi, this is Brian speaking. The thing that we're really excited about is the ability to cross-sell the multitude of product offerings that we have, bringing together the strong markets capability along with the optimization services that we provide. I think what I'm most proud of right now is through this integration process, we are working together. We're not skipping a beat in terms of the seamless performance of these new platforms that we've acquired and as we're going through the integration process. The client base is very enthusiastic about what we have on the horizon in terms of the new capabilities and functionalities that will be associated with the cutover and migration onto Globex from the market's perspective. But I think even more important is we're able to solve issues and challenges today by bringing together the combined forces of what we've had under the historical CME group, adding on the next components as we look at improving capital efficiencies and addressing margin efficiencies, post-trade challenges that firms have been encumbered with. Using and leveraging the capabilities that we have across CME Group is having a very positive impact with our client base.

Thank you.

And moving on, we'll hear from Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank.

Great. Thanks very much. Good morning. Good morning, Brian. To go back to the expense guidance, I guess right now it implies about a 3% to 4% quarterly increase in run rate from the very good 1Q level. Maybe if you could just touch on which areas you expect that to move up in. John, you mentioned the staffing event mid-year. If you can just talk about In addition to that, what type of flexibility you might have if the volatility environment stays really light. And then also just one clarification on the new fee program on non-cash collateral from one BIP to five BIPs with the revenue impact on the quarterly run rate.

You got a lot in there, Brian. So let's talk about expenses first and then you know, we'll break down your other points. So, you know, in terms of where we see, you know, the expenses coming in a little bit heavier in the quarters, really it's around when projects get implemented. So, you know, we've been staffing, you know, some – Contract workers, so you see professional fees will tick up. Our professional fees, if you look historically, tend to be lighter in the first quarter, and then they tick up as projects get underway during the year. So it expects professional fees to go up a bit. On the compensation line, you'll see that tick up a little bit. But then, you know, like I mentioned, we'll be having a staffing event, which will occur mid-year. So then that would come back down. And then also, you know, depreciation will be rolling in as systems get put into production. Then it rolls out of work in process and gets amortized into depreciation. So that's another line. And then obviously in our legacy CME expenses tend to be heavier in the fourth quarter as we've got a lot of customer facing events that occur in the fourth quarter. So you'll see a tick up in the fourth quarter. So that kind of gives you an idea of some of the breakdown. Then when you look at the levers for us, should there be a prolonged you know, downturn in volumes, you know, first off, I think, you know, if you take a look at CME Group over the last several years, I think it's safe to say that the entire organization has done an excellent job in managing that, you know, the expenses. And, you know, that mindset is continuing. You know, obviously, if there's a prolonged downturn in volumes, it will double down our efforts in terms of managing our expenses. You know, we do have some discretionary costs that we can, you know, put a sharper lens to things like travel and entertainment, marketing, spends that may not drive near-term results, but we obviously are not going to do anything that impacts the future growth trajectory of the business. As I mentioned before, as normal course of the integration, the entire management team is looking at ways we can accelerate the synergy capture where we can. So that's another thing that we're focused on. But to put it in perspective, we did have our third best volume quarter in our history, so I think it's a bit premature to talk about potential reductions in costs at this point, although we do have a strong view on cost containment and cost control. Then you mentioned the change in the collateral fees. Yes, the change in collateral fees will go into effect July 1st. We're increasing the non-cash collateral fees from one basis point to five basis points. We have approximately $100 billion in non-cash collateral. Excess non-cash collateral and guarantee fund contributions are not impacted by the fee increase, and that's approximately $20 billion. Now, non-cash collateral will fluctuate based upon trading activity and also based upon the mix of non-cash collateral to cash collateral. But that kind of gives you some ideas around what we're looking at there.

That's about, it looks like, $40 million annualized. If it's four basis points, an increase on $100 billion.

Well, you've got to take out, like I mentioned before, you've got to take out the guaranteed fund contributions and the excess collateral, and as I said, that's $20 billion.

Got it, got it. All right, great. Thank you so much. That was super helpful. All right, thanks.

Thanks, Brian. We'll go next to Alex Cram from UBS.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Just wanted to come back to the next opportunity set that you addressed earlier. I mean, obviously, we've talked about this in pretty big generalities for about a year now, but now that you've owned this asset for six months or so, and clearly, you're doing projects and the groups are talking to each other. Maybe you can just help us by giving us maybe the single largest individual opportunity that you see and what the timeline is so we can get a little bit more concrete here. Thank you.

Yeah, Alex, thanks. This is Terry Duffy. I'll ask Brian and Sean both to comment on that because we think there's multiple opportunities that we're yet to talk about, but they can give you a little bit of a color of what they're looking at today.

I'm going to take the optimization side, and Sean can speak to the markets if that's all right. On the optimization side of the equation, as you all well know, our marketplace and particularly our banking institutions have been challenged consistently with maintaining costs and capital efficiencies through the acquisition and the combination of our optimization services along with our excellent clearing services and post-trade capabilities. We're already, as we speak, as I alluded to earlier, operating as an integrated team of people working with our clients to find solutions for greater capital efficiencies. We're offering them streamlined connectivity and processing capabilities. through the complement of the optimization services of TriReduce, TriBalance, TriResolve, TriANA, and bringing those things together as a combined force and not necessarily operating them as independent businesses or silos. Just having the combined efforts along with Sunil's team to be able to work with and identify solutions for our firms real time has been a strong positive force and is being very well received by our clients. So when you think about having the potential for centralized risk management capabilities across the cash, across the listed futures that we offer in OTC products, our clients today are very excited and enthusiastic about the services that we're going to be able to provide by these combined forces.

Yeah, I totally agree with Brian. I might actually underline a couple of things in the optimization area. You know, first and foremost, you have the uncleared margin rules, right, which have hit the largest banks but have not hit all the participants yet. So in September of this year, we expect to see on the order of 50 new participants that will be hit by the globally, that will be hit by the uncleared margin rules. And then in September of the year after, it could be close to 1,000 different participants that are potentially impacted. CME Group, with its optimization businesses and its existing clearing services, can address every single aspect of clients' needs around those problems. You've got TriResolve, which can look at a margin of the uncleared margin. So in other words, the sending out of the messages, the reconciliations of margins, et cetera. You can calculate with TriCalculate the SIM or those uncleared margin requirements. You can try to avoid having to post uncleared margins by reducing the outright margin that you have needed between the parties by using the Try Balance service. You can also use Try Reduce in order to reduce your notional outstanding, in order to try and reduce the need to actually post margins. On the other hand, just like it was with Dodd-Frank, you can then move people from uncleared space into cleared space. And you can move, in particular, their FX options, as well as their MDFs from uncleared space to cleared space, or you can move them directly into our futures complex. So we have the totality of solutions for the marketplace as you approach the increasing demand for solutions to the uncleared margin rules, in particular relative to services that we have launched previously and you've heard a lot about in terms of our portfolio margining between futures and swaps. In the fourth quarter, the savings that we were – or the efficiencies that we were offering the marketplace was about $2.6 billion. Currently, we're saving the marketplace about $4.3 billion. So it created about $4.3 billion worth of efficiencies relative to portfolio margining. This has led to growth in things like invoice spreads. So invoice spreads, for example, the ability to trade a CME treasury future as a spread to a swap and to clear them both at CME, creating huge margin and capital efficiencies. That's grown from 89,000 contracts a day last year to there's actually 134,000 contracts a day in the first quarter and 118,000 contracts a day so far this year at $1.92 RPC, a very nice add to our futures business. If we move over to the market side, we're very excited. It's very early days in terms of our ability to do a couple of things. First of all, cross-selling, you know, the futures clients into the OTC products that we have as well as our OTC clients or the EVS clients, for example, into our futures products. We see those two marketplaces as highly complementary. If you think about total cost analysis and you think about what investors and buy-side, sell-side accounts are all interested in, they're interested in the lowest possible total cost. And if you can, to the extent that you can, and we are going to be focused on it, give access to both liquidity pools, right, or even in some sense combine the liquidity pool experience and the FX market, for example, Think about what we can do. Your total cost, the largest cost is your bid-offer spread. So to the extent that we combine the liquidity pool of call it the 80, 90 billion a day on EVS with 80, 90 billion a day in our FX futures. You recall last year we launched FX-Linked, which links those two marketplaces with the basis rate. When you start to combine those liquidity pools, what do you do? You tighten that bid-offer spread. You tighten that bid-offer spread because those two markers are quoted differently. Number one, and number two, you deepen the book. So by tightening the bid-offer spread and deepening the book and cross-selling into a larger marketplace, it is a much more compelling, better value proposition than we've ever had before in a foreign exchange market, and we're going to be able to access a much larger client base.

It's early days, but that's the vision. Alex, I hope that gave you a little color on the optimization of markets businesses and why we're so excited by it because of the opportunities that we see. And, again, I think what both Brian and Sean outlined is operational and cost efficiencies, which is exactly what you need to grow any marketplace, and that's exactly what we're doing by this acquisition. So hopefully that gives you a little more color for what we're trying to achieve.

Yeah, thank you. It was a little bit more than the one single largest opportunity, but I do appreciate the color. Thank you.

Well, Sean's very thorough. So is Brian. So thank you.

Michael Carrier from Bank of America has our next question.

Good morning and thanks for taking the question. Just on the current environment and the current backdrop, when I look at the open interest, overall you show some of the data and some of the growth in the product areas. It seems like a lot of that has been driven by the rates complex. When we look at, say, like equity, you know, energy, some of the other areas, you know, you're seeing a bit of a, you know, some softness. Just wanted to get, you know, some color. Obviously, you've got, you know, tough comps in 18, so we put that in perspective. But just in terms of the environment, you know, what you're seeing, you know, in some of the product areas, just given the divergence, you know, in open interest trends.

Yeah, Mike, it's a good question. And instead of spending more time on the growth of the rates business, I'll let Derek talk about Derek Salmon, talk about the energy markets and the agricultural open interest and where we're at there today. Derek.

Yeah, thanks, Michael. It's Derek. Appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of the other businesses. You're right. It's been a challenging first quarter, recognizing coming off an all-time series of records in Q1 of last year. In energy specifically, you're certainly looking at a softer market. You're seeing that market generally drift higher, even in light of the news of the Iran sanctions coming The waivers coming off, you saw only a couple dollar increase in the price and the market quickly digested that and moved on. We are seeing softness and volatility. We're seeing a slight reduction in open interest both on our WTI contract as well as what we're seeing in Brent on the other side. We're both down to right about 2.2 million contracts open. That's down for about 2.5 for each of us in May of last year. Not surprising to see low volatility environment. I think we're seeing a resumption of the short vol carry trade. Folks are realizing that selling volatility in this environment has actually been positive for the returns. So we're seeing that being a little challenging for a breakout in volatility right now. But when you look at the overall macro environment being challenging, we still posted our third best quarter ever. And on top of that, we're actually seeing we're outperforming the other folks in the space right now. On the energy side specifically, WTI, we increased our market share from about 58% to about 59% of the combined crude market. If you shift over and you look at the balance of the crude and refined space, our gasoline business, RBOB, is actually up 10% Q1 this year. People get lost in looking at the numbers and kind of look at the crude piece. The overall strength of the overall portfolio is driven by the supporting pieces of the balance of heat on RBOB as well. So really good story on gasoline with volumes up 10% this year. The other side of the shop on natural gas, another story of just continued low price environment. We had a spectacularly volatile gas season last year. This year was relatively quiet. We're seeing prices stabilize back lower again. That's another market in challenging macro trends. We're actually seeing us outperform in that market. That's a market where we are actually up to 82% market share of the Henry Hub futures market. So we're pleased that in a challenging market, we're continuing to grow customer base and outperform and manage to retain those businesses. Where we are seeing strength, and this has been a continued theme, the overall narrative of a structural change in a globalizing crude oil market and now increasingly a globalizing natural gas market, that narrative is still strongly in place. You see that in our energy volumes are actually up 3% in Asia in the first quarter. You've heard us talk about the increased demand and the expansion of exports. The U.S. is now exporting 3.5 million barrels a day of crude oil, and you're seeing that reflect both in the Asian demand for our products and the growth of the innovative new products that we put out there. For example, the Houston Physical Crude Contract, Terry referenced at the top of the call, that's a market that we launched just back in November, and we got about a 72% market share of volumes and about a 65% market share of open interest. hitting regular volume and open interest records along the way. So in a challenged environment, we're focused on the end user customer, focused on the global participation. That's where we're seeing the opportunity. That's where we're putting our resources, and we're pleased with the results on the energy side. On the ag side, again, that actually, while we're seeing all the markets down in every asset class in Q1, ags was our best performer down the least. That's also a market when you look at our comps, Our CBOT wheat complex, when compared to the combined volumes of Urinex and Minneapolis Grain Exchange, we also increased our market share there from 88% to 91%. Where we are seeing a lot of volatility, and Terry mentioned this at the top of the call, is livestock. You saw hogs, cattle reacting very strongly to what we're seeing in terms of the continued trade talks and sanctions. China and the swine fever are on the livestock market. So when there are events and when there is risk, We continue to be the place that draws customers to manage their risk, and we saw a number of volume and open interest records in both cattle and hogs futures and options over the course of the first quarter. So we'll continue to build and focus on our commercial customers there and do some innovative work around broadening our participation globally.

Does that answer your questions, Mike? Yeah, thanks a lot. Thank you.

Our next question is from Alex Blustein from Goldman Sachs.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Quick question around some of the licensing expense. I mean, it looks like because of the investment you guys are making with BTIC, that as a percentage of kind of overall equity transaction revenues continues to come up. I'm not sure if that's the best way to sort of think about the margin on the equity business, if you may, but maybe help us think through how that will play out over the next couple of quarters, maybe a year or so out as your equity business evolves there.

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Alex. So yeah, when you take a look at our licensing fees, you know, we don't give out specifics in terms of our license agreements. And each agreement is unique. So when you take a look at the license fees, there tends to be an annual adjustment to the fees paid to our IP providers. So that gets adjusted at the beginning of the year. Also, it's important to note that while the majority of the license fee line relates to equities, It also includes fees related to other asset classes like energy and interest rates. So about 80 to 85% of the license fee line is related to equities. The balance is related to other asset classes. So when you take a look at the relationship between the equity revenue and the license fee expense, you've got to take that into account. into account. Also, when you look at the interest rate component, the interest rate product component in that line, we did see a step up in terms of the revenue share that we have with our partner banks, and it was our best volume that we've had in the interest rate swaps since 2015. So that impacted that line as well.

Got it. That's helpful, caller. Thanks.

Yep. Thank you.

We'll go next to Chris Harris from Wells Fargo.

Thanks. I wanted to follow up on the commentary regarding the energy complex. The price differential between Brent and WTI has widened out now about $10. It's not as wide of a disparity as there was back in 2011 and 2012, but pretty wide. And I guess what I'm wondering is, does this create a potential problem for the complex? And the reason I say that is in the past, when we've seen a wide disparity like that, it ended up being a negative for WTI volumes relative to Brent. And just wondering if there's a risk of that going forward if this price disparity continues.

Yeah, Chris, it's Derek again. Thanks for the question. No, I think when you look at the market structurally back in 2000, kind of 11 to 14 versus where we are now, there are a number of different factors both in our own business and our own commercial focus as well as the broader market. I think what you saw back in 2000, kind of pre-2014 on our side, we had had more of a focus on the financial players and we didn't have as strong of footprints With the commercial community, that was reflected in kind of the open interest levels that we saw in WTI. We made a very specific focus pivot in 2014 to make sure that we were focused on the end-user commercial customers and that we were very much making sure that if we were focused on the end-user commercial customers, the open interest producers and the holders, then that meant that we were in the best position to draw the financial players along the way. The significant change in the structural piece I referenced just a moment ago was in December 2015 when Congress lifted the export ban. That, as you've heard us say continually, has put in place the narrative for a global oil market with WTI at the center of that. So when you look at the response to the participation and commercial participation in our market now at just under 2.2 million contracts open interest, versus where we were at a pre-2014, significantly higher, and a significant amount of our sales resources have been focused for the last four years now on those end-user commercials and participants. We also had a much smaller proportion of our business that was taking place in Europe and Asia, driven by both our commercial focus and the structural shift that has really positioned WTI as the global benchmark. So those are probably the two biggest drivers, the structural shift coupled with our commercial focus and the resource that we put into place, And Brian, I think, can talk about some of the very specific areas on our international front that's driven the kind of outpaced performance in our energy business in Europe and Asia, Asia specifically up this quarter.

Just to reinforce Derek's point, and I think you've been hearing me speak to this over the last probably year, year and a half, in terms of the tremendous growth we're seeing in the energy complex, particularly out of the Asia-Pacific region. We're very proud of that continued trend this past quarter or so. Derek alluded to the crude oil being up, I think it's approximately 15% alone, and that's its third highest record out of Asia Pacific. We're seeing nice growth coming out of Hong Kong, South Korea, as well as China, driving the demand for that product. He alluded to earlier also the growth that we've seen in Arbab Futures, which It's up about 9%, and we're seeing, again, nice growth coming out of our commercials. Commercials are up for our crude oil up about 9%. Commercials are up about 22% for our bobs. So as we're driving to those end users, reaching out to them, we have the benefits of the export capabilities coming into these regions. This will be a continued area of emphasis for us and growth.

And just let me just pile on a little bit here for good measure. You know, Derek said something earlier, which I think is really important. When you look at the open interest of the different crude products, they basically are down identical numbers. So if, in fact, the volume numbers would be different, you'd see a bigger skew in that particular number, and you're not seeing it. And just to reemphasize, I think that when you're calculating volumes from spreads that happen – several years ago, and the factors that have changed from today, just being a global market, it's really hard to make them applicable to today's marketplace. So I think hopefully that was a good color for you to see that you can't use the same measures that you used a few years ago when these spreads widened. That is helpful. Thank you.

Thanks. Our next question is from Chris Allen from Compass Pointe.

Morning, guys. Just wanted to ask real quick on other revenues. If you back out the next related revenues, it's about a $5 million jump in kind of the $40-ish million run rate we saw at the CME for 2018. And then the next revenues had a nice jump from 4Q annualized, 4Q levels to the $51 million this quarter, almost like $5 million as well. I realize there's a lot of moving parts in there. I wonder if you could give us any color on that.

Sure, Chris. This is John. I'll start. You know, in terms of the – if you take a look at – NEXT was up about $5 million. CME Group was up about $5 million in that line. There were two items that I wanted to point out. One was on the next side, there was about a $2 million relocation of rent revenue. It used to be at next netted with rent expense, and now that rent revenue is being booked in the other revenue line. And that's about $2 million. And then when you take a look at the CME side, every year we've got an adjustment to our contract with BM&F. It's an inflation adjustment. It gets recorded. at the beginning of the year, and it resets the baseline for the following year, and that was about $2 million. So that's about $4 million of the $10 million adjustment that you're seeing, increase that you're seeing on that line. The balance of the increase really is amongst a whole host of different businesses that are in there. You know, we're particularly excited about the way the optimization businesses have performed, you know, excluding the, you know, the market, the transaction fee-related businesses, which are in the markets line. So I'll turn it over to Brian to make a comment there.

I would just say on the optimization side of the equation, we had very strong performance across our TriResolve, our Reset, and our Triana businesses, which, again, goes to the commentary that both Sean and I referenced earlier, there's a strong demand for these capabilities, and we're excited about the robust diversity of product that we offer. Go back to John.

Yeah, so one thing I did want to point out, Chris, and Brian talked about it, you know, had a question earlier in the call, and that's the collateral fee line, the collateral fee change. I did want to make a point that the collateral fee change that's going to go into effect in July will be booked in other revenue, not in investment income. So I just wanted to make that point. So you'll see this line get adjusted mid-year.

So this is a good run rate going forward from here and then adjust for any growth we expect in kind of the optimization business and then obviously the collateral change coming in three years. Is that fair?

Yeah, yes, I would say the one thing, you know, the adjustment I talked about from the inflation, that's an annual adjustment, so that would increase the run rate about $400,000 per quarter going forward rather than the $2 million that was adjusted this quarter. Does that make sense? Makes sense. Yep. Yep, thank you.

Our next question is from Kyle Voigt from KBW.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. There's been some recent press in Bloomberg and other publications regarding the reduction in capital allocated to trend-following strategies and some meaningful outflows from CTAs in 2018. Do you believe that this is having any impact on the softer volume start to 2019? And then secondly, is there any way you could help frame the approximate size of CTAs and trend-following strategies in context of CME's total volume or total revenues?

I would just speak to the breadth of the products that we offer as we look at the buy-side community in particular and the opportunities and challenges that they face with their strategies. It's incumbent upon us to be able to provide them with the products and solutions and the opportunities from a liquidity perspective that they need to ship their trading strategies into other venues. And having the broad swath of product that we represent, I mean, I continue to look at, we see growth continuing across all of our regions, particularly across that buy-side community within our hedge funds as well as our asset managers. So it will be a continued focus.

I'd say on the commodity side, one of the most important ways that we can attract business that are looking to get fund inflows in the commodity side is making sure that our businesses, as we grow our volumes in open interest, that has a direct impact on the weightings that they have in the various commodity indices, like the Bloomberg Commodities Index, MSCI, et cetera. So as those get reweighted every year, the continued growth that you hear us talk about, both in absolute but equally importantly for the indexes, On the relative side as well, that reweights our products at a higher percent of the total proportion of those indices. So the trend followers and the CTA community that you're talking about that might not be directly in futures, but pile into indexes, that's indexed back to our footprint in those respective products. So the growth and focus and growing our volumes in open interest puts us in a higher weighting proportion of CME group products in those indices, which ends up giving us those traded hedged volumes back into our futures. So we can't directly control for it, but as we see those flows increase and put ourselves in the best position by getting our products reweighted at a higher percent in each of those indices.

Our next question is from Ken Worthington from J.P. Morgan.

Hi, good morning. In terms of the investment income, can you indicate how the FCM and clients are changing allocations and collateral between cash and non-cash at CME. Maybe also highlight which is more profitable for CME, cash or non-cash. It seems like cash, I think, is much more profitable. And then can you talk about where the spread earned on customer collateral stood this quarter versus last? Thank you.

Sure. Ken, this is John. I'll walk you through kind of what we've seen over the last couple of quarters in terms of the average cash balances that we have at the Clearinghouse. So we saw in the first quarter of 18 about $39.6 billion in average balances. It's gone down to around $28 billion in the first quarter of 19, so it trended downwards. The return that we receive on those average cash balances has gone from about $28 billion basis points in the first quarter of 18 to about 33 basis points in the first quarter of 19. You are correct, the non-cash collateral, we earned less on the non-cash collateral than we do have on the cash collateral. But when you take a look, we are making that adjustment in July, which will have an impact on the amount that we earn on that collateral. If you take a look at our take on the return in the first quarter of 2019, it was about $23 million. That's the net earnings that we received on the cash collateral. And as we talked about previously, you know, the non-cash collateral will be adjusted in July.

Great. Thank you very much.

All right. Thanks again.

And we'll take a follow-up question from Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank.

Great, thanks very much. Maybe just a couple of questions on products. So just in the equity indices, obviously that's been weak with low volatility in the markets. Maybe some perspective of to what extent you think the micro E&Es that are starting to launch can meaningfully impact or meaningfully boost the equity into C trends if volatility remains light. And then within interest rates, just some perspective on what kind of RPC capture you're getting on the new SOFR volumes, and also the invoice spreads, obviously really rich capture there, whether you see that continuing to trend up. I know you made some comments earlier in the Q&A on that.

John? Sure, Brian. Great question. Thank you very much. We're very excited about the May 6th launch of our micro e-mini futures. As a reminder to folks, this is across the four major indices, so across the S&P, Dow, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000 indices. Why are we excited about this? We currently have about 50,000 accounts utilizing the e-mini futures, so This will give them greater granularity. So a contract is one-tenth the size of our existing e-minis. It will give them greater granularity in order to optimize their exposures to the futures contracts relative to CTAs. And the question earlier, this will also allow them to optimize their exposure to those marketplaces with a much finer contract size than they've had in the past. If you think about the e-minis, they were launched in 1997. So since then, since the indices have grown dramatically, the size of the contract has grown, and this will allow us to better penetrate those accounts. In addition to those 50,000 existing e-mini accounts, there are approximately 250,000 current dormant CME futures accounts. We do believe that some significant portion of those users' contract size may have gotten too large for them, and this will allow us to better penetrate them. Much more importantly, if you look at external numbers, you know, in the marketplace that are available. In terms of active retail traders, there are on the order of 10 to actually we've seen numbers as high as 14 million active retail traders globally. So we are very hopeful that dividing the contract size by 10, that we will see very good uptake. We've had very positive feedback from all of our retail distribution channels. We are working with 80 different introducing brokers as well as retail brokers. And we believe that on the order of 90% of them will be ready in week one to start offering their product to their clients. So we are very excited about the opportunity. I won't size it right now, but we think it's a great idea. We're seeing very, very positive feedback from those distribution channels, and we're expecting a very positive launch. In terms of other innovations that we've you know, we're about to hit our one-year anniversary of our SOFR futures. We're very excited there about that contract. We recently had a record of 83,000 contracts traded in a single day. And if you look at the one-year anniversary, this is one of the fastest-growing products we've ever had in the interest rates complex, and I think anywhere at CME Group. So putting it in perspective, we've had about 3.2 million contracts traded in the first 12 months. That equates to about $6.1 trillion worth of notional. And in the month of March, we reached a new all-time monthly record of 38,000 contracts with more than 130 different participants. So we're very excited about the continued traction there. I could keep going on relative to renovations, total return futures. We adjusted those products on the equity side back in December. So total return features, you may recall, this is constantly focused on margin capital efficiencies, the changing regulatory environment, and how to help clients. So those are being offered to the marketplace as an alternative to total return equity swaps, especially under the uncleared margin rules. It was considered the third largest category of pain point after rates and foreign exchange. We've seen very good uptake there. We saw a record recently of 280,000 contracts open interest. And in addition to that, the growth this year, we had about 1,600 contracts a day last year. We've seen about 2,600 contracts a day this year. So very nice growth. I think actually the actual growth rate is 47% year-over-year. And in addition to that, with the extensions that we made in December, particularly we took the S&Ps, we only had them out five quarters. We now go out five years. And when we go out five years, that RPC is over $5 a contract. So... You know, we're constantly innovating. We're constantly looking at attracting new clients. Another thing I might bring up is not just the new product innovation, but we're continuously optimizing the existing contracts. Another thing I just might note is our two-year note futures as well as the two-year note cash. So back in November, BrokerTech reduced the minimum pricing permit in the two-year note cash contract. And in January, we took a similar action in our two-year note futures. Why is this important? This is important because while we're in a difficult volatility environment, actually there was a Fed research paper that was published about a week and a half ago saying that the reduction in those minimum price increments massively increased the health of those marketplaces and increased volumes. So if you look at the increase in volumes on both the broker tech side as well as the CME side, The two-year notes went from being about 13%, and I'm approximating here, about 13% of the overall treasury complex on each platform to about 16%. On the future side, that equates to an additional about 122,000 contracts a day. So a very positive result there. Invoice spreads, as I said earlier, seeing very good growth from 89,000 contracts a day last year to 118,000 so far this year, $1.92 RPC. And this is really, again, taking advantage of the portfolio margin that I also mentioned earlier where we've seen huge growth in people adopting and taking advantage of that. Thanks, Sean. Yes, it's super helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

And we have another follow-up question from Alex Cram from UBS.

Oh, hey. Thanks again. Just two quick follow-ups from things that were asked before. On the other revenue line, just to clarify, you said the run rate is good, but we don't have any sort of quarterly history. So is there any seasonality in that kind of optimization business that we should be aware of customers doing more in a certain quarter or the beginning of the year? So just anything to call out there. And then on the expenses, I think that was asked earlier, do you actually – I don't know if you gave the kind of incentive comp or bonus target for the year – Can you just give us a little bit of the range there and what it would take to be at the low end and the high end, given that volumes obviously can bounce around and performance can bounce around? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks. In terms of, just to be clear, we talked a little bit about the other revenue. The information or the revenue that goes into that line is on the next side tends to be more subscription-based. So it should be, you know, less volatile than the transaction-based revenue. So when you're thinking about that line, you know, it tends to be a much more, you know, stable, you know, line. As I did mention, there are a couple of things that are going to be rolling in there. One is the change in the collateral fee which will impact that line. Also, as we move our staff into a consolidated office space, we'll be subleasing that office space. There will be some impact in that line as well. So that's a couple of points to think about as you model out the other revenue line. In terms of the expenses, when you look at the compensation, specifically on the CME side, there is a range of outcomes when it comes to the bonus. Really, when we look at it, we look at bonus plus stock-based compensation as being kind of performance-based comp. you know, to the extent that there is a, you know, there is a cap and there is a cliff in terms of our bonus. So if we don't hit a certain targeted, we call it AIP or cash earnings target, that bonus can go all the way down to zero depending on how we do. And we don't, you know, obviously we don't disclose that range, although in the proxy you can see what it has been in the past. So that's what can happen in terms of the bonus. Obviously, the stock-based compensation is relative to our margins compared to a peer set and also our total return compared to the entire S&P 500.

All right. Thanks for clarifying. Take care. Thank you.

And that's all the time we have for questions today. Speakers, I'll turn the conference back to you for additional or closing remarks.

Well, we appreciate very much the opportunity to answer your questions today. We look forward to talking to you in the next quarter. Thank you.

And that does conclude our conference today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.