CME Group Inc.

Please stand by. We're about to begin. Good day and welcome to the CME Group fourth quarter and full year 2019 earnings. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Pescher. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm going to start with the safe harbor language and I'll turn it over to Terry and John for brief remarks followed by your questions. Other members of our management team will also participate in the Q&A session. Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents 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 statement. More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in the filings with the SEC, which are on our website. Lastly, on the final page of the earnings release, you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Terry.

Thank you, and thank you, John. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Our comments will be brief, so we can get right to your questions. We released our executive summary this morning, which provided extensive details 2019 and the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter ADV ended slowly with 16.9 million contracts down from an extremely active Q4 of 2018 period. We are very pleased with the work we did to integrate the next business during 2019, including back office migrations to support finance and HR systems and the building of an integrated global sales team. Importantly, our Globex technology migration is on track for broker tech and for EBS. During 2019, we had 40 trading days of over 25 million contracts. That is up from 35 days the prior year. We had annual volume records and interest rates medals and total options. We continue to position CME Group for the long term by launching innovative new products, tools, and services to support customer needs and to create capital and operational efficiencies for market participants. We drove significant growth from customers based outside the United States during 2019. During the year, non-US trading volume grew 10% to almost 5 million contracts per day. During Q4, non-US ADV expanded from 24% of the total volume to 27%. And the proportion increased year over year across all six product lines. So far in Q1, our business from outside the United States is up double digits in all six asset classes. We continue to deliver successful new product rollouts during 2019. Our popular micro e-mini ADV traded approximately 106 million contracts since its launch in May, with diverse participation from a cross-segment and regional perspective. We gained traction in innovative products, including Silver Futures and CME FX Link, which just set a daily trading record in January of this year. Also, we are pleased to have launched E-mini S&P ESG Futures, as well as our new Bitcoin Options product. So far in Q1, our markets have been fairly active, with total volume up more than 10%. It's worth noting that activity And our higher rate for contract commodity contracts is particularly strong with metals up more than 50%, energy up 20%, and agricultural products up more than 10%. Total open interest has increased from 113 million at year end to more than 128 million contracts. I look forward to answering any questions you have. But before I do that, I'll turn the call over to John. to provide some additional comments. John.