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.

Thanks, Terry. We made a lot of progress during 2019 as we integrated Next, attracted new customers, and created innovative solutions. We delivered $4.9 billion in revenue and managed our expenses very carefully, which ultimately drove $6.80 in adjusted EPS. These strong results led to an annual variable dividend of $2.50 per share, and we recently announced a regular dividend of 85 cents per share, a 13% increase from last year. In the fourth quarter, we faced tough comparables to a very strong Q4 of 2018. Despite the headwinds, we continued to manage the business very well. Expenses were virtually flat with the previous quarter, and we delivered $1.52 in adjusted EPS. One thing to note for the quarter, As you know, our business experiences mixed shifts in product, venue, and membership class. In December, we experienced an unfavorable mixed shift with a higher proportion of member trading and a lower proportion of privately negotiated trades in our rates business, which reduced its rolling three-month RPC for the month of December. Nonetheless, the rates RPC was up sequentially for the quarter and up year over year. Moving to 2020, We will continue to execute on our strategy, integrate the businesses, and migrate customers from the legacy broker tech system to Globex. In terms of our guidance for this year, I want to provide some background. We started 2019 with an initial adjusted expense guidance of $1.65 to $1.66 billion. For the full year, we were $13 million below the low end of that range at $1.637 billion. For 2020, we currently expect full-year adjusted operating expenses, excluding license fees, to be between $1.64 and $1.65 billion. For capital expenditures, excluding one-time integration costs and net of leasehold improvement allowances, we expect to be in the range of $180 to $200 million. By the end of 2019, we targeted $50 million in run rate expense synergies. And at the year end, we exceeded that target and achieved $58 million in run rate expense synergies, plus another $6 million of subleasing revenue, for a total of $64 million. This is net of the additional cost that we are carrying to run infrastructures in parallel as we prepare for the migration to Globex for BrokerTech and EBS. At this time, we expect to be at $110 million of annual run rate expense synergies by the end of 2020. In terms of our tax rate, last year we got into an effective tax rate of between 24.5% and 25.5%. I mentioned in Q3 that the new U.S. tax legislation would have a positive impact going forward. As a result, we expect our 2020 adjusted effective tax rate to be between 23% and 24%. Please refer to the last page of our executive commentary for additional financial highlights and details. With that short summary, we'd like to open up the call for your questions. Based on the number of analysts covering us, please limit yourself to one question and then feel free to jump back into the queue. Thank you.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the digit 1. If you are using a speaker phone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach your equipment. Once again, star 1. And our first question today, we'll hear from Rich Rapetto with Piper Sandler.

Yeah, good morning, guys. At first, I just want to shout out to Brian Dirk. And I know with nearly 40 years in the exchange space, you know, sorry to see him go. He's truly an exchange guy. So, with that, I guess my question is, John, is around the cost and the synergies. And could you tell us, we ended up in what you actually realized in 2019, and then just trying to get a feel for what the underlying growth rate is, you know, X the synergies that you got. You know, it looks like it's going to be, you know, just slightly up on a net basis, but what How do the synergies impact? What do you realize so far? What will you realize next year?

Yeah, great. Thanks, Rich. I appreciate the question. So in terms of our realized expense synergies, we realized about $35 million in 2019 in terms of synergies. Like I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we exceeded our run rate synergy target We had originally targeted $50 million. We hit $58 million in expenses plus an additional $6 million in leasehold or sublease revenue, so about $64 million all in. So really pleased with the performance in terms of the integration and synergy realization. This is a total company effort, and I think we did an excellent job. So in terms of next year, the way to think about it is – You know, if you take our expenses for this year, excluding license fees of about $16.37, you add back in the realized synergies, and then you grow that expense base between 2.5% and 3%. That's about the upward pressure that we get on our expenses. Then you back out the run rate synergies that we had, which is about $58 million. And then you back out what we think we're going to realize in 2020, and that's about $15 million in realized synergies in 2020. Now, it's less than what we achieved from a realized perspective, less than we achieved in 2020. 2019, and that's because, you know, as you know, we're going to be migrating customers onto Glowbacks in the fourth quarter. So, you know, that's really kind of the target for us. And that gets you basically flat with this year, about 1640 to 1650. So, you know, that's kind of the way to think about it. You know, we are going to accelerate the synergies in 2020 as much as we can. You know, we're very comfortable with our target of 110, but, you know, to the extent we can accelerate the synergies, we will. But the company is really focused on making sure that we have a good and seamless transition from the legacy broker tech platform to Glowbacks.

Andrew, let me just thank you for making the nice comments about all of our dear friends, Mr. Durkin, who is here.

Sorry to see him go. Thank you. That helps, John. Thank you.

And we'll move on to Dan Fannin with Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. Can you talk about the next integration a little bit more and specifically the migration over to Globex and 4Q?

I think in the prepared statement you talked about some of the client forms you've been holding.

Maybe what you're hearing from clients and as we think about that migration, what if any kind of uptick in volume might you be anticipating?

Sure, thank you. With respect to the integration, I think I've alluded to the last call that we complete our API releases, which makes it possible for our customers to begin mock trading in the test environment. We are pleased with the outreach to the clients to date in terms of their sign up for connectivity and for testing. We've had multiple forums, both domestically and internationally, with our client base to get them situated and ready for testing. I think the rubber will really meet the road in the course of the next quarter in terms of the acceleration and making sure that We've got the clients in and actively testing throughout Q2. We're excited about the capabilities and the functionality attributes. Moving over to Globex, the feedback that we continue to hear from the client base is very positive in terms of the switchover. So that in conjunction with... the talks that we're having with clients in prep for EBS as well, the clients feel like we're doing a very methodical job in terms of our outreach, in terms of the preparation, in terms of the planning and testing. I think I've mentioned in the past we have a fairly elaborate testing program in the context of ensuring that our clients have the ample time to acquaint themselves with the functionality and the platform switchover. But many of our clients, by the way, are very familiar with Globex.

Great. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.

Next, move on to Brian Fidel with Deutsche Bank.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, folks. Good morning. Just talk about the potential for RPC to move up a little bit in 2020 here. Maybe if, John, you can talk about the impact of the adverse member mix shift in rates on fourth quarter and then any planned pricing changes across the futures product suite in 2020. And also for market data, I know the last time I think you had a price increase on the monthly fees in 2018. Sometimes you do that every other year, so just seeing if there's anything planned for 2020. And then I'll also just squeeze in just the non-U.S. has been growing nicely. Any commentary on the potential impact for the shift at the U.S. in that mix shift?

Okay, Brian, that was quite a number of questions. So I'll do my best to hit them all. So first off, let's talk about our RPC. So, you know, in the month of November, we talked a little bit about it. I'm sorry. We talked a little bit about it in my prepared remarks. And, you know, so, you know, basically what happened in the month of December, the rolling three-month average for rates for the RPC was actually down compared to the rolling three-month average in November. So really, to understand why it went down, you really need to look at the activity that was occurring in December, which rolls into the calculation, and September, which rolls out of the calculation. So when you isolate those two months of activity, in September we had a higher amount of member trading activity plus a higher proportion of members privately negotiated trades and that really caused those are higher RPC trading so that caused the RPC to actually decline rolling three months November compared to rolling three months December and it's really a change in mix between September and December so that was that was what happened on the on the rate side In terms of 2020 and things that are impacting or could impact our rates, a couple of things to point out. Number one, if you take a look at our trading activity so far this year, you know, very pleased with our volume being up 11% year to date. And, you know, it's interesting when you look at the mix of trading, you know, we see energy up 20%. We see Ags up 11%. We see metals up 51%. All of them in the commodities area, which have a higher RPCP than the financials. We also see very good, strong equity trading as well. Also, when you take a look at how we're performing overseas, EMEA is up 25% with all product areas up double digits so far this year. And then APAC is up about 34%. So, you know, very strong activity coming from international. As you know, international tends to have a higher RPC than the U.S. So when you look at the mix, you know, of commodities, strong commodities performance and strong international performance, that should help in terms of the RPC. Then you had a question around pricing. You know, in general, you know, we are always looking at our, you know, at our pricing schedules. And, you know, we take a look at everything that impacts our RPC. So we'll look at, you know, the face rate. We'll look at the market maker programs. And we look at incentive plans. And we do a very detailed product-by-product analysis. We take into consideration the market environment, the total cost of trade, and other factors And then we do, when we look at making any pricing adjustment, we do it with an eye towards not impacting volume. That's very critical. In 2019, we didn't take any significant pricing actions. In 2020, we did make some adjustments that impact the RPCs. And assuming similar trading activities in 2019, the impact would be in the range of past adjustments, in the range of about 1.5% to 2%. of our futures and options transaction fees, and the majority of the changes begin at the start of February. So that was in response to your question on the pricing. And then market data, we've made some pricing adjustments in nondisplay data recently that went into effect. You know, I think that's kind of the major point on market data. So I think that addressed all your questions.

Yeah, that's great.

Just maybe what's the impact of the market data price increases from a revenue perspective? You know, we didn't provide that on the market data. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brian.

And next we'll move to Mike Carrier with Bank of America.

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Just in terms of the growth, Alex, you guys highlighted the strength in ADV, and we've seen that coming from outside the U.S., and then even the new products. I think you guys mentioned that over the past decade you're contributing about 10% of ADV today. So I guess just on the international front, it looks like some of the products are contributing 25% today and some are in the 40s. Maybe where do you see that opportunity ahead given either penetration potential or some of the initiatives that you have in place? And similar on like the new product launches, can you provide either some color or some context around maybe the pace of new launches or even the uptake that you're seeing over the past few years versus the past decade that drove that 10% contribution to ADV today?

Yeah, Mike, it's Terry Duffy. We're going to kind of go around the table a little bit here because I think there's a lot to that question. A lot of us could touch on it. I'm going to ask Sean to touch a little bit as it relates to some of the launches that I referenced earlier, one being, obviously, SOPR is not a brand new launch, but it's out there and it's growing, so I think that is something that we can have a conversation about. And then, obviously, you listed the ESG futures, which are new, so it's kind of hard to get a trajectory of how they're going to perform at such an early stage. But, Sean, I'll turn it to you on some of the new products, then we can talk about the international growth.

We're constantly focused on adjusting and reducing products in order to make them more attractive to participants, especially relative to alternative products and lifting new innovative products that address new needs in the marketplace. So, SOFR, we're very excited about where we are there. We're currently running over 40,000 contracts a day. We have the equivalent of more than $1.2 trillion worth of open interest. Obviously, SOFR, a large and important initiative in addition to The futures side that I just talked about, we've now cleared more than $54 billion worth of SOFR industry swaps across 30 counterparties. On the futures side, we now have well over 350 different firms trading our SOFR futures. So we're very excited about those developments. But if you look at each and every asset class and the financials, what you noted was in our report, we said that we had more than 2.1 million BDD last year from new products launched since 2010. We have $310 million in revenues. This is across every asset class. We are continuously innovating. So if you look at equities, for example, over the last few years, we launched the BTEC, Basis Trade Index Close, which has got a very high RPC and enjoying very good growth and significantly adds to our revenues. In addition to that, we have the total return in futures. We have the dividend futures. And then obviously you know very well about the micro e-minis. Maybe just a brief update on the micro e-minis. We're doing 647,000 contracts a day so far this year. That's up 37% from last year. In addition to that, we did tell you last year when we started in terms of the RPC, when we initially launch a product, we typically have heavy incentives to make sure that there's very high liquidity on day one, so that everyone always has a good experience on day one. But we also promised you that we would be reducing those incentives over time. So if you look at the Q3 RPC, for example, on those microarray minis, it was 7.8 cents. If you look at it in Q4, that was 11.4 cents. So a very significant increase in that RPC while the product is growing very significantly. If you look then at the RPC on that microarray mini, there's more than 80,000 different what we call tech 50s that are trading that. So a huge number of clients. We believe we penetrated tens of thousands of new clients, in particular larger retail traders. But the other thing I want to get to is the enormous growth in the product, growth in the RPC. Sorry, the last thing I want to say is a very high premium relative to the E-minis. So if you do the math, as you'll recall, the micros are one-tenth the size of an E-mini. That means risk equivalent, that's $1.10 a contract relative to, you can see we reported in our equity index is $0.65 a contract is our average RPC. If you look then, we mentioned in the prepared marks FX link, a new record day in January. In addition to that, the other big thing I would mention in foreign exchange in terms of innovations or adjusting the existing products, Late last year, we adjusted the minimum price increments. It sounds technical, but it's actually very important. We adjusted the minimum price increments in the quarterly rolls in dollar-euro, dollar-yen, and dollar-sterling. Those December rolls then were outstanding, I think it's fair to say, for each of those three products. So in each and every case, the roll volume was up tremendously. The percentage of the open interest that was rolled was up tremendously. And we saw a huge increase in interest from banks and from hedge funds. We did announce earlier this year that we are now going to likewise be reducing the minimum price increments in dollar Canada and Aussie dollar. In addition to that, what impact does that have on our foreign exchange market? Foreign exchange market volatility is incredibly low. If you look at the January volatility, it is the lowest volatility going back to 1992 for the G7 currencies. So incredibly low volatility. Nonetheless, last year, the number of large open interest holders in our foreign exchange business grew by 30%. And on January 28th, we had a new all-time record high in large open interest holders in foreign exchange. So we believe these adjustments to our products, even in this very low volatility environment, is having a very positive impact. So every asset class is seeing new innovation, new product launches, I could keep mentioning them. One last one I'll mention is we just launched in January also options on our software futures. I could go on and on, but hopefully that gives you enough color. Yeah, Mike, let me just talk real quick about Asia and Europe.

And I'll ask Brian to comment a little bit about the growth throughout Europe because I think that was the second part of your question. And I'll touch just on a quick story about Asia. Last night, Julie Winkler, who is my chief commercial officer, held an off-site meeting which she was scheduled to be with her entire team in Asia, but obviously that was not going to be the case. So they held it here from Chicago. And we have over 200 salespeople today. We have a significant amount of those in Asia. I actually participated in her presentation because I happened to be walking by, so I did participate for about the first hour. And it's quite fascinating to see the enthusiasm amongst the Asian sales folks because we are now able to leverage our broker techniques to a treasury platform. These are things that sales folks never had before that can hopefully increase the business throughout the region of Asia. We're having great growth through there, so we referenced it in our earlier numbers. And we're excited about the prospects of what the sales force can do by creating capital and operational efficiencies with the next transaction as they continue to sell those products throughout the region. And I'll let Brian talk about Europe.

You know, it's been a journey. You've walked along with us over the last few years. You've heard what we've done to build up to the ability to say that we have about 5 million of our volume now coming out of international markets. You're well aware of the liquidity programs we've put in place over the years to build up that activity during the regional time zone. And I think that that story is just continuing to unfold in a very positive way based on the diversity of the products, the asset classes that we represent, our global sales force that is very dedicated and attuned to the very specific client segments that do business at our institution. Over the past five years, we've seen over 75% growth in our average daily volume internationally. And what that breaks down to is about 4 million contracts coming out of the EMEA region and around another million contracts coming out of Asia. This is the first year that we were able to, on an average daily volume for the year, really meet and in some instances exceed that million contract level. You had mentioned that you'd seen double digit growth occurring in various asset classes. Again, it's the beauty of the diversity of our products. So earlier quarters you were seeing tremendous growth in the international side in Europe on the interest rate products. This last quarter, we saw a little bit of a slide in terms of interest rates in the European side of the equation, but that was offset by strong growth in terms of our commodities, particularly our gold futures, our platinum futures, our foreign currencies did well. With respect to Asia Pacific, we saw a bit of a downturn in our energy products, but that was highly offset by performance in our interest rate quadrant in our equities. So again, it's the diversity of the products that we have. It's our ability to penetrate these client segments. You've heard me talk about country planning which is a rather new phenomenon that we've introduced across our sales course and our international teams over the course of the last two years. We're covering over 70% I think of the top 10 countries that are providing the revenues on the international time zone. where we have very, very specific deliverables for our sales force and our business lines and our international teams, and we track those accordingly. Just one last point. If we maintain this level of volume from international, this will be the largest month in our history since 2012 since we started tracking it. This will be our largest ADV month in the month of February.

Hopefully that gave you a little color, Mike. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thank you.

And next we'll move to Alex Bolstein with Goldman Sachs.

Hi, this is Sherrick filling in for Alex. Can you talk about the transition to SOFR and what sort of preparations have you made and how should we think about the implications on volumes and the pricing for this product? Go ahead, Sean.

Sure. We've been a member of the Alternative Reference Rate Committee now for several years. And we were the leader in terms of introducing the SOFR Futures. I already mentioned earlier that we have about $1.2 trillion worth of open interest. We're doing over 40,000 contracts a day. If you look recently, in terms of our SOFR Futures, we are running 78% of the global volume in SOFR Futures in terms of average daily volume. and we're running at 94% of the open interest. So I'd say very solid growth in terms of those products. We see this as additive to the rest of our products in terms of the FedCon futures and the Eurodollar futures, as well as Treasury futures, obviously. So this is an additive product that we expect to grow side by side with our existing products. In addition to that, I mentioned earlier on the interest rate swap side, we cleared $54 billion worth of interest rate swaps. We have 30 participants now who have cleared interest rate swaps with us. And working very closely, you know, with the industry on development. I did mention also earlier that we did launch SOFR options on our SOFR futures in January. Other things going on this year, later this year, we will be working with the industry. We will be changing the discounting on our industry swaps from FedFunds over SOFR. So I would say that, you know, there's a continuous increase in the adoption of SOFR buyer clients. And, you know, very goodly, Now, ecosystem in terms of trading the SOFR futures, as I said earlier, it's actually more than 370 participants have been trading the products. I think it's a very healthy product area, and it's growing very nicely.

Thank you. And anything on the pricing side as to how that would impact long-term?

On the pricing side, I would assume in the beginning when we launch new products, we want to ensure that they are extremely liquid. So in the beginning, we typically offer incentives in order to ensure that we have the liquidity. And with SOFR, I said this on previous calls, I think we are the natural home for the product. So we offer the most efficient place to trade. We offer inter-commodity spreads between your dollar futures and the silver futures, the Fed funds futures and silver futures. In addition to that, from a margin and capital perspective, we offer offsets between the silver futures, your dollar futures, silver futures, treasury futures, silver futures versus Fed funds futures. So an extremely efficient place to trade. In the beginning, we do have incentives. We do have incentives today. And as I said, we have 94% of the global open interest in the product. Over time, I would expect us to reduce those incentives. And I expect the pricing to look similar, you know, at some point to our US dollar futures. But at the moment, honestly, there are some incentives. Okay. Thank you.

And we'll move on to Alex Cram with UBS.

Hey. Good morning, everyone. wanted to take some of the pricing questions that you got and maybe take them over to the next side. Can you talk about how you view pricing in those legacy business a little bit more? One, on the non-transaction side, but also on the transaction side, I think there's still a lot of legacy contracts that are fairly fixed. So do you think there will be opportunities as maybe some of that comes up as you maybe move to Globex to maybe restructure some of that or you're pretty happy to kind of keep the volume there no matter what and maybe not participate in the upside as maybe competition gets a little bit bigger in that space. Thank you.

Hi, Alex. This is John. I'll start and Sean can chime in. You know, you're correct. When you look at the legacy next businesses, you know, broker tech in particular has a large number of bespoke businesses agreements and they tend to vary less with volume than our futures business. When you look at EBS, it's more akin to our futures business in terms of volume activity versus revenue realization. So that's on the market side. On the optimization businesses, The non-transaction optimization businesses, it's much more subscription-based or monthly-based fee for those services. Obviously, on the transaction side of the optimization businesses, that varies a bit with the amount of activity that's performed. For example, This quarter, we saw a sequential increase in the amount of revenue generated from the transaction business of the optimization companies that we own. It was actually up about $4 million sequentially. That was primarily because there was more activity at TriReduce. We haven't announced any long-term plans around pricing. We're very focused on the transition. from the legacy Next platforms onto Globex. But as we always do, we're always looking at our pricing and we want to make sure that we've got a very compelling offering and that we've got a very compelling platform for our customers to use.

I think underlying what John said, this is Sean, Our primary focus now is transitioning the businesses onto Globex. So both BrokerTech this year and EBS next year onto Globex. And secondly, making sure that we have the single most attractive platform for anyone to trade in terms of our products. So creating new between the cash and the futures markets that haven't existed before because we have both sets of products. So we are really focusing on the transition on the go back, one. Two, making sure we have the single most attractive products possible. Three, creating new efficiencies that the marketplace has never seen before. And four, you know, cross-selling. So the cross-selling is the thing that we've already, that we're already heavily into. In terms of that cross-selling, maybe just a couple of points. We started tracking what we call cross-referrals and cross-introductions between the cash and futures businesses. And to date, we are now tracking more than 400 cross-introductions where we are having the cash markets salespeople introduce clients to our futures folks as well as our futures sales team introducing clients over into the cash markets businesses. The large portion of those are as we had expected and as we talked about when we launched the transaction. The highest portion is coming from foreign exchange customers in the cash markets as well as the futures markets looking at the cross-sell opportunity, particularly in Europe. The number two category is in interest rates. So we're really very focused on the client experience.

Very helpful. Thank you.

And we'll move on to Chris Harris with Wells Fargo.

Thanks, guys.

With the news out there regarding ICE's interest in eBay, can you give us an update on your thoughts regarding M&A and specifically hoping you could address whether you consider somewhat out-of-the-box transactions?

Well, we won't comment on what was talked about in the Continental. As far as our M&A strategy, Chris, as you've seen, we're very deliberate and diligent in how we approach it, and we try to be obviously opportunistic if something arises that we think is right for the value of the shareholders and can increase the value for the client. We have a long history, and I'm not going to go through all the history of what our transactions have been. We're focused on the next integration. We have two years left on that integration process to get both Robotech and EBS on the platform. It's a big part of what we're trying to accomplish. So that's our strategy for now. Obviously, we always look at things, but at the same time, we're laser focused, as I've said before, on complete de-integration of this transaction.

Okay, got it.

And next, we'll move to Kyle Vogt with KBW.

Hi, good morning. Maybe a couple questions on market data. Looks like the next market data revenues were down $5 million sequentially. Anything to call out there that drove the decline? And I suppose that implies there was some good sequential growth in seeing these core data revenues. Just what drove that? Was that the pricing move? And then maybe if you could just give an update on the derived data initiative and the kind of sales progress there.

All right. Hi, Kyle. This is John. When you take a look at our market data line, You know, from a revenue perspective, it was actually up about $500,000 sequentially from Q3 to Q4. Really, when you peel it back, you know, our market data performed very well in the fourth quarter. In Q3, we had $1.1 million more in audit findings. And as you know, those audit findings can vary quarter to quarter depending on, you know, as those audit findings get realized. So really, if you strip out the audit findings, our market data is actually up $1.5 million. And that's really a function of two things. One, you know, we had a – You know, we had a pricing change that we discussed in our non-display data, and also we've seen a stabilization on the attrition, which has been helpful. So the core market data excluding audits is up about a million and a half, and from a next perspective, the market data is relatively flat Q3 to Q4. Brian, do you want to talk a little bit about the... No, I mean, you covered the pricing, but on the direct side of it, we continue to be very pleased with the demand from the client base in terms of having access to our products for them to be able to build structured products based off of our data. That business continues to grow and evolve and the interest and the demand is coming from a variety of different client sectors. What I'm most pleased about is our engagement with the consumers of this data, whether it are core customers, customers being the consumers of the data for trading. So you've got to think about this outside the box of subscribers, the traditional subscribers, but those looking at it from the perspective of using data to complement both their trading development of products that they can sell in-house as well as demand for historical data that they use for a variety of reasons. And so we've really been trying to more deeply engage with the client base. The audits, quite honestly, that we started almost a couple of, I think it was a couple of years back, in earnest, has really allowed us to capture a much deeper insight into how the variety of client segments utilize our data. That's brought us much closer to the client base itself and the consumers. The other thing that we look very closely at is the distributors of the data, so really drawing a much closer alliance and relationships with the vendors and how we go about pricing that information for them to be able to redistribute our data. So we're very excited about the the foundation and the programs that we've put in place over the last couple of years to help us really grow each of these variety of data offerings. When you look at next, as you can appreciate, we had to get into this more deeply this past year in terms of looking at maybe the esoteric nature of how that data is utilized by EBS as well as broker tech. And so we have a number of plans on the horizon working closely with Sean and his team in terms of how we can better structure and package that information for consumption.

Thanks. And, John, I apologize. The $5 million sequential decline I was looking at was actually for the next other revenue. Could you just provide any clarity on that? I'm sorry.

No worries, Kyle. Yeah, so really the primary driver of the $5 million reduction in the other revenue is, as you recall, in the third quarter, we announced that we had completed the sale of the ENZO business. So the majority of the $5 million decline was related to that sale.

Got it. Thank you.

All right. No problem.

We'll move on to Owen Lau with Oppenheimer.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. So I want to touch on the commodities and metals a little bit. So the ADV and open interest of commodities and metals are up quite nicely year over year at the end of January. Could you please talk about some of the drivers of the strength there? So are you taking shares from other exchanges internationally? Is that continual migration from cash to derivatives, or is it mainly driven by like volatility events, like coronavirus. How should we think about the contribution of each driver and the sustainability of the strength for the rest of this year? Thank you.

Thanks, Joel. I'll give that to Derek.

Thanks, Ellen. Yeah, it's been a good run. It's actually there are three different businesses that some are operating in conjunction with others. Some are actually quite de-correlated when you look at the impact of coronavirus, African swine fever, and the phase one trade deal that we've seen on leash. As Brian had mentioned, we've seen particular strength in the commodities businesses, all three of these, most especially our metals business out of Europe and Asia. I think that's a business that over the last four or five years, not only have we positioned our COMEX gold and silver contracts as the global benchmark, you're seeing that as more business shifts out of the bilateral swaps market, primarily the London physical market, the bullion market, into our markets. We actually regressed our volumes back 20 years. And if you go back over 20 years ago, COMEX represented 10% of the total physical and cash combined businesses of futures and cash. Fast forward to today and COMEX now represents 50% larger volumes than what we've seen in the LVMA business. So we're seeing that bullion market. adopts very much the capital and operational efficiencies of Comax Gold. So we've gone from one-tenth of that physical market to 50% bigger than that cash market. So the significant growth and uptake is largely driven by U.S. and actually Asian and European customers We see that on the competitive numbers. We see that in overall numbers. The business referred to so far this year, we're up 50%. We see that our Asian business in metals is up 56%. It's up 58% as well in APAC. So to the extent that that business continues to grow, that is both metal and particularly gold as a preferred commodity in uncertain markets in which we operate. And I think us better positioning the futures market is the best solution and product for delivery of that market. Flipping over to our energy business, I think it was referenced earlier in the call, Terry talked about the strong growth we've seen so far this year in our energy business. Global, the energy business is up 20% and we're seeing that actually up significantly in Europe as well. And what we're seeing there is after a year of basically a $10 trader range in oil and natural gas sitting at around $2.50. We've seen significant impacts to concerns of global growth and two ways in which the market expresses a view on concerns of global growth is effectively the price of oil. So we've seen that as that bound draft has actually taken place. We saw WTI go from 62 to 52 in the span of two weeks on growth concerns. We've seen our business so far this year absolutely take off. So not surprising to see that the preference for global crude trading taking place in the form of WTI. It's a global crude oil market story that we've been talking about for the last three years, and we see that play very much in tech. And I would say even more strongly in natural gas, our business in natural gas is up 40% so far this year, and our market share has gone to an all-time record of 84% of natural gas futures Henry has in the U.S. So again, when you're seeing markets break out below levels driven by growth-based concerns globally, minutes ago on global growth concerns, putting downward pressure on energy prices. The market's coming to CME to use our energy prices to manage that risk. Lastly, on the ag side, this is a business that's close to a half a billion dollar business to the firm. This is a market where we saw record dairy and livestock volumes last year. So as you saw concerns about African swine flu in Asia and the concerns about coming to herds, we saw that risk being managed here at CME Group. Most particularly with the phase one trade agreement now announced, we've seen a resumption of our volume. It went a little bit sideways in grains and oil seeds last year. We're seeing our ag business up so far 11% this year. And most notably, when you see where that growth is taking place, we're seeing the business so far up 33%. in Europe and up, gosh, 51% in Asia. So, again, when the market experiences volatility, uncertainty, and breakout in ranges, you're seeing the market continue to adopt seeming group global benchmarks, and we're seeing that not just during the U.S. time zone, but the points Brian has made and Terry referenced earlier, an outsized proportion of new clients acquisition in Europe and Asia.

That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Terry.

And next, move to Ari Ghosh with Credit Suisse.

Hey, good morning, everyone. And apologies if you've already hit on this, but just wanted to touch on a couple items that could be incremental to volumes looking forward. So first, just hoping to give us an update on conversations you're having with clients around navigating UMR and potential cost saves from your FX feed. And then just moving on to Bitcoin, you continue to see solid volumes and new account growth around UMR. around Bitcoin as well. So just curious how the institutional ecosystem here is evolving around Bitcoin and your competitive positioning in this emerging asset class as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sean. Yeah, so in terms of the unclear margin rules, that's something we've been very focused on now for a number of years, and that will continue to be a tailwind for us over the next couple of years with the extension of the dates by regulators relative to compliance. So we do expect that September of this year, you know, another very large portion of clients will be forced into those unclaimed marginals. Relative to that, we do see an opportunity to offer clients listed FX options in particular, but also use our FX futures as alternatives to forwards. We added, as you'll recall, a couple of years ago now, monthly futures in addition to our quarterly futures in order to help facilitate that, as well as FX link in order to make that transition from the OTC market over the futures market, the listed market, you know, much easier. As you're rightly pointing out, you know, something that we point out, we've pointed out for years now, right, is that if you are affected by the uncleared margin rules, you have a 10-day margin period of risk. If you move to an OTC product, and we do now clear, you know, both non-deliverable forwards, as well as cash settled forwards, those are G7 currencies. So we are clearing FX forwards, cash settled FX forwards in the OTC market as well. So, uncleared 10-day margin period of risk, cleared OTC typically a 5-day margin period of risk. We've actually now cleared about $69 billion worth of NDFs and CSS in our OTC FX business, relatively small but increasing. But the most efficient place is in futures and listed options, which is typically the one-day margin period of risk. So we do see that to be a continuing tailwind. In addition to that, our optimization services are very focused on having a holistic solution that no other marketplace can offer in terms of optimization of portfolios as well. So in terms of UMR, we can see a continued benefit there. And I think you had a second question. Oh, Bitcoin. Bitcoin continues to operate well. We're doing around 10,000 contracts a day. And we did launch options on Bitcoin, which are doing well. But honestly, it's a very small part of our market.

Great. Thank you very much.

And as a reminder, it's Star 1 if you would like to ask a question.

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

Great. Thanks very much. I just want to also just say my appreciation for Brian Durkin's help over the years and great answers on these earnings calls. And just many other questions were asked already, but just are there any plans to fill the president role or are you eliminating that position?

You know, Brian, sorry to interrupt you. I'm going to look at that over a period of time. Brian is committed to being here through May and then help advising me thereafter. And he's also joining our board of directors, which will also be a benefit to not only the shareholders but to the employee base as well, which he is a big part of now. So I haven't made a decision about where I'm going to move forward with that particular role right now. I'll work with Brian and others as we continue to evolve. and Brian starts his transition into his next life. So let me instead just echo your comments at the beginning. He does give great answers, and not only that, he works wonderful with clients, and his knowledge will be around for a long time to come. So that is greatly appreciated. Thanks very much. Thank you.

And just a reminder, Star 1, if you would like to ask your question. And next we'll move to Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James.

Hey guys, it's actually David Farnham on for Patrick. I was wondering, for the international business, I was wondering if we could dig into the drivers of your growth across the various regions. So can you speak to your sales headcount ramp over the last few years? Where are we right now across the various regions? Where was it, say, five years ago? And as we look forward, would you anticipate further headcount growth to continue to capitalize on the international opportunity, or do you feel like you're at the correct point right now?

David, sorry to interrupt you. Right now, our headcount in sales has gone up close to 200 of the CME workforce today, and it's spread throughout the world fairly evenly. Obviously, a big part of it's here in the U.S., but in Europe and Asia as well and other parts. Listen, if in fact it's the The business is growing, and I continue to see the benefits, which I have seen by increasing the sales force over the last several years. You've got to remember about seven to ten years ago, that number was probably about 10 to 15 people in sales, and now we're sitting at 200. And you can look at the chart up and to the right of the growth of the business, and you can correlate that to new count acquisitions that Julie Winkler and her team have been doing along with the sales folks. And as long as we can continue to offer a solution that's more cost-benefit to the participant, we're going to continue to add our sales folks to do so. It's one of those things you don't want to be a company full of salespeople, but if they are continuing to deliver value, I have no problem increasing the size of that staff as long as the business is reflective of what they are producing.

Great. Very helpful. Thanks. Thank you.

And that will conclude today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to the management for any additional or closing remarks.

Yeah, we appreciate it very much and we look forward to speaking with all of you next quarter. Have a nice day. Thank you.

And that will conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation.