CME Group Inc.

the CME Group First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Pichure. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'm going to start with a safe harbor language, then I will 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. 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 it over to Terry.

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Thank you, John, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Our comments will be brief so we can get to your questions. As we all continue to navigate through the pandemic, I hope you and your families are staying safe and healthy. We released our executive summary this morning, which provided extensive details in the first quarter of 21. As John said, I have John, Sean, Derek, Sunil, and Julie Winkler with me this morning, and we look forward to addressing any questions you have. We saw a solid volume rebound during the first quarter of this year as we averaged 22 million contracts per day. That represented our third most active quarter ever, following the record activity we saw in Q1 of 2020 at the start of the pandemic when we averaged 27 million contracts per day. Importantly, we had a nice rebound from the back half of the year in 2020. We had a 35% sequential increase in average daily volume from Q420 to Q121. Also, Interest rates grew up 65% to more than 10 million contracts per day in Q1 relative to Q4. In addition, equities, energy, and metals were all higher sequentially by approximately 20%. In terms of products, we had record quarters in Bitcoin futures and silver futures. Micro E-mini Nasdaq and Russell were each up more than 100%. Agricultural markets remained active, particularly in options with more than 60% growth in both corn and soybean options, ADV versus Q1 of 20. Also, we continue to see strong non-U.S. customer volumes originating in Europe and Asia with approximately 6 million per day during Q1 2021 versus 4.7 million per day for all of 2020. We are also pleased with the transition of broker tech onto the Globex platform for the treasury curve trades. And we did see recent all-time record in European repo activity. Last quarter, I mentioned the ongoing innovation across our markets. In Q1, that continued with Japanese energy futures, global emission offset futures, Ether futures, micro Bitcoin futures, lithium futures, Mexican interest rate futures, and most recently, CME term SOFR. Also, we announced the JV with IHS market, which we are excited about. The main point is that we are constantly finding ways to assist our clients with the world's most diverse product offering across all the critical global asset classes. With that, let me turn the call over to John, who will discuss the financial results, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Thanks, Terry. During the first quarter, CME generated more than $1,250,000,000 in revenue, reflecting average daily volume of 21.8 million contracts. Expenses were very carefully managed and on an adjusted basis were $437,000,000 for the quarter and $372,000,000 excluding license fees. CME had an adjusted effective tax rate of 23.6%, which resulted in an adjusted diluted EPS of $1.79. Capital expenditures for the quarter were approximately $27 million. During the first quarter, CME paid out more than $1.2 billion to our shareholders in the form of our annual variable dividend of $2.50 per share and our most recent regular dividend of $0.90 per share. CME's cash at the end of the first quarter was more than $1 billion. Our 2021 guidance remains unchanged. We expect total adjusted operating expenses, excluding license fees, to come in at $1,575,000,000. We anticipate the spending to be weighted heavier in the second half of the year as the global economy potentially opens. We continue to expect capbacks to come in between $180 and $190 million. Finally, our tax rate guidance remains between 23.2 and 24.2%. 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 signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star 1 to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone the opportunity to signal for questions. Thank you. Our first question will come from Rich Rapetto with Piper Sandler.

Good morning, Terry. Good morning, John. And I hope everyone's doing well on the CME team. As we see the light at the end of the tunnel here, I hope. But anyway, my question is on the broker tech migration. I know you completed it in early February. And Sean has talked about the different things, the relative value spread trades, as well as other initiatives you're going to do. I'm just going to see what the interest rate outlook is He also said it took like three months for people to get really up to speed and, you know, connect and get used to the data and so forth. So I'm just trying to see, you know, what could we expect from, you know, the migration and the impact on interest rate volumes, you know, going forward.

Yeah, Richard, thank you for your question. I'll ask Sean to go ahead and give a response. And if anybody else would like to participate, fine. But Sean, why don't you go ahead and start?

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Thanks very much, Terry. And thank you, Rich. Great question. So, so far, things have gone very well. If you look at our relative share of the market, which is available through certain market sources, it's been on the broker tech U.S. Treasuries, it's been flat between the fourth quarter and the first quarter. So we're very pleased with that result, given the challenges, as you mentioned, participants adopting to the new platform. In addition to that, we're very excited about the new functionality that we have launched. It likewise is taking time for participants to take advantage of the new functionality. We did launch now about a month ago our new RV trading functionality, which I have described before. We have a handful of market makers. We have about 17 customers who are submitting orders and getting executed. And we've executed more than $2 billion worth of volume We're doing about 120 million a day. We are very excited though. Why? Because it is taking time for participants to adopt to it. And we have honestly three major ISVs who have not yet fully completed their development. So we do expect them to fully complete their development over the next month or two. And when that occurs, we expect to get a significant ramp up in volumes and a significant ramp up in activity. But we're very pleased with that. In addition to that, on May 3rd, We're going to be reducing the minimum price increment on three-year notes. You will recall from previous earnings calls when we reduced the minimum price increment on our two-year notes, both on the broker tech platform as well as in the two-year note futures on the listed platform, that increased our overall volumes in our treasury complex in each case by about three percentage points. So we're excited about both of those developments and things, I think, going very well. As Terry mentioned earlier, that migration included not just our U.S. Treasuries, but also our repo business. And in particular, we're running all-time records. The first quarter is an all-time record in our European repo, doing almost $300 billion a day. We're also doing about $219 billion a day in our U.S. repo, which has also gone very well. So in general, I'd say it's all going very, very well and as expected.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thanks, Rich.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Fannin with Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. My question is for John just on the expense outlook. Obviously, after the first quarter, you're tracking annualized well below your guidance. You talked about a second-half spend pickup. Can you just maybe discuss some of the specifics that you anticipate in terms of either just travel kind of normalization or what you're spending on and then also remind us where you are in synergies if there were any additional realizations here in the first quarter.

Thanks, Dan, and good morning. Yeah, we are very effectively managing our expenses here at CME Group. If you recall, we got into $1,650,000,000 in expenses at the start of 2020. We came in at $1,557,000. We got into $1,575,000 for this year. very effective expense management over the last couple of years. So in terms of what we see, obviously this is early in the year. We're hopeful that we see economies begin to open up in the back half of the year. So we did expect or build into our plans for that to occur. We anticipate an additional $20 million compared to last year in terms of spending for you know for that for that you know hopeful eventualities so you know we are we have that going on which is which is kind of a back half expense expense expenses and then we also are building out our East Coast data center and we are working on the migration of of EBS onto Globex. So those are a few items that we anticipate incurring additional cost for towards the back half of this year. So from our perspective, we are very focused on managing our expenses. We're going to do everything that we can to keep our expenses down. but we want to balance it with growing the business. So that's the mindset that we have here. So we've got a couple of opportunities in front of us in terms of getting our sales team out there to meet with clients as the economies begin to open. And also we've got the EBS migration and our data center, which our costs are more back half loaded. So those are a couple of items. Secondly, in terms of synergy realization, yes, we did have synergy realization in the first quarter. We anticipate our $200 million in run rate synergies by the end of this year. That's an additional $60 million in synergies, run rate synergies, that we need to achieve. and we achieved about two-thirds of that run rate synergies at the end of the first quarter. So well on track to achieving our $200 million expense synergy target.

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Thanks, Dan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Cram with UBS.

Yes. Hey, good morning, everyone. Can you just give us a quick update on what's happening on the retail side of your business? I mean, I think it's been a nice growth area. So maybe just give us some of the updated kind of stats there and maybe plans for engaging with that customer set more in terms of new products as well. You know, on the equity side, it seems like retail has gotten a little bit more tired in the second quarter. So just wondering if you're seeing the same thing on the future side as well. Anything you could point there to in April so far? Thanks.

Thanks, Alex. We'll let Julie Winkler comment on the retail side. Julie?

Sure. Thanks for the question, Alex. Yeah, the retail volume and revenue in Q1 was tremendous. Certainly quite strong. You know, the month of March in particular was a top three all-time revenue month for us in retail behind only March and April of last year, which obviously was a time of very historically unprecedented volatility. When we compare Q1 back to Q4, you know, we saw the business up 21% with really all of our regions showing double-digit growth, which is really, really strong. The product growth, it did still largely come from equities, but we also saw some nice pickup in FX and AGs. You know, more specifically, right, it was the micro e-minis, emerging market FX, micro FX, corn and soybeans. And it really, you know, that just speaks to the diversity of our product offering and how appealing that is to our active individual traders. During Q1, as you'd kind of expect, with everyone still more or less at home, a lot of our outreach has been across our digital properties. And so we saw over half a million retail traders visit our CME digital properties, and that's twice the amount that we had at the same time last year. And when we looked at the number of new traders that we were able to add, it was over 50,000 during just the first quarter. And so that was up another 24% over what we were doing in Q4, which just, you know, continues to signal the really solid momentum that we've made. As you pointed out, certainly a key part of this business is just the alignment and the partnership with our global distribution partners. There, you know, a lot of this is around outreach and product education. The number of active traders that are partners educated on CME products just in Q1 surpassed over 1.5 million traders. A lot of that outreach certainly going on in APEC, but also in the U.S., and, you know, I think that's just continuing to add to the momentum and attracting new customers to the business area. You know, a lot of this is still largely virtual, although some in-person events are starting as well. We had about five in-person events in Q1, so less than 10%, but I think that's another great step to returning to some of that pre-pandemic form of engagement with our clients. So, you know, I think we saw certainly a very strong quarter, and there is definitely a lot of interest about the upcoming micro-Bitcoin launch that we have coming in May.

And I would just add, Alex, to what Julie said, that, you know, You referenced, is the retail trader tired as it relates to equities? You know, right now, we're looking at a very seasonal, slow month of April, and that's probably what's reflecting on what you're seeing right now in the last couple of weeks. But I think what Julie said is the important part is the onboarding process that's going on, not only with retail and others, is very exciting for the future growth of not only retail trading, but the entire business. So I wouldn't read too much into the recent couple of weeks.

Thank you. And did you give the revenue or volume percentage of retail for the quarter? Sorry, I don't know if I missed it.

John, do you have it? In terms of the retail volume for the quarter, it was about 1.1 million contracts traded a day for retail. And what was interesting, it was strong across all of our regions. So if you look at it sequentially, Q4 to Q1, US, EMEA, APAC, LADAM, and Canada were all up double digits sequentially.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Carrier with Bank of America.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. The overall volumes are strong 1Q. You'll be seeing some mixed open interest trends and some moderation. So just wanted to gauge your sense, maybe why this is happening. Do you think it's transitory? And then what metrics are you watching that provide confidence in the growth out? Thanks a lot.

Okay. Derek, do you want to start with the...

Yeah, it's going to vary a little bit by product, Mike, in terms of kind of what those trends are. And to be honest, it also depends on when you're looking discreetly. If we just have big options expiration, we're going to see some OI roll up. But you look at average OI trends, sequentially, most importantly, from Q4 to Q1, on the commodity side, we're seeing a lot of really significant positive trends indicative of what we're seeing reflected the commercial customer base. So for example, in WTI, we saw a, you know, with the overall slowdown in the back half of last year, volumes in open interest decreased. We saw open interest in WTI down on the 1.9 million contracts mark in November. We've seen that sequentially build up to close to 2.4 million contracts. We actually just did 2.54 million contracts just a month ago, which is close to a three-year high for us. That's reflective of the sequential participation and increased participation from commercial customers. Sequentially, our WTI volumes were up from Q4 of 20 to Q1 21 by 40 percent. Commercial customers were up 53 percent. So that open interest build is reflective of broader participation from the commercial customers on the energy side. I'd also add to that we set record levels of open interest in both corn options and soybean options. Again, that's driven by the fastest growing part of our ag business right now, which is commercial customers. We're up 21% with commercial customers. So that sequential growth of record open interest, growth of the fastest participation client group being commercial customers, reflective of the increased risk and volatility in that market. And it's just reflective of the work that we do to make sure CME Group is the primary place for price discovery, and most importantly, risk management for all end-user customers across the board. So that's some flavor on the commodity side.

Yeah, and I'll ask Sean to comment as well, Alex, but I think Derek touched on it a little bit with the options, and I think, you know, you look at where CME's at today versus where it was at just a few years ago with the different options that we have today with the different expirations, not just on a quarterly basis, but the weeklies and things of that nature, you're going to see fluctuation. fluctuations in options OI, which drives those numbers quite a lot up and down. But the good news about that is, you know, healthy options on futures business helps protect and grow the underlying futures contract in of itself. So I find that a very good sign, but the volatility in the OI definitely goes in association with the new expirations that we have. I'll let Sean comment as it relates to the rates.

Thanks very much, Terry. So in terms of the rates, obviously the opening just down a bit, but we're very excited about the huge growth in the first quarter over the fourth quarter, and in particular, several different records that we had in terms of average daily volumes. So average daily volumes of our three-year notes, our five-year notes, our ultra-tenure, and our third-year bond. It was the best quarter ever, actually, for those particular items. In addition to that, we saw enormous growth out in our greens and our blues, or our third year of euro-dollar futures and our fourth year of euro-dollar futures. So with the advent of rising rates, particularly on the long end, you know, our volumes are following through as expected. One of the things to keep in mind is it remains an extremely challenged environment. And the first quarter was, in fact, an extremely challenging environment. If you look at it from a volatility perspective, you know, foreign exchange, the euro, yen, and sterling, if you look at the foreign exchange markets in euro, yen, and sterling, their ranks in terms of percentile volatilities going back to 2007 were 14%, 5%, and 13%. So essentially 90% of the time volatility has been higher since 2007. If you look likewise at our rates markets, out to the $8 future in the first quarter, we were still running at just a 5% ranking. So in other words, 95% of the time going back to 2007, volatility has been higher. If you go further out the curve where we saw some increase in volumes that I already spoke about, our 12th-year dollar future, for example, was at the 34th percentile ranking, and our 10-year notes were at 32%. So still very low volatility, even though we saw very good volumes, especially further out the curve. The other thing I might mention, you asked previously, there was a question previously about retail, and Julie did mention it, but we are excited about our micro-Bitcoin launch, which will be happening next week. Bitcoin, you first talked about before, but I think I might talk about it somewhat differently than I have in the past. If you look at our first quarter of this year, the revenue was higher than the entirety of last year, and it was about $4.7 million in the first quarter. So it was a positive, and for the first time, much stronger than in the past. With the launch of the new micro-Bitcoins, Today, let me talk about the large Bitcoin futures that we have. It's five Bitcoins, and the margin requirements run typically more than $105,000 per contract. Obviously, that is extremely restrictive in terms of the number of participants and the types of participants who can be involved in that. With the new micro Bitcoin, it's going to be 1 50th of the size. Micro Bitcoin future will have approximately $2,000 margin. So you can see how that opens up a much wider potential customer base for that product. In addition to that, while the notional size of that product is one-fiftieth the size of the large contract, it's at one-tenth of a Bitcoin, the rack rate fees are one-half of our existing Bitcoin futures. So we're looking forward to that launch. In addition to the fees relative to other exchanges, will be significantly lower, even at that fee rate. So we're looking forward to that launch.

Thanks, Sean. Okay, great. Thanks to the fellow. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Harris with Wells Fargo.

Great. Thanks, guys. So it's a good quarter for data revenues. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what drove the increase? And then I believe there was a price increase that went into effect in April. So how should we be thinking about the outlook given that price increase?

Chris, we'll let Julie go ahead and talk about the market data business, and then John can talk about the price changes associated with this. So, Julie.

Sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. Yeah, it was a great quarter for market data revenue at $144 million. We're up 10% compared to first quarter of 2020. And, you know, it was a number of factors. You know, I'd say in addition to kind of that new fee structure that we've talked about before on non-display data, that was implemented, you know, this quarter. We also did some data feed pricing adjustments that were implemented in Q2 of last year. And so this was the first quarter that you would have seen those increases, you know, as part of the revenue. And in general, you know, it's just increased demand across our derived data licenses and historical data, as well as there were some higher audit findings in there. And I think we're continuing to see there's just consistency in our display device counts, and we believe that that is a result of really better compliance and also reporting of usage by our client base. And when we kind of look not just at that quarter but the outlook, I think what we're doing is listening to our clients and we're delivering data in flexible ways, which is really how they want to take it in and use it on their end. So whether it's the data feed side of things, whether it's the new Google formatting that we're allowing and getting the data in the cloud, all of those adjustments are really just speaking to those broader data trends that are really kind of feeding both automated trading as well as clients' use of more sophisticated algorithms. And, you know, that really was the reason for the results. You know, I'll turn it to John, but just, you know, what we have coming into effect here April 1st is a change to the real-time pricing, and so that has not been changed since 2018, and we're taking that price per DCM from $105 per month per DCM to $110. John?

Yeah, thank you, Julie. As I mentioned in the last call, we took a very targeted approach to pricing this year. We focused on our micro products. We adjusted the member fees, I'm sorry, the non-member fees for our micro equities. We increased that 5 cents per side. Micro gold, which we increased 20 cents per side, and micro silver, which we increased 40 cents per side. Those went into effect in February, so you'll see a full quarter impact of those price changes beginning in the second quarter of this year. As Julie mentioned, we also took our pricing on our screens in our market data business from 105 to 110. That's the majority of the revenue. for market data that comes through on this real-time data, which is what we adjusted. So targeted approach, we should see full quarter impacts of all of our pricing changes this year starting in the second quarter.

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Thanks for your question, Chris. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alec Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Greg, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I was hoping you could spend a couple of minutes on the JV on post-trade services with IHS market. Maybe spend a couple of minutes on kind of strategic and financial implications for CME from this transaction over the next kind of 12 to 24 months. Thanks.

Yeah, sure. Thanks. I'll start that off. We are very excited about the JV with IHS market. And we think that it's going to really be impactful to the industry. It will be a leader in trade processing and risk mitigation services. and it'll provide our clients more efficient access to services, and it'll be a great platform to launch new solutions across a broad set of asset classes, including interest rates, FX, equity, and credit. So the largest markets out there will be able to service from an OTC perspective with the JV. And what's really exciting about the JV is that it's very complementary in terms of services that the IHS market business provides and CME's optimization services business provides. So, you know, we're going to have this combined in terms of the business. We anticipate getting the approvals. You know, no sooner than mid-summer, but we are well on our way in terms of getting those approvals. And so there's no, you know, no issues thus far in terms of the combination. In terms of what this means going forward, this will allow us to innovate and bring to market analytics, workflow tools, and solutions that allow our clients to manage risk and process much more efficiently. If you think about the data that goes to CME Group and the data that goes to MarketServe, which is IHS Markets business, very similar data, and it'll allow customers to connect to one entity versus multiple entities. as they have cross-asset class exposures. So very, very excited about that. And then in terms of financial implications, what you'll see this quarter is a change in accounting for our business. It's going to held-for-sale accounting. So you'll see on our balance sheet, it's spelled out on our balance sheet, We separate out our assets and liabilities related to the IHS, I'm sorry, our optimization business in anticipation of the combination. So you'll see that in our balance sheet. From a financial perspective, it's immaterial financial implications for our adjusted earnings. On a gap basis, you'll see a reduction in our amortization of intangibles. So our amortization of intangibles have gone down about $17 million per quarter, and that is really because we put on pause any further amortization of intangibles on these assets. So those are the financial implications so far. We'll provide more information as we get closer to the combination.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ari Ghosh with Credit Suisse.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Just a quick one on product development. So, again, if you're coming off of a few years of robust product development, and, again, clearly you've seen strong client adopts with these launches, You know, if I look at your recent innovation, it's been skewed around a little more around financial products. So just given, you know, the evolving environment with retail, ESG, global participation, et cetera, can you talk about, you know, areas of new product focus to CME and where you see the most opportunity over, you know, the near to medium term? Thanks so much.

Okay. Thanks, Ari. I'll let Julie go ahead and comment on that, on the new products, what they're folks are working on these. So, Julie, go ahead.

Thanks for the question, Ari. I mean, 2020 was certainly a busy year. I mean, we introduced over 85 new products last year amid the work-from-home environment. And, you know, I think we continue to be very focused on identifying those new opportunities with our clients and working across the organization to bring those to market. You know, the first quarter of 2021, though, was quite active, I would say, Derek will jump into across the commodity suite. So, you know, we had our launch of CBL Global Emissions Offset Futures, which was extremely well received by our clients, a major source of engagement with them, and, you know, one that really is just going to kick off a number of other new opportunities across the ESG space and the voluntary carbon markets. We've also been introducing some new Asia-focused products in the first quarter, adding China methylene and also Japanese electricity futures. We just recently announced the launch of the Mexican short-term interest rate futures, and just this morning sent the release out about the ESG 350 futures contract. So we're really focused on where there is specific market needs. And I think our clients continue to help us lead us to those opportunities. And with that, maybe I'll just turn it over to Derek to go a little deeper on commodities.

Yeah, that's a great question. It's one of these things, Ari, that when we launch products, particularly in the emerging either renewable side or we're looking at ESG constraints, these are markets that are in the early stages of development. So it's not like putting a weekly Monday expiration route or a weekly Wednesday expiration out or a microcontract that instantly throws a bunch of volume out. So Julie makes the right point. We spend a lot of time working with particularly our commercial customers, with the end users that actually have these underlying physical risks, And so I'll just give you a quick overview of some of the things that we've launched really over the last twelve months. Julie mentioned a couple that we've launched over the last three months. We already have a pretty healthy slate of bioenergy products, whether it's the Chicago-New York ethanol contract that we have, Rotterdam ethanol, two contracts that we've launched that are going to sound really niche, but it's exactly in the kind of area that you're talking about, used cooking oil and used cooking oil methyl ester. These are really, really technical products that serve very specific functions inside the renewable space. Something that is a little more top of mind, cobalt and lithium. These are battery metals that are obviously absolutely imperative for as the EV market grows and you electronify businesses and cars and you go into carbon neutral world. Copper is a big part of that. That's a huge part of our business right now, the fastest growing part of our metals business. But most importantly, building these markets out to provide risk management solutions for commercial customers that need to be able to price and have access to these underlying physical products that are part of the future that we're building. So there are a couple of examples in there that are maybe quite narrow, and you're not going to see those do 100,000 contracts anytime soon, but they're serving specific needs. That's what we do. We talk to our commercial customers. Our focus is on how to build products that suit their needs. We can build open interest, bring the commercial customers alongside, and there are many examples we go into, but appreciate the question, but I assure you we're spending a lot of time with our global commercial customers building these products They're in our investor deck, and we'll make sure that when we put those out, we highlight those to show you the work that we're doing in this environmental space on behalf of our customers.

Let me just make a comment here. Innovation, I've been here 41 years. Innovation is the lifeblood of this business, as it is every other business in the world. You have to have it. So we are constantly looking at bringing out new products. The beauty of the world that we live in today, we are able to bring out new products. do, whether it's regulatory approvals and things of that nature. But what's important here is, and Derek referenced some mesoteric products as he referred to them as, is timing is very important. So you want to make sure that you have products in your pipeline, and then you'll decide how you want to add cost to them when it's time to promote them in a different fashion. So I do think it's important, and Derek is right. You can get a derivative of a derivative and call it a micro and get instant volume, but there's of these other product lines that take some time to nurture to bring forward but it's important that you continue to innovate so that's what we do and the cost associated with it is nowhere near what it used to be you know 10 20 30 years ago appreciate all the colors thanks so much thank you our next question comes from brian bedell with dosha bank great thanks good morning folks um

If we could just touch on the cryptocurrency ecosystem a little bit in terms of how you're thinking about that. Obviously, developing more Bitcoin products and especially on the micro side. I think you said the notion is going down to 150 or the margin requirement is going down to 150th. If you can comment on first how much demand you think there will be for that given obviously you're reaching down into that lower margin bracket and potentially the pickup from Asia on that. And then secondarily, on the risk side, in terms of margining, if you could just talk about how comfortable you are with those lower margin limits. And as you think about the cryptocurrency trading ecosystem broadly in places where there might be even lower margin requirements, do you see any systemic risks in the system, you know, either for Bitcoin trading or that could eventually impact TME on the clearing side?

I think it's a really good question, Brian, and let me ask Sunil to comment on the risk component of it because I know it's the second part of your question, but I do believe it's very relevant as the growth of any product is to make sure you risk manage it properly. So when you're going into a contract that is margined at $100,000 or whatever the number is to $2,000, you've got to say, well, how are you going to manage that risk? So I'd like Sunil, who's the president of our clearinghouse, to go ahead and give you a little flavor of how he's thinking about it.

Thank you very much, Terry. Very important to note that we did not reduce the margin. The margin is not lower. It is actually the margin is just the same as the larger contract. The margin is a percentage of the notional. So in this case, you know, our initial margin currently is at 38% of notional. It's still the same thing for the smaller size contract. I think what Sean Tully was trying to communicate was the larger contract had a very large notional size, and it was a very higher entry point for smaller clients who have smaller hedging needs. So as a result, a smaller contract, you know, again, it's a 38% margin, but, you know, in order to get the same exposure, you'll have to actually get... 50 of those contracts to equate to the larger contract, so you'll end up with the same amount of margin. So there's no difference between the margin of the larger contract and the smaller contract in terms of its relative value to the size of the notional.

Just so it's clear, Brian, we won't participate in a race to the bottom on margins on any product, Our risk management is one of the hallmarks of the growth of this institution, so we'll be very cautious how we do that. So you're right, we are going to have participants in here that have a different economic makeup trading these products than the ones that are trading them today because of the value. That doesn't mean that the risk management changes at all. It will be just as stringent as it is today. Sean, do you want to comment any more on smaller contracts?

You know, obviously, thank you, Terry and Sunil, for clarifying what I said. I really appreciate it. No, we're excited about the launch. And, you know, the other thing I would add is Ether. So we do have Ether futures that we recently launched as well. Those Ether futures doing more than 1,000 contracts a day. And so we continue to see progress. The other thing I would say is, you know, in terms of the Bitcoin futures that we have already, as well as the micro e-minis, we've added you know tens of thousands of new accounts actually over the last year more than 200 000 new tech 50s so we are penetrating new clients we're bringing new customers to the exchange and we're very excited about the new size of this contract as terry rightfully said allowing us to penetrate a different economic base of customers but the the ratio as sunil said of margins to the risk is absolutely the same, but we are still very excited about that development. Thanks, John.

Brian, hopefully that gave you some more color how we're looking at it.

And just one angle of that is just the cryptocurrency trading that's happening outside of CME on other platforms. Are there any, do you view any systemic risks that would potentially impact CME or does your margin requirements basically, you know, they're pretty solid and you wouldn't see any impact whatsoever?

I'll let Sunil comment, but I don't know if this is if someone sneezes, we all get sick type of scenario, if that's where you're going. But let me have Sunil give a comment as it relates to the risk management of other entities that are trading products and the contagion that could possibly happen at CME.

We don't see any contagion from those. They are serving a different client base. They are not regulated in the U.S., and U.S. persons cannot trade, technically cannot trade on those platforms. Our product is completely regulated here, fully regulated. You know, and as Terry pointed out, we stand by our risk management. That is very important to us, and we continuously monitor Um, our clearing firms, um, and we look at contagion risk as well.

So again, we don't have, uh, mark the myth. We have marked the market and we have, you know, margin going back and forth on real time basis. We can do it as, uh, as much as an hourly basis if need be, but we do it twice a day on a, uh, typical day, and so I'm very comfortable with the way we are managing the risk in that. But again, this is a new asset class. There's a lot of people participating in it all over the world. I think your question is valid, but I like our risk management model and the way we handle our client base.

Perfect. Thank you so much for such a comprehensive answer. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kyle Volt with KBW.

Hi. Good morning. Maybe just a modeling question for John, just trying to better understand the moving pieces in the decline in other revenue. I think you called out client shifting towards cash collateral. I guess, can you just remind us what that means from a fee standpoint? So maybe the current net fees earned on cash collateral and the net investment income line versus the fee rates on the non-cash collateral and other revenue. And then... Also, if you could just help us understand the size of the shift in collateral, the client shift in collateral that's occurred over the past quarter or so.

Sure, Kyle. Thank you for the question. I hope you're doing well. In terms of the sequential decline in other revenue, as I mentioned on the last earnings call, there were a couple of items in Q4 that would not continue, and that is driving the majority of the sequential decline. We had an annual adjustment based on exchange activity paid by our partner in Brazil for software that we licensed them. There was also a termination fee related to our agreement with the Korean exchange. Both were booked in Q4, and both agreements concluded in last quarter. So those are not going forward, and I mentioned that at the last running call. So there was also lower custody fees in Q4 versus Q1. That was about $2.5 million as customers chose to put cash up at the clearinghouse rather than non-cash collateral. So those were the majority drivers of the sequential decline in other revenue. In terms of our collateral that's put up at the clearinghouse, When you take a look at the average cash balances between the fourth quarter of 20 and the first quarter of 2021, they increased from $86.1 billion in cash put up in the fourth quarter to $103.5 billion in cash collateral on average in Q1. So we saw an increase in the amount of cash put up at the clearinghouse, but we saw a decline in the return on those balances. It went from approximately three basis points down to about two basis points in terms of the return. So when you take a look in our other non-operating section of our income statement, those returns were about flat. So it was about $6 million in the fourth quarter of 20, and it's about $6.4 million in the first quarter of 21. So relatively flat. So the increase in the non-operating section of our income statement really is a reflection of our equity and unconsolidated subsidiaries, and that's primarily driven by our joint venture with S&P Global in the indexing space. So those are the main changes between other revenue and then our other non-operating section of our income statement. Thanks, Kyle.

Sorry, John, just on the non-cash collateral piece. Can you just remind us what the net fees are there that you're earning within other revenues?

I want to say it's five basis points is what we charge for non-cash collateral put up at our clearinghouse. Obviously, what you're seeing now is people make a decision in terms of what they have on hand to put up at the clearinghouse, and they also will then take a look at the returns they can get depending on what instruments they hold, whether it's you know, for example, U.S. Treasuries or whether or not they would, we would deposit that at the Fed and then they would get a sharing of that, of those returns that we put up at the Fed.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Kyle.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Allen with Compass Point.

Morning, everyone. I wanted to follow up on the market data question from earlier. Market data feature of about 12.7 million year-over-year, about 10%. I was wondering if you could give us some granularity just in terms of the dollar impact from the higher audit findings to kind of break down the growth between what's been driven by price increases versus organic growth, i.e., higher demand.

I'll take part of that, and then I'll turn it over to Julie to talk a little bit about kind of the organic part of the question. But in terms of the audit findings, what we saw from a sequential increase of about $2.3 million, I'm sorry, let me get that correct, $1.2 million in terms of sequential increase in audit findings between Q4 and Q1. So when you take a look at the overall increase in you know, sequential increase in our market data business, it went up about about 4.4 million. So about a quarter of that was of that sequential increases related to increase audit findings. You know, we did put in an impact, you know, a structural change in terms of our market data business on non-display fees, and that, I want to say, was about $2 million for this quarter in terms of impact. I'll turn it over to Julie for any other questions.

Yeah, I just think, as John mentioned, those are all right. The additional on the data feed access side of things, that's where we changed the monthly per DCM feed for end users that were going to take this mailable feed from the vendor. So that price increase is the one that went into effect the second quarter of last year. That took, you know, the... increased the fee from $375 a month per DCM to $500 for real-time. And then for the delayed fees, it went from $175 a month per DCM to $250. So, you know, from that, you know, we're seeing, you know, fees up about 36% there versus what they were before. And then we're also seeing good growth in derived data. So that's been up another 16%. And a lot of that is just, you know, people are continuing to want to use our data in other structured products and indices that they create. So that has all kind of helped to contribute to that uplift that we talked about. But the main point being, right, is that subscriber device count still holds strong and, you know, does not decline and we don't see the attrition. You know, that's the key part because that is the majority of that data revenue.

Thanks, Julie. Thanks, John. Thanks. Go ahead, Chris.

I was going to say, maybe any color just in terms of how much the subscriber count has increased. I'm not looking for the absolute numbers, maybe percentage changes in year-over-year.

Sorry, can you repeat that? Yeah, we didn't hear you very well, Chris. Hey, can you say it one more time?

Yeah, I was wondering if you could give any color just in terms of the percentage changes in subscriber count on a year-over-year basis.

Subscriber count, Julie.

It's flat. Yeah, it's roughly flat, Chris. So, I mean, I think what's really... You know, really good news, you know, I think is, you know, really the pandemic, you know, really showed the importance of our data. And as we went to this remote working environment, people needed to utilize our data. And with so many, so much happening in our marketplace, you know, having that information is, you know, very important for them to run their businesses effectively. So, you know, been pretty pleased, especially, you know, we've made some changes to our pricing, and we haven't seen that flow through from a subscriber perspective at this point.

Yo, what's up, everybody? Today I'm going to be bringing you something a little bit different.

Thank you. Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Herbert with Citi.

hey good morning thanks for taking the question i was just hoping you could drill down a bit on the continued non-us strength and i know julie mentioned retail was was strong across regions but anything to note particularly on the large oi commercial base and then also maybe against kind of different phases of recovery across the globe and lastly john if you could maybe walk us through how we should be thinking about any RPC impacts from non-U.S. strength. Thank you.

Sure. Why don't you let Julie go ahead and comment on the strength of the U.S., and either Derek and or Sean can jump in, then you can jump in. Sure. Julie?

So on really the international growth side, you know, this was the second best record ADV month with 6.2 million contracts trading. you know, being up 33% versus what we saw in the fourth quarter. And, you know, this was driven, you know, just from a product side across a number of different areas. We saw interest rates up 70%. We saw equities up 15%, energies asset class 20%, and metals 12%. So those are all, you know, clearly strong double-digit growth. You know, this was the interest rates were at the strongest level that we've seen since the first quarter of last year. From a customer perspective, again, I think growth was generated really across all of the segments when we looked at it most in more detail. And the largest gains, though, were among our hedge fund clients and also bank trading activity. And, you know, that continues to kind of demonstrate that diversity of that client ADV contribution that we saw in Q1. If we just double-click a little bit on Europe, that being up 34% in Q1 to 4.3 million contracts. And there we saw some strong growth in Eurodollar futures, Treasury weeklies, across really the whole Treasury complex, copper and also gasoline. And APEC was a pretty similar story. You know, there we saw ADB of 1.5 million contracts, so that was up 33%. Major growth, again, from a product perspective, your dollars, treasuries, WTI, copper, and bonds. And when we look across all of the international countries, you know, the top 20, all of the top 20 had double-digit growth, which is, you know, phenomenal. And, you know, this is where we're continuing to put our assets and our resources to kind of continue to grow that business. And in particular, again, I think for all of those regions, the hedge fund and bank clients were really the standout customer contribution side of things. And Derek can go into more detail on commodities.

Yeah, I'll touch on just maybe the agricultural piece of this because that was really the standout performer that we saw in some of the trends we talked about earlier. Terry touched on some of these trends in terms of global utilization, the way we're focusing on global customer bases. Now, ag showed some significant uptake just given the increase tightening stocks globally, particularly for corn and soybeans. Specifically in Asia Pacific, we set a quarterly volume record for our agricultural asset class in Asia. Our Asian ag volume was up 57% year-on-year. That is a staggering number, but when you look at the continued globalization efforts that we put forward, whether it's electronic trading, whether it's the products that we're building out, whether it's the growth of our options business. We talked about the record corn options and soybean options, open interest. Remember that open interest growth generally is reflective of increased participation from commercial participants. We typically see financial players then follow as they're following the open interest trend. So we saw record quarter. We saw record individual month in ags in the month of January. And we continue to see going from strength to strength there. So the percent of our business taking place in commodities generally has been an area of growth for us over the last couple of years. This particular quarter, it was a highlight on ags, and that has obviously had a very significant positive impact on our rate per contract on ags. that we saw a couple of cents uptick in rate per contract, even with very, very strong volumes, both sequentially and year on year, we still were able to grow our rate per contract today. So I'll turn it over to John for some of the RPC effects.

Yeah, thanks. When you take a look at the RPC from participants outside the United States, it's certainly higher than within the U.S., and it's primarily for a couple of reasons. One, non-U.S. participants tend to be less non-members of the exchange. They pay a higher rate per contract because they're non-members, tend to be non-members. And then secondly, the mix of products that they trade also tends to have a higher RPC. So when you look at the volume, the volume coming from outside the United States is approximately 29% of our total volume And then when you look at the revenue, the electronic trading revenue from outside the United States is about 38%. So that gives you an idea in terms of what the premium is that they provide in terms of an RPC.

Thanks, Jeff. Okay.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Owen Liu with Oppenheimer.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I want to go back to micro Bitcoin futures. And I'm wondering what has changed since the last earnings call so that CME has decided to launch micro Bitcoin futures. And then Ether futures volume hit another record high. What do you want to see to make you comfortable of launching something like micro Ether futures? Thank you.

I don't think anything's really changed since our last call. I think that we've always looked at the evolution of this product going to go into different participants' hands, as we talked about earlier. Obviously, the massive increase we've seen in the price of the cryptocurrency in and of itself lends to a smaller contract for more participants to manage their risk in, as we talked about earlier. So I don't think we really had any change of mind since the last call. It's just part of the natural business decisions that we make here going forward. And as it relates to the Ether contract, you know, that's a relatively new contract, trading, Julie, what, a couple thousand a day maybe? thousand a day and um we won't say never to a micro ether contract but again we're going to continue to help nourish that contract along and we'll see how it goes so we'll make that decision when the time is right if in fact the time is right but right now it was an appropriate move for us to work on the micro contract with bitcoin we have listed a contract for several years we've had an opportunity to risk management as we talked earlier which is critically important to this institution so I think that's really the philosophy as it relates to some of the micros. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Clinch with Atlantic Equities. At Bridgestone, we are accelerating our efforts to create a more sustainable future for generations to come. Learn more about our Bridgestone E8 commitment at whatreallymatters.com.

Hi, thanks for taking my question so late on in the call. I was wondering if we could just go back to just help me think about what's going on with some of the trends in RPC. And I'm particularly thinking about the energy side in terms of the mix there and why the RPC tick low this last three months.

Sure. I'll take that and maybe toss it over to Derek to provide some color. So in terms of the RPC and energy, we saw it decline a bit from Q4, and it was primarily driven by increased volume. We saw a substantial increase in the amount of trading activity between Q4 and Q1. And that really, the increase in trading activity led to more volume discounting. We also saw a higher proportion of member trading activity, which also would have a lower RPC. And then last, what we saw is really a tremendous increase in the amount of WTI trading, which was up, I think, sequentially about 37%. about 40% I should say and you know nat gas which has a higher RPC was relatively flat so you know so what that did is that you had a product mix shift towards towards WTI you know That gas was a higher proportion of trading in Q4 than it was in Q1 because of the WTI increase in trading. I'll turn it over to Derek for some additional color.

Yeah, John hit it. It's a combination of client product and geographical mix for us. We actually saw with the increased volatility around and the increasing story around the kind of global super cycle that's tended to present itself this past quarter more in terms of the record levels of copper that we're looking at right now and that ag's piece of this. So we actually saw some sector rotation of some of the financial players out of energy into into copper and ags. We talked about some of those trends. And it was a bit of a disappointing gas season for all of us. Last year, we had a really, really active gas season. We just saw gas kind of disappoint over the last couple of months. So from a proportion point of view, a lower proportion total of gas versus WTI.

Understood. Thanks. I just want to follow on just with a question about, just going back to expenses again. Because I know that when you originally set your targets for the year, you sort of outlined it in terms of a more constructive revenue environment. I just wonder if you could talk about how, given where we are in the first quarter and what we've seen, is that what we were talking about in terms of a more constructive revenue environment? Or are you expecting more around as we move through the back end of the year?

Yeah, I think it's more along, obviously, we're very pleased with the first quarter of the year. That's certainly a nice uptick from Q4. So certainly very pleased about it. Really, it's more around the opening of the economies around the world and getting the opportunity to get in front of our clients um you know in person uh you know really is what is what we're thinking about and um you know certainly some early uh you know positive signs around that we do have some of our sales teams meeting with clients and you know outdoors and and and and the like but Really what we're looking for is getting more customer events, more in-person events, more of our sales team meeting clients around the world. That's really what we were referring to. You know, that leads to, you know, additional, you know, travel, additional, you know, marketing events. You know, those are the items that, you know, we've kind of put into our plans for the back half of this year, and, you know, we're hopeful we're going to see that.

Okay, that's useful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over for closing remarks.

Thank you all very much for joining us today and taking time out of your busy schedules. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Everybody stay safe.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference.

You may now disconnect.

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