CME Group Inc.

Good day and welcome to the CME Group second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Pescher. Sir, please go ahead.

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

Thanks, John, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As John said, our comments will be brief so we can get to your questions. We released our executive summary this morning, which provided extensive details on the second quarter of 2021. Also, as John said, I have John, Sean, Derek, Sunil, and Julie Winkler here. on the call with us this morning, and we look forward to addressing any questions you have. We delivered solid volume during the second quarter of this year, as we averaged more than 18 million contracts per day. We saw strength in our rates and agricultural businesses relative to Q2 last year. Equities and energy volume were down with less volatility in those markets compared to the prior year. So far in July, we are up 29% month-to-date compared to July last year, with particular strength in rates, which has more than doubled compared to a year ago. We have seen a rebound in energy, which is up more than 25% month-to-date. In terms of products, we had a record ADV, or average daily volume, in SOFR futures, total Bitcoin futures and options, and copper options in Q2. We had a highly successful launch of our micro WTI, which was the most successful commodity product launch in the history of CME Group. On August 1st, we will begin trading nature-based global emission offset contracts. In addition, our new micro treasury yield contracts will be available for trading in August. In the second quarter, non-US ADV was 5.2 million contracts, up 6%. We saw 9% growth in Asia Pacific, 8% in Latin America, and 6% in Europe. Across all regions, the growth came from increased rates, activity, ag products, FX, and metals. This was also supported in how our clients interacted with our digital properties as ags, metals, and FX saw double-digit growth in new users from all regions. The main point is we are constantly finding ways to assist our clients with the world's most diverse product offerings across all the critical global asset classes. With that short introduction, let me turn the call over to John, who will discuss some of the financial results.