Marex Group plc

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Marex's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Adam Strachan, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for Americs' first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Speaking today are Ian Lowentz, Group CEO, and Rob Irwin, Group CFO. After Ian and Rob have made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain matters discussed in today's conference call are forward-looking statements relating to future events, management plans, and objectives for the business and the future financial performance of the company that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The risk factors that may affect results are referred to in Marek's press release issued today. The forward-looking statements made today are as of the date of this call, and Marek does not undertake any obligation to update them. Finally, the speakers may refer to certain adjusted or non-IFRS financial measures on this call. A reconciliation schedule of the non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures is also available in Marek's earnings release issued today. A copy of today's release and investor presentation may be obtained by visiting the IR page of the website at Mareks.com. I'll now turn the call over to Ian.

Good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. Thank you all for joining us today. Q1 2026 was a record quarter for Marex, materially above our prior record in Q4 2025 and somewhat above the top end of the profit range we provided at our investor day on March 26. This was a quarter of high exchange volumes and extremely elevated volatility, an environment in which we performed very strongly. Our performance is the result of both a supportive market environment, albeit one with significant potential pitfalls, and the ongoing structural growth of our franchise, evidenced by new client acquisitions, customer balance increases, and share gains. As you see on slide four, first quarter revenues grew 48% from $467 million to $692 million, and adjusted profit before tax increased 59% to $153 million. This record performance includes the impact of a client default in January that we described at our investor day and which Rob will cover in his comments. We grew EPS by 55% to $1.52 with trailing 12-month EPS of $4.66. Return on equity was very strong at 34.4% up 570 basis points. Adjusted PBT margin was 22% up on last year's 21%. Importantly, and consistent with prior quarters, this performance was broad-based, with all our businesses contributing strongly. Clearing had an outstanding quarter, with high levels of client activity and new client onboardings. Market-making benefited from the elevated volatility and performed strongly, particularly in metals and energy. Agency and execution also delivered a strong quarter driven by volatility across energy and financial markets. Prime saw some modest negative impact on client balances from lower equity markets in February, but it was still a strong quarter up materially over last year's. Underlying client demand remains robust and Q2 balances are at record levels. Solutions had a record quarter driven by high levels of client activity and the investments we made in technology and platform capabilities last year are now clearly bearing fruit. As we described on our last call and discussed at our investor day, Q1 was a challenging environment for managing credit exposure. The small number of clients we mentioned who were illiquid but not insolvent as a result of the elevated volatility in price movements have now resolved their situations. And aside from the loss in January, we have seen no further material credit issues. Our record performance in Q1 was a result of both the support of market as well as structural franchise growth. First quarter exchange volumes are up a lot, up 32% on Q4 and 24% year on year. Cleared volumes in March were around 25% above the record levels in April 2025, evidencing the operational resilience of the firm and the scalability of our platform. Volatility, as measured by the VIX, increased by 15% to an average of 20 for the quarter and 26 on average in March. Commodities pricing was up on average 13% on the fourth quarter and was over 20% higher in March, remaining at these elevated levels through April. This was a period of extremely elevated volatility within certain asset classes. In natural gas at the end of January, we saw multiple days of two or three standard deviation price moves, which together represented a one in 35 year event with prices experiencing one of the largest five day rallies on record. We also saw significant volatility in oil markets through March, with crude prices increasing by around 70% to well above $100 per barrel, which we navigated without any material client events. This backdrop is supportive for the business overall, driving higher activity in clearing, agency and execution brokerage and match principle, as well as market making and solutions. Equity markets were softer in February, which impacted prime client balances, although overall markets remained strong over the quarter. Interest rates also remained supportive. Against that backdrop, we grew adjusted PBT 59% year-on-year and 33% on Q4, demonstrating that we are growing faster than our underlying markets. One of the clearest indications of structural franchise growth is in our clearing client balances, which I'll cover on the next slide. Clearing client balances grew to an average of $16 billion in the first quarter, up from $14 billion in Q4, and our run rate at the end of the quarter was above the average. This growth is a result of three effects. First, exchange margin requirements have risen to reflect the higher volatility, and that increases balances. Second, we continue to win new larger clients. We are already ahead of our annual target for net new balances, and our pipeline of large client opportunities for the rest of the year remains strong. And third, some of our larger trading clients are taking advantage of the current environment and increasing their margin balances with us. We expect balances to continue to increase, although the pace will likely moderate. Turning to Winterflood, which is included in our numbers for a full quarter for the first time within market making this Q1. The business has started strongly ahead of our prior expectations, and we see opportunity for margin expansion as we scale the business. Regulatory approval for the sale of Winterflood's custody business has been received, and we expect closing in the second quarter. Under the terms of the transaction, this will generate around $40 million of capital benefit. This will increase reported earnings for Q2 and creates equity, which will be deployed for growth. This is another example of our disciplined approach to M&A, as we will have acquired Winterflood's market-making capability, which is performing strongly on the Marek's platform at a material discount to tangible book value. We also completed a successful $500 million senior unsecured debt issuance, priced 50 basis points tighter than our previous deal, and the deal was highly oversubscribed. We are becoming a regular established issuer in the U.S., and this further diversifies our funding while reinforcing the strength of our balance sheet. We continue to make progress with our proposed redomiciling to Bermuda, which we expect to implement in the second half of 2026. The proposal is subject to shareholder approval at our AGM on May 21st and subject also to regulatory approvals. To recap what I said at Invest Today, we believe this is the right structure for the next phase of our growth, aligning the group more closely with how the business is managed and enabling us to scale more effectively across regions. This also helps simplify the unintended complexity that comes from being a UK incorporated company, which is US listed. We're very mindful of preserving shareholder rights and protections in the new structure, and critically, there will be no change to the underlying business model or operations. I'm pleased to share that April has continued the momentum we experienced in Q1. It is tracking above last year's April, which was a very strong month given the Liberation Day volatility and volume spikes. We are running above February's level of $38 million, but below March's exceptional 78 million. Turning to the outlook for the full year, while individual quarters are hard to forecast, our underlying trajectory, balanced growth, client wins, platform scaling, is very positive, and we've had a very strong start to the year. As a signal of the board's ongoing confidence in our growth outlook, we have announced an increased first quarter dividend of $0.16 per share, Now I'll pass over to Rob to go through the financials.