OTC Markets Group Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the OTC Markets Group fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would like to hand the conference over to speaker today, Dan Zinn, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and welcome to the OTC Markets Group fourth quarter and year-end 2021 earnings conference call. With me today are Cromwell Colson, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Antonia Georgieva, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will be accompanied by a slide presentation. Our earnings press release and the presentation are each available on our website. Certain statements during this call and in our presentation may relate to future events or expectations and, as such, may constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information concerning risks and uncertainties that may impact our actual results is contained in the risk factor section of our 2021 annual report, which was published yesterday and is available on our website. For more information, please refer to the Safe Harbor Statement on slide three of the earnings presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Cromwell Coulson.

Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I wanted to start by acknowledging the tragic events taking place in Ukraine. We stand in solidarity with the brave Ukrainian people and hope for a peaceful resolution that preserves their citizens' freedom and independence. 2021 was a year of both volatility and change. Throughout it all, I remain extremely proud of our colleagues' commitment to upholding our mission to create better informed and more efficient financial markets. Our team's collaboration and execution across all levels is extraordinary. I am honored to work with this dedicated group who kept our markets open and operating. We delivered outstanding results for our clients and shareholders in 2021 and discovered new ways to live our values of being open, transparent, and connected. Our results for the full year 2021 reflect the success we reported throughout the first three quarters. We saw increased demand for our products and services across all business lines. Client demand and higher regulatory standards, along with strong execution and a focus on leveraging technology to scale quickly and meet our clients' needs, led to record financial results. Gross revenues surpassed $100 million for the first time in our history, increasing 45%. Net income grew 67% compared to 2020. And as a result, our earnings per share and operating profit margin also experienced significant expansion. Antonia will cover our financial results in more detail in a few moments. Our cornerstone project last year was the implementation of the SEC's amendments to Rule 15C2-11. This initiative brought our entire organization together, with each department playing a key role in achieving a shared objective. It required us to remain connected to our clients, regulators, and other stakeholders, helping to foster industry-wide communication and transparency. As a regulated market operator and a qualified interdealer quotation system under Rule 211, we have an opportunity to enhance our products and services to make it less burdensome for companies to go public and to be public. With data-driven markets, we can improve information for investors while supporting industry-wide compliance initiatives. we intend to build on our enhanced regulatory role to create new opportunities for our clients to be more successful. In our OTC Link business, trading volumes leveled off in the fourth quarter from the highs earlier in the year. We continue to enhance the efficiency of our systems and add features to improve the value of our three ATSs for our subscribers. For example, OTC Link ATS's role as a qualified IDQS allows our subscribers to rely on our publicly available determinations regarding Rule 211 compliance, easing their regulatory burdens, increasing the number of securities available to trade, and supporting a more transparent public market. Security and uptime of our core SCI regulated trading systems remains a top priority. And throughout 2021, we delivered consistent, reliable service to our broker-dealer community. Our corporate services business grew at an unprecedented rate during 2021, adding more than 100 companies on the OTCQX market and more than 200 on OTCQB. Each market finished with its highest ever year-end count of companies and securities. The ongoing growth and development of each of these markets exemplifies the value of our data-driven market standards and technology platform. We understand that a company's decision to join OTCQX or OTCQB involves an active choice to meet our market standards, and we value the relationships we have built with over 1,500 companies on these markets. Led by our disclosure and news service, our suite of corporate services for distributing investor information, compliance, and governance credentials also experienced its highest growth year in 2021. doubling the number of corporate clients year over year. The Rule 211 compliance date proved a significant influx of DNS users as companies worked to ensure they could disseminate current public information in compliance with the rule for the first time. And other long-term subscribers strengthened their engagement to ensure they could retain public quotes. Our market data licensing business completed its own record year with a strong fourth quarter. User growth throughout the year highlighted broader global and domestic interest in our markets and the data we provide. We remain focused on growing our global subscriber base and providing enhanced compliance data, including data focused on Rule 211 compliance, to a wider group of industry participants. 2021 was a transformational year for OTC Markets Group in becoming a better regulated market operator. It was just a decade ago that our trading platform registered with the SEC as an alternative trading system. Rule 211 has modernized the SEC disclosure requirements for publicly traded companies and recognized our role as a qualified IDQS with enhanced FINRA SRO oversight of our trading operations and issuer qualifications process. is within that regulatory framework, we can now bring greater benefits of being public to a wider spectrum of companies. We enter 2022 with four strategic initiatives structured around continuing to serve our clients and shareholders. First, drive sustainable revenue growth across each of our business lines that increases long-term per share earnings power. Second, commercialize our enhanced regulatory status under Rule 211 to create new opportunities for public companies and broker-dealers. Third, advocate for additional regulatory recognition of our market to increase the value of being public. Fourth, pursue corporate development efforts to grow and diversify our product suite and client base. In closing, I am pleased to announce that on March 7th, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of 18 cents per share, payable later this month. This dividend reflects our ongoing commitment to providing superior shareholder returns. With that, I will turn the call over to Antonia.