OTC Markets Group Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to OTC Market Group's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. 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 1-1 on your telephone. I would now like to hand the call over to Dan Zinn, General Counsel.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and welcome to the OTC Markets Group second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me today are Cromwell Coulson, 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 Factors section of our 2021 Annual Report, which is also 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 want to start by congratulating our team on the successful acquisition of Blue Sky Data Corp during the second quarter. We had a tight plan to execute and integrate. Shortly after closing, we quickly cut over production of the Blue Sky compliance data from their systems to ours and welcomed seven employees to our team. The Blue Sky Data Corp business is now fully integrated into our market data offering and technology platform. We offer our clients comprehensive data regarding state law compliance for over 100,000 equity and debt securities, in addition to the federal compliance data we already provided. This additional information enhances issuer compliance allows for greater automation by broker dealers and benefits investors. Over the long term, we see opportunities to add subscribers, broaden Blue Sky compliance, and expand distribution of our data in both equity and debt markets. Our business continued to grow during the second quarter. Following our record results during the first half of 2021, The year over year rate of increase slowed. We had lower transaction based revenues in our OTC link business, tracking the decline in trading volumes from last year's record activity. Our corporate services business achieved another quarter of impressive growth while the market data business line saw incremental growth and started to benefit from the blue sky acquisition. Our overall revenue mix looks similar to the first quarter of this year. with our base of corporate services and market data subscription revenues balancing out lower OTC-linked transaction fees. Our operating profit margin remained relatively flat year over year, while gross revenues grew slightly. Revenues, less transaction-based expenses, net income, and earnings per share all experienced solid growth. Antonia will cover our financial results in more detail in a few moments. We are strong believers that long-term success is not linear. Our overall approach is to focus on the areas in our operations that we can control and finding ways to provide unique value for our clients. This is most apparent in our OTC Link business. With trading volumes normalizing over the first half of this year, our team is focused on adding subscribers, gaining additional market share, and reducing operational risks. Our three trading systems, OTC Link ATS, OTC Link ECN, and OTC Link NQB, offer our broker-dealer subscribers a range of market structure tools from which to choose. Each ATS offers subscribers a different choice. Connected together, they strengthen the overall network of broker-dealer subscribers using our systems to transact efficiently, serve investor needs, and achieve better trade executions. Our OTC Link ECN ended the quarter with more than 100 subscribers for the first time in its history, further demonstrating the value of the business model. Our subscribers also continue to rely on us as a qualified IDQS under SEC Rule 15 . We take great pride in performing this critical monitoring role for our industry, and we are excited to expand the opportunities for companies to go public and be public. Security and uptime of our core SCI regulated trading system remains a priority, and throughout the second quarter, we delivered consistent, reliable service to our broker-dealer community. We earn that every day. Our team's focus on quality, reliability, and regulatory compliance is a core aspect of our processes and culture. The corporate services business reached an exciting milestone last month. with 600 companies on the OTCQX Best Market. After reaching 500 companies just last year, we are proud of this noteworthy achievement. Our goal remains to help companies efficiently inform and access U.S. investors, and with 600 OTCQX companies, along with over 1,200 companies on OTCQB, we are executing on that objective. The remarkable growth of these markets exemplifies the value of our data-driven market standards and tailored public disclosure platform. On the heels of the Rule 211 changes last September, we also continue to see increasing demand for our disclosure and news service, which allows companies to publish current disclosure directly to our website. we saw a 62% increase in the number of companies subscribing to our DNS offering over the prior year. Our market data licensing business saw increases in the number of professional users and enterprise licenses, while the number of non-professional users declined in line with retail investor activity in our markets. The continued incremental organic growth in market data was indicative of broader global and domestic interest in our markets. During the second quarter, we also took another step in broadening our global reach, adding a sales representative in Singapore to cover Asia. This will allow us to better serve international issuers and market data users in the region as we continue to grow and build our network there. Throughout the first half of 2022, We have continued to pursue our 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 markets 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 August 9th, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of 18 cents per share payable in September. This dividend reflects our ongoing commitment to providing superior shareholder returns. With that, I will turn the call over to Antonia.