OTC Markets Group Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the OTC Markets Group second quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Speaker Day. Dan Zinn, General Counsel and Chief of Staff, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and welcome to the OTC Markets Group second quarter 2024 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 2023 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 will discuss our second quarter 2024 results at a high level and we'll review our operational and strategic priorities. Gross and net revenues each grew 1% versus the second quarter of 2023. and remained relatively flat over the first half of the year as compared to last year. Among our business lines, OTC Link experienced the highest growth, up 12% during the quarter, while market data rose by 1%, corporate services revenue decreased during the second quarter and for the six months of the year. Antonia will review our financial results in greater detail in a few moments. OTC links strong quarter was due largely to increase trading volume across our markets. While we cannot control market activity in any given quarter, we consistently look to add and refine features to provide the best possible experience for our broker dealer subscribers. Last quarter, We discussed the addition of closing cross functionality on our matching engine ATS. In May, we announced our intent to launch OTC overnight. OTC Link and our broker dealer subscribers provide the engine for our entire business. Our mission is to create better informed and more efficient data-driven markets. As a first guiding principle in pursuing that mission, our trading and data businesses must allow our broker-dealer subscribers to trade any security that has investor demand in an efficient and compliant manner. By supporting the success of a diverse community of broker-dealers, we have grown the number of securities traded and have become a global market. ADRs and ordinary shares of non-US companies now comprise over 84% of dollar volume across our markets. Providing a broad suite of trading services remains at the core of our enterprise, and initiatives such as closing cross and overnight trading underscore just how much value we place on this part of our business. Our market data results reflect growth in some areas and work to do in others. The Blue Sky business continues to grow, adding revenue in each quarter since our acquisition. We still need to up our game adding client value to the Edgar Online data sets and creating new solutions for subscribers. The better we are at delivering useful information onto investor screens and into broker-dealer machines, the more thoughtfully and widely our data is used, the stronger our data-driven market model becomes. The corporate services business has been impacted by a reduced number of subscribers throughout the year. OTCQB in particular has continued to see a number of financially stressed smaller companies drop from the market due to noncompliance with the OTCQB rules. Our second guiding principle is the pursuit of increased issuer engagement which drives market quality, price efficiency, and trading volume by improving information availability, data integrity, and compliance. This benefits investors, brokers, and our markets. Our OTCQX and OTCQB markets and suite of corporate services products provide an opportunity for public companies to own their symbols, serve shareholders, and engage with U.S. investors. For global companies, we provide a unique and streamlined way to connect a company's local primary listing to U.S. valuations and secondary liquidity. As we seek to engage more companies to take ownership of their trading, we have reorganized our corporate sales and support resources into three regional teams covering the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. This will better focus our sales efforts on areas of growth around the world. Corporate services and their success is paramount to creating informed and more efficient data-driven markets. It is imperative we keep advancing our product offering by better utilizing our increased regulatory role, breadth of data services, and expanded technology platform to connect the majority of companies to their U.S. securities markets. While we pursue growth through new product and service offerings over time, we also take seriously our responsibility to be careful commercial operators and thoughtful fiduciaries of our shareholders' resources. Our operating expenses during the second quarter and first half of the year grew by approximately 1%, in line with gross and net revenues. We continue to enhance our compliance and market integrity functions through in-house talent and third party experts. Operating in a highly regulated space requires that we stay vigilant in meeting our regulatory obligations and our responsibilities to our clients and our shareholders. Compliance and technical competence also form the foundation of our growth efforts. Each new initiative springs from an investment of time and resources that provide a framework to build scalable operations that thrive over the long term. Overnight stock trading has quickly gained interest across the industry, and we are looking forward to launching our OTC overnight business. The overnight market will offer trading in OTC equity securities from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern Time, Sunday through Thursday. Our broker-dealer subscribers will be able to offer investors access to thousands of global equity securities during Asian market hours, at European market open, and overnight in the U.S. We will be able to share the benefits of scale through existing connectivity and infrastructure with our subscribers. Similarly, overnight trading can help introduce our comprehensive market data coverage to new groups and geographies. I look forward to updating you on overnight trading and other initiatives across our business lines as the year moves on. On a more macro level, we continue to make progress in our five strategic priorities this year. One team, one platform driving results to build the value of one share. Under the initiative, we continue to integrate our teams and consolidate our technology platforms to drive operational efficiencies and client value in pursuit of revenue growth. Second, increase the number of securities on our markets. Our near-term opportunity is greater global trading supported by overnight access to the securities trading on our markets. We also seek to increase the breadth and depth of ADR and foreign ordinary shares traded in US dollars by US broker-dealers to grow the size of our markets by adding securities, new asset classes, and trading functionality for our broker-dealer subscribers. Third, transform the client connection and improve the quality of information. For markets to work best, useful data needs to be on investor screens and in broker machines, connecting company information with trading decisions, facilitating investment analysis, and supporting operational and compliance processes. Fourth, mitigate operational risk and strengthen regulatory compliance. In keeping with our focus on market integrity and compliance, we invest in our core trading infrastructure, operational processes, and risk management systems, as well as our regulatory procedures. In each case, to enhance their reliability and our compliance with securities laws and regulations. Fifth, grow revenue across business lines and align resources with long-term value creation. This strategic initiative is woven into the fabric of everything we do. We continue to focus on being good stewards of our markets and thoughtful commercial operators to align our operating costs with recurring revenue generation, where managers intelligently allocate company resources and act as fiduciaries to generate sustainable value for our shareholders. In closing, I'm pleased to announce that on August 6th, 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.