OTC Markets Group Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to OTC Markets Group third quarter 2026 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, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now it's my pleasure to turn the call to the General Counsel and Chief of Staff, Dan Zinn. Please proceed.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to the OTC Markets Group Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining 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. Information concerning risks and uncertainties that may impact our actual results is contained in the risk factors section of our 2025 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, and thank you for joining us. I will begin by reviewing our third quarter 2026 results at a high level and will then turn to a discussion of our performance and priorities for the year. Gross and net revenues each grew by 7% during the third quarter, up 12% for the first nine months of the year. All three business lines grew revenue during the quarter, and our year-to-date results continue to reflect the strength of our interconnected business model. During the quarter, OTC Link was up 17%. Market data increased 7%. and Corporate Services was up 2%. OTC Link continued to lead our growth, driven by higher volumes across our ATS platforms, even as trading on Moon pulled back during the quarter. With overall activity on our markets increasing, we remain focused on providing trusted, reliable service to support our broker-dealer subscribers. Market data growth this quarter came primarily from professional user licenses and delayed data licenses supported by price increases and new subscribers. In corporate services, the third quarter marked the first anniversary of the OTCID basic market launch, which means our year-over-year comparisons now reflect a full year of OTCID. Our premium markets continue to grow. with OTCQX and OTCQB revenues up 6% and 4% respectively, driven by higher company counts and pricing adjustments. We ended the quarter with 589 OTCQX companies up 7% from a year ago. We continue to focus on reducing OTCQX churn through product enhancements and education to increase user engagement and overall client success. With respect to operating expenses, we saw an 8% increase in the third quarter and a 9% year to date. Our largest expense remains the investment in our people. It is our job as management to put our resources in the best possible position to achieve positive results for our clients and our shareholders. I remain extremely appreciative of the dedication and client-centric approach our OTC Markets team brings every day. Speaking of our team, I am thrilled to officially welcome Megan McGowan as our EVP of Corporate Services. In taking leadership of our global sales and success teams, Megan brings expertise working alongside executives at leading public companies, helping them better understand their shareholder base, enhance governance, and identify opportunities to engage new investors. As more companies look to expand their U.S. investor reach on our OTCQX, OTCQB, and OTCID markets, Megan's leadership and insight will be invaluable in shaping how we support growth for our corporate clients and expand our platform's functionality to improve market quality. With respect to the strategic initiatives we carried into this year, the OTCID basic market has become an established part of our tiered market structure. At a year old, we have seen companies use OTC ID as an entry point to public markets so they can start engaging with investors and complying with securities laws. OTC ID serves as a landing point for companies seeking to stay connected to their market and their investors, even when unable to meet our higher market standards. The increase in new sales and retention on OTCQX and OTCQB can be partly attributed to the introduction of OTCID and our ability to reach and connect with a greater pool of issuers. Connected companies qualified for trading on our premium markets contributed approximately 24% of the dollar volume during the third quarter. We built our overnight trading capabilities during 2025 and saw that carry into an active first half of 2026. However, NMS volume on our Moon ATS dropped off during the third quarter and the dynamics will shift again with the impending entry of the NMS exchanges into the overnight market starting in December. We have long recognized the importance of building our operations to serve broker-dealer subscribers as equity markets move to O is on trading. Our experience with Moon will help us support reliable OTC overnight trading as investor demand expands. Turning to our 2026 initiatives, we continue to prepare for the introduction of tokenized and digital asset securities into our markets. Our strategic alliance with BitGo lays the groundwork for broker-dealers to use OTC Link ATS for tokenized stocks into US regulated markets and provides a model for the settlement and custody infrastructure. The regulatory and legislative environment for digital assets and tokenization is moving forward. While the Clarity Act did not happen The rules of the road are becoming clearer. US regulators are diligently working to adopt their rule sets so broker-dealers will be able to use blockchain technologies and lawfully trade tokenized securities. Our aim with digital assets tracks our underlying goal for all of our trading services. We stand ready to support our FINRA member broker-dealers Public companies, market data clients, and other market participants as they innovate and grow their businesses with these new technologies. To that end, trading of OTC securities on our markets has maintained record levels throughout the year. Total OTC market dollar volume traded grew to over $670 billion through the end of the third quarter. An increase of more than 27% over the record levels of volume we experienced through this point in 2025. As markets grow, we remain dedicated to providing our subscribers with elegant, reliable, and cost-effective data-driven solutions that improve The connectivity and quality of our markets and to support the continued growth of our clients. We also spent the third quarter supporting our regulatory agenda and modernizing rule sets. A big focus is increasing the benefits and reducing the burdens of securities laws so we grow the number of public companies. Small company capital raising, recognition of our OTCQX and OTCQB markets, and achieving regulatory parity between qualified companies on our markets and those on NMS exchanges are all top priority initiatives. The SEC spent the first half of the year developing and rolling out proposed rules advancing many of these points. Specifically, the SEC's proposal for the first time formally recognizes OTCQX and OTCQB as qualifying public trading markets on which issuers conduct at the market offerings. We are committed to working with regulators and our industry partners to make these proposals a reality so they can provide real value for issuers of securities traded on our markets. On the legislative front, we have long advocated for the modernization of rules that would provide domestic OTC securities and ADRs a pathway to margin eligibility. I'm pleased to report that the recently introduced Margin Eligibility Modernization Act in Congress would take great strides towards achieving that goal. Seeing that bill introduced represents considerable progress. There is still much more work to be done. At the beginning of this year, we announced a strategic determination to increase our quarterly dividend to better balance the ratio between quarterly and special dividends. Our strong operating results give us the flexibility to continue returning capital to shareholders while investing in our operations. We have also begun opportunistically buying back shares in the public market. I am pleased to announce that on November 10th, our board of directors declared a special dividend of $1.75 per share and a quarterly dividend of 30 cents per share, each payable in December. These dividends reflect are ongoing commitment to providing superior shareholder returns. With that, I will turn the call over to Antonia.