Okay, welcome back. I'll repeat, the 20th Annual Global Exchange & Trading Conference. We're getting to some of the mainstays of the conference that have been here since the beginning. It's my pleasure to introduce the Chairman and CEO of ICE, the Intercontinental Exchange. Jeff started, I don't have the name in I know what went public in 2005. Five. Mm-hmm. The, what was? Continental Power Exchange. The Continental Power Exchange. Then I decided it should be Intercontinental, and it shouldn't be limited to power. That's how the name came. Voila! Jeff, you know, thank you for participating all these years. I would say what has been an experience is, we had a running joke that Jeff would lay breadcrumbs of his ideas of where some of the strategies were going, whether it be about clearing, whether it be about taking data and algorithms and perfecting the exchange model. Yeah. ... new places like mortgage. Anyway, it's been great watching you innovate. I guess first question would be, as you look, you know, at the global economy, 'cause ICE has significant assets both in Europe, U.S., and does business beyond that as well, especially with the crude oil, et cetera. Right. When you look at the global economy, what are you seeing? You know, you're more focused on what happens in Europe, what happens even, you know, in Dubai and... Right ... in the Middle East. Mm-hmm. Global outlook. Well, first of all, let me. There's a lot of old friends in this room, so it's great to see your faces. Rich worked on our IPO, so he and I worked together in 2005. I just have always, you know, regarded you highly and have always wanted to do this conference, and appreciate everything you've done to support our company. We always, have Rich go first on our earnings call as you know. There was no bribery. Which is Well, it's a testament to the fact that... Thank you. ... you and I worked together to build this company and to a certain degree, and so thank you very much. We're gonna miss you. Thank you. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because we're somewhat feeling a sense of optimism. I think it was almost like, you know, for two years, everybody said recession was right around the corner, and people were looking at consumer spending and consumer savings and credit cards and all this, and everybody said, "Oh, the lines are gonna cross, and everybody's gonna run out of money, and we're gonna go into a recession." I felt like earlier this year, maybe the market just got tired of saying that. We mentioned on our earnings call, for example, that in our mortgage space, two-thirds of the people that are up for renewal on their contracts are renewing at higher volumes than they had before. Which is a, you know, one segment of a global economy, but is somewhat indicative of what we're seeing around the world, which is there's a sense that things are going well. In Europe, you know, it was only last year that people were saying that there were gonna be people dying in their homes for lack of energy and so on and so forth. Now, you know, just a year later, like, everybody's like: "Oh, yeah, we solved the energy delivery problems. We've redone the supply chains, and everything is fine." So it's a long-winded way of saying, globally, we feel sort of a sense of optimism, with everybody having a little asterisk by it, saying: "Yeah, but there still could be some, you know, catastrophic economic issue out there." It seems like they're taking it less seriously now, and we can see it in our contract renewals across the business. I mean, when you look at ICE's exposure, whether it be in crude oil products, particularly, you know, European, it's a global crude. Brent is global. Right. exposure right there to, you know, the sort of the geopolitical risks. When you look at rates, you know. Sure ... the short-term, your IBOR contract and mortgage. Yeah ... as well. Is there any particular. These businesses have improved, and you have easier comps in energy. Is there any particular business that you think will thrive? The flip side of the coin, is there anything you know, you're monitoring closely? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question because, really, I'm an engineer by education, and I think like an engineer. I still was able to find a great bride who is willing to deal with me. The, I really wanted the company to be an all-weather stock. We use that word, we talk about it, that, you know, some part of our business will do well in a high interest rate environment, some part will do well in a low interest rate environment, some part will do well if we have inflation, some will do well if we have deflation. The parts of the business that are slowing are sort of calculated in this environment to do that, and the parts that are rising are calculated in our minds to do that. The net total is growth, and it all seems to be working pretty well. You know, we run pretty much the global credit default swap market, which credit default swap is, if you don't follow that market. It's essentially protection against somebody with a bond defaulting. We had the biggest bond issuer almost default, the United States. You know, I don't know. It's just like we just kind of blew right through that, right? Our business is doing well there. I don't know how to explain it, other than there's a sense that it's all gonna work out, and ICE has a lot of products that help people hedge risk, and they're sort of being used around the world. With respect to Brent, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I've been at this conference for so many years. There have been years when some of you in the room have grabbed me and said: "Do you think, you know, this is the end of crude oil trading? You know, we're becoming a less carbon-based society." You could, you know, have that view, and yet our crude oil is trading at record volumes. Similarly, we're helping people with energy transitions. Our emissions contracts, our renewable energy contracts, our green contracts, even natural gas, which is a transition for many economies from coal and crude to something greener, they're all doing well. I mean, you know, when we built that complex, we thought we need to have the tools to make a transition, and one will go down, and another will go up, and it will be part of the all-weather name. Never thinking, is it possible they could all go up? They are. We feel very good about, you know, the business right now. Even though I don't, as an individual, I'm not confident that we're not gonna go through a recession. I'm just not seeing any signs of it in our customer base. I think you captured it. It's things look good, but you're everybody's a little bit reserved. Yes. Okay. Yeah. The theme of the conference is a celebration of electronic trade. We had Vinnie Viola. I saw that. ... a fellow classmate. Yeah. As well as Thomas Peterffy. He was talking about hockey. Yeah, we did talk a little bit about hockey. If anybody epitomizes bringing things electronic, the theme of electronic trading. Right. I was there when you brought the IP, not only the power exchange, but the IPE in London, whether the New York Board of Trade. I guess the question is, that brings us right to mortgage. Mm-hmm. You know, you talk about the different businesses and diversification, but this theme of electronics has not stopped with you. Right. I guess the question is, as you look at it now, you know, timing, you don't control the interest rate cycle? Right. Has it lived up to your expectations in regards to sort of the momentum of conversion? It's a great question. First of all, when I started ICE, Vinnie was, Vinnie Viola was at the NYMEX and was doing everything in his power to prevent us from doing what we were doing. He won't admit that yesterday. Yeah, including trying to buy. Yes ... and sued me, and we went all the way to the Supreme Court, and ultimately, ICE won. He and I have been longtime friends and colleagues. I have tremendous respect for him, even though. He saw the light, and he's probably done better than anybody in this room, embracing electronic trading. You know, it's interesting, I kind of have a dual answer, which is, I'm surprised that some company that was never in the mortgage business is able to actually go into a brand-new business and effect massive change, and it's working. Like, it's really pretty surprising. Like, there are some. The mortgage business is kind of at the heart of the banking business. It is the largest consumer loan. Banks really, you know, are in the loan business, and we've evolved the corporate borrowing into bond market now. That's kind of the mainstay of banking, and yet somehow, with thousands of banks and millions of borrowers, nobody has ever just said: "We should automate this process and streamline it in the way we're doing it." I'm kind of surprised that we're the ones doing it. It's definitely being embraced. We are really growing the parts of the business that we have. We're trying to acquire some other pieces and in an argument with the government over that, which I think if we can effect that merger, that we'll be really able to effect change and benefit consumers even beyond what we're already doing. The government will suggest that we would be very, very powerful, and I suggest that it's gonna take a powerful entity to change behavior for an entire industry. Anyway, that's kind of the argument we're having. We're doing well. If you go back to the history of ICE, which, you know, Rich, you witnessed, reported on diligently for years, I started the company, but it became successful when Enron collapsed, and we went into a minor... Right ... claw recession and a rethinking of corporate governance and everything that was surrounding that. We took off for energy trading. I started working on the credit default swap market in 2007. In 2009, you know, we had a financial crisis, and our CDS business took off. New York Stock Exchange, you know, that stock was once like $120 a share, and it went down to 22, and it was an unloved company. We stepped in and have completely rebuilt the tech. Every piece of technology in that company is brand new, and we built that bridge while the cars were driving on it, and in fact, driving 60 miles an hour over the bridge. These inflection points in businesses and in the economy are really the time that entrepreneurs should be building businesses. We announced recently, one of the world's largest banks is going onto our mortgage system. You know, a years ago, when mortgages were rocking and rolling, they had mortgages coming out of their ears, when you go in and talk to them about, "Would you like to abandon everything you've built and have us rebuild it on a different way?" They were like: "We don't need to do that. We've got so much business here, we, you know, I can't even keep up with it." It's times like this when you can go in and talk to managers and say, "You know, now is the time to get ready for the next cycle." We've done that over and over and over again. While you can't choose your timing, as you're right, when you do have these moments, you've really got to lean into them. Most entrepreneurs think the time to build a business is when money is free and everybody's doing well. It's a good time to raise money, but it's not necessarily a good time to build a business. All of the big tech companies, if you go back and look at them, they all came out of the dot-com boom. You know, all their competitors fell away, and then they, you know, became these monoliths. I like these periods, even though you got to navigate them. I gotta take the liberty to tell one story. My last conference, so I'm gonna. Jeff told me, and I've repeated this story over the years, but back, right before the financial crisis, we were talking and volumes at the exchanges had ballooned and increased. He said: "The CEOs of exchanges, we've had it easy because electronification have had boosted volumes." He goes, "Where I see things going is more towards the back office, more towards clearing, more the things that aren't the sexy, upfront matching engines." Mm-hmm. As I joked with Jeff, I said, "Now, it did take a financial crisis." The truth of the story is he went out and bought clearing assets. Mm-hmm. The Chicago Clearing? Yeah, the old Board of Trade Clearing Corporation. Yes. At one point, was the largest clearing organization in the world, but then after they moved their business to CME, it went to zero. But I had all the infrastructure there. There you go. You know? Lo and behold, I think governments now look at clearing as a systematic. That is that important. Swaps were forced into clearing to try to reduce. Right ... overall systematic risk. You're gonna be talking to Chair Gensler here shortly. You know, there are still assets that are not clear that the government, you know, for example, the treasury market, the Chair has talked a lot about treasuries. We sort of, you know, had a near-death experience in treasuries on whether they're gonna be a default. Certainly, you know, we saw Silicon Valley Bank and other large regionals that had, you know, tons of treasuries on their balance sheet that turned out to be much to their demise. There's another asset class that even, you know, something that's considered the gold standard of assets by people around the world. You know, you still have regulators saying maybe those should be cleared. It'll be an interesting question if we can get them off of equity market structure and crypto right now. Another asset class that you that you delved into is the fixed income, data business, data analytics. Yeah. It's another asset class that hasn't moved. Somewhat, it's moved somewhat electronically, but it hasn't gone full-fledged. I guess, what are your thoughts on how you're positioned? I know you've done well in munis. The business is recurring, it continues to grow consistently. Mm-hmm. Uh- Right What are your thoughts about that asset class in general? You know, I've been transparent that we were late to get into that class, and Bloomberg, and MarketAxess, and Tradeweb had already started the analog to digital conversion of trading. Clearing is and the consolidated tape is basically an industry utility. We looked at it and said: We wanna be in that business 'cause there is an analog to digital conversion. Where are the points that all of those people are ignoring? That's really how we got into the business that we're in. It was an area that we were late. I didn't see it as early as some of those guys. Actually, we saw it, and we didn't think it would be as valuable as it's become. We said, "Okay, we think fixed income is gonna be traded..." Owning a bond is hard, and particularly for a consumer or family office. We think there's going to be more ETFs built that are gonna make a, you know, a different kind of security that'll be easier to own, and you want to build a ladder. Also, you know, those people are gonna need indexes, and they're gonna need to mark to market, and they're gonna need all these back office services. That's, you know, going back to your earlier comment, it was an obvious area to us where we felt we could lean into and do well, and we are doing well there. We also saw that, you know, the platforms that I mentioned were really focused on the corporate bond market. We said: You know, there's a government bond market, and there's also a... Which people, you know, some of our peers and competitors are in, and but we saw this municipal bond market, which largely, if you don't follow that, it's retail-oriented because they're tax-exempt. They have particular allure to small family offices, small institutions in retail, which is not the, not the client base that those bigger platforms were going for. We said, "Let's go there." It's done well. We do have such a big footprint globally, that we're able to take that sort of retail-type market and expose larger institutions to it, who do wanna participate and see that flow, and see the trading opportunities, even though the real... what we call the paper. The paper in oil are the big oil companies. The paper in the muni market are retail, consumers and their advisors. Others wanna interface with the paper, and we're doing a. You know, it's taken a while. We rebuilt a lot of the highways to get people to it, but it seems to be doing really well now. Feel good about it. There was kind of a pause here, as interest rates went up with some of the large fixed income managers on what they were gonna do. You know, are we going to a recession? There was kind of fear in the market, I would say, one year ago, if we were talking about this. That seems to now be pretty much dissipating, except for the one little asterisk, where everybody says, you know, "It could happen." I want to leave plenty of time for the last question, but the only thing about fixed income, it does seem like it's going in, Not an evolution, but the more demand for real-time pricing. Yes. Will you be able to move, be flexible enough to participate? Yeah. You know, only, you know, a small percentage of, the fixed income market trades every day that can discover a real-time price. The vast majority, it's certainly over 80%, it may even be over 90% of the instruments, that are in the world, don't trade. People want real-time pricing because they may be thinking about selling them, and they certainly need end-of-day pricing to mark to market. That's all done through algorithms. We have developed a predecessor company that we acquired, that has been developing those algorithms for a decade. They've had constant feedback from the market, and they continue to get constant feedback. Very hard to replicate, particularly because it's not just having the algorithm, it's having confidence in the algorithm that you'd actually stake your own money on the output of that algorithm. You know, I don't think that's gonna go away just because of the nature of fixed income. I really think that the real-time market is gonna be, you know, on the run, you know, large names, recently issued, kinds of transactions. The vast majority that are gonna be sitting in ETFs and in fixed income managers are sedentary, but still need real-time pricing. That's the kind of thing we can do. I've waited, of all the CEOs to step up here. I think I wanted to ask you this question more than anybody else. Yes. it's because of your expertise and knowledge of bringing markets electronic. Mm-hmm. It's a technology question to wrap up. You know, As far as society, we're seeing advancements in technology, with AI, with ChatGPT. Mm-hmm. You sort of, what do you call? Created the framework to think about this, at least to me, even prior, when you talked about taking in massive amount of data, processing that data to instantly, efficiently make decisions, at least in... Again, I rate myself a two on a scale of 10 of knowledge of ChatGPT. Anyway, the question is: where does this technology ever have a role to play, in the trading business, in the exchanges business, in the clearing business? I know- Mm-hmm ... your weekly, whether it's a weekly or bi-weekly strategy sessions, I just suspect you might have discussed it. Yeah. Yeah. No, we've been really talking about trying to figure it out, like everybody. A lot of our peers have done deals with the big cloud providers and are, you know, doing prototype work around this. We've gone just the other way, which is, lots of AI and language providers have approached us, "Let's do some benchmarking, prototyping, and what have you." We say to them: "Okay, great. We have one of the largest financial databases in the world of both third-party information, who use our networks, and our own proprietary information." We say to them: "Why don't you give us one of your prototypes, and we'll run it in our data center?" They say: "Well, why don't you give us our data, your data, and we'll run it in our data center?" We say: "Well, we're in the data business, and you're in the software business. We should just license your software, and then we'll control it in our environment." They're like, "No, no, no. You don't understand. You know, we're doing this... We need all this computing power, you gotta do it in our environment." Our antenna have gone up that, wait a minute, you know, when we're trying to ask questions about who owns the data, what is the title? What are the copyright protections? Well, how If there is a consumer use of this, how will we charge for it? Who will bill it? None of those questions are answered. We have, in our company, said, "No one can bring that stuff into our data center." We've gone and got a team, and we're going through all of the data that we have, every little nook and cranny, and we're inventorying it and asking ourselves: "What are our proprietary crown jewels? What are some interesting pieces of data, but they may be available elsewhere? What is really public domain data that is ubiquitous, but happens to be in our data center?" We need to know that and know. I talk a lot on earnings calls that, you know, in a grocery store, you have to have milk, butter, and eggs, but everybody makes their money selling rotisserie chicken. You gotta have milk, butter, and eggs to get somebody to come to the store. You know, I wanna know: what are our rotisserie chickens, and what is the milk, butter, and eggs? Until we can figure out how we can perfect our ownership rights in that, we're not gonna let any of this stuff get nearby. I'm happy to let my peers go figure that out, but we haven't been able to, and we haven't been able to get straight answers yet. I think ultimately, there's going to be a lot of open source models. I think universities and others are working on these things. They will be open source models, the software itself will not be particularly valuable. What will be valuable is the dataset that software runs on, I think ultimately, we and lots of our peers in financial services will have these models available in our networks and data centers. The people that run these models will be doing so in our container, and this stuff will not get commingled with the broader information that's on the World Wide Web. That's my guess. Well, we're gonna check those breadcrumbs out. Those are the breadcrumbs to follow. Unfortunately, time is up, but I wanna thank you for Jeff and Kelly, for your friendship over the years. Watching you grow this multi-billion, I'm not even call it, enterprise now has been, you know, an experience. And I will see you soon because we've asked Rich to come in and ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Which In honor of all the work you've done. Thank you. Which is an honor. Yeah. Thank you. Great.