Welcoming. I am Ashish Sabadra, and I cover Information Services and Exchanges here at RBC. We are really excited to host Sarah, CFO of Nasdaq. Sarah, thanks for giving us this opportunity. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I'll start off on the topic that everybody's focused on at the tech conference, which is Gen AI. Of course. Maybe talk about both the top line and bottom line. On the top line perspective, maybe if you can talk about the proprietariness and how embedded within your client workflows you are, but also monetization opportunity. How do you think about monetization from Gen AI? We also would like to cover on the bottom line side, how do we think about investment, but also efficiency. Maybe if you want to start with the top line and monetization opportunity. No, that's great. I appreciate the question. We feel really good about GenAI for Nasdaq. If you try to look at why would we, I go back to 10 years ago, we went into cloud, and nine years ago, we went into AI, algorithmic AI. By the time you have that, you are like preparing your data for GenAI. We started doing that a long time ago. Some people have to do some major investments to do that. The second thing about data that we have is contributory data, which is moated. I think that's extraordinarily important as a differentiator because GenAI is lovely, but it works better on a lot of data. It can be done individually by a lot of people, but our data is only accessible by those who contributed. I'll give you two examples of that. Contributory data of Verafin, and that's $10 trillion or over $10 trillion in total assets of banks across 2,700 banks. It took us 15 years to assemble the data set. Somebody can maybe do it in five or in eight, but it's not something that can be done in two years. We're not sitting on those laurels. We are bringing GenAI, and I'll come back to that as to how we monetize there. Another example of contributory data would be eVestment. A thousand, and probably many of you in the room, allocators use it around 89,000 strategies. By the time you have that for public equities, you can add private equities, but being embedded in the workflows with that contributory data, you can't really go find that data somewhere else. Therefore, you buy it from us. We like that. By the time you have that, you can start doing GenAI on top of that. I'll use Verafin as an example of what we have done there. We have done first a copilot with GenAI, but that's still human in the loop at the bank, and then an agent on sanctions that gives our banks the opportunity not to have a person touch 80% of the sanctions. That's extremely valuable because now we're talking about our banks not only having less fraud thanks to us, which has an incredible ROIC, and that's done with algorithmic AI, but also being able to have efficiencies on the base. What you can... As As the banks, I used to be a bank CFO at UBS and at Chase. There are hundreds of people in compliance. We're not addressing some small groups of efficiencies, but a large group of efficiencies. We are seeing that on that, the banks are willing theoretically to pay. The model that we are using is copilots are embedded and are part of our net retention apparatus, adding value to our clients so that we can increase the pricing or get upsales. However, the upsales would be the agents. The agents are not like you have it, you need to pay for it to just have it on your platform, but above a certain volume. You get to use it, build the arbitration at the bank, and then pay for it. We do believe that the revenue that is influenced by GenAI is across all of Nasdaq. I just gave you two examples, but I could go into each of our products and that we have the opportunity to upcharge, but that at the beginning, it's important to give the arbitration. In terms of the bottom line, we are also doing it, so this was in the products, we call it on the business. Whether you are a finance function, a legal function, the product development, everybody is engaged in GenAI, and we are asking people to put real efficiencies in the budget. When we increased the number from $80 million to $140 million, we had already overachieved the $80 million. We also said we are going to do what we had done as efficiencies just in the fintech businesses beyond that, and we will have benefits of GenAI in there. We are delivering some of those benefits already. There are some dollars of efficiencies that are falling to the bottom line that are already linked to GenAI in client success, in the PDLC, and we are asking everybody everywhere to do it. I can show you the ones in finance, and everybody everywhere can give you theirs. That will continue to be an efficiency play that we continue to have. That's great, color. We'll talk about the cost synergies on the fintech side, but before we do that, I just wanted to drill down on some of the products. Particularly Verafin, the example that you gave, I want to talk about the business there. You've had a pretty big uptick in enterprise signing, both tier one and tier two clients. Can you talk about what's really driving those? Can you also talk about your pipeline going forward for more tier one and tier two customers? Yeah. Verafin is a great growth engine to calibrate. So far, just here in three quarters, we have three times the amount of signings in enterprise, and that's two times the ACV of signing. That is a moment that we've all been waiting for, and there is more to come. When you look at the cross-sell pipeline, which is not just Verafin, of course, it stayed steady at that 15%-ish level, which means that we are replenishing the pipeline. We have a bunch of POCs that are in place, including one that is in Europe, which will open a new market for us, but we also have some additional tier ones and tier twos in the U.S. that we continue to build the momentum for. We feel very well positioned. We're getting tremendous client feedback on the way we are utilizing the data. We are connected to 70 core banking systems in that business, which is really important to capture the 2,700 banks, but that's out of 10,000 banks, so we have plenty of other banks we could get. For the large banks, we are viewed as very innovative, and I had with one of them the discussion of build versus buy for them. I think they have all come to the realization that you cannot build the data set that we have, and therefore the only way to get the small banks' input into the big banks is us. That's true. I think the network effect is so evident, particularly in the case of Verafin. Just shifting gears on the fintech side, talking about the capital market technology, we saw a pretty good improvement there, 13% growth in the third quarter. What's driving that resumption? Can you help us understand how are you thinking about the growth across the different businesses within that, which is market tech, Calypso, and the trade management services? Yes. Once again, and I'm going to address GenAI in each of them just to make sure that I don't just talk about it for Verafin because we're very excited about it across our business. When you try to think about Calypso or trade management services or market tech, now you're into core infrastructure. If you're trying to think about Calypso, for example, we think that at the convergence of tokenization and GenAI, any bank is looking at it as if I am not using a provider, I should really think about that. I think maybe take exception for like three or four banks whose differentiation is that, and they have built fantastic systems. For the great majority of banks, you are not going to add tokenization in your Excel. When you're looking at Calypso having done already a collateral POC, that is something which they will rely on people like us to do. When you're looking at core infrastructure, you're also looking at something that's very, very difficult to displace with something that you can do yourself. It's not a simple workflow to put together. Could you imagine an agent that starts doing pre-trade, trade, collateral management, and with all of the connectivity to all of the things that need to work for that to happen? There is no little agent that does that, not even a good agent. We feel really good about the fact that we are entrenched, but we are also modular and therefore easy to add. Now that we have a cloud offering, it's really the foundation that we needed for Calypso to be able to do even more for our clients with that. If you then go into market tech, we are, I would say, the Rolls-Royce of market tech systems. To calibrate, we own and operate about 20 exchanges across the Nordics and the U.S., a bit in Canada, but we operate it for others. Think of it as SaaS in a box for 130 plus. That means 110 are done for others. We are very good at that. We have benefited from some of the new entrants in the space, especially on digital. Not just digital, but new players can use our technology and very much appreciate that. If you're looking at the last piece, trade management services, that's very different. That is connectivity that is really leveraging the trend of everything is faster. And in trading, the nanoseconds differentiations make a difference. People, hedge funds in particular, will pay a fair bit for that. We intentionally added space and power with our partner Equinix, and we've been able to monetize that, and you're seeing that in our results. That's great, color. Just shifting gears and talking about the last segment within fintech would be particularly regulatory tech. As you think about the regulatory environment, how do you think about, are the clients still waiting for some clarity on the regulatory side? How does that influence the regulatory tech? If you could also talk about some of the dynamic around professional services and some of the headwinds, but also tailwinds going forward as we think about the top line growth there. Yeah. So one more thing about the RegTech, this includes our Solovis business as well as AxiomSL itself. Talking first about the regulatory trend, at this point, there is good confidence that this government will do what is called smart regulation. There is no indication that there will be no regulation as opposed to smart regulation. That is very important for us because we can adapt to any regulation as long as there is some regulation. We do think that Basel III, which is a big element of regulation that was well expected by the banks, will come. There is a date that is in December on the schedule. That being said, with the shutdown, could it move into January? Absolutely, or even February. Do I have a specific date? No. Do I believe that we will have the clarity we were looking for for our clients to engage? Yes. More importantly, do our clients act as if they believe that? Absolutely. We are seeing that pipeline, and that is very hopeful. Across the world, our solutions are very much adopted. I think it's helpful to remind the audience of what we announced in the third quarter, which is this large bank which displaced a competitor, put us as AxiomSL in place in multiple regions. That confidence that we're getting, that's what happened to be a cross-sell too, is very much what we hoped is to become a larger partner to banks, not just in the U.S., but international banks, and having the coverage of 55 countries, 110 regulators, 5,500 reports, 3,000 updates every year. Again, that's very difficult to replicate. If you're thinking GenAI, what's your differentiation there? It's data lineage. Not only do we have the data for the AxiomSL reports, but we actually have the lineage that goes with it. If you ask a bank CFO, which I was one, what is the most difficult thing to do in bank infrastructure? It's data lineage. Theoretically, once you have the data in perfectly orderly form, you could do a reg to code. You will never want to be responsible for those 3,000 updates a year if you're large international banks in all of those countries. You do not even have the data organized in that form without using our tools. We feel very good about the protections we have. Not resting on those laurels, but adding GenAI on top of that, on top of surveillance to make sure that we continue to bring innovation to our markets. Surveillance, very nice performance. That's a business that has benefited from the Adenza acquisition. The leader of RegTech is an Adenza leader who's brought a lot of energy. You're hearing more about surveillance than you did in the past. That's for good reason because we are doing a lot with those roadmaps, and our clients are rewarding us with more business. That's great. Maybe just to follow up there, obviously you gave multiple examples of cross-selling and successes that you've had across all the segments within fintech. You've already guided to like $100 million of cross-sell synergies by 2027. Maybe just any more color on the progress that you're making towards the cross-sell. How should we see that momentum pick up, particularly on the cross-sell side? Yeah. We have continued to share, as you have just mentioned, the percentage of our fintech pipeline that is cross-sell. Whereas we had said that we wanted it to be around 10-11% or a bit more than that if possible, we have consistently now for some time given you a 15% or above type of number, which we feel is a very good number. It does take some time for that to translate into revenue, but we feel we are very well positioned to meet or exceed the $100 million. That's great, color. Just moving on to the capital access business, talking about the listing, obviously from your exchange perspective, you have really good visibility on the listing business. How do you think about the listing pipeline? How should we think about that contributing to your revenue stream going forward? Yeah. If you think about capital access platform, the listings franchise is very much part of our brand name. I think if you say Nasdaq, you say power innovation, NASDAQ- 100. That brand, which is now a top 100 global brand, is very, very rare to have a B2B brand that is actually a top 100 global brand by Interbrand. When you look at that survey, you have us, ahead of Tiffany, you have us with the Amazons and the Nikes and all of the things which you associate as big brands. Nasdaq is that brand. The listing franchise is very much associated with that brand. We feel very fortunate to have that recognition. We also work on it every day. This is both the listings and the switches. We have had very good momentum in both. We are really excited about the value proposition that we provide to our clients. The quality of trading, of course, the community, it's a very good group to be part of, to be around. We have about half of the market cap of the U.S., about 20% of the market cap of the world that is on Nasdaq. When you look at who that group of, it has, of course, the Max 7, but all of the players that are in NASDAQ- 100 and beyond are tremendous company. We also, I would say, go out of our way to use our marketing dollars towards helping the brands of our clients. We are very involved with our clients. I spend time with our CFOs. We also advocate on behalf of our listed companies, especially at times like now where there is advocate that can be done in a very productive way. We feel good about the franchise. We're well positioned. We have a nice pipeline, and it's part of the flywheel. It does mean that we are able to have the closing cross in market services. We have some data businesses associated with this and, of course, the index business, which is now an $800 billion business, and the revenue has multiplied by eight in eight years. Yeah, no, absolutely. That was going to be my follow-up question. Obviously, you talked about NASDAQ Index being such a strong franchise. How do you think about expanding that into new products or international markets? How do we think about the shift, the shift towards ETP? Any color on that front? Essentially expanding that product suite, obviously very strong franchise. Yeah. Index is a great business. If you go back to 2017, it was a $100 million franchise, about $100 billion of AUM. It was this little thing nobody talked about. Adena, rightfully so, deployed a lot of investments in that business, which still continues to have tremendous margins, by the way, even after the level of investments we have done. This is a fantastic high-margin business, but also high-growth business. We have three vectors of growth. One is continuing to add new products, so both NDX-related and non-NDX-related. That gives us also resilience in terms of inflows coming at times when people are looking for NASDAQ- 100 or NASDAQ- 100-related. We can provide yield through some of the products that are done around NDX, or we can be in totally different things that are in adequation with our brand Nasdaq. If you want the GenAI item, you can do it. If you want the data center, if you want, like we have lots of products that we build in partnership with asset management clients. Second is international. We used to be very much U.S. We believe that both in the queue in NDX-related products and beyond that, we can certainly add value to asset managers across the world. We have had very good growth there. The last one is institutional. Through our asset managers, our indexes so far end up in the hands of retail in general. Institutional is a big opportunity. We are still under-penetrated in that opportunity. We have put some investments to make sure that we continue to ramp up in that space. That's great, color. You mentioned a couple of times about the data business, that data business has been growing really fast. I think some of the flywheels that you get from listing and everything else, maybe just any other incremental color that you want to add on the data business. As we think about that proprietariness as well, like any color there as well. Yeah. Think about our data businesses in two parts. We've got regulated data. Everybody who's got an iPhone on the table and is checking the stock market is looking at Nasdaq Data. If you're looking at it in Excel, you're still using Nasdaq Data. If you are doing it through a retail brokerage and buying and selling, you're still using Nasdaq Data for a very good majority of the cases. If you're now sitting in Asia or in Europe and you want to trade in the U.S., you're still using Nasdaq Data very often. That was an example I gave yesterday on eToro. Whereas we have already the U.S., we just added a data set with 210 stocks that are in the Nordics, because actually if you are sitting in Oslo or in Stockholm, you might want to invest in the fantastic local companies that you have. You have a home bias, but you also want to invest in Apple or in any of the U.S. stocks that are here. That is the regulated data. We have another data set, which is whatever data set we can combine that gives alpha to a hedge fund, for example. That could be, if you want to invest in healthcare, we could partner with a healthcare company on getting some data from a healthcare company. We can then marry that with some of our data to provide alpha opportunities to our client, which of course can give us a good amount of pricing so that they can have access to that proprietary set. That's very helpful, color. Maybe just going on to your market services or the exchange business. You've recently filed a proposal for tokenized securities. Can you talk about how do you expect to benefit from a trading volume or capital liquidity margining perspective? Or how do you expect this whole exchange business to evolve? There's a lot of talk about tokenization. How will it be disruptive or additive to your existing franchise? We feel the proposal that we have put in place is additive. What's very important is to respect what exists. What exists is investor protection, market integrity, transparency, depth of liquidity pools. You have a U.S. capital markets that actually functions, functions extremely well at speeds that are extraordinary. We want to make sure that we embrace innovation while preserving what exists. One of the guiding principles in our proposal was, let's not break the liquidity pool. Let's make sure that each equity instrument is what it is. Now I think it is very helpful to provide the option for the settlement to be either in traditional form or in tokenized form. That's exactly what our proposal is. At the time of the trade, you can indicate whether you want a settlement in token form or in traditional form. That enables you to have the potential advantages over token, which could be mobility. You could potentially at some point have speed, although right now we are not changing the settlements to plus ones. All good. You certainly could see some applications in collateral management that would make it good. You could decide whether you want to do netting, but you would have opportunities to do that. We do think that it opens the aperture. It is really additive because it did not hurt the liquidity pool and the investor protections. Yeah, no, that's great, color. Just moving on to the cost synergies, you mentioned that upfront as well, how GenAI is driving a lot of efficiencies for you. You've already surpassed your $140 million of synergy guidance and hitting more closer to $150 million year to date. How do you think about the synergy in the context of that 5-8% expense growth as well? If you can help us understand, how do we think about further synergies and also the expense growth? Yeah. We have a very specific expense guidance for this year. That basically is supportive of the revenue growth that we have. The way you should think about it is there are really three parts to the expense. A structural part, which benefits from the efficiencies and is obviously also reflecting inflation and merit and other things that come through. You have volume related. By definition of many of our products being in the cloud, we have marginal costs, which we can work on having unit economics efficiencies, but by definition, more business equals more cost, but in a very productive way and at a high margin, incremental margin. We have the investments we are making. We're spending a lot of time in making sure that we are using, for example, GenAI in making those investments more efficient. We also spend a lot of time in capital allocation in our organic investments to make sure that we're deploying those dollars in ways that will both create the trust in the Nasdaq brand, because it's definitely a tenet of our brand, but also the innovation, which could be the R&D. I talked about cloud 10 years ago. We didn't have a good business case towards that, but we did it and we're so glad we did. There are things in R&D that absolutely need to be maintained. In between, you've got the shareholders' benefit. We have Horizon One and Horizon Two, Horizon One being twice your investment return in three years, Horizon Two in five years. That's great. Maybe I wanted to end with a question on capital allocation. You talked a lot about driving growth while investing organically, but how do, like with leverage now at 3.1 turns, expected to be 3 turns by end of the year ahead of your schedule, how are you thinking about capital allocation going forward? Particularly in light of, like, the stock has pulled back a bit, how do you think about buyback versus M&A or other uses of capital, deleveraging included? Yeah, I would say what you're about to hear is very much a continuity of what I have said and what Adena has said. We have a focus on organic growth. Before you get to our $2 billion plus of free cash flow, we have invested well in the business. That's incredibly important for the resiliency. The second part is we have a dividend that is progressive. We are continuing to do that. Then comes share repurchase, debt repurchase. We are at the point where we can be very smart and optimized about thinking about both of them. When you look at it in accretion dilution, some of those trenches of debt look attractive, but we're doing math. You will continue to see us optimize both in share repurchase because we like our stock and in debt repurchases. There could be a bolt-on. Of course there could be, but our focus right now is on organic. Okay, that's great. We'll leave it there. Thank you again. Thanks everyone for joining. Thank you, Sarah, for giving us this ballpark.