As we kick off today's OTC Markets Group Investor Day, I'd like to share that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements included in our presentation materials. We have an exciting program for today, which will begin with opening remarks from our President and CEO, Cromwell Coulson. Welcome to our OTC Markets Group 2022 Investor Day. I'm R. Cromwell Coulson, President and CEO of OTC Markets Group. It is my pleasure to kick off today's event. As I reflect on what our team accomplished during 2021, I'm excited for the opportunities that lay ahead of us. 2021 was a record year for our business. The results we achieved reflected strong client-focused execution, increased product demand, and our commitment to meeting higher regulatory standards across our markets. Gross revenues surpassed $100 million for the first time in our history, up 45% from the prior year. Our earnings per share increased 65%. Each business line contributed to the company's success as we pursued our mission of creating better informed and more efficient financial markets. 2021 marked the fifth consecutive year of revenue growth for OTC Markets. Our financial stewardship allowed us to deliver 49% growth in capital return to our shareholders. We operate a service business, making consistent investments in our people and platform to provide useful solutions to clients. With a focus on long-term progress and thoughtful management of operating expenses, we are well-positioned to build on our recent success and deliver sustainable value to our shareholders. Our strategy remains focused on driving revenue growth by enhancing the capabilities of our core trading services, market data, and corporate services business lines to provide greater benefits and operating efficiencies for our subscribers. We strongly believe that our future is predicated upon supporting the collective success of our clients. We are committed to delivering on four strategic initiatives. First, commercialize our regulatory role under Rule 15c2-11 to create new opportunities for companies to be public and enhance our technology platforms so that broker-dealers can efficiently and compliantly trade more securities. Second, advocate for additional regulatory recognition of our markets to increase the value of being publicly traded and remove market inefficiencies. Third, pursue corporate development efforts to grow and diversify our product suite and client base. Fourth, drive sustainable revenue growth across each of our business lines, which increases per-share earnings power over the long term. Throughout our history, OTC Markets has increased the level of transparency in the market and improved the availability of information for investors, brokers, and regulators. We believe that competitive markets thrive in daylight. We play an expanding role in supporting critical trading infrastructure that improves the integrity and price efficiency of financial markets. The implementation of amendments to SEC Rule 15c2-11 in September 2021 represents a culmination of these efforts, building a strong base for the future. This was a complex effort to deliver for broker-dealers and public companies the infrastructure to support Rule 15c2-11 compliance. Our on-time delivery reinforced over a decade of enhanced regulation that began back in 2012, when OTC Link LLC was established as a FINRA member broker-dealer and OTC Link ATS as an SEC-regulated alternative trading system. Regulatory modernization, increased responsibilities, and recognition of our data-driven disclosure standards form the foundation of our public markets. We are now recognized as a regulated market operator and a qualified interdealer quotation system. Our role as a qualified IDQS allows our broker-dealer subscribers to rely on our publicly available determinations, which eases their regulatory burdens, increases the number of securities available to trade, and supports a more transparent public market. With three distinct markets, the OTCQX Best Market, OTCQB Venture Market, and the Pink Current Market, we inform investors and give public companies a stairway of standards to climb as they build their businesses. Our markets can accommodate the needs of companies at their infancy and through maturation, with tailored standards to support a diverse range of industry leaders and market innovators. Collectively, the OTC Markets provides companies with a gateway to become public and the building blocks to establish themselves as public citizens, inform investors, and demonstrate their compliance with securities laws. Last year alone, we saw over 200 companies join our OTCQX market and more than 400 join OTCQB. Each market finished with the highest ever year-end count of companies and securities. We take tremendous pride in this milestone and the relationships we've established with over 1,500 companies that choose to trade on these markets. Our corporate service team continues to build on this momentum, educating companies across the U.K., Western Europe, Australia and the Nordics on the differentiated value proposition our premium markets offer to international companies. Our OTCQX and OTCQB markets are objective solutions for engaged global companies seeking more efficient access to the U.S. capital markets by digitally distributing their disclosure data and governance credentials. Beyond corporate services, strong growth in users and the expansion of our real-time data and compliance products remain a priority for our market data licensing business. We continue to add U.S. international distributors of real-time quotes, broadening the reach of our market data to a wider audience of institutional and retail investors across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Canada. We also recently announced our plans to acquire Blue Sky Data Corp, a leading provider of data on Blue Sky rules and regulations. This acquisition will result in a fully integrated product suite that provides a holistic, comprehensive view of Blue Sky secondary trading compliance. This unique data offering will help our broker-dealer subscribers and public companies improve their compliance and understanding of state securities laws. Our goal is to deliver this information in the most efficient format for broker-dealers, financial advisors, public companies and regulators in both equity and fixed income markets. Collectively, our three distinct business lines form a cohesive, mutually reinforcing offering to a broad range of market participants. We generate diversified revenue streams, providing a stable foundation for growth. We benefit from a subscription-based revenue model, with over 70% of our revenues in 2021 coming from subscription-based arrangements that are recurring in nature. Over the past year, we have managed a substantial increase in customer demand for our corporate services products, driven user growth in our market data business, and handled record trading volumes on our ATSs. We have demonstrated our ability to provide reliable platforms that adapt and grow in lockstep with investors, broker-dealers, corporate clients, and our broader community. Today, you will hear more from members of the senior leadership of OTC Markets Group as they discuss strategies for managing our business lines and the growth trajectory of the company. I look forward to your questions and the opportunity to provide further context at the end of the next discussion. Thank you, Cromwell, and good morning, everyone. My name is Kristie Harkins, and I'm the Chief Marketing Officer here at OTC Markets Group. I'm pleased to be joined by Jason Paltrowitz, our EVP of Corporate Services, and Dan Zinn, our General Counsel. Gentlemen, to start things off today, I just wanna kind of expand upon our overall performance, which Cromwell touched on. Jason, I'll first turn to you. If you could just talk a little bit about the key drivers that you saw in the business last year and what led to our overall growth. Sure. Thanks, Kristie. I think there were two key things for last year that led to our growth. First is obviously COVID. You know what we saw through the COVID crisis was companies really trying incredibly hard to reach out to U.S. investors. You saw a tremendous disconnect between valuations around the world and companies in the U.S. And you saw primarily out of Australia, Europe, Canada, companies trying to bridge that valuation gap. Being able to access U.S. retail investors was really pivotal in being able to do that. The second thing would be around Rule 15c2-11 that I believe Cromwell touched on. You know, companies were now forced into a situation or not forced, but wanting to be in a situation where they were providing timely disclosure to their U.S. investors. U.S. investors that are so important, as I just mentioned. We saw a tremendous amount of companies coming to us wanting to be open and transparent, meet U.S. securities laws and provide the most disclosure possible in order to be on our market. Yeah. I think that in terms of the specific key drivers, that's exactly right. To me, the point is being prepared for those kinds of events. Mm-hmm. Extreme volatility and more volume in terms of trading. If we didn't have our OTC Link ECN in place, we wouldn't have been prepared to take advantage of that piece of market structure and that piece of how business sort of grew last year. Similarly, Jason referenced Rule 15c2-11. That was a long time of working with the SEC and working with our industry partners to get that rule implemented, to get us to a point where we could have a service for those companies that wanted to remain compliant and stay on our market. I think all of that tied together in terms of drivers, to just put more focus on the market and more focus on what we do, which really drives our market data business as well. Mm-hmm. The more people and entities that are interested in the kind of data we provide and where that market data business can grow. It kind of creates that cycle or that flywheel effect with each of those business lines kind of driving the other one. Exactly. We certainly, you know, talked a bit about in Cromwell's remarks about the changes to Rule 15c2-11. I think one of the things we often get asked by investors is, okay, so that had a big impact in 2021. What does that look like moving forward for the business? I think it really is important to reference how long the process was prior to Rule 15c2-11 being implemented in September of last year. Really, what happens when a rule like that comes into place is this mad rush of activity, which we saw and Jason referenced in terms of U.S. companies really wanting to ensure their compliance. Those compliance rules stay in place. For all of the companies that, let's say, joined our disclosure and news service in order to be able to reach their investors and put out compliant disclosure, they're going to have to continue to do that in order to maintain compliance with the rule. I think as we continue to show the benefits of being compliant and having a public quote, the number of companies that are interested, the types of companies that are looking at our markets is only gonna grow. You'll see that impact over time. It won't be a single event like it was last year, but it will be this ongoing sort of focus on our part of the market. Yeah. I think when you look at corporate services, you really have to remember the world is our oyster, so to speak. You know, there's tens of thousands of equities around the world, most of which want to access U.S. investment, and most of which want to be and maintain compliance to the rules under 15c2-11. For us, as we grow the business out in the future, we're looking at new markets. We're looking at, you know, new companies that are coming to market in their own countries that are gonna wanna access the U.S. We look at our Virtual Investor Conferences series as a driver. That continues to bring some traction as more and more companies, you know, are looking at travel budgets but still want to be able to access those investors. We're really just the tip of the iceberg if you think about the number of countries and companies that we can provide services for. That really helps kind of amplify or answer that question, in terms of what the company's growth trajectory looks like as we move forward. Yeah. I think to some degree it does, right? With a specific regulation like 15c2-11 and some of the specific points of focus. More than that, it's continuing to do what I referenced earlier, which is remain kind of ahead of the curve. When we have a strategic plan for enhancing the kinds of services we can offer our broker-dealers, that comes to fruition in the form of something like OTC Link ECN, which then is able to step in and provide a really needed service, when volatility and volume rose like they did last year. That's going to be part of how we continue to grow going forward, is remaining in touch with our subscribers and understanding what their needs are gonna be going forward, and then being able to execute when the time comes and when those needs arise. Certainly, I would think for you, Jason, just bringing some of those companies into the OTC news and disclosure fold under the C point that sort of then allows you to amplify and look at how you really elevate that company into either our OTCQX or our OTCQB markets. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. We've really transformed from, you know, what I would call a nice to have, right? It was really more about how you access U.S. investors and part of the team investor relations strategy. For most companies around the world now, in order to kind of have the right market here, a must-have. And as we're engaging with those companies primarily through the disclosure and news service, they're seeing the opportunity that our premium markets afford them and want to kind of upgrade as they go through the process. Going back to that kind of to a cycle or the circle, the more people that are trading, the more volume that's going through our platform, the more people that are taking our market data, right? We started to see interest out of Asia. The more companies are starting to see that, and really it just feeds the demand for issuers wanting to be on our markets. As I said before, it is the tip of the iceberg in that we're really focused on certain key regions, and now we're gonna continue to expand out from there. I think one of the other interesting points or issues that Cromwell mentioned was the announcement that we recently signed a deal to acquire Blue Sky Data Corp. I think maybe, Dan, if you could just tell us a little bit more about what that means for the market data business, but also for how we think it will help the business overall. Sure. I mean, on a granular level, what that does is provide us with state level compliance data. That's what we're already doing through Rule 15c2-11 on a federal level. For a broker-dealer compliance department or a clearing firm compliance department, having a view into both state and federal law and how companies are complying and how securities are complying with those is gonna be a nice additional offering. I think on a broader level, it speaks to what we're able to do when the market becomes educated about the services we provide. Which is really a lot of what Jason was referring to earlier. The more we become that touch point, the more interest there is in our market data, the more likely a broker-dealer compliance department is going to look to us for, you know, compliance analytics data, some of the other offerings that we have. The more educated the people in those compliance departments become, the more comfortable they become with things like differentiating OTCQX and OTCQB from the same concept and just having a better understanding of how our market structure operates. It's a seemingly small piece of the puzzle. Mm-hmm. It actually has an effect that will be outsize compared to the size and scope of that particular business. Well, really continues to speak to the journey that we've been on in terms of becoming a regulated entity and having that both federal level regulation, but also then the state level regulation that's kind of continuing to bring that all together. Sure. It's for us 15c2-11 really represents an inflection point of some sort. I think the Blue Sky Data acquisition adds to that, where now the industry and even regulators are looking to us as the source of this information, and as a reliable and regulated market that they can really understand and grow with. I think again, that just feeds the issuers because they're being told by their investors, by the broker-dealers that they're working with, by their advisors and their investment bankers, that there are now key standards in the U.S., you know, that companies need to meet. There's disclosure requirements. There's state securities laws. There's all of these things that companies need to think about, not as necessarily limiting institutions from taking investment. If you wanna broaden and diversify your shareholder base as much as possible, you need to kind of check these boxes and be mindful of what you're doing. It all just feeds into growing the issuer business. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't just sort of mention or talk a little bit about some of the outside factors that affect our business overall. I mean, certainly there's quite a bit going on, whether it's from an economic level, geopolitical level. How do you think about those kind of outside issues and how they impact our business over the long term? Well, it still certainly creates volatility and uncertainty. Mm-hmm. One of the things through my 20+ years in the career, right, is uncertainty is opportunity. Where you have volatile markets, you have companies that are looking to reduce that volatility. Broadening your shareholder base, diversifying your shareholder base, adding a retail component to your shareholder base is a tried and true way in which to kind of bridge that gap or minimize the volatility in your stock. We're still seeing even in this uncertain time, you're still seeing issuers, you know, reaching out and wanting to join our markets in order to do that. From a geopolitical standpoint, you know, obviously, I don't know that I have the answers or Dan or you. We don't know where those things are gonna go. What we do know is the financial markets are still important. What we still are seeing is that from the SME, the small and medium enterprise base, being able to be in the U.S., whether it's in biotech or fintech or clean tech, being able to access U.S. investors and investment is probably more important than ever as certain parts of the world are a little dicey. You know, it's a lot of uncertainty, but so far, so good from a business perspective. Yeah. I mean, the experience of dealing with a global economic event is not that dissimilar from dealing with COVID. Mm-hmm. It does drive retail investors to either take more action or at least demand more information. Those impact our trading services business and our market data business to drive companies to make sure they understand how they're interacting with investors. Jason's point about how our markets can help companies in those circumstances. Right. It's almost to us less about the specific geopolitical event or the specific macroeconomic event and more about making sure that when those things arise, we have the ability to communicate with our subscribers, for Jason and his team to talk to companies, whether they're on our markets now or thinking about it, and leverage our services to be able to get through whatever bump in the road or larger than bumps in the road appears to them. You mentioned sort of the ways in which we help companies, and I know that one of the things near and dear to your heart is continuing to help companies and really make sure that the legislative agendas and the regulatory agendas are really helping our issuers as well. Maybe if you just give a quick couple of thoughts on some of the key regulatory pushes that we're looking to make this year. I just look at it as metrics to D.C., but I like that you framed it that way. I think a lot of our legislative agenda is really driven by what we hear from the companies. Mm-hmm. When we convene things like the OTCQX Advisory Council to hear really from CEOs and CFOs that are experiencing life on the OTC market, just wonderful to hear what things are important to them. One of the biggest ideas we got out of that group in those conversations was this concept of how companies on our markets can offer employee stock ownership plans. Mm-hmm. Which is really a way of giving employees access to the economic benefit of a growing public company that has access to public markets. The rules have been outdated for a long time, and they treated companies on our markets like private companies as opposed to the public companies that they really are. We're happy to say that just last week, the House passed SECURE Act 2.0, which is a sweeping bill that deals with a number of retirement plan issues that includes a provision that would modernize the way that rule works and allow companies on their OTCQX markets in particular to offer these plans on par with how their peers on an exchange would do so. We have a long list of regulatory asks and things that we think would level the playing field and really focus on the narrative we're pushing. Making sure that people understand the OTC market has transparency, it has easy to access market data and all the rest. Another key driver for us is margin eligibility, which really just boils down to being able to hold an OTC security in your margin account and borrow against it the way you might a security listed on an exchange. Again, sounds like a small piece, but every bit of recognition we get on Capitol Hill in particular, that shows how our markets are really providing the same kind of public service that people have grown to expect over the years. That really does allow us to then take a step further and a step further. We could do this for hours, but I'll pause on those two in terms of key drivers. Well, I know those are certainly both issues that are near and dear to your heart and to those of our clients as well. Well, yeah. You know, it's important to recognize that while we talk a lot about growth being international, we have a sizable U.S. business. You know, things like Reg A or, you know, SPACs or, you know, anything that allows a domestic security where we're the primary market feel and look more like an exchange counterpart really adds a tremendous amount of value, and it certainly helps growth as a company. You know, these changes aren't always priced out for a lot of the companies that still want to be public and want support their shareholders. Being able to address some of these regulatory inefficiencies between the markets are really important, not just again, for our growth in the company, but for these companies. You know, we're a company on our market and a small company, and we face these issues as well. I think it's important that we kind of fly the flag for those companies that we support. Thanks, Dan and Jason, for today's discussion. We will now transition over to our Q&A session, where you'll have the opportunity to ask questions of both Jason and Dan and the other members of our senior leadership team. Thank you. Great. We've got everybody in the process of just logging in to join us for our Q&A session. Just as a reminder, at the bottom of your Zoom screen, there is a Q&A module which will allow you to type in and ask questions. Our goal is to get to as many of those as we can today. If we aren't able to get to your questions, we'll certainly have your contact details, and we'll be able to follow up after we have gone through the ones that we can get to. As we kind of kick things off with this portion of the program, Matt, I'm gonna direct the first question that we've had come in is towards you. Jason touched a little bit upon some of the trends that we were starting to see globally. I was hoping you can expand a little bit more on sort of where you see growth coming from at a global level from a market data perspective. Sure, Kristie. Yeah, we're continuing to see, you know, opportunity and interest from the retail sector internationally. Activity has trailed off a little from the peak of COVID, but there's still a lot of opportunity there, especially in Europe and Asia. We see that sector growing, and we're seeing, you know, demand there, and we're starting to cover that as well. Additionally, because of that, we're also seeing, you know, from an institutional trading community, both in Europe and Asia, demand as well. That's something that, you know, we think is gonna continue over the next, you know, 6-18 months. We see a lot of European firms looking at our data for after hours and, you know, overnight in Asia. We see a lot of opportunity there, and you know, to definitely in those two regions. I think as we kind of think about, and we talked a lot about in our sessions about how each business sort of feeds onto itself. Mike, there was a question just around obviously we saw a lot of volatility last year and Dan and Jason and Cromwell all spoke to that. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the early things we're seeing in 2022 and kind of how that ties in with some of those trends that Matt was just speaking to. Sure. You know, although last year in Q1 was obviously the highest volumes we ever saw in over-the-counter trading. Volumes in this Q1 are down about 32%. From you know, our participation in the market, we've continued to grow our overall market share on the ECN. You know, we've been able to continue to advance our new products into you know, being able to trade additional securities and be able to continue to grow that market share. I think we're well positioned you know, as market volumes come back in over-the-counter to you know, be the place of choice for our subscribers to execute transactions. I think that's helpful just to frame up sort of how things are shifting, but also the type of things that Dan was talking about earlier of how we've really set ourselves up to be prepared to handle those differences and those different trading strategies as well. One of the questions that just came in, Jason, I think I'll direct this one to you, which is really around companies becoming public later in their life cycle. Therefore, you know, just kind of looking at that dynamic and kind of how we position ourselves based in and around how companies might view entering the public markets. Maybe, Jason, I'll start with you and then Cromwell, maybe add some additional remarks from your perspective on that kind of going public process. Sure. Thanks, Kristie. I think, you know, there's a lot of press about companies staying private longer. I think what's missed in that is companies are actually choosing alternative routes to access public markets, and not as much of a discussion around that phenomenon. Our markets are tailored for early-stage growth companies, that maybe historically would have stayed private longer and waited for a big bang on a national exchange. But in essence, are using our markets to learn how to become kind of those future public companies. We position ourselves, you know, in some cases as public venture capital, if you will, right? For those early-stage companies where the benefits of being public exist, where you can go out, tell your story, capture investment, grow your business without some of the complexity, risk, costs, burden of a huge national exchange, and learn how to grow yourself up to that point so that when you want to become public in what the press calls being public, you're ready to take that jump to a bigger national exchange. We're actually seeing and I think Cromwell in his presentation saw the numbers, right? The number of companies that are accessing our markets continues to grow. Those are public companies. It's just an alternative route that they're taking in order to get there. Cromwell, are there some maybe additional thoughts or color you just wanna add around kind of that cycle of going public that Jason spoke to and also just the journey that companies are on, much like our own, to really learn how to be good public reporting companies and have the right governance and standards in place. Thanks. Thanks, Kristie. There's always been a debate since I started in public markets about how do we balance the needs of capital formation and compliance from a risk and size and cost perspective. We no longer live in a one-size-fits-all world. What we think about a lot is how do we offer public company different stairways of standards to go upward on. Instead of having a big package to buy at once, our goal is pretty straightforward, to provide building blocks. That understanding is different than a national securities exchange, but it's more forward-looking. That's as we've built it, what we've seen is our standards we've built, more regulatory recognitions as the marketplace has recognized those standards, and that can increase value to companies being public. I think that's really helpful and also just gives the perspective of we ourselves have been on that same journey in terms of establishing ourselves within the public market. As we kind of switch gears a little bit, but again, Dan, this is over to you. It's just a bit of a look at expanding the thoughts around 15c2-11. So I know you touched on this a little bit in your remarks, but we did get a question just around, you know, given it was adopted last year, how does that drive growth into 2022 as you think about seeing more companies join the market? Is that impacted at all by things like, you know, a recession or rising inflation rates? It's a good question, and I think it's important to address it both in the prior panel and in this discussion. I mean in terms of growth and how we see that working in 2022, we thought 2021 as setting a baseline. What I was referencing earlier was this flurry of activity that led up to the compliance date last year, but that now becomes the standard. In terms of our growth possibilities into 2022, it's gonna be building on what we already established last year, making sure our processes and procedures are as smooth as possible and allowing more companies to onboard as they see the value created by those companies that ensured their compliance last year. I think things like a recession or inflation or other macroeconomic events of the type that we were referencing earlier will always have some degree of impact on how the market operates and how investors think about how they wanna interact with companies. From our sort of silo here in terms of the regulations that are very specific to what we do, Rule 15c2-11 will continue to set that baseline. It will continue to be the market companies need to meet in order to remain publicly quoted on the market. Typically, even in times of economic distress, that's what companies wanna do. They want to be able to have good disclosure, ultimately be transparent, and communicate as much as possible with investors. With that in mind, I think 2022 sets itself up as a year of seeing that part of the business grow. Jason, is that something that you're seeing as we look at, you know, the first coming out of the first quarter of Q1? Yes. I think, you know, when you get into times of economic uncertainty, and when you overlay kind of Rule 15c2-11, what you're seeing is companies that are being much more proactive in wanting to engage investors. You know, there's a saying when I started, "Stocks are sold, they're not bought." Right? That's more than ever, companies are going out and trying to make sure they're doing what they can, to grow their shareholder base, their investor base. Rule 15c2-11 is that benchmark in order to be able to do that, in the over-the-counter market here in the U.S. For international companies, it's even more important. As a large number of investors that use our markets are retail investors. Being able to access U.S. retail investors in times of uncertainty to mitigate a lot of the velocity that happens during those times has become increasingly important. Being able to evidence their investability through rules like Rule 15c2-11 are, you know, a significant part of that. In terms of some of the other kind of questions that are coming in, I think, this one I'll turn over, Antonia to you and to Cromwell. Obviously we talked about our recent acquisition of Blue Sky Data Corp. We've got a question just on any further color that we might be able to provide on that acquisition. Kind of bridging that to sort of a longer term thought about how we kind of think through, our overall acquisition strategy. Maybe, Antonia, I'll start with you and then, Cromwell, maybe you can pick up from there. Thank you, Kristie. In general, when we look at acquisitions, we certainly look for opportunities that further enhance and strengthen what Cromwell and others touched on. Blue Sky Data Corp is no exception. In terms of the specific question around the economics of that acquisition, Blue Sky Data Corp has been a leader in its space of delivering Blue Sky compliance data for 30 years and has operated profitably over that long period of time. We are looking forward to bring on board clients and revenue. In addition, we're also expecting to realize efficiencies in how we leverage our technology capabilities to deliver the same data set more efficiently to the existing client base. We expect to realize certain synergies on the cost side and overall see not only the strategic benefits from this acquisition that Cromwell touched on and others touched on in terms of expanding our capabilities into state securities laws to augment and enhance our federal level compliance data. We do expect to see positive financial impact from the acquisition as well. Cromwell, maybe you can kind of speak to the broader acquisition strategy. This is one example. Blue Sky Data was an acquisition that I would like to be able to do one every six months. It's timed well. The entrepreneur who founded it has built a strong business with recurring revenue and has a high quality product. It's a smaller company, though, so we can bring to it our better technology platform. We're actually moving the process of creating the data into our platform very quickly. It's a big win from that side. However, we get to take the people and the knowledge and the domain knowledge to improve our product and also work on our overall data quality picture. It's a very positive acquisition from a commercial standpoint for us. Now, of course, the entrepreneur knew they had a good business or they sold it. We had to get to what was a tough fair price. She was quite a good negotiator too. What we have now is a product that takes a very complex set of regulations and makes it easier for brokers to be in compliance. We get to take that critical mass and expand it out and have that tool set of helping brokers take complex regulations and be in compliance, and scale it across a network. Then the second part is because platforms are much more valuable if you have a multi-sided effect. By our going out to the corporate community of issuers of equity and debt securities, helping them understand Blue Sky will give them the opportunity to go into to be compliant in more states, to take the extra steps, to provide the disclosure, to put the credentials out. It becomes a win-win situation where the market becomes more efficient and more compliant. That's exciting. Because a big chunk of the securities are traded over the counter, while we'll cover listed equity and debt securities, it expands the access to those securities and the overall level of compliance with securities regulations in the market in an efficient manner and technology-driven. Now, the second side is I would say that's not every acquisition we're gonna see. We're gonna see a range of acquisitions that there's going to be different opportunities. When we initially purchased the National Quotation Bureau, it was a turnaround situation, and it was a re-platforming, and it was changing the fundamental service provided to clients rather drastically. By doing that, we were able to put the business on a path to grow. you know, for us, we look at acquisitions is what does it do to increase our product suite, strengthen our platform or expand the skill set of our people. If we do those thoughtfully and carefully, we should over time have a portfolio of purchases, investments and engineering type products to grow shareholder value over time. I think that's really helpful to both frame sort of the reasons behind the Blue Sky acquisition, but also to look at how we think about acquisitions overall and as we move forward to the future. The next question, actually, Jason, looks like this one is just for you, at least as a starting point. It's really around talking a little bit about pipeline. In this case, rather than talking about the private to public pipeline, really looking at the potential pipeline as it exists of companies that have maybe, you know, with a potential economic downturn, you know, are facing the question of whether it makes sense to come to our markets, to OTCQX, for example, rather than remain on a national securities exchange. Maybe you can just talk to us a little bit of that process and kind of how you view that overall. Over the last 5-10 years, you know, that's been an ever-growing part of the pipeline. As our markets have expanded, as we gain more regulatory recognition, as everybody on this call has said, we've increased the product suite, the breadth and depth of the distribution of the information. Companies have always taken a look at whether or not being listed on a national exchange meets the needs of that company at any particular moment. Certainly one of those factors is cost, but regulatory burden and others certainly come up. When markets turn down or we hit a recession or something that causes companies to think longer and harder about what they're getting out of their public market, we absolutely do see growth and accelerated growth in the pipeline. Certainly you also see companies that, you know, no longer want to be on that wheel of chasing meeting an exchange listing standard. Not wanting to do reverse splits to meet the price requirement, not needing to do all of the things that come with being on a national exchange. You know, the short answer to the question is yes, absolutely, when markets turn, we see the impacts through increased pipeline. That's not something that's limited to just a market downturn. It's something that, as we've grown, has been part of our strategy for business development all along. I think that's just helpful again to understand there's multiple sides of the equation, whether that's the private to public process, whether that's the uplisting process or whether that's looking at companies choosing our markets over or for a national exchange. Liz, I thought I might just turn to you for a second because we've obviously talked a lot in our remarks about 15c2-11 and the ongoing implications of that. Your team obviously sees you know this from kind of the ground swell up. You know, we just came on a bunch of annual filing cycles and things like that. Can you just speak a little bit to what your team saw as we hit that kind of post six-month mark from the implementation of 15c2-11? Sure. As several people have mentioned, we spent the last year leading up to the implementation date of the Rule 15c2-11 amendments, just sort of onboarding new clients onto our platform and working with them to provide the required disclosure for 15c2-11. Now we have to continue to serve those clients. We are just coming off a large filing cycle, 31 annual filing cycle. Just finishing that up. It's typically our busiest time of year. It's gone remarkably smoothly. What we're seeing is the vast majority of the companies that elected last year to have OTC Markets [trade us role] and confirm compliance with two eleven to maintain a public market are continuing to provide the required disclosure. It's just going very smoothly. Companies are providing the disclosure that they need to provide to maintain their markets. That's what we're seeing so far. We also, you know, we continue to see interest from new issuers who are you know inquiring about how they can sort of come into the lit markets as well and make their disclosure available, newly available to investors. I think, Cromwell, that speaks to one of the things that you often talk about is really just the ESG factor of you know making sure that companies have good corporate governance in place and are continuing to meet those deadlines and those standards and making that information as transparent and as available to investors as possible. Thanks, Kristie. We talk about our regulatory recognitions a lot. Those regulatory recognitions aren't for every company on our platform. That's important to understand. Our goal is to create a market where investors can identify and properly price opportunity and risk. What that does is companies need to earn and own their public reputation. It's the company's reputation on the platform. It's the company's disclosure, it's the company's governance, it's the company's credentials. We're the network that helps distribute those and digitalize that and provide a continuously updating stream of information which then feeds into the market pricing process. That's where an efficient market is. It's supply demand with information for the market to move from the short-term dynamics of popularity to the long-term scale of value. You know, we get it. ESG governance and good corporate citizenship is on the front burner for every company and is not going away. Because for companies that want to be public and successful over the long term, they need to practice a form of sustainable capitalism that's connected to their community, delivers value, and also complies with securities laws and other rules and regulations wherever they operate. Our goal as a market operator is to help those companies distribute that information into the market, their information. That's very helpful, Cromwell. Thank you. I think as we kind of, there's a few more of the questions that have come in. Dan, this one's for you. Obviously there's a lot going on right now within the SEC, and within the regulatory space. I know we obviously talked a bit in your remarks earlier about our legislative and our regulatory agenda. Maybe you can just touch on what some of those more critical pieces are for our markets that the SEC currently has under review, or at least a few highlights anyway. Sure. They are prolific lately. You know, last year I was wondering when the rule proposals were gonna start coming, and they turned on the faucet. A lot of things have come out recently. The things that impact our market, and that we pay close attention to, are largely around disclosures. There are climate disclosure proposals out there, cybersecurity disclosure proposals out there. We look at that both to try to understand what our SEC reporting companies are gonna need to include in their disclosure, how folks might react to that, and whether that's something we should adopt or pieces of that. It's a nice process of learning by watching the comment period and watching implementation of some of those rules. Similarly, the SEC put out a rule proposal regarding the definition of exchange and looking at how trading systems operate, really with the goal of expanding the pool of organizations and trading facilities that qualify as an ATS. We're trying to welcome more people into the place where we sit as a regulated market operator. Seeing how the SEC implements rules like that is also very core and very key to what we look at. There are really new ones almost every day. I think focusing on those two things that impact kind of how we deal with our regulators as a regulated entity and how our regulators are thinking about expanding or minimizing those responsibilities and how companies that might be included on our markets can be a part of what the SEC is doing. That's really where we're gonna spend a lot of our time. Certainly that's a passion area for everyone that's on this call is how are we, you know, really helping the companies that are in our market, the broker-dealers who trade with us, our market data subscribers, you know, make the most out of their ability to be here with us. As we kind of wrap things out, we've got just a couple more questions coming in. If anyone's been holding off and not asking a question, I would invite you now as we start to wind things down, to add it into the Q&A module. The next question that came in, and I think, Matt, you touched a little bit upon this. This is from more of a corporate service perspective. The question was around just, you know, Asia and China as core markets, or what we're seeing in terms of the potential for those markets, as we look forward. Maybe, Jason, I'll start with you, and then Matt, if you want to add anything further, that would be great. Thanks, Kristie. Certainly from a corporate service perspective, Asia is a market on which we plan to focus. China, I think the question was China/Asia, so I don't know if that's both or all. Certainly countries with public markets, Japan, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, are markets where we're looking, where there's a tremendous opportunity for us on the corporate services side, as well as tremendous opportunities for companies. Again, back to my earlier response about wanting to access U.S. investors and have a public market. You know, we are the beneficiary of being a secondary market for a significant number of companies that are primarily quoted on their home markets. If you look at Tokyo or Hong Kong or Singapore, and those exchanges as an example, to be able to have an OTCQX or OTCQB quote, and to be able to access U.S. investors through their home market disclosure is really advantageous. As you look, you know, China is something that comes up a lot as we've looked at what's going on with single-listed Chinese companies on the exchanges here. Being able to redomicile and become publicly traded in their home market, Hong Kong as the example, but to be able to still maintain that secondary quotation on our market and be able to access those investors or maintain their investor relations strategy to the investors they already have is something we spend a lot of time looking at, and we're focused on. Certainly, Matt, you know, as we, you know, bring on more and more companies from some of these different regions and we see the trading community interested in those markets specifically, obviously that opens doors for you from a market perspective. Right. I mean, you know, Asia, I guess, thrown around as a region, but it's, you know, there's so many different obviously, you know, countries within it and different markets, right? They all have a lot of opportunity from a data perspective. It's really seeing what Jason was saying. Also, you know, to go to the retail investor, to go to the middle class and these folks who are interested in trading, it's getting easier. That's, you know, expanding a lot of opportunity on the data side. Yes. Bruce, as we think about sort of the technology obviously to serve both those companies, our broker-dealer subscribers, as well as our market data subscribers, maybe you can just talk a little bit about, you know, the investments that we continue to make in our technology, in order to make these things happen. Sure, Kristie. We are constantly increasing our technology spend year-over-year. That's in both infrastructure, personnel, development. I think Blue Sky is a good example, as Cromwell Coulson pointed out before. We continue to increase our systems to handle 2-3x capacity, so they're never running at the top of the stack, so to speak. A good example, you know, year-over-year, we are constantly upgrading our broker-dealer community offerings so that we enhance the capability of the company's value there. At the end, we're a fintech company, and we're always ensuring that our technology is both scalable, resilient, and most certainly reliable. I think, guys, that brings us to the end of our Q&A session. Cromwell Coulson, maybe I'll flip it to you if there's any closing remarks or anything else you just wanted to highlight, while I give everyone an opportunity, if there's any last breaking questions. Thanks, Kristie. You know, there's a big long-term trend, which is transparency in technology has increased information availability and diversity of investor access points to public markets. That's really highlighted the importance of active investing. The stock markets when I was starting out, active investing was the top of the chain. Passive index investing created an incredible product where investors can put their money at risk in a diversified portfolio and free ride off the market forces. However, that only works if there's active investing and there's an ecosystem feeding the large index companies all the way to the beginning of the capital formation process. That conversation with regulators, how do we keep improving that environment and increasing information availability and a diversity of access points to the public markets? Brokers offer lots of different business models and pricing strategies to investors and information availability. That's a big change. Because of that great information distribution is the value of going and being public as the long-term trend of transparency, of companies becoming more transparent, becoming more connected to their community, wanting to have their community be investors in their company. That's demonstrated from direct listings. It's demonstrated from SPACs. It is a changeover. Our challenge is how do we balance the complexity, time burden, cost for companies over their life cycles, and how do we tailor it for different companies, whether they're global companies, community banks, early startups, Bitcoin trusts, and solve those problems so that there is good information for investors in the market and that companies own that reputation and can earn a reputation or be priced properly for their own risks and putting that together. That's always our challenge because we have public companies, we have investors, we have broker-dealers who are highly regulated and need to meet standards and be a very competitive market. Finally, that conversation with regulators, that the markets are moving in the right direction. Those are the things that we work on. As we get to work on those, we're also building out the technology platform to actually, and the people platform to accomplish those commercial needs. I think that's an excellent place to wrap up our discussion today. Obviously, we've talked a lot about the continued trajectory, whether that be from a regulatory agenda perspective or from a business perspective. I'd just like to thank all of you in attendance today. You will receive a copy of both the Q&A session as well as the previous sessions. We look forward to continued dialogue with all of you and the ability to answer your questions moving forward. Thank you very much for joining us for our OTC Markets Investor Day. Thanks, everybody.