Hello, everyone. And welcome to the ICE Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Lydia, and I’ll be your operator today. After the prepared remarks there’ll be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] I’ll now hand you over to Katia Gonzalez, Manager of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning. ICE’s fourth quarter 2024 earnings release and presentation can be found in the Investor section of ice.com. These items will be archived and our call will be available for replay. Today’s call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements, which we undertake no obligation to update, represent our current judgment and are subject to risks, assumptions and uncertainties. For a description of the risks that could cause our results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, please refer to our 2024 Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. In our earnings supplement, we refer to certain non-GAAP measures. We believe our non-GAAP measures are more reflective of our cash operations and core business performance. You’ll find a reconciliation to the prevailing GAAP terms in our earnings materials. When used on this call, net revenue refers to revenue net of transaction-based expenses and adjusted earnings refers to adjusted diluted earnings per share. Throughout this presentation, unless otherwise indicated, references to revenue growth are on a constant currency basis. Please see the explanatory notes on the second page of the earnings supplement for additional details regarding the definition of certain items. With us on the call today are Jeff Sprecher, Chair and CEO; Warren Gardiner, Chief Financial Officer; Ben Jackson, President; Lynn Martin, President of the NYSE; and Chris Edmonds, President of Fixed Income and Data Services. I’ll now turn the call over to Warren.

Thanks, Katia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’ll begin on Slide 4 with a summary of our record 2024 results. Full year adjusted earnings per share totaled $6.07, an increase of 8% year-over-year, marking the best year in our company’s history. For the full year, net revenues totaled a record $9.3 billion and pro forma for the acquisition of Black Knight increased by 6% versus last year. Full year adjusted operating expenses totaled $3,810 million, an increase of roughly 1% year-over-year on a pro forma basis. It’s worth noting that in just 16 months following the close of Black Knight, we’ve achieved run rate expense synergies of $175 million and now expect to reach our full synergy target of $200 million by the end of 2025. In addition, we are also raising our Black Knight expense synergy target to $230 million. This strong performance drove record full-year adjusted operating income of $5.5 billion, an increase of 10% year-over-year. Moving to cash generation, this record operating performance contributed to full year free cash flow of $3.6 billion, of which we returned $1 billion to shareholders through dividends, while also reducing our leverage to under 3.3 times EBITDA versus 4.3 times upon the close of Black Knight in late 2023. As a result of the significant progress we have made on leverage, we now expect to begin repurchasing shares in the first quarter. Recall that we were -- we expect -- recall that we still expect and are on track to achieve leverage levels of approximately 3 times EBITDA. We will balance share repurchases with continued deleveraging until we reach this target, which we expect will occur later this year. Moving to Slide 5, I’ll discuss our fourth quarter performance. Fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share totaled…

Thank you, Warren, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Please turn to Slide 10. Across our futures markets, we’ve worked for over two decades to build out the scope and depth of our multi-asset and multi-geography offering to allow for both flexibility and precision trading from wherever in the world customers choose to trade on ICE. As a result, a record of over 2 billion futures and options contracts traded on ICE in 2024, marking the highest volume year in ICE’s history, including a record 1.2 billion commodity contracts and a record 753 million Interest Rate contracts. This strong performance contributed to the 12th consecutive year of record futures revenue in 2024, which grew 20%, including 15% in the fourth quarter. Across our Energy markets, we saw the importance of investing in a diverse and globally interconnected energy platform that better serves the needs of an evolving and growing commercial customer base. By working closely with our customers, we have built and continue to enhance our leading Global Energy network that delivers comprehensive risk management solutions, provides capital efficiencies and is positioned to grow alongside the continued evolution of global markets. All this while providing the critical price transparency across the Energy spectrum needed to navigate the Energy transition and to meet forward-looking demand. Over the last five years, revenue growth across our Energy markets has averaged 14% growth annually, with 2024 revenues reaching a record $1.9 billion, up 25% year-over-year. This strong performance was driven by record Energy volumes and is a testament to customers’ continued confidence in ICE as the Global Energy hedging venue of choice. In our oil business, we offer key benchmark contracts such as Brent. As the global benchmark for crude oil, Brent prices roughly three quarters of the world’s internationally traded…

Thank you, Ben, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Please turn to Slide 13. Over two decades ago, we launched Intercontinental Exchange, a name we chose to reflect our vision of better serving global markets with a mission to drive transparency and create workflow efficiencies for our customers. The pursuit and execution of this vision first led us to Energy markets, where at the time of our 2005 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, we were purely an Energy exchange, offering only a handful of products and on track to generate what would ultimately be $156 million in total revenue. Our goal then, as it remains today, was to build a platform that operated on a global scale and which had the asset class breadth to enable us to quickly and efficiently chase growth opportunities as they emerged around the world. In the years since, our focus on leading technology, customer-driven product innovation and operating efficiency has remained core to our strategy. We’ve built new technology from scratch, acquired old technology and refurbished it, and innovated all along the way, developing countless new products and content that seamlessly flow through a global distribution platform, enabling us to build on the success of our core businesses while looking ahead to new opportunities. In many ways, this is how we’ve built what I often refer to as our all-weather business model, one that drives growth on top of growth through an array of economic, political and regulatory environments, with 2024 marking our 19th consecutive year of record revenues, increasing 16% year-over-year to $9 billion. Through deliberate, organic and inorganic investments that we’ve made, some more than a decade ago and others in more recent years, such as our Midland HOU contract, our leading Global Energy network today spans…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. When we look at the new client wins in Mortgage, both on the origination and servicing side, there would seem to be a lot of new business getting up and running all at the same time after a period of limbo between when Black Knight was announced and closed. Can you give us a sense of the cadence of the big new customer wins going live for MSP and Encompass? Are they front-end loaded, back-end loaded, as we think about this year and how does the new customer wins sort of contribute to the guidance that you gave us for 2025?

Hey, Ken. This is Ben. I’ll start, and then Warren will probably take the last part of that question. So, recall we closed on Black Knight roughly 18 months ago. And since then, we have closed, as you highlighted, a number of very significant large financial institutions onto both Encompass and onto MSP. We’ve also highlighted that it takes anywhere from 12 months to 18 months for those clients to come online, get through all their testing. This is all absolutely critical infrastructure, as you well know. And then once they start to come online, they’ll roll it out division-by-division. So, it takes time to make these changes happen. Because the deal closed about 18 months ago, we’re right now in that window where, in 2025, we are going to have a number of clients that we closed in those windows coming live as this year plays out and I think it’s -- you’re going to see it coming in and building as the year plays out.

Yeah. Ken, I’ll just add to that, too. That’s right. We’ll start to see those. That’s what we talked to you guys about throughout the years. We’d start to see these impact 2025. And part of the reason we saw some stabilization towards the fourth quarter in the recurring revenue is because some of these are starting to come online, too. And so, I think we’re at a point where we can start to grow from here. I think one thing just to call out, too, is that while all that’s good and we have that coming online, there are still a little bit of some headwinds. There is the flag star attrition that should happen towards the end of the year. That’s probably a 0.5 point in terms of an impact on our growth rate. And then we also still will expect some headwinds from renewals on Encompass is particularly related to 2020 and 2021 vintage that you’ve heard us talk about throughout last year. Got a little bit more of that to go. That’s probably from a growth rate percentage, probably a low single-digit impact for us, but an improvement from what we saw last year. So, there’s some moving parts in there, but absolutely, as Ben said, we’re starting to see some of the impact from those winds come online and that will help us this year and then into next year as well.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for your questions. Well, I was hoping we could spend a couple of minutes on trends you’re seeing in WTI markets within your oil complex. ICE made a nice progress gaining market share over the course of last year. It looks like trends have picked back up again on the market share trend versus your primary competitor there. So, what’s driving that? How durable that is? How do you expect that marketplace and that ecosystem to evolve as you progress through 2025 and 2026?

Hi, Alex. It’s Ben. I’ll take this one. We’re pleased with the overall growth of our entire oil complex. It’s done very, very well over the last several years now. And a lot of what I think has fed into what’s made WTI -- our WTI successful is innovations that we launched a few years back. So, one innovation in particular was our Midland WTI HOU contract that we’ve talked about and highlighted. That contract is literally up 200% on a year-over-year basis to start this year and had a phenomenal year last year as well. Another interesting data point on that Midland WTI HOU contract is that it’s a truly physically delivered contract that’s supported by a lot of the big oil companies. And the amount of physical deliveries that we saw on our contract are double what our peer saw on WTI. So, it’s a testament to the fact that the physical underpinning and structural pieces of this market are very strong. And this is pricing Midland WTI oil basis Houston that’s now also flowing into the Brent contract and also flowing into Europe as well. So, given all those dynamics, a lot of traders when they’re trading, they’ll trade, as you know, they’ll trade basis amongst other contracts. And the fact that we have Brent, we have the WTI HOU contract and we have our own WTI contract, clients that want to trade this for maximum efficiency can trade all of those as a package or a subset of those as a package and we think that’s what’s feeding into a lot of the growth in our WTI contract.

Our next question comes from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So, I just want to follow up on the Mortgage guide, the low-to-mid single revenue growth this year. Warren, you said that I think the high end of that would imply a low-teens pickup in origination activity and that’s in line with what the industry forecasts are currently projecting. I think, that growth number though is projecting around 30% growth in refi activities. So, could you talk about, how you’re thinking about the dynamics between refi versus purchase activity next year, just kind of through the lens of that Mortgage guide you provided? Thanks.

Sure. Thanks, Patrick. So, look, I think that based on where rates are today, that certainly to see that kind of refi growth might be a little optimistic, but we did want to incorporate that view into our guidance. And that’s why we do also give you a more conservative sort of low end of the range in terms of what things could look like. It’s obviously difficult to predict, particularly the refi market and what you might see on an Interest Rate perspective and impact there. So, look, I think, we’re seeing some improvement on the purchase side in terms of the fundamentals. I noted that in my script in terms of some inventory, more inventory coming onto the market, some price appreciation slowing and things of that nature. We’ll have to sort of see how refis trend, and that will, as you know, largely depend on how the trajectory of Interest Rates. So, I tried to give you kind of a wide band in terms of what the year could look like from an origination perspective. But even within both ends of those -- that band, I think, we’ve got some good growth that’s coming through. And importantly, the recurring revenues will start to grow too as well. So, hard to know exactly how that’s all going to play out. But I think through that, we’ve got an opportunity here to continue to invest in the business, advance the industry and really put our platform on a better footing as we move throughout the year.

Our next question comes from Ben Budish with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Warren, I was wondering if you’d give a little bit more color on the timing of some of the expense synergies. Curious if you could kind of quantify what is the sort of year -- thinking about the pacing of the expense synergies you’re realizing this year, what is sort of the year-over-year benefit embedded in your full year OpEx guidance, and given the increased expectation for now, I think, $230 million. Should we think about that as being layered in over the course of 2026 or sort of achieved towards the beginning of 2026 so we see a bigger year-over-year benefit? So just curious if you could help us with the sort of pacing of those savings?

Sure. So I think as you’re thinking about the impact for this year, obviously, we had a big year, well, really in 2023. So got to go back a little bit. And so a lot of the synergies, because we were very quick at the close of the deal to get these groups together and bring these groups together, we were able to realize a lot of the synergies in the third quarter and the fourth quarter of 2023, and then, of course, a little bit more in 2024 as well. Part of what you’re also seeing as you kind of move throughout the year sequentially is that we’re starting to invest in the business once we’ve gotten those organizations in the right spot. And so, there’s a lot of that is in the run rate, if you will, already in terms of the synergies that we’ve spoken to. And so I think if you think about next year, there’s a little bit of help there. Obviously, on a run rate basis, we’ve got it to about $25 million of help, some of that’s going to come towards the end of this year. So it won’t be necessarily fully run rate impact, have a full run rate impact this year. And so as you’re thinking about that, it’ll be a help. It’s why you’re seeing our expense guidance overall kind of more towards the lower end of what the organic constant currency guidance in the past has been excluding synergies at 3%. So it’s helping us a little bit there. In terms of, the go-forward and the $230 million, the extra $30 million that we’ve added, a lot of that’s going to come in later years. That’s a lot of that is related to systems and infrastructure and real estate and things of that nature that just takes time to position and get those cost savings out. So no change to the timeframe necessarily in terms of reaching by 2028, but certainly an increase, of course, in the total amount we can achieve.

We’ll go next to Dan Fannon with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on the Fixed Income Data outlook mid-single-digit growth again. Can you talk to kind of the inputs there, whether it’s pricing, new customer growth, new products? We can see the ASV, some good dynamics, I guess, ending this year, but can you talk about maybe any changes in demand trends or the outlook that’s shifting as we think about 2025 versus last year?

Hi. This is Chris. And thanks for the question. What I would say right now is you’re seeing a trend within the space of clients, probably more by side than anything related, where they are very focused on the number of vendors that they are doing business with and looking for the growth -- most robust catalog of services available, so they can limit the amount of investment needed in order to consume the data and they need to run the business. And there’s also a massive focus on predictability of cost, something we hear each and every day when engaging with the clients on that side. So given our robust catalog, given the fact we’re connected to most of these people, that is generating opportunities that we’re seeing. And probably as a headwind, if you are a smaller data provider that has maybe one or two of the segments that someone’s looking for versus a much wider piece of that, that gives us opportunity and looking forward. I’ll turn the other over to Warren. He can talk about the numeric piece of it.

Yeah. Dan, so I think, look, the guidance we gave, it’s pretty consistent with the last several years in terms of what we expect. And I think you look at the ASV as we exit the fourth quarter, 5.4% certainly sets up for another good year. And I think we’ll have a solid year from both business lines within that recurring revenue, within the recurring revenues that we have. And I think particularly, one thing that we don’t always talk about a whole lot, but the Other Data and Network Services business, it’s been around 5% the last few quarters. I think that certainly can set up for a little bit of pickup as we move through throughout the course of next year, in part because of some of the investments you’ve heard us talking about on the data center side. So very happy with where that business has ended this year and where we’re in the setup for next year, both on the Other Data and Network Services side and the Fixed Income and Data Analytics side as well. So, again, another, I think, solid year coming in 2025.

Our next question comes from Chris Allen with Citi. Your line’s open.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to maybe follow up on the Energy markets. I’m kind of curious how you think the new administration policies may impact the Energy markets from your perspective, whether it’s creating any new potential opportunities for your business moving forward or maybe potential headwinds. And then, Ben, any new -- any color, you mentioned the opportunity trading relationships, maybe in terms of what type of customers you’re looking at there.

This is Jeff. A couple things. First of all, we’ve talked a lot on this call already about our Houston WTI contract, which is really an export contract. And we’re hearing the administration say they want to amplify U.S. production, which we think will affect the export markets and play well into risk management using that contract. The other thing that we’re beginning to hear a lot about from the administration is how sanctions might be used and tariffs on other countries. And again, we -- that may affect the global supply chain for energy. One of the takeaways from the European Energy markets over the last few years was how quickly the Energy markets are able to reorganize the supply chains. And we’ve been investing in the Middle East in our Murban contract and in our Abu Dhabi Exchange, which we think the risk management dynamics around the changing supply chains can have a positive effect for that contract as well.

Our next question comes from Kyle Voigt with KPW. Please go ahead.

Actually, maybe I could just follow up on the prior question and continue discussion specifically on Dutch TTF. You’ve seen significant growth in TTF over the past few years. OIs doubled in the past two years alone. As you just noted, there were some -- some of this has been driven by changes in supply chains post-Russia-Ukraine as well as growth of U.S. LNG into Europe. There have been some recent press headlines around the EU contemplating restarting Russia gas imports if there’s a resolution to the war. I’m just wondering if you could speak to how that would potentially impact Dutch TTF and whether it changes anything with respect to the importance or utilization of that benchmark?

Thanks, Kyle. It’s Ben. We’ve built our business in all of the commodities that we cover as global businesses and that’s how we’ve differentiated ourselves with hundreds, if not thousands, of contracts around the world to help customers manage their risks at the point of production and consumption. Part of the reason that we did this alongside of partnering with our customers is that supply chains do evolve and they do change. And right now, we’re in a situation where Ukraine has ceased all Russian gas going through the Ukraine into Continental Europe. Could that change? Yes, it could. For us, when we look at the open interest trends in our contracts and look at the open interest trends in TTF, it’s an incredibly healthy business, incredibly healthy contract for us. If you step back to when the Ukraine war started, our open interest in that contract held in, but trading volumes went depressed for a little bit until it was -- until the market kind of reset and supply chains reset. And then, because we believe, because the open interest held strong and continued to grow even during that window, that once the supply chains reset, the market knew how to price and to think about supply and demand dynamics, that the contract has seen explosive growth. So we view it as a positive as these supply chains evolve and change.

And with TTF becoming a real benchmark, as Ben mentioned. And so as the supply chain trades away potentially and moves around the world, we would expect that those pair relationships would continue to do robust volume. That’s partly how the market has been managing these supply chain differences.

The next question comes from Alex Kramm with UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey. Good morning, everyone. Maybe just a quick one here. You talked about the AFX acquisition a little bit in passing, and I know it’s small, but maybe you can just give us a little bit more color on what you expect to do with that asset. I mean, you talked about similar clients as in Mortgage, obviously, its Interest Rates. So maybe you talk about your U.S. Interest Rate ambitions more broadly, because you’ve talked about this over time, but you’re not very big there. And then maybe for Warren, is there actually revenue contribution and where will that show up? Thank you.

Hey, Alex. It’s Chris. So, consisting of what we’ve done with other asset classes and other offerings around the history of ICE, it’s making sure that we can find things to tuck in that where customers need. And you look at the overlap of that customer base and how that product’s being used, we do think there are opportunities there for us to expand the use of those services all the time and create a little bit more transparency for those current users and those within the Mortgage space as a whole that may wish to use it in the future. Certainly, it’s another product that we have in the inventory for folks to use where they do not have to leave our ecosystem in order to go out and manage the risk they may be facing or manage the book that they have there. So, it’s still early days and putting that into the process, but we look forward to growing that like we have many other products throughout the history of the company as they fit hand in glove with other pieces that we have.

And Alex, it’s Warren. So, it’s an immaterial amount of total revenue today. And so, it’s a small amount. So, I don’t know if you’ll see much of an impact. It will be in the Fixed Income and Data Services segment and the Exchange component of that would be on ICE bond side. And then, the Index component will be more on that. It will, of course, be in the Index business, which is in Fixed Income Data and Analytics business line.

The next question comes from Ashish Sabadra with RBC. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. I had a question on the Mortgage business. How are the contract minimums on average for Encompass compared to the Mortgage origination levels in 2024 or another way would be how much do transactions volume have to improve to get full benefit of the spring from that Mortgage recovery? Thanks.

Ashish, it’s Warren. So, I think the way to think about this, well, let me back. So, right now, as we kind of move through this year, we still have the, I would say, the vast minority of customers or sort of loans from our customers that are above the minimum. So, there’s still a relatively small amount that are trending above the minimum. But over the last several quarters, that’s been improving, and actually, the last few quarters have been some of the best quarters in terms of the percent above the minimum that we’ve seen in a number of years. So, we’re heading in the right direction on that and that’s in part because the market’s gotten a little bit better. But then -- and also, as you’ve heard us note on calls, that the minimums have been coming down for a number of the customers as they’ve renewed. So, that’s been sort of a dual impact that’s helping on that front. I think I’d point you back in terms of how to think about the impact, I’d point you back to some comments that we’ve made a few quarters ago, which is if we’re in a $7 million to $10 million loan environment at an industry level, we’d expect revenues to be a couple $100 million to up to close to around $0.5 billion in terms of incremental revenue in those two scenarios. And so, as we move into a more normal market, and for what it’s worth, $10 million loans has kind of been the average over the last 30 years. The median has been around $8 million loans. So, as we move back toward the more normal market, you’re going to certainly start to see that impact flow through a little bit more on the transaction side as that impacts those contracts.

The next question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Your line’s open.

Good morning. This is Robin Holby on for Bill Katz and thank you for taking the question. We wanted to get your comments on Interest Rate volumes and open interest. Is there anything structural that you’re doing or have done to drive the robust volume and open interest growth here? And where do you see the opportunities or potential headwinds for the rates business in 2025? Thank you.

Hi. It’s, excuse me. Hi. It’s Ben. We’re very pleased with the growth that we’ve seen in our Interest Rate complex over the last couple of years and even starting into this year, they’re off to a fantastic start. So, we obviously have a multi-currency Interest Rate complex that we’ve built up. We continue to invest in options and development of options markets around all of our Interest Rate futures, which has also helped in the development of those contracts. And we continue to invest in making sure that we’re getting the best market participants into these markets to create tight liquid markets for our clients. So, those are some of the things that we’ve done. I think that as it relates to persistent Interest Rate volatility that’s going on around the world, obviously, we had a bunch of administration changes around the world. Jeff alluded to in his comments and his prepared remarks around acts of man and the impact that has. So, with the administration changes happening, settling in, we’ll see what that means in terms of Central Bank policy and trade policies as they develop, all of which we think should feed volatility into the Interest Rate markets globally and we’re well positioned for it.

Thank you. We’re out of time for further questions. So, I’ll pass you back to Jeff Sprecher, Chair and CEO, for closing comments.

Well, thank you, Lydia, for moderating the call and thank you all for joining us this morning. We’ll look forward to updating you again very soon. We’re going to continue to innovate for customers and continue to drive this all-weather business model that we’ve been building. With that, I hope you’ll have a great day.

This concludes today’s call. Thank you very much for joining. You may now disconnect your line.