Earnings Labs

Nasdaq, Inc. (NDAQ)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 28, 2016

$91.28

+0.12%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+5.30%

1 Week

+1.63%

1 Month

+9.12%

vs S&P

+4.36%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the NASDAQ Fourth Quarter 2015 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call maybe recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Ed Ditmire, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Edward P. Ditmire

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss NASDAQ's fourth quarter 2015 earnings results. On the line are Bob Greifeld, our CEO, Lee Shavel, CFO; our Chief Operating Officer and President, Adena Friedman; President, Hans-Ole Jochumsen; Ed Knight, our General Counsel; and other members of the management team. After prepared remarks, we'll open up to Q&A. The press release and presentation are on our Web site. We intend to use the Web site as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and complying with disclosure obligations under SEC Regulation FD. I'd like to remind you that certain statements in this presentation and during Q&A may relate to future events and expectations and as such constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from these projections. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements is contained in our press release and periodic reports filed with the SEC. I now will turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Thank you, Ed. Good morning and thank you for joining us today to discuss NASDAQ's fourth quarter 2015 and full-year results. I will set a quick agenda for today’s call. I want to first review our strong fourth quarter results, then provide more color around how we will deliver for our customers and shareholders in the periods to come. And lastly, our esteemed CFO has decided to retire and we will discuss this more at the end of the prepared remarks before opening up to Q&A. Turning back now to our results. We are extremely pleased to deliver another record setting quarter and full-year 2015 results for our shareholders. This is highlighted by record net revenues and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share. Fourth quarter non-GAAP diluted EPS was up 10% year-over-year, despite a 4% FX headwind. The positive organic growth in net revenues, 5% year-over-year for the quarter and 4% for the year generated across this entire franchise suggests that we’re on the right path in terms of running our business well and delivering for our clients. Even more impressive was that our non-trading segments grew 8% for the quarter and 6% for the year. At the same time in 2015, we invested over $400 million in R&D initiatives, capital expenditures, and bolt-on acquisitions to support our future growth, but also returning a very significant amount of capital to our shareholders. But what is important to me is I believe this quarter really echoes our laser focus on our customers. And as I assess the competitive positioning of each of our businesses in the very diverse markets in which we compete, I’m again most proud that the vast majority of our businesses improved their competitive positioning during the quarter and the year, relative to their competitors and most importantly in…

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. My commentary will focus on our non-GAAP results. Reconciliations to GAAP to non-GAAP results can be found in the attachments to our press release and in the presentation that's available on our Web site at ir.nasdaq.com. I want to start off as I did the last few quarters by highlighting the impact the stronger dollar had on our year-over-year results. Excluding the impact of FX, our net revenues would have been up $37 million or 7% from the prior year and operating income would have been up $21 million or 9%. I'll start by reviewing fourth quarter revenue performance related to the prior year quarter as shown on Page 3 of the presentation. The 4% or $19 million increase in reported revenue of $536 million consisted of organic growth in the non-trading segments revenue of $26 million or 8% due to growth in listings, information services and market technology, plus $9 million in revenues from the DWA acquisition reduced by a $10 million FX impact. Organic growth in market services net revenues of $2 million or 1%, resulting principally from higher cash equity revenues, reduced by an $8 million FX impact. And if we move to Page 4 in the presentation, we show how organic growth breaks down historically between the non-trading information services, technology solutions, and listing services segments, which collectively had 8% organic growth this quarter and the volume sensitive market services segment at 1% for the quarter. Looking at our full-year 2015 results, we’ve achieved 6% organic growth for our non-trading segments, around the upper end of our mid single-digit medium term guidance. And in market services we achieved 3% organic growth for the full-year 2015 continuing positive organic growth for the second straight year. I’m…

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Thank you, Lee. And I like to say two things. One, professionally the facts speak for themselves. Our stock was at $24.24 when Lee joined here and he has been a key part of the team to get us to where we’re today. So, us and the rest of NASDAQ and the investors on this call, we’re grateful for that service. And probably more importantly I would like to speak personally for one second and I think Rich Repetto and other analysts might remember back to the [technical difficulty] days, but I first met Lee when he was representing [indiscernible] and I was representing Brut [ph], I think we were both a lot younger back then, Lee. And then certainly when I came to NASDAQ Lee was our trusted advisor and he was the architect of the plan for us to separate from the NASD and become public and start the company we’re today. And all through that time, Lee has a certain unique can-do attitude about himself and its been that spirit that’s made it very enjoyable for us to work with him and certainly his contributions to our firm are permanent, and also the personal relationships we built with him will be something we enjoy for the rest of our days. So Lee, thank you for your service and let’s give him a round of applause. With that, we will take some very nice questions, right.

Edward P. Ditmire

Analyst

Operator, if you would please open-up the line for Q&A?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Richard Repetto of Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open.

Richard Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Yes, good morning, Bob. Good morning, Lee and Adena.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

How are you doing, Rich?

Richard Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Good, good. First, I do remember, Lee, prior -- even prior to his CFO position. It’s amazing the development and to watch him do the job that he has done. The multiple expansion and stark performance speak for itself. So, congrats, Lee. Anyway, so my first question has to do with the tech solutions, and Lee’s amended pre-tax margin there reached 21%. So I’m trying to see what’s sustainable and trying to maybe get a feel for the contribution that you think might be coming from NASDAQ IR Insight. It seems like you made progress there, but I just want to decipher what’s audit fees and what could be more sustainable?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

That’s a detailed question. So Adena once you start, then Lee you can cover some of the details behind those.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Sure. So, I think the first thing to recognize, Rick, as you know, is that the technology solutions business has some seasonality to it. So the fourth quarter is always has been and probably will always be the strongest quarter in the year. In the quarter, we did have very strong revenue from our change requests and our technology services business, as well as some new license sales and continued growth in SMART. And now on the corporate solutions side, we continue to have very good cost discipline and we had nice sales as well as people using our services in the fourth quarter where we can recognize revenues. So we definitely did have a strong underlying quarter. But on a full-year basis, you can see that we believe that our margins for that business in 2015 were 16% and we continue to make progress against that the 20% goal for full-year margin. But we still have some work to do and as we go into 2016, we see a few things of particular strength. Number one, we still have not yet recognized revenue from the Borsa Istanbul contract. So that will start to -- we will start to be able to recognize that as we continue to deliver on that contract. We also have continued growth in SMARTS, which will continue to drive on both top line revenue and margin expansion. And then in corporate solutions, the IR Insight rollout have just begun. We launched it two weeks ago. We already have about a 100 clients using the new product. We’ve clients calling us, asking us when they can get it migrated or rolled out. And we’ve a very full schedule in the months to come as we continue to roll out that new service. So we feel very good going into 2016 around the progress there. But we still have work to do to get to that full-year 20% margin goal.

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

And so Rich, first of all thanks for your comment. I don’t really have anything to add to Adena’s comment on the margin. You did ask a question about audit revenue in the period, which relates not to technology solutions, but to the information services business. As we’ve typically disclosed, the audit revenue in the fourth quarter was $1.6 million and that compares to a year-ago where we had a reversal of about $300,000 of audit revenue. So there -- they contributed on a year-over-year basis as you know that audit revenue can be volatile quarter to -- what quarter-to-quarter or so that will give you some basis for comparison. And then on the technology solutions margin, as Adena indicated, I think we’re excited about two things. One, with the IR Insight launch, that clearly enables us to reach the final phase for us in limiting some of the expenses. You’re seeing some of the impact of the investment that we’ve made in the IR Insight platform in our depreciation and amortization. But to the upside will also be driven by success and revenue growth and as I indicted in the comments the net subscription sales and overall new sales of products in the corporate solution sector as a leading indicator and has been very positive and gives us confidence about making that continued progress against the goal in 2016.

Richard Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks to the correction there on the audit. I guess, the one follow-up would be for Bob, and on the Chi-X Canada acquisition. I think you said in the past that Canada was somewhat smaller market, its good to hear that the margins are so good at Chi-X Canada. But I’m just trying to see to get a little bit more color on the -- the revenue opportunity and so to the strategy there, Bob. I’d think is it more revenue than say expense story and just a little bit more behind the Chi-X.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Sure. Well, one it’s a classical play in the transaction business where there is an expense story in that there are two platforms, they both have common heritage I have to say. But there are two platforms that now will be consolidated down to one platform. So you’ve benefits there. We certainly also think that the Canadian market has opportunity in equity trading for us to grow both share and I think the market itself has some volume upside to it from where it is today. And we also see opportunities to broaden our franchise in Canada over time. So we start as an equity play, but we certainly will take a long march to broaden that into more of a full exchange type offering.

Richard Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Thanks, guys. I just had two questions just on the non-transaction parts of the business. I think one is, just on the corporate solutions. It seems like ’15 was a year of repositioning, it sounds like the platform is in place. We just wanted to get a sense on, what you’re seeing maybe year-over-year on the customer demand on the platform, any other pricing issues. Just trying to get a sense when you think about ’16, ’17, where that business is headed?

Bob Greifeld

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Yes, I’ll let Adena, answer that question, but let me just start by saying, its exciting with IR Insight, and you have to realize that we started from a clean sheet of paper, and it’s the first time that that’s ever been done. When you look at the current competitors in the space, they have taken other products and repositioned it. So you see a dramatic improvement in the workflow and capabilities that we’re delivering to IR. So proud of the team for having conceived of and developed this thing on schedule, on budget and that was great to have it live. And Adena, will give you some feedback on that.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Sure. Mike, in terms of looking at ’16 and ’17, I think the fact that we do feel some momentum both in sales and retention coming out of 2015 is a good indicator, so I look at it as the leading indicators into the forward quarters. And also the fact that we have been making investments not only in our IR Insight platform, but also in our PR platforms. So we continue to find opportunities for us to generate more sales opportunities for clients in both of those areas. The other, I think advancement we’re going to make as we go through ’16 and certainly into ’17 is starting to integrate our platforms together, in terms of capabilities to our clients. The IR Insight architecture is very flexible and allows us to basically share content across products and start to create more of an integrated experience for our clients. So we do think that, that will continue to drive demand for the services and also the potential for us to up-sell our clients and offering new content and services. So this is the start of, I see it as positive momentum in the business and in terms of having a really flexible and exciting new architecture as well as new capabilities to our customers. So that’s how I would look at 2016 and ’17, Mike.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Okay. That’s helpful. And then, just quick follow-up on the index side. It seems like there’s been a lot of growth and I think just even for the overall industry a lot of demand for those types of products. Just when you think about pricing and how that business works; how should we think about like the underlying growth versus weaker markets maybe having a negative impact just because the assets are down. So, I know that’s a bit tough. But just in terms of how the pricing works for that business on the outlook?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Sure. Well, generally the pricing for an index is contractual. And so when you establish the index ETF, with an ETF provider, you establish what the fee -- what fee the index provider is going to get from that product and that’s generally contractual over several years. So we don’t really have the ability to kind of fluctuate pricing year-over-year, and therefore there is a fair amount of beta that does start to occur once you launch an ETF in terms of the AUM growth, and sometimes some declines based on market performance. Generally speaking what we look at is, obviously we look at AUM, but we also look at TSO which is the total shares outstanding and that’s more an indication or core indication of the demand for the products from investors. So right now we’re seeing our TSO is holding steady as we’ve been dealing with the volatility in the markets. And so for us that means the underlying demand for the products is strong, and its just a matter of riding through some of these beta wins that come when we have market volatility. But the pricing, it tends to be fixed upon launching the product, Mike.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Michael Carrier of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

Thanks a lot. Your business has clearly changed quite a lot over the last 5 to 10 years, and we actually look back at the prior recession we had here in the U.S. And during that period of time, your non-trading revenues held up remarkably well, but again that business has changed quite a bit. I’m wondering, if you can give us some perspective on, if we go into a pretty severe or a recession scenario in the U.S. how would you expect those businesses to respond?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

The first thing I want to say is, on the trading business, its important to recognize and we saw some of this in the fourth quarter and we are experiencing it in the first quarter, our business does well in volatile times. So, when you think about the trading businesses and people are worried about the fact you paid per transaction, it’s a remarkable resilient model. In normal times we do well and in difficult times we tend to do even better, and we experienced that in the first quarter. And as you correctly pointed out, we have 75% of the businesses recurring, and that recurring business tends to hold very steady through thick and thin. Obviously if you get into a prolonged recession then people have a longer time to rethink where they are. But there’s such a big shock absorber in the recurring businesses that we have. Adena, do you want to add to that?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

No, I think that we -- I think one of the great things about the NASDAQ portfolio of services is that, they -- we have resiliency built into the model. So, we do have the strength of volumes that can come in during volatile times, but of course there’s some little offset in terms of capital raising activity and the fact that we -- probably we will see a slower start to the year, for instance in IPOs. But, so we have kind of these nice resiliency measures in terms of looking at volatility. In terms of our prolonged recession and some of the new businesses, I think that in a prolonged recession we do work with our corporate solutions clients to makes sure we retail them and we may end up having some shorter term discussions with them on pricing, but then longer term we maintain them and they become very, very loyal clients to us. And then on the side of the market technology businesses or long-term contracts, generally fixed price, and we find that that is very resilient through all economic cycles.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

We also disagree with the premise that a recession is coming. We think the economy will do just quite well.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

Yes.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open.

Alex Cram

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

Hi, good morning everyone. Good to be back.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

Good to have you back.

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

It’s good to have you, Alex.

Alex Cram

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

I hope lease retirement is not related to me covering the stock?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

Lee came in and says Alex is back, I’m out.

Alex Cram

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

Anyway, I actually just wanted to follow-up on Chris’s question from just now and in terms of the resiliency. So I guess the one question, the first of it is, are you actually, when you have discussion with your clients right now in market -- in the corporate solutions side also in market services, are you feeling any sort of push back, as people saying, like oh, this is crazy right now, leave me alone, I don’t have the sales discussion right now. And then secondly, what areas would you actually -- you mentioned corporate solutions Adena, in terms of pricing, but in terms of your financial services trading customers, do you feel any sort of potential for a slowdown?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

But let me give the broad theme here. One, we identify ourselves as a technology company. We have development muscle that many if not all of our competitors cannot match. And we’re in the business of coming up with innovative product. Innovative product tends to be relatively immune to what we’re getting at with cycles, up or down. And Adena, referenced that in her comments where people are calling us up wanting to get on the delivery queue for the new product. So we certainly operate here saying, if we come up with an exciting product for our customers that they need that we’ll do well independent of a given cycle at a point in time.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

I also would point out, Alex we have almost 10,000 corporate clients worldwide. So it’s a very global business, and so every different sector that we represent it goes through cycles. But the fact of the matter is, it’s an incredibly broad base of clients and there are always clients who are growing, always. And so I think that, I think that we find that with a really great product set and a great set of capabilities, coupled with our team of experts in the advisory business and the ability for us to truly partner with them, we find that we do quite well across the business and we feel very good about it. I think that with market tech, I think that it’s again a partnership -- it’s a partnership construct honestly with all of our clients, and they continue to have needs to manage their volumes and to deal with new regulatory changes and to deal with new opportunities in their markets. And for those reasons we continue to do quite well in having very strong conversations with our clients.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

And I’d just add something briefly here, Alex, its something that we experienced, particularly in the corporate solutions products, as technology products they help us operate more efficiently and that type of leverage when a company is under pressure from an expense standpoint is very valuable. And so we think that’s part of what contributes to the resilience of that particular revenue stream.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

I totally agree.

Alex Cram

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you. And then, just secondly, just quickly on capital returns, I don’t think that was brought up yet. But last year, I think you were opportunistic in the third quarter buying back a lot. So far this year’s markets have been choppy, but your stock has actually been a big out-performer. So just wondering, if you think about 2016, is a steady buyback expected or do you think there is opportunities to be a little bit more opportunistic here and there?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

I would say this, we are certainly opportunistic, but that’s on a foundation of being steady, if that makes any sense to you. So we have a desire to be steady, but we’ll certainly lighten up when we think marketing additions warranted and get aggressive when it’s favorable.

Alex Cram

Analyst · Alex Cram of UBS. Your line is now open

All right. Very good. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Alex Blostein

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Hi, guys, good morning.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

How are you doing, Alex?

Alex Blostein

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Very good, thanks. So a question for you on NFX. You highlighted pretty robust momentum out of the gate. Just curious if you can give us any break down between sell-side participation versus buy-side participation, any revenue figures you guys can point to and, I guess, more importantly, how much either in revenue or volumes you guys expect to do there to break profitability?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Yes. So I would say, first thing is we always judge our effectiveness first before we get to efficiency. So what that means here is we are certainly looking at non-financial metrics, and I think you got touched on a few of them. So I pay paid close attention to the number of participants that come in on a daily basis. So we were in the 20s through most of last year getting to the high 20s, now we’re getting to the high 30s of number of daily participants, that’s good. So we’re spreading through the community. We look for our progress in particular instruments. We look obviously at the overall scheme but we’re trying to focus on a couple of different instruments most notably nat gas options and to have double digit market share in that space, so we focused on that. We also look at the total number of contracts we trade. We look at the breakdown between trade reporting and central limit order book trading that’s done. And then last and probably most important is the open interest as I referred to, in my comment we had over half a million contracts of open interest which is well beyond what we thought we’d be at, at this stage of time. So increasing engagement from the community, increasing participation and we’re hitting all the metrics we need. With respect to a direct answer to your question, I think the financial metrics come to play in and around mid year going to the second half of this year, but right now we’d like to get to a higher average daily contract rate and obviously increase our market share in certain targeted products, but so far so good.

Alex Blostein

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Got it. And just a follow-up question for you guys around corporate solutions and that segment as a whole. The path to 20% that Adena and Lee, you guys mentioned, is that going to be a function at least in 2016 of expectation for revenue growth or some of the expenses kind of falling off as you migrate people from one platform to another, just kind of trying to think through the moving pieces of getting to that 20%?

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Alex, it’s really both. I think that, what we see -- we see margin upside both from continued elimination of some redundant expenses as well as revenue growth in the business as a whole with higher margin. So we’ll take it any which way we can, but I think both will be contributors here.

Alex Blostein

Analyst · Alex Blostein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open

Okay. Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open.

Kenneth Hill

Analyst · Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open

Hi, good morning everyone.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open

How are doing, Ken?

Kenneth Hill

Analyst · Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open

Doing really well. Thanks. I had a question on SMARTS, so that continues to be a nice business for you guys and it seems like you can grow that business from a few different angles. So I know you mentioned, you’ve got some new customers signing up like the Nigerian stock exchange, you’ve got some opportunity in China. And then I think also at the end of the year you had exchanges like the Abu Dhabi exchange which upgraded their technology. So as you kind of look at the different pieces there between new customers and customers who are going to potentially upgrade. Could you maybe size those type of markets and maybe talk about maybe what inning you’re in for each one?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open

Sure. Thanks for the question. So the first thing I would say is SMARTS has really three different markets that we’re trying to serve at this point. We have the exchanges which was the original business for SMARTS, and it’s the longest standing business. It’s a deployed solution out to the clients. We have been selling to exchanges for many years as well as to regulators. I should say exchanges and regulators. And that continues as you can tell to grow in terms of new exchanges taking our solution like Nigerian stock exchange most recently. But that’s a longer sales cycle, obviously there’s a finite number of exchanges, but we continue to find real success there, and that’s a more mature part of our business. The broker dealer community is the second community that we’ve sold to and that’s a newer part of our business, but definitely the fastest growing. We actually surpassed 1000 users this year and we were just thrilled with that. We, in fact, send him a small gift. And then [indiscernible] client. And I think that its really exciting to see continued double digit growth in that part of the business as we continue to find striking demand for trade surveillance solutions across the broker dealer community. In the year, over the last two years we have made it so it’s multi-asset class and it’s every geography. So it really can serve any and all trading firms in the world. The third community is the buy side community. And for the first time this year we do have three buy side clients who have signed up for the service and we’ve chosen to invest through our R&D program to build out more fulsome buy side solution for the trade surveillance. So buy side firms, both hedge funds and traditionals are really becoming much more sophisticated in their trading operations and they realize now that they need sophisticated tools to couple with the sophistication of their trading strategy. So we believe that that will be a new area to increased demand for us for the SMARTS service. We also were looking at how we can integrate more machine intelligence into the solution and we have been discussing how to integrate even more intelligence to make it more useful across the platform in terms of compliance and trade supervision. So that’s a quick synopsis of the SMARTS business, but it really is a great business for us.

Kenneth Hill

Analyst · Ken Hill of Barclays. Your line is now open

Great. I appreciate all the color there. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open.

Kyle Voigt

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Good morning.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

How are you doing?

Kyle Voigt

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

I just wanted to ask a question on the regulatory environment in the U.S. I guess recently there’s been much more focus on equity market structure in the U.S. given all the comment letters and press around the IEX exchange application. I guess I’m just wondering, your conversations with the SEC is all this attention by some of the largest market participants and equities kind of pushing them any closer to actually undertaking this holistic market structure review?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

That’s a difficult question for me to answer, directly you’d have to talk to them. But I’ll just make one comment on the topic. Certainly we think it is time for a redo of Reg NMS and I also think Reg NMS deserves some credit. In that we had a duopoly kind of situation before Reg NMS came along, and we’ve seen a dramatic decline in spreads and effective transaction cost in the market. So it served the purpose for a long period of time, but we certainly think refinement is in order. With respect to IEX our position is it’s thoughtful, it could be innovative and it’s very similar to what we had suggested to the Commission back in 2012. They told us it was not in either the letter or the spirit of Reg NMS and said we could not do it. So our position with IEX is that, you really should be after there is a rethink of Reg NMS and how do we get the new market structure in place and let innovation develop under the new set of rules and not patchwork and try to get exceptions under the existing rules that exist.

Kyle Voigt

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

All right. Thanks for the color. And then I guess my follow-up is the big question -- a big picture question around blockchain. So you certainly seem to be one of the leaders in terms of adoption and development in the financial services sector. But I guess the first part of my question is, do you think -- ever think that blockchain technology will ever be adopted in public cash equities trading in the U.S? And then, secondly, maybe you could give us some of your thoughts around, what other areas in financial services you see the biggest opportunities for adoption of blockchain maybe over the next two to three years? Thanks.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

Yes. So I would say, yes we certainly see blockchain adoption coming in public market equities, but we’ll not predict when. Certainly that will take a village to get there and to move from a legacy infrastructure that is ingrained in everybody’s infrastructure is not an easy thing to do. So we’ll be involved with those conversations and an active participant, but when you think of NASDAQ and blockchain you have to think of us being focused on what's the art of the doable, what's pragmatic and what's possible. So obviously with NASDAQ private market it’s the beginning of time, so we’re able to create the experience we wanted. We’re looking for similar type opportunities. We want to have use cases where you can deliver and get paid for and bring real value today. So as I said in my prepared remarks, we’re committed to proxy voting. In Estonia, they have a rule set that will allow us to do that. We have about three other use cases which we’ll not announce today, but a very close to being funded. And those use cases will have a common theme that they’ll be doable, we can deliver it, and deliver real value and not get wrapped up in the allure of blockchain’s technology, but focus on blockchain to enable real products that customers want to pay us for.

Kyle Voigt

Analyst · Kyle Voigt of KBW. Your line is now open

All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Vincent Hung

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Hi, good morning.

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Hi, Vincent.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

How are you doing?

Vincent Hung

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

So, on market technology again, this time on change requests, how much of an impact did change requests have on revenue? What's the typical impact from change requests, and what typically drives change requests?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

While Lee looks at the exact impact, I’ll answer the second part of the question. So as we work with a very broad set of clients, that we’ve over 70 market places around the world that will leverage our technology. They have things that they want to do to enhance that technology over time. And so it maybe a new feature, a new product or asset class that they want to bring into their market place and maybe speed that they want to continue to enhance their speed or they enhance their volumes, and then maybe regulatory changes that they have to make to be able to manage through the regulatory environment that they’re facing. And in all of those cases, that would be a change to the original scope of what we built for them and therefore they come to us and they ask us to size out and work through enhancements and change requests associated with the technology. In general, I always think of it as, in general, somewhere in the range of a $20 million annual revenue stream to us, but it can fluctuate year-over-year. And so I’m going to, I will turn it over to Lee to answer the specific question.

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Yes. So, Vincent the change request variance from the prior year was on a year-over-year basis the increase in change request was $5 million. So that gives you some context now. Also keep in mind that that’s on a -- that’s a reported basis and so a portion of that revenue is going to be subject to the FX impact that we have. So I’d estimate it’s probably proportionately and probably the $3 million to $4 million of an organic impact relative to market technology revenue as a whole.

Vincent Hung

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Okay, great. And last one for me; could you just give us any color around new product developments in the data products business?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Sure. So, in the information services business, as you know, we operate two sub-businesses, the index business and the data products business. And we look at product development across both of those areas. So clearly in the index space we worked very closely with ETF partners to launch new products that they believe will have investor demand around thematic indexes and we can do that now with the AlphaDEX index family, with First Trust, we can do that with our dividend achievers index family, our buyback index family and Dorsey Wright index family. And so we have a broad range of strategies that we can deploy through new products and we do that on a regular basis. With regard to data products, we have been -- we do a lot of work with our clients to look at new ways that we can either present our data, provide new technologies around our data like FPGA technology to deliver some of the data that we already have, and then we have been working closely with clients to start to get their demand and their interest in some new data analytics and again the use of machine intelligence to help fuel some of those products. But it’s early days and we’re still in the research phase for that.

Vincent Hung

Analyst · Vincent Hung of Autonomous. Your line is now open

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from the line of Brian Bedell of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Brian Bedell

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Good morning and thanks, folks.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

How are you doing, Brian?

Brian Bedell

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Good. How are you?

Brian Bedell

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

My congrats to Lee, also. It’s been great working with you. Most of my questions have been asked actually, just one, maybe, and that would be on the revenue momentum in the technology solutions segment. Given the momentum of the new IR product, and also layering in Istanbul, and as you see that trajectory going out in 2016 and into 2017, and Bob as you commented the cross-sell seems to be picking up momentum, as well, do you feel like the mid single-digit revenue growth rate in that segment could be higher, high single digits, in both ’16 and ’17?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

I would say it’s too early to change that target. As Adena referenced, the product is new and we’re so excited that it rolled out and we’re gaining experience by the day, and in the quarters to come we’ll have a better sense of that.

Brian Bedell

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay, I’ll leave it there. Thanks.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Andrew Bond

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

Thank you, good morning.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

How are you doing, Andrew?

Andrew Bond

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

I’m doing well, thanks. A question on the future initiative. NFX appears to be progressing nicely. I just want to talk about NLX and share gains have been somewhat more elusive there, as obviously it's a pretty tough market to break into and win share. So, just from your point of view, what kind of progress are we making here, and what are the plans moving forward to continue with the business?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

Yes, so with respect to NLX we are continuing to have what I call intensive dialogue with our customers. The focus now is with respect to the open interest realizing that’s an enduring value. There remains in that community a strong desire for a credible alternative. We have been successful in running the enterprise at, I think, a hyper efficient level. So it allows us to have betting strip on the table without us impacting the mother ship in some material way. So Hans-Ole was just there last week, I was there a few weeks ago. Community’s engaged and we have some pretty exciting plans in place and we’ll see how they play out later in the quarter. Hans-Ole, you want to add anything?

Hans-Ole Jochumsen

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

We could add that, but we believe is very important is a question about moving open interest and we have an approval for a scheme for that approved by the U.K. authorities and now we are working with customers to making that real. And I would say that, I made a couple of that, that very big players in discerning products and they are very keen that something is going to happen in this field soon. And the reason for that is pretty obviously for me. What they have in their mind is only one thing, how can they reduce the capital cost of the bank. And the way to do that is to clear more products in the same clearinghouse, in this case [indiscernible] clearinghouse, because thereby they can reduce the cost of clearing and thereby the capital cost.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

And for the record, scheme is a defining term in the U.K. and it doesn’t have the connotations it has in the U.S. just a pricing plan.

Hans-Ole Jochumsen

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

An improved one.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

Improved one.

Andrew Bond

Analyst · Andrew Bond of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open

Great. Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Kenneth Worthington

Analyst · Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Your line is now open

Hi, thank you. Just on the legacy eSpeed business, volumes down a lot; looks like industry volumes are weak. Are you also losing share? Maybe talk about what’s happening here, how broker tech is reacting to you as a competitor, and how the strategy is evolving? Thanks.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Your line is now open

Yes. So, I would say there’s one, the treasury market is undergoing some fundamental rethink. And the market is not just us and broker tech. There are other competitive forces in play. That being said, I think we’ve seen on the positive side some marginal increase in activity based upon the rate movement. We have seen some increased take up of eSpeed Elect where we have more participants coming on pretty much every week or so. So, that’s on the good side. But I think on a relative basis, even though there are competitors, I think relative to broker tech we’re still share challenged and have -- obviously our efforts have to become more effective in that regard, and we are working hard at it.

Kenneth Worthington

Analyst · Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Your line is now open

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open.

Robert Rutschow

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Hi, good morning, everybody.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Good morning.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

How are you doing?

Robert Rutschow

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Good. I wanted to wish Lee, good luck. And a quick question on market technology. Do you expect that Borsa Istanbul, that you will complete Phase 2 in 2016, and if so, is that included in any of the expense guidance?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

We basically are continuing to work towards a full solution offering that will continue to allow -- it will, actually will turn on the GAAP reporting of the contract. We are not giving any sort of estimates right now on time and we are working with the client. So I can’t give you a direct answer to that question at this point, because we continue to work through the development and the acceptance by the client. But as we get closer, we will certainly make sure that you stay informed.

Robert Rutschow

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Okay. And then, one on corporate solutions. Can you talk about how many customers will go from sort of free trial users to paying this year? And of the ones that have done that, what are the products that they’re most interested in paying for?

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Okay, yes. So to just to clarify for everyone, the way that the question really relates to IPOs that we have come on to NASDAQ, and we basically for the period or switches, and for a multi-year period they’re able to take the services for free, and then we turn them into paying clients as they choose to -- to continue to take those services over time. And with those, we have had a strong IPO environment in 2014 and 2015. But if you really look at it, the clients who are rolling off are clients that went public in 2012 and 2013, and we do have strong success in converting them into paying clients. But I think that, we also have these two years where we are offering a fair amount of free services to a lot of new clients. And therefore, the way that we manage that internally is that the listing business does pay the corporate solutions business some piece of that costs to be able to offer those out to their clients. So, really, those free clients are being partially paid for by listings, and that’s reflected in our segment results.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

But the 10,000 customers are not getting a free trial of IR Insight.

Adena Friedman

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

No, there’s no free trials going on, on IR Insight part of phase right.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

If that was your question.

Robert Rutschow

Analyst · Rob Rutschow of CLSA. Your line is now open

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Hi, good morning, guys.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

How are you doing?

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Hi, Patrick.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Good. A question for you on, how do you think about the barriers to entry for your listings franchise? BATS is talking about maybe trying to go again IPO -- IPO on their own exchange. IEX is talking about starting a listings franchise. So, how comfortable do you feel that your franchise is going to stack up pretty well against those new alternatives?

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Well, I think we feel incredibly comfortable. One, you have to realize that when you go public it’s an event to raise your profile, I mean, you want to get publicity associated with it, and the companies want publicity associated with a brand that they know and like. So, there is a very large brand barrier to the IPO pipeline. And obviously we’ve seen others try to build an IPO franchise with very limited success in the past. But, in addition, I think under Adena’s leadership we’ve done a lot to actually put hard products into our listing. So when you think about our corporate solutions product, which we talked about today, and talked about on the last question, that’s a whole range of services that we uniquely can offer, and that is a large barrier to entry. When you think about the technology we bring to bear on the IPO across at this point in time, again a big barrier to entry. So it’s our job to always be paranoid, but with respect to the different businesses we have, the IPO business has a large and I think protectable mode [ph].

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Your line is now open

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back to Mr. Bob Greifeld for any closing remarks.

Robert Greifeld

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Thank you. I thank you, everybody for your time today. Certainly it was another record quarter based on a record year. We are executing very well across our different businesses. And as I said in my prepared comments, I judge our businesses on how we are stacking up relative to the competition, and how we’re doing relative to serving our customer needs. These measures can be different than financial measures and they’re over time the more important measures. And I’m happy to report to our investors that across the vast majority of our businesses, we’re more competitive than we were a year-ago. And we are serving our customer needs better than we’ve been in any time in the past, and that will certainly portend well for financial results going forward. So I look forward to getting back with you again in the quarter and taking your calls and meetings during the quarter. And again, Lee, thank you for your personal relationship with us and your professionalism. So, thank you.

Lee Shavel

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open

Thank you.