Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the INTL FCStone Quarter Two 2018 Earnings 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 follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Bill Dunaway. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning. My name is Bill Dunaway. Welcome to our earnings conference call for our fiscal second quarter ended March 31, 2018. After the market closed yesterday, we issued a press release reporting our results for our second fiscal quarter of 2018. This release is available on our Web site at www.intelfcstone.com as well as a slide presentation which we will refer to on this call in our discussions of our quarterly and year-to-date results. You'll need to sign on to the live webcast in order to view the presentation. The presentation and an archive of the webcast will also be available on our Web site after the call's conclusion. Before getting underway, we're required to advise you and all participants should note, that the following discussion should be taken in conjunction with the most recent financial statements and notes thereto as well as the Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. This discussion may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in our filings with the SEC. Although the company believes that its forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions regarding its business and future market conditions, there could be no assurances that the company's actual results will not differ materially from any results expressed or implied by the company's forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Readers are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Sean O'Connor, the company's CEO.

Thanks, Bill. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining our second quarter fiscal 2018 earnings call. We achieved a sixth straight record quarter in operating revenues, up a strong 33% from a year ago, and up 22% sequentially from the immediately prior quarter. We recorded our best ever quarterly earnings of $22.7 million, up 106% from the prior year. After adjusting for the Tax Reform, second quarter adjusted net income was up 46% from our immediately prior quarter. Our diluted EPS was a record $1.18, up 103% from a year ago, and on an adjusted basis up 47% sequentially versus the first quarter. Our return on equity for the quarter was 20% and for the year-to-date period excluding the Tax Reform was just over 18%. Our ROE numbers are calculated on total equity not tangible equity. Tangible equity being the way a lot of other financial companies report the statistic. Using tangible equity reduce these numbers by around three percentage points. The market environment we're operating has become increasingly positive for us over the last four to six quarters with interest rates increasing and volatility slowly and sporadically increasing to more normal levels as the Fed withdraws from the capital markets. During the time to review, we certainly benefited from a spike in equity volatility around the Vics issue, which positively impacted our equities and futures hearing activities. Also we've benefited from higher interest rates on our $3 billion plus of customer flows. Clearly more extremes spice us as we saw in the Vics are not sustainable, but it does seem that's moderately higher volatility has crept back into many of the asset classes such as metals and agricultural commodities offer best as political and other concerns. We think this is a more normal situation, which is sustained will continue…

Thank you, Sean. I'll be referring to slide in the information we have made available as part of the webcast. Specifically starting with slide number three which shows our performance over the last five fiscal quarters, the top of slide number three is a chart that depicts our reported net income earnings per share and ROE over the last five quarters while the bottom of the slide shows the same metrics on an adjusted basis. Removing the effective tax reform in the previously that on physical coal, in the second quarter the only difference in our GAAP net income and adjusted net income was an $800,000 income tax benefit related to an adjustment provisional discrete tax charges taken in the immediately preceding first quarter related to the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The bottom graphs shows the strong growth we have seen over the last five quarters in our core operating result with the near doubling of our earnings per share and an ROE from the current period in excess of our internal target of 15%. Our adjusted net income was $36.9 million with earnings per share of $1.93 for the fiscal year-to-date period. Moving on to slide number four which represent the bridge between operating revenues for the second quarter of last year to the current year fiscal second quarter. Operating revenues were $260.2 million in the current period up $64.4 million or 33% versus the prior year that shown all operating segments showed revenue growth over the prior year but by our clearing and execution services segment which added $23.8 million or 37% in operating revenues driven by strong exchange traded revenue growth as noted by Sean earlier. In addition our largest segment added strongest quarter ever, adding $15.6 million or 25% in operating revenues…

Thanks, Bill. Our operating revenues and core earnings have been accelerating for a number of quarters now, as we scaled our business by increasing our capabilities in our client base. We have created a financial platform that connects over 20,000 clients with over 40 exchanges and 100s of execution venues. We have a scalable platform with high operational leverage, around 50% of incremental revenue for up to the pretax line. We have been steadily increasing our footprint and growing client's acquisition and volumes across our platform which has resulted in the steady and positive trend in our results. The positive overall trends has not been impacted by improved market conditions with higher volatility and higher interest rates, , unleashing long dormant components of our business model and resulting in what we think is an industry leading ROE. We believe as these more positive market conditions are return to more normalized situation in the capital market. Since the spike in volatility around the VIX issue, we have seen general in more widespread volatility across different asset process and we also anticipate that interest rate increases are not get over. All of this is very positive for our business environment long-term. Despite the better overall market conditions we continue to see consolidation in our industry with scale as becoming a bigger issue for smaller players and based on and we continue to focus on the larger clients. With that, I'd like to turn it back to the Operator and question and answer session. Operator?

Okay, well, thanks everyone for participating, and we will speak to you again in three months time. Thank you.