Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call

Hello, everyone. 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 will be an opportunity for questions. 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 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 $1.52, up 14% versus last year. Fourth quarter net revenues of $2.3 billion increased 5% year-over-year, driven by transaction revenues of $1.1 billion and recurring revenues of $1.2 billion. Fourth quarter adjusted operating expenses totaled $973 million, $4 million below the low end of our guidance range, driven by reduced marketing and legal spend, as well as lower customer acquisition costs at the NYSE. Now let’s move to Slide 6, where I’ll provide an overview of the performance of our Exchange segment. Fourth quarter net revenues totaled $1.2 billion, up 9% year-over-year. Transaction revenues of $883 million were up 13%, in part driven by record revenues across Interest Rates and our Global Energy business, which grew 38% and 16% year-over-year, respectively. Revenues within our global oil complex increased 11% year-over-year, while natural gas and environmental products, which represent nearly half of our Energy revenues, increased by 22% in the quarter, and were up 31% for the full year. In addition, 2025 is off to a strong start, with January volumes increasing 21% year-over-year, and total open interest up 11% year-over-year, including 13% growth in Global Energy and 17% growth in our Interest Rate business. Recurring revenues, which include our Exchange Data Services and our NYSE Listings business, totaled $353 million. The sequential decline in Exchange Data Services was largely driven by a one-time full year true up to our tape revenues at the NYSE, which we do not anticipate will repeat in 2025. As a result, we expect that Exchange Data and Connectivity Services revenues will rebound to the $240 million to $245 million range in the first quarter. In our Listings business, while less than half of global ITOs met the standards to list on our exchange in 2024, the NYSE helped to raise $17 billion in new proceeds, welcoming 53 new operating companies, including seven of the top 10 IPOs and nine of the top 10 best-performing IPOs. Looking to 2025, we expect that recurring revenues in our Exchange segment will grow in the low single-digit range, largely driven by continued growth in our futures data services. Turning now to Slide 7, I’ll discuss our Fixed Income and Data Services segment. Fourth quarter revenues totaled $579 million, including transaction revenues of $108 million. Within our ICE bonds, lower tax loss harvesting activity relative to 2023 within our muni business offset growth in institutional corporates, while strong CDS clearing activity was offset by lower levels of member interest following two Fed cuts towards the end of 2024. Recurring revenues totaled a record $471 million and grew by 5% year-over-year. In our Fixed Income Data and Analytics business, record fourth quarter revenues of $301 million increased by 5%, driven by growth in pricing and reference data, and another quarter of double-digit growth in our Index business. Other Data and Network Services revenues also increased by 5% in the fourth quarter, driven by continued growth for both ICE Global Network and our Consolidated Feeds offering, as well as continued strength in our desktop solutions. Looking to 2025, supported by an ASV that exits the fourth quarter up 5% year-over-year, we anticipate mid-single-digit growth in our Fixed Income and Data Services recurring revenues. Please flip to Slide 8, where I’ll discuss the results in our Mortgage Technology segment. Fourth quarter Mortgage Technology revenues totaled $508 million, slightly above the high end of our guidance range. Recurring revenues totaled $391 million. While down on a year-over-year basis, revenues improved relative to the third quarter, driven by growth in both our Servicing Solutions and our Data and Analytics business. Similar to prior quarters, while the majority of Encompass customers renewed at higher minimums, the improvement in recurring revenues was somewhat offset by customers that reduced minimums at renewal. Transaction revenues totaled $117 million, up 12% on a year-over-year basis, but as anticipated, were down slightly relative to the third quarter due to seasonality in the market, a dynamic that typically impacts both the fourth quarter and first quarter of each year. It’s worth noting that according to ICE Mortgage Technology, we continue to see signs of market stabilization, as housing inventory continues to rise, up 20% in 2024, and annual home price appreciation slowed to the lowest levels since 2011. Moving to guidance for 2025, we anticipate that total IMT revenues will grow in the low single-digit to mid-single-digit range. The high end of the range is underpinned, in part, by low-teens growth in industry origination volumes, which is similar to expectations set by the NBA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while the low end of the range assumes a more conservative origination backdrop that is flat with 2024 levels. At both ends of the range, we anticipate growth in recurring revenues due, in part, to a portion of the $55 million in total revenue synergies we have achieved beginning to come online. Please flip to Slide 9, where I’ll provide some additional full year guidance. We expect 2025 adjusted operating expenses to be between $3,915 million and $3,965 million, an increase of roughly 3% year-over-year at the midpoint. Similar to prior years, we expect to invest in our people, our technology and growth initiatives across our business. With these investments somewhat offset by synergies related to Black Knight. Moving below the line, similar to last year, we currently expect the full year tax rate will be in the range of 24% to 26%. And finally, we expect full year CapEx to be in the range of $730 million to $780 million. As is typical in the years following an acquisition, CapEx is expected to be slightly elevated as we invest and reposition the acquired asset. In addition to these IMT-related investments, we will also make revenue-related investments in our data center footprint to meet growing customer demand for additional capacity. In summary, we delivered a very strong finish to another record year of revenues, operating income and free cash flow, and adjusted earnings per share. We invested across our business while also significantly reducing our leverage. As we kick off 2025, we’re focused on once again delivering growth and creating shareholder value. I am happy to take your questions during Q&A, but for now, I’ll hand it over to Ben.

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 crude and serves as the cornerstone of our global oil complex, which today includes over 800 locational and product spreads relied on by commercial customers. This innovation and evolution have enabled us to continue serving our global customers and to drive growth across the business, delivering record oil revenues in 2024, which grew 21% year-over-year. This strong performance was underpinned by the highest volume year for total oil contracts traded on ICE, including records across our Brent and gas oil benchmark contracts. In addition, as trade dynamics evolve and become increasingly complex, customers not only are seeking liquidity in the major global benchmarks, but also in products that provide greater hedging precision. This dynamic is illustrated by record trading activity in our other crude and refined products in 2024, with volumes of 34% year-over-year, including records across our Platts Dubai and Murban contracts. Our global oil offering sits alongside our global natural gas markets, where the globalization of this commodity is underpinned by the rise of liquefied natural gas or LNG. The ongoing liberalization of the LNG market has put more natural gas in motion over longer distances with a greater number of touchpoints along the value chain from production to consumption. At the same time, demand for natural gas continues to grow and likely sustainably for the foreseeable future. Trends that support this are the undeniable secular growth in overall energy demand, increased demand for data centers and the associated power that goes with it, and the move to gas as a cleaner fossil fuel source versus coal. In essence, this evolution creates opportunities for new trading relationships to develop and adds an extra layer of complexity that fuels adoption of our global gas product suite. This was illustrated by record market participation in our global gas complex in 2024, which has increased nearly 30% since 2019. As supply chains evolve and globalize, the quality of our expansive range of benchmarks is evident with our natural gas business delivering another year of record revenues in 2024, increasing 30% versus last year. This strong performance was led by record revenues in our Title Transfer Facility benchmark, or TTF, which we have positioned as the Brent of natural gas and plays a critical role in providing global natural gas price signals. As a result, TTF continues to be relied upon by an increasing number of market participants with market participation and volumes both setting new highs in 2024 and each growing double digits on average over the past five years. In Asia, where coal still accounts for nearly half of the region’s energy supply, our Japan-Korea marker, JKM, has seen market participation grow double digits on average over the past five years, reaching a record in 2024 and increasing 27% year-over-year. As a cleaner alternative to coal, natural gas has accelerated the global risk management needs related to the commodity and caused the markets across North America, Europe, and Asia to become increasingly interconnected. This dynamic was once again highlighted by JKM volume execution trends in the fourth quarter with two-thirds of JKM volume executed via the JKM-TTF spread. In North America, as market participants continue to gravitate towards ICE’s Henry Hub contracts for the liquidity ICE offers in longer-dated tenors, along with the linkage to our exclusive regional basis markets, volumes in our complex grew 30% year-over-year, including record volumes across our basis markets, which span 70 hubs across North America, allowing customers to manage regional supply and demand dynamics. Trading alongside our global oil, gas, and power markets, our leading environmental markets, which were first launched nearly two decades ago, provide customers price transparency across the energy spectrum that is critical in navigating the clean energy transition. Here, we’ve seen market participation grow double digits on average over the past five years, including record participation in 2024, up 13% versus prior year. At the same time, record volumes across the complex were up 39% year-over-year, led by another record-setting year in our North American environmental markets. These record volumes represent the equivalent of over $1 trillion in notional value for the fourth consecutive year and contributed to a 40% increase in environmental revenues in 2024 versus the prior year. In summary, the evolution of our energy markets is one example of how we continuously invest and develop customer-driven solutions across asset classes to drive value creation. Our record performance is a product of these investments, some that we’ve made more than a decade ago.

Turning now to our Fixed Income and Data Services business on Slide 11. Driven by multi-year investments in both technology and data, our comprehensive Fixed Income Data platform continues to deliver compounding revenue growth. Our position as a leading provider of price and reference data has served as the foundation for many innovative solutions, such as our rapidly growing Index franchise, a business we built through both organic and inorganic investments, including our acquisitions of IDC and the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Index Platform. In 2024, revenues in our Index business increased double digits year-over-year. A key driver was growth in ETF assets under management benchmarked to ICE indices of 13% year-over-year. Collectively, the strong performance across our PRD and Index business drove 5% growth in our Fixed Income Data and Analytics business in 2024. In addition, we continue to see returns on past investments made to enhance content and functionality across our Other Data and Network Services business, which grew 5% in 2024 versus prior year. As an example, within our Consolidated Feeds business, investments we’ve made to elevate and enhance our offering, including commodity and energy data now available on our feeds, has led to accelerating adoption by large financial institutions, including displacements of larger multi-asset class incumbents. This was a key contributor to the high single-digit revenue growth in this area in 2024. With content from over 600 data sources, as firms seek more high-quality data from a range of different sources in a cost-effective manner and access to new unique content, our competitive and comprehensive offering stands to benefit. Finally, as we move forward, we remain focused on continuing to leverage our deep expertise in gathering and cleansing unstructured data to develop actionable insights and add transparency, not only to the Fixed Income markets, but across asset classes.

For example, in 2024, we announced the integration of our property and loan-level Mortgage data sets with our property-level climate risk metrics covering more than 100 million U.S. homes. This solution improves transparency and facilitates risk management throughout the housing, finance, and property insurance sector, allowing customers to apply ICE’s climate metrics to individual loans, properties, and entire portfolios, improving the visibility to the inherent climate risks in each. We also went live with our MBS mortality indicator, which leverages data sets across ICE Data Services and ICE Mortgage Technology to produce daily trading signals for more than 900,000 agency and residential MBS pools. Shifting now to our Mortgage business on Slide 12. Like our Exchanges and Fixed Income businesses, ICE Mortgage Technology’s products and network excel by offering a value proposition that enables efficiency gains for our customers. We target asset classes that are in the early stages of an analog to digital conversion because we believe these asset classes will benefit from greater automation and create strong network effects. This is no different in Mortgage, where we’ve constructed an unparalleled network that seamlessly connects key industry stakeholders within a single end-to-end digital ecosystem. That kind of connectivity and network is a hallmark of the ICE business model and one that, combined with our leading solutions, gives us confidence that we can grow a business that at $2 billion today is only a fraction of the $14 billion addressable market that’s in the early days of an analog to digital conversion. In 2024, we continued to make progress on the successful integration of Black Knight and executing on our strategy of relieving the pain points and inefficiencies across the Mortgage workflow. Starting with Encompass, we closed on 38 client wins in the fourth quarter as customers focus on modernizing their infrastructure and our workflow efficiencies, and to kick off the year, we’re pleased to announce that Flagstar and Howard Hanna have signed on as Encompass clients. In parallel, we delivered on several enhancements to Encompass during last year, including a launch of multi-channel support for web-based loan manufacturing, and are pleased to see clients adopting this innovation. We also unified our industry-leading marketing and sales automation solutions into one complete customer acquisition and retention suite. We also added a borrower-facing mobile application to support lenders on our platform. Then we embedded these into Encompass workflows directly, enabling our lender clients to efficiently identify customers to target with the right products at the right time and manage their leads through to closing. This helped to drive over 200 cross-sells of our customer acquisition suite into Encompass customers in 2024. Along the same lines, we integrated datasets from Black Knight into Encompass, including property tax, flood, and closing fees, providing customers with more choice of service providers on our platform and are pleased by the early traction across these offerings, executing on over 400 data cross-sells to Encompass clients in 2024. Along the same lines, and consistent with our approach of investing ahead of secular growth, throughout 2024, we dramatically enhanced our ICE Product and Pricing Engine or PPE, and look forward to showcasing this enhanced offering at our upcoming ICE Experience Event, an annual gathering of thousands of customers where each year we launch our new and enhanced innovations for our clients. For MSP, roughly 80% of new client wins during the year were cross-sells to Encompass clients. We also continue to make significant strides in enhancing functionality designed to elevate customer interactions and experiences, including the rollout of our MSP Digital Experience or MSP DX. At the same time, we enhanced and integrated our loss mitigation, customer service, and collections capabilities. These embedded tools within MSP not only streamline operations, but help clients prepare for the eventual increase in defaults and foreclosures. Our customer service enhancements improve the customer experience, and as an example, our call prediction functionality uses artificial intelligence to analyze the account and provide a prediction of why the customer is calling, allowing the customer service agent to reach a resolution in decreased timeframes and reduce friction for the homeowner. Lastly, our Actionable Intelligence Platform or AIP, which is in the process of being rebranded as ICE Business Intelligence, provides robust analytical and reporting capabilities based on configurable suites for originators and servicers. Originators will be able to view dashboards to manage all aspects of production, including marketing, sales, pipelines, and closing through all channels, including retail, wholesale, and correspondence. Servicers will have sophisticated risk management, compliance, and capacity planning tools that will help them better manage portfolios and coordinate activities across the enterprise. By delivering timely and actionable insights, our Business Intelligence Platform will help enable financial institutions to stay agile and competitive in a continually evolving market, all while seamlessly integrating with existing systems for ease of adoption. In that regard, we are pleased to announce that we signed a top five depository onto this service in 2024 and we continue to see other clients engage in this solution suite based on the efficiencies and revenue opportunities it can help uncover. In summary, we are pleased to see the value of our comprehensive platform is resonating in the marketplace and we remain optimistic about the long-term opportunity to accelerate the analog to digital conversion. With that, I’ll hand it over to Jeff.

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 WTI contract, our leading Global Energy network today spans more than 2,000 contracts. It’s a business that, as you’ve just heard, continues to flourish more than 20 years later, with revenues tripling since 2010 to a record $1.9 billion in 2024, an increase of 25% year-over-year on top of 28% prior annual growth. Building on our Energy business as the foundation, we’ve targeted an interrelated collection of markets to create a global risk management powerhouse that helps our customers manage risk associated with both acts of nature, such as issues that affect commodity supply chain flows, and acts of man, such as central bank and cross-border trade policies. In 2013, through the acquisition of the London International Financial Futures Exchange, known as LIFFE, and subsequently combining it with our own local commodity exchange and clearinghouse, we broadened our offering to manage the risk resulting from both types of forces. And in 2024, our commodity markets, as well as our Interest Rate derivatives complex all traded at record levels, highlighting the key role that these contracts continue to play for global market participants. Across our Interest Rate contract portfolio, diverging rate paths by Central Banks was a consistent theme throughout 2024, contributing to record revenues, which increased 30% versus 2023, including 38% growth in the fourth quarter. These results highlight the strength of our multi-currency European, U.K. and Swiss Interest Rate markets, including the key benchmarks Euribor, SONIA, SARON, and Gilts. In 2015, our acquisition of IDC proved to be instrumental and laid the foundation for our move into Fixed Income markets and the development of a comprehensive platform that has since evolved into nearly 500 unique institutional-grade data products, one that continues to deliver compounding revenue growth as these markets automate and as passive investing grows. In our Index business, ETF AUM benchmarked to our indices has grown to $648 billion at the end of 2024, from less than $100 billion in 2017, a key driver of the double-digit average annual revenue growth over that time frame. Fixed income and its related data is an area where we continue to make strategic decisions to position ourselves for success. For example, in 2024, we announced our intention to launch a clearing service for all U.S. Treasury securities and repurchase agreements, leveraging our infrastructure and expertise in centralized clearing. And in early January, we announced our acquisition of the American Financial Exchange or AFX, an electronic exchange for direct lending and borrowing for American banks and financial institutions. AFX has focused on regional, midsize, and community bank customers, covering many of the same customers that we serve through our Mortgage Technology Network, making AFX a natural fit at ICE and complementing both our Mortgage Network and ICE’s growing Index business. Across our Mortgage business, much like our strategy and other asset classes, we’re leveraging our data, technology, and collective expertise to bring efficiencies to the entire Mortgage manufacturing workflow. And as Ben pointed out, we continue to make strides executing against this strategy, digitizing the workflow from home buyer identification all the way through to the capital markets. In 2024, we added many new clients to the Mortgage network while also deepening relationships with our longstanding customers. As we look to 2025 and beyond, the new U.S. administration has pledged to increase U.S. energy production, which could change the supply chain dynamics of the world’s energy supply, and resultingly, the global risk that will need to be managed. We believe that energy demand growth, particularly in Asia, the power deregulation trends in Japan, increases in U.S. energy exports, and the multi-decade non-linear energy transition all point to the growing use of market-based commodity pricing and risk management tools. And with new governments in the U.K. and EU Commission, as well as in the U.S., we expect novel policy decisions that will impact inflation and employment, which could drive continued demand for Interest Rate risk management in 2025. Also, when thinking about the current robust AI investment environment, particularly in the U.S., coupled with uncertain Central Bank Interest Rate policies and the potential demands for energy by this sector, these trends could further the need for commodity risk management while continuing to stimulate trading in equity markets. From helping our customers navigate the long-tail evolution of commodity markets to the digitization of Fixed Income workflows and automating Mortgage placement, it’s our operating expertise, leading technology infrastructure, and forward-thinking that underpin the quality of the network that we operate, proving to be our competitive advantage and providing the opportunity to unlock additional growth by collaborating across customers and our own business units. We believe that we’re better positioned than ever to capitalize on these secular and cyclical trends across asset classes, and we remain focused on investing and executing on the many growth opportunities that are in front of us. In summary, for more than 20 years, ICE has continually evolved to meet the needs of our customers and provide value for our stockholders. In that vein, 2024 marked our 19th consecutive year of record revenues, record operating income, and record adjusted earnings per share. This consistent record of growth reflects on the quality of our strategy to diversify the business and position the company at the center of some of the largest industries undergoing analog to digital conversions, a strategy that has created an all-weather business model that is well positioned to continue to drive growth as it has for every year since we’ve been a public company. I’d like to thank our customers for their business and their trust in 2024, and I want to thank my colleagues for the efforts that contributed to yet another record year at ICE. I’ll now turn our call back to our moderator, Lydia, and we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session until 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

Thank you. 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 begin, and then Warren will probably address the latter part of that question. As a reminder, we completed the Black Knight acquisition around 18 months ago. Since then, we have successfully onboarded several major financial institutions to both Encompass and MSP, as you noted. It's important to mention that it typically takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months for these clients to fully integrate and complete their testing. This is essential infrastructure, as you know. Once they begin to come online, they will implement the changes gradually, division by division. Therefore, it does take time for these adjustments to occur. Given that the deal was finalized about 18 months ago, we are currently in a phase where numerous clients we secured during that time will start going live in 2025 as this year progresses. You will see this development unfold throughout the year.

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 Flagstar 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 wins 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 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 is that? 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, which has performed very well over the last several years. A key factor in the success of our WTI is the innovations we launched a few years ago, particularly the Midland WTI HOU contract. This contract has seen a remarkable 200% increase year-over-year at the start of this year, following a phenomenal previous year. Another noteworthy aspect of the Midland WTI HOU contract is that it is a physically delivered contract supported by many major oil companies, and the volume of physical deliveries we experienced is twice that of our peers in the WTI market. This highlights the strong physical and structural foundation of this market. Additionally, we are pricing Midland WTI oil based on Houston, which is now also influencing the Brent contract and extending to Europe. Given these dynamics, many traders engage in trading based on the interrelations of contracts. With our offerings of Brent, the WTI HOU contract, and our WTI contract, clients seeking maximum efficiency can trade them as a package or a subset, and we believe this is driving much 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.

Thank you, Patrick. Considering the current interest rates, it might be somewhat optimistic to expect that level of refinance growth, but we wanted to factor that perspective into our guidance. This is why we also provide a more conservative lower end of our projections. Predicting the refinance market, especially regarding interest rates and their impacts, is challenging. However, we are noticing some improvements in the purchase sector, such as increased inventory and a slowdown in price appreciation. We'll need to observe the trends in refinancing, which will primarily be influenced by interest rates. I aimed to give you a broad range of what the year might entail from an origination standpoint. Even within that range, I believe we can achieve good growth. Importantly, our recurring revenues are expected to increase as well. While it's difficult to predict the exact outcomes, I believe we have the opportunity to keep investing in the business, advance the industry, and strengthen our platform as the year progresses.

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

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Warren, could you provide more details on the timing of some of the expense synergies? I'm interested in quantifying the year-over-year benefit reflected in your full-year operating expense guidance, especially with the raised expectation of $230 million. Should we anticipate that benefit to be distributed throughout 2026, or will it be realized more at the beginning of the year, resulting in a more significant year-over-year impact? I would appreciate any insight you can offer regarding the timing 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. Thanks for the question. Right now, we are seeing a trend among clients, particularly on the buy-side, where there is a strong focus on the number of vendors they work with and an emphasis on having a comprehensive catalog of services. This helps them limit their investment while obtaining the necessary data to run their businesses. Additionally, there is a significant emphasis on predictable costs, which we consistently hear when engaging with clients. Given our wide range of services and our connections within the industry, we are generating opportunities. However, smaller data providers that offer only one or two segments may experience challenges compared to those with a broader offering, giving us an advantage going forward.

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 pick up 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. Thank you for the question. I wanted to follow up on the energy markets. I’m curious about how you believe the new administration policies may affect the energy markets from your perspective, whether it presents new opportunities for your business in the future or perhaps creates some challenges. Additionally, Ben, could you share any insights on the potential trading relationships and the types of customers you are considering?

This is Jeff. We have discussed our Houston WTI contract extensively on this call, which serves primarily as an export contract. We're noticing that the administration aims to boost U.S. production, which we believe will influence the export markets and enhance risk management through the use of that contract. Additionally, there is increasing dialogue from the administration regarding the potential use of sanctions and tariffs on other countries, which could impact the global energy supply chain. One key observation from the European Energy markets in recent years has been the rapid adaptability of the energy supply chains. We are also investing in the Middle East with our Murban contract and at the Abu Dhabi Exchange, and we believe that the evolving dynamics of supply chains will positively affect this 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, 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 developed our business across all the commodities we cover as global entities, which has allowed us to stand out with countless contracts worldwide to assist our customers in managing risks at both the production and consumption points. We did this while collaborating with our customers because supply chains are constantly evolving. Currently, Ukraine has halted all Russian gas transit through its territory into Continental Europe. Could this change? Yes, it’s possible. When we examine the open interest trends in our contracts, alongside those in TTF, we find a very healthy business and a robust contract. Reflecting on the onset of the Ukraine war, our open interest in that contract remained stable, although trading volumes dipped temporarily until the market adjusted and supply chains reconfigured. The resilience of open interest, which continued to grow during that period, suggests that once supply chains reset, the market learned how to assess pricing and the dynamics of supply and demand, leading to significant contract growth. Therefore, we view it positively as these supply chains continue to 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.

Warren here. To clarify, as we progress through this year, a majority of our customers still have loans above the minimum, although the amount trending above the minimum remains relatively small. However, over the past few quarters, we've seen some of the best improvements in the percentage of loans above the minimum in several years. This positive trend is partly due to an improving market. Additionally, as we've mentioned in previous calls, minimums have been decreasing for many customers during renewals, contributing to this situation. To provide context on the potential impact, if we are in a $7 million to $10 million loan environment industry-wide, we would anticipate revenues to reach a few hundred million dollars, potentially close to $0.5 billion in those scenarios. As we transition back to a more typical market, which historically has averaged $10 million loans with a median around $8 million, we expect to see a more pronounced impact on transaction volumes, particularly as it affects 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.