Earnings Call Transcript - ICE Q1 2021

Mary Caroline O'Neal, Director of Investor Relations

Good morning. ICE's first quarter 2021 earnings release and presentation can be found in the Investors section of the 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 2020 Form 10-K, first quarter Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC.

Scott Hill, CFO

Thanks, Mary Caroline. Congratulations on your new role, truly well deserved. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin on Slide 4 with some key highlights from our first quarter results. First quarter revenues, operating income, adjusted net income, and adjusted earnings per share were all the best in the history of our company. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.34 increased 7% compared to our previous record of $1.25, which we achieved in last year's first quarter. Record total first quarter revenues of $1.8 billion were up 4% year-over-year on a pro forma basis. Total transaction revenues declined slightly versus an unprecedented backdrop a year ago. Importantly though, total recurring revenues, which represent about half our business, increased by 9% with all three of our business segments contributing to the strong year-over-year growth. First quarter adjusted operating expenses totaled $729 million, including $30 million related to Bakkt. Without the additional $7 million of Bakkt investments, we would have been toward the lower end of our original guidance. We expect that Bakkt's merger with Victory Park SPAC will be completed toward the end of this quarter. We expect second quarter adjusted operating expenses to be in the range of $742 million to $752 million, including approximately $35 million of additional expense related to Bakkt. Incorporating the additional Bakkt expenses into our full year guidance as well as slightly higher-than-expected FX, which will be more than offset by higher revenues, we now expect full year adjusted expenses to be in the range of $2.88 billion to $2.93 billion.

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Congratulations to you, Scott. Thank you, and good morning to everyone on the call. Please turn to Slide 8. As we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and the highly volatile environment we experienced in 2020, our customers continue to rely on our global energy markets to navigate uncertainty and manage risk. Importantly, it's our network expertise and investment in technology that enables us to deliver innovative customer solutions and capture the growth opportunities provided by secular trends, such as the growing complexity of energy markets alongside the energy transition. In our oil markets, Brent crude serves as the cornerstone of a global network that includes key benchmarks such as WTI, Gasoil, RBOB Gas, and most recently, Murban crude oil. By leveraging our global network, the launch of ICE Futures Abu Dhabi, or IFAD, has enabled, for the first time, participants to come together and contribute to the price formation of Murban, an important benchmark for oil flowing through to Asia. In just its first month, Murban, along with related derivatives, has traded over 150,000 contracts across 49 firms with growing open interest now over 45,000 lots, making it one of the most successful futures launches in our industry's history.

Jeff Sprecher, CEO

Thank you, Ben, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Please turn now to Slide 9. In the first quarter, we once again grew revenues, grew adjusted operating income, and grew adjusted earnings per share, delivering the best quarter in our company's history. Remarkably, we did this against last year's record-breaking volumes and volatility, which was largely driven by the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are a testament to the value of our data, technology, and the strength of our strategic business model. The compounding growth of our subscription-based services, combined with our diverse transaction-based businesses, means that our growth is not tied to one economic cycle, to one geography, or to one asset class. Rather, it means growth on top of growth through all rate environments, across asset classes, and around the world. Over the past 20 years, ICE has continually evolved to meet the needs of our customers and provide value for our stockholders. For the past 14 years, I've had the privilege of working alongside Scott Hill as our growth story has unfolded. ICE has completed dozens of deals and made thousands of strategic decisions that have been rooted in the information and the quality metrics that were ingrained in our culture by Scott. Scott not only provided financial leadership for the company, but has played a vital role in providing strategic vision. He championed our unique culture, and he's mentored younger generations of leaders. I want to thank Scott for his contribution, dedication, and leadership. I want to wish him our best as he moves on to tackle the difficult life of branching in Texas. Scott will officially transition next month, and he'll remain an adviser and a mentor to ensure a smooth transition as Warren Gardiner assumes the duties of CFO. Warren has worked closely with Scott over the last four years and covered our sector as a senior research analyst for many years prior to this. Warren's knowledge of our business and our industry will help us to continue to build on the foundation that's been established by Scott and continue a track record of growth. I also want to welcome MC as our new Investor Relations Head. Let me say thank you to our customers for their business and their trust in the quarter. Thank you to my colleagues at ICE for their contribution to delivering the best quarter in our company's history. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to our moderator, Chad, to conduct the question-and-answer session, which will run until 9:30 Eastern time.

Rich Repetto, Analyst

Good morning, Jeff and Scott, and Scott, all the praise and comments are well deserved, so congratulations. My first question will be on the Mortgage segment. And I guess it's been on spot but you reclassified the line and you sort of explained that. But I'm trying to understand how you outgrew what looked like Dodd industry originations and when we look at those four lines now that are reclassified, which ones are recurring and which ones are transactional, so we can model it out. Lastly, which will be more dependent on refi or purchase mortgages?

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Thanks, Rich. This is Ben. Thanks for observing what we've seen in the marketplace in terms of a downturn in transaction volumes as I can confirm, we saw a downturn in closed loans on our Encompass platform. When you look at Q1 closed loan volume versus Q4. As our results are testament to, we were able to grow through it. The key point is that we see, just like we saw in the commodities markets two decades ago, just like we've seen in the fixed income markets, that the mortgage space is an industry that's going through a significant analog to digital transition. We knew by combining the closing network that we have with the unique customer originator and investor network that Ellie Mae has that we can do something really special here for our customers in providing a digital future and a lot of efficiencies. And that's how we got conviction that we can grow through long-term cycles. We put out a guide, a 10-year guide of roughly doubling revenue when you look at that 8% to 10% guide over a 10-year period. That's roughly doubling revenue. What we've seen in the platform has done nothing but strengthen our conviction over the last 8 months in our ability to do that. Last quarter, I mentioned that Q3 and Q4 sales expectations well exceeded our model. Q1 continued this trend. Tactically, what you get when you're increasing your penetration into new sales is new subscription revenue when you implement, and as you ramp the customers up, you're getting more loans that you're interacting with than you were before. Those loans than interactive services are our network. You have a flywheel effect, you have a compounding effect. More importantly, when a customer is choosing our solution set, they're fundamentally choosing to change their business. They are selecting us to be the heart and lungs there, to be their network that's interconnecting them to every player that we interact with from our front-to-back network. As they realize those benefits from being part of our ecosystem, it enables us to cross-sell our other services that I also mentioned in the script, such as our AIQ offering, which is that automation of the underwrite, as well as eClose. That's what gives us conviction on the ability to grow this business sequentially, quarter-over-quarter on subscription revenue growth and outperform downturns in terms of volumes just as we did Q1 versus Q4.

Warren Gardiner, Incoming CFO

Hey Rich, this is Warren. I'll just try to give you a little bit of color on the subscription versus transaction breakdown. Most of the subscription revenue is going to be in that origination technology line. Within that, it’s pretty balanced between subscription and transaction. The other part of subscription is going to be in data and analytics. When you think about transaction side, it's going to be the closing solutions, which is pretty much 100% transaction, and then other transactions as well. Hopefully, that helps you a little bit in terms of color, but we haven’t broken those out quite yet.

Mike Carrier, Analyst

Good morning and thanks for taking the question. Maybe just on the capital front, given the Coinbase gain you expected in 2Q. Just wanted to get an update on how you guys are prioritizing your debt pay-down if you expect to get your target leverage faster? Any other investment areas for growth in the business?

Warren Gardiner, Incoming CFO

Yes. Mike, it’s Warren again. We are definitely a bit ahead of schedule, paying down debt faster than we sort of expected when we started the deal. I would say we were doing that though before the Coinbase sale. You look at the quarter, we generated about $734 million of cash flow. We used that to pay down close to $350 million of debt, raised our dividend by 10%, and then also invested in the business. When you think about the Coinbase proceeds, it gives us additional flexibility as we kind of move into the rest of the year. As Scott said, we are down to about 3.6 leverage, the target is about 3.25, where we can start to think about buying back stock. This gives us a little bit of flexibility, and we will provide more updates as we get closer to that in terms of what we will do with buybacks.

Ken Hill, Analyst

Hi, good morning everyone. I wanted to start with ICE Futures Abu Dhabi. I know you guys had a really strong start with the Murban crude contract. You talked about some records. Ben, you discussed being one of the most successful launches there. I was hoping you could maybe outline a little bit on the broader ambitions in regions there, whether it’s the Middle East or Asia, how you might be leveraging that success, thinking about like a land and expand type of opportunity in other ICE products, whether that's on the trading side or on the data side? How should we be thinking about that in those regions there? Thanks.

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Thanks for the question, Ken. It’s Ben. When you look at our futures markets and how we have developed them versus any of our peers, we have stayed very close to the commercial customer base since our inception. That's enabled us to develop literally hundreds of oil contracts around the world because it helps our customers manage risk in a benchmark contract and manage their risk at the point of consumption or production. We are the only truly global platform that enables customers with deep liquid markets in hundreds of marketplaces to manage that risk. During the backdrop of COVID, we continued to partner with our commercial customers, which led to the launch of ICE Futures Abu Dhabi just in the last few weeks here. In the early days, it looks to be one of the most successful futures launches in history. Not only have we seen volume growth, but also significantly, growing open interest growth, with 49 major players utilizing the contracts and establishing positions to manage risk. I look at the overall oil open interest in April versus the fourth quarter; we are up in almost every major product category. Overall, we believe we have a great foundation and will stay close to our commercial customer base to look for more opportunities.

Jeff Sprecher, CEO

This is Jeff. To add a little more context, we have launched now a dozen derivative contracts on that exchange. We are moving quickly to build out a broader product suite there. There is a large Asia presence of commercial users that operate comfortably in the Middle East. This offers us an interesting launch point for additional derivative contracts. You will see us continue to build out this amazing suite that we have, including Abu Dhabi as a vehicle.

Alex Blostein, Analyst

Great. Thanks. Good morning everybody and to echo everyone’s comments, Scott, Warren, MC, big congrats to all of you. I wanted to go back to the mortgage business for a second. Clearly, organic growth remains really strong. Ben, great to hear that sales momentum continues to be above projections in the first quarter; however, the market seems overly concerned about the refi cliff impacting your transaction revenue. Can you help us unpack how much of the $230 million is related to transaction revenues, comparing refi versus new purchases? Additionally, how would you frame the downside risk to this revenue bucket, assuming current industry refinance expectations come through? Also, could we touch on the expense interplay here to the extent transaction revenues decline? Is there any expense offset we could see in that segment? Thanks.

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Thanks Alex. This is Ben. I will start, then I will hand it to Warren on the expense side. We are not looking at this as a quarter-over-quarter business and really worry or be afraid about volumes changing each quarter because we see a long-term change happening towards digitization. We see substantial Total Addressable Markets (TAM) out there with long runway and ample opportunity for growth. The core being that Encompass and the network set we have, with a little over 20% if you look at the trailing 12 months. We continue to sign new customers and onboard them, which allows us to interact with more loans, thereby increasing subscription revenue and transaction volume. The other key element is the cross-sell of services to our customer base, leading to growth in the closing TAM.

Warren Gardiner, Incoming CFO

And Alex, it’s Warren. Just quickly on the expenses. There are definitely some variable expenses in play, but we haven’t broken those out yet, so I can't provide precise insights. The plan is about a 10-year strategy for doubling revenues from where we are today, so we will continue to invest in the business regardless of short-term fluctuations.

Brian Bedell, Analyst

Great. Thanks. Good morning folks. Congrats to Scott, Warren, and MC as well. Just a two-parter on Mortgage Tech. In terms of the strength in origination, Ben, can you touch on the recurring revenue side, focusing on market share gains versus revenue cross-sell synergies into that network? The second part is about the closing side. I think you mentioned 20% of a $1 billion TAM. Can you clarify the revenue run rate there is $280 million? Your optimism on the growth in the closed business compared to the rest of the Mortgage Technology business?

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Thanks Brian. Regarding the 20%, I am looking at the last 12 months as a rough gauge. The core of the first part of your question is about the recurring revenue and market share gains. Our confidence in recurring revenue growth is driven by our continued success in expanding customer footprints with existing clients. This includes adding new loan officers and increased volume on our platform. We are also seeing cross-sell opportunities within our customer base for other services. Additionally, we have a strong pipeline of new customers coming on board with increasing implementation speeds which contribute to our growth.

Ari Ghosh, Analyst

Hi, good morning everyone. Ben, maybe you could discuss customer expansion in relation to the $4 billion data TAM you highlighted? Specifically, what’s the current level of data and analytics usage by the captive customer base, and how does that translate to growth opportunities?

Ben Jackson, President and COO

Thanks for that question, Ari. Currently, we have about 2% to 3% of that TAM in our revenues. We are in early stages here. Our AIQ offering is gaining traction across our customer base and we had record sales of it recently. Customers are realizing significant benefits from adopting this technology, allowing us to strengthen our pipeline and position for future growth. It’s largely a cross-sell opportunity into our existing customer base.

Chris Harris, Analyst

Thanks guys. On ICE Abu Dhabi, could you discuss how Murban might be distinctive or why you think it will win over other benchmark alternatives targeting Asia?

Scott Hill, CFO

Yes, it’s a good question. Historically, commodity exchanges have priced commodities near the source of production in their respective locations. When hedgers buy contracts on exchanges, they need a movement hedge on top of the commodity hedge, affecting the pricing structure. One of the tensions in the market is that, as Asia grows, there is a strong desire from the State Oil Company of Abu Dhabi to control pricing at the point of production. They recognize that having the market price the commodity at its source, rather than a delivery-price contract, is crucial. The growth of the Middle East, modernized infrastructure, and increasing economic interactions with Asia make this a strategic location for us.

Jeff Sprecher, CEO

Thank you, Chad. I want to again thank Scott Hill for his amazing contributions to the company and for all the success. Thank you all for joining us this morning. We look forward to updating you as we continue to execute and innovate. With that, we will close the call and have a great day.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.