Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Welcome to the CME Group First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Adam Minick. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and I hope you're all doing well today. Earlier this morning, we released our earnings commentary, which provides extensive details on the first quarter 2026, which we will be discussing on this call. I'll start with the safe harbor language, then I'll turn it over to Terry. Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statement. Detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in the filings with the SEC, which are on our website.

Lastly, in the earnings release, you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures following the financial statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Terry Duffy.

Thanks, Adam, and thank you all for joining us this morning. I'll make a few brief comments about our record quarter before turning it over to Lynne to provide an overview of our financial results. In addition to Lynne, we have other members of our management team present to answer questions after the prepared remarks. I'm proud to announce that CME Group has achieved a record-breaking start to 2026. Our outstanding performance in the first quarter reflects the essential role we play in the global economy and the trust our clients place in our markets to manage risk during periods of significant economic transition.

The first quarter average daily volume of 36.2 million contracts was the highest quarterly average daily volume in CME Group's history and represented an increase of 22% compared to the same period last year and 6 million contracts a day higher than any previous quarter. For the first time in our history, we achieved simultaneously record volume across every 1 of our 6 asset classes: rates, equities, energy, agricultural products, metals and foreign exchange. In aggregate, our commodity sector volume grew by 38% and our financial products volume grew by 18%. Building on the momentum of our record 2025, our global expansion continues to accelerate.

International average daily volume reached a record 11.4 million contracts, a stunning 30% increase in 2025. The EMEA, APAC and Latin American regions all posted record highs. Remarkably, our international business also saw a record volume in all 6 asset classes simultaneously, proving that our value proposition is resonating globally. We aren't just growing volume, we're growing client value. We delivered record levels of capital efficiency, saving our customers an average of over $85 billion in margin per day.

Additionally, open interest ended the quarter up 11% over the past year and up 19% since the beginning of 2026. During the quarter, U.S. treasury open interest reached an all-time high of 36.3 million contracts, driven by unprecedented demand for U.S. treasury futures and options. This growth reinforces CME Group's role as the deepest and most efficient liquidity pool in the world. We continue to innovate and provide the tools our clients need, and in an environment that is always risk on. These include last week's CME FICC, or Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, cross-margining agreements received approval from both the SEC and CFTC to expand to our end user clients beginning on April 30. 24/7 crypto trading scheduled to go live on May 29. Also, we're excited to announce that we will be filing to change our Micro Equity Index options to be financially settled to better serve the users of those products.

Our new environment in Dallas is on track to open this summer, and we will provide a critical testing ground for our clients in advance of 2 of our agricultural products migrating to the cloud by the end of the year. As we look to the rest of 2026, we are confident in our ability to continue to deliver value to our clients and shareholders. Our strong performance, coupled with our ongoing investments in technology and product innovation, provides a solid foundation for future growth. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Lynne to review our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Terry, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As Terry mentioned, the first quarter was record-breaking across the board. This included growth in our clearing and transaction fee revenue of 15% year-over-year. The average rate per contract for the quarter was $0.652. Our pricing strategy includes volume tiering, which results in decreasing rate for contracts at higher levels of volume.

With volume records in every single asset class this quarter, this volume tiering encouraged incremental trading, providing risk management benefits to our customers and driving highly profitable incremental volume to the exchange. The combination of our volume growth and pricing structure resulted in an increase of $205 million in clearing and transaction fees for the quarter. Market data revenue also reached a record level, up 15% to $224 million, marking 32 consecutive quarters of year-over-year market data revenue growth. In aggregate, CME Group generated record revenue of $1.9 billion, up $238 million or 14% from the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted expenses were $512 million for the quarter and $405 million excluding license fees.

Our adjusted operating income was $1.4 billion, or a 72.8% adjusted operating margin, the highest in our history. Adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at a record-setting $1.2 billion and $3.36 per share, 20% higher than Q1 2025. This represents an adjusted net income margin for the quarter of 64.9%, with $200 million of the $238 million increase in revenue accruing to adjusted net income. We returned $3.2 billion to shareholders during the quarter, with $2.7 billion in variable and regular quarterly dividends and $536 million in shares repurchased. This quarter delivered the highest volume, revenue, operating income, adjusted net income and diluted earnings per share in the history of CME Group.

These results are a reflection of our position as the world's premier risk management destination. As our clients continue to navigate uncertain times, we remain fully committed to meeting their evolving needs through continued innovation and deep liquidity. We'd now like to open up the call for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question in the queue is from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler.

Terry, you mentioned that you've received regulatory approval to expand the DTCC cross-margining agreement to end user clients. At the same time, the DTCC has been running a pilot program to tokenize U.S. treasuries as collateral. So as you think about the intersection of these 2 initiatives, I'm curious how you see enhanced collateral mobility impacting CME's clearing business. And then more specifically, with customers having the ability to move tokenized treasury collateral in real time, just what that could mean for the industry write large?

Thanks, Patrick. Suzanne Sprague is here, and she's been working very closely with both FICC and folks at DTCC and the regulator. So I'm going to ask her to opine on that question to start, and then I'll go.

Yes. Thanks, Patrick. We are continuing to work with FICC as well as internally on various tokenization efforts. So we think that there is a benefit for the industry to be able to reduce friction moving collateral, especially for collateral that does not settle naturally same day.

Treasuries is a good example of that. So we will continue to explore what we could do together with FICC as well as other initiatives that we're pursuing at CME, including the tokenization of cash and our partnership with Google, as well as looking at other assets that might be of interest in the ecosystem today to be able to reduce some of those frictions and free up liquidity by moving those assets on digital technology.

Patrick, just to add on to that, I have said and the team has said, we're looking at potentially our own stablecoin here. We're looking at multiple different ways to make that $85 billion a day of margin efficiencies continue to grow, and not only just the margin efficiencies, but the capital efficiencies about how we move money back and forth each and every day and what's the best interest of every single client. So whether it's through tokenization, stable, using cash and treasuries, other forms of margin that they use with us today, we want to make it as effectively for them and efficiently for them.

So I think it's an exciting time for us, and we look forward to informing you more as we continue to roll out these proposals.

Okay. That's great color. As a quick follow-up, we've seen some pretty interesting developments in the perpetual future space this year. The S&P Dow Jones JV recently granted an exclusive license for the S&P 500 perpetual futures to a relatively lesser-known company [indiscernible] blockchain.

And on that platform, we've seen volumes explode in commodity perps. So just with your goal to try and attract more and more retail eyeballs to CME's product suite, I'm curious how you're thinking about perpetual futures as a product structure that could eventually become a more meaningful driver of [ retail ] engagement. And then just if you could maybe talk about some of the regulatory or market structure hurdles that I guess would need to be cleared before we get there.

So thanks, Patrick, and I'm glad you raised that. There's a couple of things I want to unpack there. First, we'll talk about the JV venture, then I want to talk about some of the commodities, and Derek can address that, and what the true volumes are associated with that. It looks very large in the way they're trading, but remember, those are in notional value, not in contract terms the way we calculate our business.

So, and who's on those platforms, how those platforms work, what's the risk management associated with it and why would that institution potentially want to participate in something the way those are structured. First of all, perpetuals are against the law in the United States of America. That's first and foremost. That is where it's at today.

They are not allowed under the Commodity Exchange Act of 2000. The centerpiece of that act was how do you define what a futures contract is. It wasn't a bunch of other things in the act. The centerpiece was what is a futures contract. And it was defined as a contract for future delivery.

It was not designed as a contract that never ended. So I really believe that for perpetuals, I think convergence is massively important to the commercial producers and other participants that these contracts are designed for. Contracts are not designed, not, I repeat, not designed for speculators or hedgers or not to design for speculators or just a pure retail. They're designed for hedgers, commercials and producers.

That's the way they -- you have to have a natural buyer, a natural seller. And they need to have convergence between cash and futures in order to run their business, which benefits the participants, not only in the United States, but globally. You need to have these markets. As the great Dr.

Milton Friedman said to me in 2002, if we did not have futures contracts today, we would need to invent them in order to move forward and progress. But that -- the way the market works between cash and futures is critically important. So the decisions that people want on perpetuals, they seem to me more of they're trying to create a contract for the speculator. That's not the mission of the commodity exchange.

That's not the definition of it. So I -- that's something that I'm very much involved with as it relates to perpetuals. Your other part about the volume going into some of these products, I assume you're referring to some on silver, some on oil, and so let's talk about that for a second. When they listed those on [ XYZ on hyper liquid], as you know, the way that market works, if in fact they were to have a tip-over in [ the auto ] liquidation, they've been very fortunate to have an orderly market for the most part, but if in fact, you had an auto liquidation, the money from the losers, it comes from the winners.

It's a very difficult proposal for any institutional hedger to use a product such as that where if they're due $1 and they get $0.45 back because the other side of the trade just got beat up and so that's where they got the money from. So I am concerned about some of those rules, and those are done on a perpetual basis. I think the agricultural communities, the energy communities and others are not completely pleased with some of the pricing of those products. But I'll let Derek talk about that.

But what's important, before he mentions it, we have to think about the timing of when those products were listed. You got to remember, silver went from $50 to $118, I believe, Derek, is that about right? High, and then back to $86. Oil went from $50 a barrel for almost 4 years to north of $100, and then back down $86. So that was where that activity kind of caught. Now the question will be, is that sustainable?

So I'll let Derek comment on those particular products.

Yes. I appreciate it, Terry. I think if you look at the results of this last Q1 and even continuing into Q2 of this year, you're seeing exactly what Terry talked about. The purpose of futures contracts are to enable hedgers to be able to know that they can identify the forward curve.

These products then converge to physical delivery and physical markets, whether it's corn, whether it's livestock, whether it's oil, whether it's gold, all come to physical use. So we look at the end-user commercial need of these customers. When you look at the growth and record activity in our commodities portfolio as a whole, you'll see that every single portion of our client segments grew with double-digit growth in every single group led by commercial, corporate banks buy side and [ prop firm ]. So retail is a part of that, but financial customers will follow where the end user manages and hedges their underlying risk, and that's in our futures market.

And so on the first part of your question with the S&P listing on that, we were not made aware of that, even though we own 27% of the index business. We were not made aware of that decision. We got made aware once they listed it, literally several hours before their press release went out. Their press release went out, and which coincided with the opening of that market.

We've been engaged with conversations, as you can imagine, with our partners. We both have a deep respect for intellectual property. We've made our points very aggressively on that, and I think they understand that now. And so we are continuing to work with our partners at S&P to make certain that, as we go forward, we're all on the same page.

And the next question in the queue is from Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

So Terry, I wanted to follow up on your comments about the Micro Equity Index option to change. I think you finally are making to be more financially settled. So just wanted to talk about why now and what you see is the opportunity going forward with that.

I'll let Tim chime in, but I will tell you why now is -- maybe we should have done it a little bit sooner, but why now is because the client base continues to go across multiple different versions of the equity complex, whether it's the larger [ E-mini ], whether it's the micro or something smaller, and how they participate. This client base in the micros seem to be more of a retail focus. They really don't want to deliver their options into a future where the people that are trading the larger clients do want to deliver their options into the future. So we felt very strongly that the micro contract would make more sense for that constituency.

But at the same breadth, we didn't think it made sense to change all of our equity contracts to deliver into cash settled. Basically we'll keep them as deliverable into a future. But Tim, you can add to that.

Great. Thanks, Terry, and thanks, Dan. And I think part of it is, as Terry said, as CME Group is the comprehensive leader in risk transfer for the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ complexes. It's important for us to continue to evolve our products to meet the risk management and market access needs of our customers.

And that's the feedback that we're receiving. When we look at the micro-size products and how those strategies are deployed, to hedge other parts of their either stock portfolios or ETF portfolios, or looking to access the market, that they prefer the financially settled mechanisms where they could have the options expire against the futures daily settlement price. And that is the change we're looking to file. It will then, as Terry said, be different than the institutional-grade E-mini offerings and options on those products, which serve a very specific and highly utilized function of the market of delivering the underlying futures, which is a benefit to the institutional community and the hedgers out there, particularly when they're looking to access the almost $40 billion per day of capital efficiencies in our equity complex at CME Group.

We've actually seen continued adoption of our E-mini products by clients where several large buy-side clients are also switching some of their structured product strategies to utilize the efficiencies and the benefits of trading futures-based options at CME Group on the S&P 500. So we think this will further grow the complex as we remove some of the barriers to entry for clients and give them a better tool that serves the risk management needs of their portfolio.

And just so you not think I'm talking [indiscernible] my mouth, in this particular contract, we didn't design it as a financially settled in the micro because it's just for retail or speculation. It's not. You have to look at the value of the S&P 500 and who uses that contract today. For your historians that may or may not know this, we started with an S&P 500. And then we cut the multiplier of the 250. As the contract continues to go up and value, participants, even the large ones, need to trade a smaller contract or they need to trade a bigger contract, depending on what their needs are.

So we are trying to take these pools of liquidity for the constituents to across the entire spectrum of CME's equity products. And it's basically the decisions are being made for the value of the index itself, not for just the constituents who are trading in. So I think that's a really important distinction.

The next question in the queue is from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.

Can you talk a bit about the evolution of WTI and how you see the ongoing growth of U.S. Gulf oil playing into the dominance of the Cushing's settled product? And secondly, how do you see the changes in Venezuela and the conflict in Iran changing global supply chains? And how might this feedback into CME energy activity and CME oil market share?

Ken, that's a really good question. I think a lot of people like to have the answer to that one, especially in the industry for sure. I'll let Derek talk a little bit about the TI because I think it's important. But when we get into geopolitical, like what it means for Venezuela, I mean, we know what has been said publicly by the administration, but we don't ultimately know what's going to happen.

So I think we'll stick with what we think on TI right now, Derek.

Yes. I think that's a great question, Ken. It's certainly timely in light of what we've been seeing in terms of restrictions and constrictions of [indiscernible] supply. 20% of the crude oil market, as you know, comes from the Middle East, flows out in the global network. That has been disrupted.

We've been talking for years about the ways in which we have continued to evolve WTI as a global benchmark. Ever since the export ban was lifted in 2014, U.S.-produced WTI, and nat gas, in fact, have been flowing out into global markets. So I think that to us, this is just another confirmation point of the absolute essential nature of U.S. produced energy products, both WTI and Henry Hub, that is now being produced and exported at record levels outside the U.S. And this is just another marker of adoption globally of the -- what these markets mean and what these products mean to risk management across the board.

We have seen outsized growth for 4 years in a row now of global adoption of commercial end-user customers in Europe and Asia as both the Russian conflict with Ukraine disrupted supplies, this is another supply disruption, meaning a greater reliance on another provider of last resort. And that is the U.S. right now. As it relates to your specific question on the crude grades, we launched these contracts back in 2018, 2019, fully expecting a global adoption of WTI. When you have a physical contract that delivers in Cushing as we see record amounts flowing out into the U.S., we needed to provide a risk management tool to get physical in Cushing down to the Gulf Coast enter the export market.

I think what you're seeing in the record volume in open interest and our crude grade contracts, it's really solidifying WTI as a dependable supplier of oil to the world. We think that continues to reinforce WTI's importance globally. And you look at the dependability of physical deliveries, we continue to dependently deliver those barrels month after month. In fact, our GME -- our state in the GME Global Mercantile Exchange in Dubai, which delivers the [indiscernible] crude contract, also physically delivered outside the Strait of Hormuz, has been uninterrupted in delivering 15 million to 20 million barrels a day as well.

So the market needs to find dependability of supply. They found that in WTI. That's the reason why we're exporting not only record amounts of WTI and Henry Hub, but also [ RBOB ] gasoline and HLR diesel contract as well. So it confirms the importance of that in global products for global customers that we are the dependable provider, and we continue to ramp up exports, and that further solidifies U.S. energy products in the portfolios of global customers.

And Ken, I don't want to be dismissive, so I want to go back to the beginning of your question on Venezuela. Can you ask that question now separately so maybe I can address it? But I may not be able to.

So it was just about how the changes in Venezuela impact global supply chains and what it means for CME activity and share?

So I think for -- not quite sure what that's ultimately going to mean with Venezuela. I think that the verdict is still out about how that country is going to run. As everybody knows, I think that their production got run way down. Their infrastructure in Venezuela was not doing what it was at peak.

So those are all issues that they need to have addressed going forward. And then there's going to be a lot of politics and other people trying to deal with that particular issue. So as far as our share goes, I think what is important, and Derek touched on it, WTI is no different than Brent, another one, these are global markets. Whether it's produced in the United States or it's produced in Saudi Arabia or UAE or Qatar, these are global markets and people are going to sell to the highest bidder.

And that's just how the oil market has worked. So I think sometimes people here in the United States think that we have this massive supply of WTI so our gas prices should be a lot lower. Our producers sell all over the world. And that's the way this market is, it's global.

But the good news is, I think what Derek is saying, is the benchmark at WTI is getting a much higher visibility, and I think that will continue, which will bode well for CME's risk management [indiscernible]. Derek?

I think one little last piece that's worth noting on the share piece here is that Venezuelan crude is extremely [ heavy ]. It's going to take a long time to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela, import that and then actually resource some of the refineries in the U.S. to adopt that. So we think that's a term impact. If you look at the forward curve of the oil market, you'll see a backwardation, lower prices [indiscernible] expecting more U.S. flow in.

The last point I want to note is on the share piece of that. I think if you've seen record amounts of activity in global energy markets, we have seen share increases back in CME WTI north of 79%, 80%. And that's just confirmation that when markets are going through times of undue stress, market retrenches to core liquidity on the home exchange. We've seen that in WTI futures and options over this last 3 to 4 months.

And the next question is from Ben Budish with Barclays.

I wanted to maybe start with market data. It looked like this quarter's recurring revenue growth was the fastest I think you've seen in several years. I'm just curious if there's anything you can share there. To what extent are these contracts volume based? To what extent are these from new FCMs kind of joining the platform? And how sustainable do you think this growth is over the near term?

Thanks, Ben. We'll turn it over to Julie Winkler, who heads up this area for CME. Julie?

Thanks for the question, Ben. Yes, it was a great quarter. We had record $224 million in revenue. So we are up 15% from Q1 of 2025. And I'd say one of the biggest shifts that we've seen is really a surge in the simulated trading environment.

So what's happening there is really strong growth, and I would say maturity among these platforms. And so these environments are really allowing new traders access to our market data. They're learning how futures products work. And they're taking advantage of the educational resources provided within these platforms.

And really using it as part of the customer journey become successful new active retail traders. And so we've seen very strong year-over-year growth in these participants utilizing these sim environments to begin their trading journey in futures, that we believe is really going to be additive over the long term to the retail ecosystem. So sim participation was up significantly. And so that is really kind of driving that retail or nonprofessional participation in our market data business.

We've also made -- we continue to make policy changes, right, in thinking about data feed licensing and how that all needs to work. That has contributed to some of that recurring revenue growth that you're seeing. And then lastly, subscriber growth has continued on the professional side as well. We were up about 1% from Q4 and up about 2.45% from the number of professional subscribers we had a year ago.

So I'd say it's a number of fronts. A lot of this is relatively sticky revenue in that sense. And we continue to work with our customers to ensure that our benchmark data is provided and they're getting the data in the way that they want it.

If I could just reinforce a little bit of what Julie said, I mean I think what we're really pleased with is kind of broad-based growth. So we're seeing that subscriber growth. We're seeing the new product growth as well as some of the changes just with pricing. But this is a really healthy ecosystem that we're seeing across the market data business.

All very helpful. Maybe just a follow-up, maybe sticking with the retail team. You mentioned in the earnings commentary that on the prediction market side, you've now seen it looks like about 15% of volumes are kind of markets related. So curious if there's any further details you can share, what, if you have any visibility on, what types of customers are trading those contracts rather than sports?

I would imagine all this is happening within your 2 current FCMs. But just curious what that customer base looks like. And maybe any color you can share in terms of the pipeline of potential additional FCMs would be helpful.

Thanks, Ben. Tim, do you want to address that?

Yes. Thanks, Ben. So when we went live with our prediction markets and event contracts offering back in December, we've seen strong growth both in terms of adoption and volume where we recently surpassed the $220 million contract mark. And then when we look at the participation across those contracts, we started a marketing effort in the middle of March with our partners at FanDuel.

And since then, the actual participation or the distribution of volume towards the market-based contracts across equity, crypto, energy and metals actually exceeded 30%. That's a shift that we're pleased with. And I think it speaks to the attractiveness of the offering where we're looking at attracting these next-generation traders to our markets. They're coming in through the apps through our FCM partners, and they're trading all types of the event contracts, both sports and the market space contracts.

And that's something I think that reinforces the value prop of CME, that we have some of the world's leading benchmark products at CME Group and now we're making them more approachable and more accessible to the individual and next-generation trader through the fully funded or fully collateralized event contracts and prediction markets offering at CME. And the other thing that we're pleased to see is since December, we've had over 150,000 new accounts trade at CME Group in these products, which is off to a fantastic start. We're continuing to work with our partners that are currently trading, and we have a pipeline of FCMs we're still working to get on board and offer these products to their end users.

So optimistic about the future, but a first few good months here out at CME Group in our prediction market offering.

So Ben, just to emphasize a little something, when we originally negotiated this deal with FanDuel, our goal and objective was it had nothing to do with sports. Our goal and objective was to do with markets and distribution. And that is exactly what we're starting to see happen. Even though it's very, very early innings, to say the least, for baseball season, Tim is absolutely right, what's going on here.

And that's exactly what we were hoping to see. And if, in fact, both our partner, if FanDuel wanted to have [indiscernible] so we were accommodating to them, but that was never our goal and objective. Our goal and objective were markets, on events, on markets, for their participants and ours. And that's what we're starting to see.

And for me, that's exactly what we wanted to see happen.

The next question in the queue is from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

I had a follow-up on the energy markets. And just curious to get your thoughts on the health of the underlying customer. Obviously, we've seen extreme volatility, which feels like it might continue for some time. There's always a debate about good vol, bad vol.

This doesn't feel like great vol. So if you think about what's happening with the underlying users and the durability perhaps of the customer base on the go-forward basis, I'd love to hear your comments on that.

Derek?

Yes, it's a great question. I think that when you look at markets in times of stress, as I mentioned before, you're going to see liquidity retrench back to home markets. And we've absolutely seen that. When we think about healthy markets, we think about a couple of different markets.

Number one, we want to see health across the entire breadth of the portfolio. So we saw record activity not just in WTI futures, but options. We saw record activity and open interest being held in the crude grade contract, as I mentioned before. We're seeing record uptake and actually fastest uptake in Europe and Asia.

And we're seeing options set records, particularly in the short-dated part of the curve as well. So broad-based activity across all products. We're not seeing activity spikes in one. We're also seeing, despite the fact that we're seeing some pretty unprecedented volatility times and uncertainty, open interest in energy has been extremely resilient.

If you look at open interest since the deck 31, our open interest in energy is up 14%. Even on a year-on-year basis, open interest is up 1%. So open interest is a marker of the sustainability and health of activity, and that is still holding in well. One of the other markers we look at is the breadth of activity across client segments, and every 1 of our client segments continues to perform up double digits across the board, led by our commercial customers, not surprisingly, in markets like this.

Retail has returned over this last quarter as we saw in the metals markets as well, very much wanted to be actively involved in our micro contracts. But I would say the growth and the sustainability in the open interest holdings continue to be -- show positive trends. And we're seeing sustained activity. We are not seeing activity that we saw immediately following COVID, which was a spike in activity closing open interest and reduction in activity across client segments.

So we are seeing a healthy amount of activity. I would attribute at least a portion of that strength in these markets to the growth in our options business, particularly with the short-dated options business that are giving customers the ability to discretely manage event risk like we're seeing right now. And that's why we're seeing records in weekly options that I think customers are using to manage short-dated risk around longer-term core exposure. So at this point, we're seeing into April a strong participation, open interest holding there, and good participation across clients.

And just to add to that, Alex, I think you got to look at the entire industry, and it's not just oil, it's the shipping industry. These are billion-dollar ships that are sitting out there that need to be insured. Insurance companies are very nervous about extending insurance to some of these billion-dollar ships that could be blown up in a heartbeat. So they are looking to offset some of their risk on the insurance side, whether they're creating a swap or trading futures against it.

So I think the client base will continue to expand because this -- even though, whenever this gets resolved, people are still going to be very concerned. So I think we'll get a new constituency of participants, not too dissimilar from the mortgage industry and others, from insurers and reinsurers from the energy business using our products and others in order to manage that risk going forward. These are very expensive vessels that they cannot afford to have being sunk in the Strait of Hormuz or anywhere else. So I think it's a very interesting what's going on.

You mentioned good vol and bad vol, Alex. I want to touch on that for a second. So good vol is the volatility that market kind of goes orderly in a direction and it maybe goes into a different direction. When you see pockets of volatility with not much [indiscernible] that to me is bad volatility.

But that's headline volatility. And headline volatility can be very disruptive to the marketplace. And there's a lot to that, but that normally is short-lasting as well on the bad volatility. So we'll see how that continues to proceed going forward.

Got it. Yes. No, super helpful. One quick follow-up just on the numbers. Obviously, with a lot of volumes coming through, RPCs came down a bit. And I was hoping you could maybe frame how to think about near-term RPC across, particularly the energy markets where we're seeing the bigger decline.

Thank you, Alex. Lynne?

Yes. So I would keep in mind a few things when you look at the energy volume and the RPC in this quarter. First, as Derek touched on, we obviously had record volume there. But you also had some real spikes in short periods of time.

So March, the level of activity we saw there is certainly impacting the numbers. So if you look at the total volume growth, you would expect additional usage of volume tiering. You also saw a mix shift towards crude, which tends to be lower priced than things like our nat gas. And Derek also touched on one other thing, the micro business really grew significantly.

So we saw about 315,000 micro energy contracts a day this quarter. That was up from about 80,000 contracts a day in the same quarter last year. So that is going to have a dampening effect on the weighted average. Those are at about $0.52 a contract.

So I think those 3 factors really are what weighed in on the energy RPC. The last one that's a little bit harder to see is just the shift towards more member trading. So that's really where we saw that impact. So going forward, I would look at that overall level of volume in terms of volume tiering.

And then I would look at those mixes in terms of crude versus nat gas, and then the micro versus full-sized products.

The next question is from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

I was just hoping you could update us on your partnership with Google, including tokenizing cash, what the time frame and key milestones are there, how you see this playing out? And if you could also update us on the prospects for CME stablecoin as well.

Yes. Thanks, Michael. I'll have Suzanne and Lynne touch on both, because they're both working on those projects. So Suzanne, why don't you talk a little bit about the tokenized Google and timing and things of that nature?

Yes, thanks for the question. So we are working with the settlement banks in our ecosystem as well as clearing members to be able to advance stages of tokenizing cash. You may have seen a press release from Bank of Montreal in the last few weeks, announcing publicly that they have been working with us and Google on the tokenization project. And so the goal there really is to be able to increase the testing capabilities within the settlement bank ecosystem as well as start integrating clearing members into that testing process this year, with the goal of being able to go live by the end of this year.

And again, the tokenization of cash really for us enables movement of value outside of traditional banking hours, especially looking at 24/7 trading activity, as Terry mentioned in his opening remarks. It's a key component to being able to enable the movement of value in the off hours, as well as allow us to build upon other tokenized assets using the Google Cloud Universal Ledger. On stablecoin, we also continue progressing that effort with regulatory engagement. And as Terry mentioned there, we are looking to be able to seek a license to be able to issue stablecoin.

And we're exploring technology partners that can help us do that as well. We plan to be able to advance that effort this year, although we can't opine on the regulatory engagement time line. Happy to have Lynne add anything else as well for stablecoin.

Yes. I'll actually add 2 things that are a little further afield related to Google. So first, you heard Terry mentioned that we are getting close to opening our Dallas facility for testing with our clients with the goal of ultimately operating markets in the cloud. So we're excited about that progress that we've made with Google.

That was something that has been several years in the making. We're also -- that was a big part of the investment that Google originally made in CME. So I just want to make sure you all noted that the Google shares, which were preferred shares, the only difference between those shares and common was that they did not have voting rights. Those did convert into common during this quarter.

So you will see that in the basic and diluted share count rather than seeing that separate class of preferred stock. So going forward, you will also see just that earnings that was allocated to the preferred stock, it will show up just in the basic and diluted. So you won't see that differentiation going forward. I just want to make sure you captured that.

Do you have anything on stablecoin, we'll get -- Michael, hopefully that addresses your question?

Yes. Just a quick follow-up, if I could, on the cloud. So with the contracts migrating to the cloud. I was hoping you could maybe elaborate on the benefits that you see the steps that you're taking to help facilitate that.

How do you see the scope and path for migrating other contracts eventually to the cloud or what that might look like and how you sort of evaluate that and what the benefits could be?

Well, I'm a big believer that this is the future. And I think if you were to start an exchange or any other business today, you would be in the cloud. We are 175 years, 200 years old at this stage of our proceedings. I think this is the future of markets, having access to be in the cloud.

I think the efficiencies that a hyperscaler like Google will be able to provide to CME and its clients will be second to none. And I think that is really exciting. You have to start somewhere. We wanted to start with our less latency-sensitive products, which are the agricultural complex and that commodity side.

So I think this will be the catalyst that show people how the benefits of having markets in the cloud and the redundancy that they will have with 20 other centers just in the United States alone, if in fact we needed to go there. So it's pretty exciting from my standpoint. This was our vision going way back during the pandemic in '20 and '21 to do this with a big partner like Google. And I think the future, not only it was looked at, is starting to be realized.

So I think it's exciting and I'm looking forward to this progressing forward, and I'm looking forward to every single product being in the cloud, as long as, and I'll say it again, as long as Google's technology and facilities are better than what we have right now. And I believe they will be.

The next question in the queue is from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

Maybe, Terry, one for you. if you can update us on your thinking on capital allocation at this point in time. Obviously, you have the dividend, but I'm sort of curious of what your thinking is on M&A. In particular, it seems like there's a lot of different vectors of growth in the industry, both de novo and inorganic, and how that might shape your views on priorities.

I missed the latter part. But on the capital allocation, Bill, I think is what your question was, the first one, and I'll let you take the second one. But on capital allocation, I think from the beginning, Bill, going back to '02, I was a big proponent of paying a dividend at CME when everybody else said you shouldn't do that. But I thought it served our interest really well.

I still think it does, and I think returning capital to shareholders is really important. But at the same time, I don't want to be stuck in a situation where we're afraid to do something that we think can grow the business, whether it's through M&A or something else, if the opportunity presents itself. So I think instead of putting myself in a box or the company in a box about capital allocation, right now, we are in a really strong position with our dividend, we're in a strong position on repurchasing shares, as you heard Lynne talk about earlier. But again, if there's an opportunity that we see that makes sense for our shareholders, without going out too far outside of the scope of what we do, we will be evaluating those, and that might change our capital allocation at that time.

But right now, we're pretty committed to where we're at on the allocation of dividend and share repurchase for now. And what was that the latter part of your question?

It was all the same question. And then maybe just a quick follow-up, one for Lynne. If I look at your adjusted expenses, excluding licensing fees, it looks like it was up about 7% year-on-year, if I did the math correctly. I think the -- I think you affirmed your guidance for $1.695 billion for the year.

Can you sort of unpack what the growth was in Q1 and how we should think about maybe the -- just sort of the pacing as we look through the rest of the year?

Yes. So certainly, and your numbers are correct, so we saw about a 7% growth rate in Q1. Obviously, with a high level of activity, you saw some of the variable expenses come in a bit higher. So you'll see that in compensation, you will also see that in technology where we did see more activity going across the system. So we'll continue to monitor as we go forward.

We sometimes see these spikes in activity. We're seeing a little bit of softer activity so far here in April, but it tends to be different periods of time over the course of the year. So we'll continue to look at that guidance as we move forward. But at this point, we're comfortable with where we're at.

I would point out that we do expect the occupancy cost to continue to grow over the course of the year as we do things like opening the Dallas facility. You will expect technology to continue to grow as we move more into the cloud environment. The others don't have as many specific drivers that I'd call out.

Next question is from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America.

We were looking for an update on your prediction markets FCM JV with FanDuel just given FanDuel's announcement earlier this month that they will launch a new FCM. So I assume they're going to favor the new venture where they can keep 100% of profit. So are there any major differences in the offering?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Craig. And I think there's a bit of confusion on what they can and cannot do with that potential application process. I'll let Lynne describe it to you so we're all on the same page.

Yes. So certainly, this is something that we were aware of, that they were going to make this application. I think it's important to note the difference between an application and a launch. So similar to the way we started an application process, and it took several years to get that approval, they want to be prepared for any future changes and registration requirements or the like.

So this actually doesn't signify any change in our relationship or the partnership going forward. And as Terry mentioned, and as you would expect, there are some contractual restrictions in terms of operating alternative venues during our partnership.

And I think that's really important, Craig, they can't just get an FCM license, apply for one or buy one and compete with the JV that we put together with them. That is obviously contractually against what we originally stated with them. So I think it was a bit confusing to begin with at best.

That's helpful. And just one follow-up on prediction markets. Any update on the DCM side and volumes where there's multiple entities hooked up to, including DraftKings?

Is there any volume up there with DraftKings?

No, I think, Craig, just sort of to my earlier comments when we were speaking about prediction markets, we just recently crossed the $220 million contract volume threshold since going live in -- back in December of 2025. I think the notable thing from volumes is, again, as we were covering, is that the percentage of volume in market-based contracts across the CME Group benchmark products in equities, cryptocurrencies, energy and metals is in excess of 30% since mid-March when we -- with our partner at FanDuel increased the marketing efforts, and we've had 150,000 accounts trade at CME Group. So those are the sort of numbers-based updates for prediction markets.

And we would say off to a great start and optimistic about the continued growth from here.

Craig, what I think is also important is there's a lot of activity, for lack of a better term, going on around the sports prediction markets between the states and the providers. Where there's not a lot of noise, and nor should there be, is around the market event contracts or prediction markets on financial products. And I think that's why we're seeing them grow. And I think that's a very good sign for the future.

And I think you're going to start to see other people probably leaning that direction more than just looking at the pure sports itself. So we'll have to wait and see, but I think that bodes very well for CME if in fact that goes there because potentially the offsets you can be looking at against our multiple asset classes that we have here at CME Group that others don't. So I'm pretty interested to see how this all plays out in the future investments going into prediction markets on the sports side of the equation.

The next question is from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Maybe just staying with that very line of your answer on the prediction markets, good to see that market side rising as a mix of the percentage of volume. What is your view on potentially creating company KPI types of contracts, like financial KPI contracts? And I know -- I believe, maybe you can weigh in on this, but I believe they most likely would need to be SEC regulated. So maybe your view on any kind of time line of that, if that is something that is -- that you're interested in developing.

And then also if you could just confirm, I think the rate capture on the contracts for you guys is about $0.01 a contract. I just wanted to confirm that.

Okay. Thanks, Brian. So do you want to address the first on that.

Yes, sure. Brian, and thanks for the question, we're certainly seeing a lot of interest in other economic or market-based contracts where we've seen good growth in the economic indicators as well as the benchmark products at CME Group. I think with respect to anything that is financial or KPI or individual stock related, that is something that we continue to engage with customers on. But as you noted, there are some regulatory questions and clarity required about how those products would be brought to market and what the security versus commodities-based offering might be.

So that's something we continue just to engage with the regulators. So I'd say stay tuned on that, but no imminent plans or a path forward for those just yet.

And in terms of pricing, we don't break out entirely, there's obviously different pieces depending on where the volume comes from either through the various channels. Obviously, the clearing and transaction fee is transparent. But again, for us, this is about getting the traction with the potential customer base and getting the eyeballs in that distribution and getting kind of that community exposure to our products, which we're seeing good uptake on that right now.

Great. And then maybe if I can ask Lynne, if you could just talk about the April collateral balances that you're seeing so far and if that's -- if you're still managing about a 30 basis point spread in those balances. I said 30 basis points -- 10 basis points on the noncash, I think, and 30 on the other, on the cash.

Sure, Brian. So in Q1, we did show an average of balances for cash of about $149 billion. That is up a bit so far here in April at $153 billion. In Q1, we averaged about 33 basis points on the cash.

I don't -- typically don't disclose for the partial period how we're doing so far in April, but that held steady at about 33% versus last quarter. Then on the noncash in Q1, we had $171 billion on average at that 10 basis points. So far in April, we're averaging $174 billion. So both up slightly in terms of the average balances.

The next question in the queue is from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.

This is Will Qi on for Ashish Sabadra. I appreciate you guys squeezing us in. Just wanted to maybe follow up on some of the comments around market data and information services. I think last year you guys had some data license changes in regards to the introduction of the end-of-day data category versus real-time delayed and historical.

It seems like clients are still kind of generally building out the infrastructure to kind of track that data and they've been back-billed for that charge. How much of a contributor is that license change to the market data and information services growth? And are there any other policies that we should be aware of that are notable as well?

Julie?

Yes. Thank you for the question. Certainly, that was a change in policy. And part of it, right, is just to protect what we believe is a strong intellectual property of our data assets and just changing business practices within the space.

So it has in the past and will continue to be of real-time professional subscribers being the core of that market data revenue line. And so while data licensing such a end of day is adding to the growth of the business. It is not a significant driver of that revenue that we talk about each quarter. That continues to be that real-time professional subscriber.

I'd say policies in general though, I mean, this is where -- and Lynne mentioned it earlier, right, there's this blend of utilizing policies, introducing things like enterprise pricing with our core partners, simulated trading environments, things like that, that we are going to continue to do, [ Term SOFR ] is another great example of our build-out of our benchmark space. So these are all things that the team is actively working on as this space continues to evolve and change. And I think it's working given the 32 consecutive quarters of year-on-year growth. So we'll continue to update you on that.

But I think, again, strategic and pricing-related initiatives as well as new product development is going to be a core of us continuing to drive this growth going forward.

The next question in the queue is from Simon Clinch with Rothschild & Co. Redburn.

I was wondering if I could just ask about [ BrokerTec ] and BrokerTec Chicago in particular. I was wondering if you give us an update on how that's progressing. Any benefits you're seeing also what kind of behavioral changes you're seeing across that treasury complex? And I guess, how we might think that could impact the overall treasury performance of BrokerTec in the future?

Thanks, Simon. Mike?

Yes, Simon, thanks for the question. While still early innings, adoption of BrokerTec Chicago is expanding as clients leverage the platform's value proposition of smaller tick sizes, and co-location alongside our core futures and options markets in Aurora. What I like about BrokerTec Chicago is it gives our clients choice and execution venue, depending on their trading strategy and market conditions. We have over 35 clients connected to the platform already.

And that includes several participants from the derivative space who exclusively trade U.S. cash treasuries on BrokerTec Chicago. ADV grew 93% month-over-month in March, and we saw a record day of $1.2 billion on April 8. So additionally, we view BrokerTec Chicago as an important foundation in a larger effort to deliver unique new trading efficiencies by bringing our cash and futures markets closer together. So we're pleased with BrokerTec Chicago so far, and we'll keep you updated on new features as it progresses.

Great. And just a follow-up on prediction markets. Terry, could you expand a little bit more about on the -- I think you said 150,000 new contract -- new accounts that sort of started trading on CME's platform, having come through that predicting market funnel. I was wondering if you could talk about just what you're seeing, the early behaviors of those kinds of accounts, what -- how you think it might evolve as you sort of try and graduate those kind of customers across the actual traditional futures [indiscernible]?

So I'll let Tim comment, Simon. But I think when you look at those new accounts coming in to trade that particular product, it's really difficult to predict what the next 6 months or a year is going to look like with that constituency. It could be a whole new group of them. The market can get a little bit stale or could get exciting.

You just don't know what's going to happen that would drive the growth of those new accounts or take it away from it. So I hate to try to make a prediction on that. I would rather try to create efficiencies for each and every client and build the business that way. But I'll let Tim talk more about it.

As I said earlier, when we originally did this deal with FanDuel, it was about distribution and having people look at our products and then participating, and then hopefully they would be graduating into the other parts of our industry, which we think they are and they will. So to me, that's the long game here, and we are going to continue to stay focused on the new client acquisition, as we talked about for many, many years. And this is just an extension of the new client acquisition through our FanDuel partnership. Tim, do you want to expand?

Yes. Thanks, Terry. I think the one thing I would expand on that is when we think about the original thesis of why we're trying to attract the next generation of trader to our markets, it's because we want to get our benchmark products and these benefits and the value prop of CME Group into the traders earlier in their life cycle as a market participant. So when we think about what is exciting about the prediction market is prior to the introduction of the full value margin of event contracts that make it easier to access some of these markets at CME Group.

We were on the life cycle of perhaps a trader started in other markets, whether it was single stocks or ETFs or options and then eventually cross over to CME Group to open a futures account, work with our futures brokers and start trading either full size or micro-sized contracts at CME Group. What's exciting though we don't know the exact motivation of all those 150,000 traders at CME Group is with the smaller-sized, full value margin contract, we now have the opportunity to perhaps be their first trade in the financial markets. And that is something that is evolving and transformational for our opportunity here at CME Group, that we can meet these clients earlier in their journey.

And then as you noted, Simon, once they are then in the ecosystem at the CME Group, we're optimistic they will look at other products. But hard to say exactly what that graduation or life cycle will look like. But capturing them earlier in that journey is one of the things that we find attractive about this opportunity. And it's great to see that bear fruit this early on in the endeavor.

And the next question in the queue is from Chris Allen with KBW.

Just a quick one following up on the capital discussion from earlier. I just want to ask about the buyback philosophy. So the buyback level doubled this quarter versus the prior quarter, even with the stock improving materially this quarter. So I'm just kind of curious how you're thinking about it from a -- you view it as opportunistic buyback or is it -- is there anything related to the preferred conversion to common shares?

Any color there would be helpful.

Thanks, Chris. Lynne?

Yes, sure. So Chris, one thing that you are saying is we did comment that we will be using the OSTTRA proceeds and putting those to work in the repurchase. So we will continue to be opportunistic with repurchases, but we also will be using that $1.55 billion that we received from the OSTTRA sale and putting that towards repurchases. So between last quarter and this quarter, we've completed about half of that.

So we had about $758 million remaining in cash from the OSTTRA proceeds at the end of Q1.

And the last question in the queue is from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

I was just hoping to circle back to the cross margining where you see the regulatory approval to launch the expanded treasury cross-margining to end clients in the coming weeks. So I was hoping you could help quantify the impact of that in terms of added margin and collateral efficiency for customers, how you see the scope for expanded client engagement, velocity and what that path might look like?

That's a good question, Mike. And I don't know if we're going to have complete visibility into what it's going to look like ultimately. But we are excited by the beginning of it. I'll let Suzanne talk about from her end, what she's seeing.

Yes. Yes, thanks for the question. We are excited to be bringing those 2 big liquidity pools together in the interest rate space. We think that just as we've seen in the House program, we do have the ability to offer a pretty compelling savings the 2 clearing houses.

We anticipate the savings can be upward of 80% for the client book just like we've seen on the House side of the program today. We are at about 22 clearing members today that have signed the agreements for the House program. And although we've just announced the approval, we do already have 1 clearing member that signed the agreement for the customer program scheduled to go live at the end of this month, and are engaging with a number of other clearing members to offer the client program as well. . So hard to speculate on the dollar savings, but we do anticipate the ramp-up will be similar to what we saw on the health side and that we'll be able to deliver significant savings for customers, just like we have so far on the House program.

And I would just add that this is a unique benefit that they're able to get those offsets between their activity at CME and at FICC. So it does help reinforce the value proposition of our offering.

And what were the savings on the House side?

Max savings have been about $1.5 billion. Average daily is closer to just over $1 billion.

And showing no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to management.

Well, thank you. Our record-breaking start to 2026 underscores the importance of our risk management ecosystem. I want to harp on one thing that Lynn talked about earlier. We have continued to grow this business, exponentially grow the client base globally and bring more participants in here to mitigate and manage risk.

The rate per contract is always something that's difficult to figure out. And I think when you look at that, you need to focus on that just a little bit more as we continue to grow our business because we actually think this is a really good thing as we continue to grow. So this is not new. We're growing the business and we're really excited about that because it allows multiple participants to continue to grow their business here at CME and pay a price that makes sense for them and for us and for more importantly for you.

And we're seeing unprecedented engagement across all of our global asset classes today. We remain focused on disciplined execution and delivering superior value to our shareholders. Once again, I want to thank you all for joining this call today.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.