Thomas Gallagher
Analyst · Piper Sandler
Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. In Q1, we executed well and continued to benefit from industry tailwinds, posting record quarterly revenue in a volatile market environment. That is the story of this quarter, and I want to spend a few minutes walking you through what drove our results before Lance takes you through the financial details. I'll first highlight 3 things I hope every investor takes away from today's call. First, we continue to execute well and our options business had another strong quarter. We are seeing the benefits of our technology investment show up in sustained year-over-year volume growth and healthy revenue per contract levels. This continued strong performance is the result of the strong relationships we have built over the last decade. Second, we continue to benefit from powerful secular tailwinds in our core market. Options industry ADV reached 63 million contracts in Q1, up 17% year-over-year, driven by elevated volatility, broad investor participation and growing volume in the new short-term expirations in single name stocks. On top of that, when the market gets volatile, industry volumes tend to rise. Third, we are seeing broadening revenue and margin contributions across our business and continue to invest in offerings that will drive the next leg of our growth. Our equities business maintained its positive trajectory and our International segment performed well. Our futures business is set to expand as we are on track for the May 17 launch of our Bloomberg Equity Futures. Q1 was defined by elevated volatility across asset classes, driven by geopolitical tensions, trade policy uncertainty and shifting expectations around rates and growth. While most businesses are volatility adverse, for MIAX, elevated volatility is good for our business. Sustained geopolitical volatility drives an increased need for risk management tools for virtually all market participants; institutions hedging equity exposure, corporations managing exposure to underlying markets or retail investors protecting positions. Options are an important tool that can help end users manage risk and increased hedging demand translates directly into higher contract volumes on our exchanges. All of these factors contribute to our Q1 performance. First quarter total net revenue grew 40% year-over-year to $129 million and adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 800 basis points year-over-year to 51%. Q1 adjusted diluted EPS was $0.42. These results reflect the continued strength of our options business, the operating leverage in our model and the broadening contributions we are seeing across the platform. Taking a broader look at our business segments, our options franchise continued to perform well in Q1 with market share and volumes tracking ahead of levels seen in the first quarter of 2025. Our market share in multi-listed options was 17.3% in the first quarter, up from 16% in the prior year period. We continue to see opportunity for share gains over time as we build out new functionality and bring new products to market. Our Sapphire trading floor continues to build momentum. And on April 14 of this year, we had our first 1 million contract day. We've also seen improvements in our equities business with improved capture rates during Q1 and line of sight to sustained profitability. Our International segment delivered another strong quarter. And looking ahead, we'll continue to streamline operations across TISE and BSX to maximize revenue as well as cost synergies. In futures, our Onyx platform continues to perform well, and we are in the final stages of industry testing ahead of the launch of our new Bloomberg Equity Index futures. We will be launching the first product, a retail size contract based on the Bloomberg 100 Equity Index on the evening of May 17. We are launching with 3 different contracts designed to serve both institutional and retail participants. The full B500 contract provides large notional exposure for institutions, while the [ TEB500 ] and B100 contracts are smaller-sized versions of those indexes targeted at retail investors with fees that we expect will be very competitive with existing contracts traded by our peers. These new futures will clear at the Options Clearing Corporation, giving our members real margin efficiencies as part of their broader equity derivatives activity. The Bloomberg 500 and the Bloomberg 100 indices are built differently than the competing futures and options market benchmarks. Rather than relying on a committee to make decisions about which companies belong in the index, Bloomberg uses a transparent rules-based algorithmic methodology. Constituents are added and removed based on predetermined criteria, eliminating subjectivity and delays and newly minted public companies can be added faster than under a committee-driven process. We think this is a better construction and a meaningful structural advantage as the IPO pipeline improves and we believe the market will come to appreciate these differences. We have been working closely with liquidity providers on both onboarding and platform integration and Bloomberg is an active partner in our go-to-market effort. Building a futures market takes time, but we are doing it in the right way. The infrastructure is in place, the participants are engaged and we are confident in the long-term opportunity this product suite creates for MIAX, Bloomberg and our members. Following our Bloomberg product launch and given clear customer demand, we intend to bring additional commodity and agricultural products to the market. I also want to provide a brief update on our sale of MIAXdx, now called Rothera. As previously announced back in January, we completed the sale of 90% of the business to a joint venture established by Robinhood Markets in partnership with Susquehanna International Group. MIAX retains a 10% equity stake in that joint venture, giving us accelerated access to the predictions marketplace without tying up capital or resources. We will carry that stake at cost with any future distributions flowing through as dividend income. In other words, this is not something investors should be building into their revenue models. What it represents for MIAX is real long-term optionality, a position in a growing market alongside 2 strong partners with upside if the prediction market volumes scale the way we believe they can. We remain focused on what we can control, which is running our business exceptionally well. With positive free cash flow, we are generating cash and ended Q1 with more than $550 million in cash on our balance sheet. Our capital allocation priorities are unchanged; organic growth opportunities, including our futures business, supporting the Bloomberg product launch and investing in technology and people. Beyond that, we are open to opportunistic acquisitions that fit our strategy and make sense for our business. We understand that our cash position is a competitive advantage and we intend to deploy it thoughtfully. With that, I will turn it over to Lance to walk through the financial details.