Richard McVey
Analyst · KBW. Your line is open
Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter 2016 results. This morning we reported record first quarter results, driven by record trading volumes and an acceleration of market share gains across each of our four core products of U.S. high-grade, U.S. high-yield, emerging markets and Eurobonds. First quarter revenues were a record $89 million, up 15% compared to Q1 2015. Record pre-tax income for the quarter was $44 million, up 15% from a year ago. And diluted EPS was up 18% to $0.77. Our estimated U.S. high-grade market share was 14.9% in Q1, up from 13.7% a year ago. And estimated high-yield market share was 6.4%, up from 4.8%. We believe that share gains in Eurobonds and emerging market bonds were similar to the high-yield pace. Open Trading adoption accelerated and reached record volume and participation in the first quarter. Transaction cost savings continue to grow as Open Trading solutions identified more trade matching opportunities for our clients. Slide 4 highlights our trading volume across product categories. Our overall global trading volumes were $310 billion, up from $244 billion one year ago. We surpassed $5 billion in average daily trading volume in the first quarter, one quarter after reaching $4 billion in ADD [ph] for the first time. U.S. high-grade volumes were a record $178 million for the quarter, up 22% from the first quarter of 2015, on a combination of 1.2 percentage point increase in estimated market share and a 12% year-over-year improvement in estimated high-grade TRACE volume. Volume in the Other Credit category increased 43% year over year as trading in Eurobonds, high-yields and emerging market bonds, each achieved record quarterly levels. We are excited about our recent launch of municipal bond trading and the opportunity to deliver broader access to liquidity and greater efficiency to his highly fragmented market. Today, we have approximately 65 dealers and 200 investor clients onboarded to trade muni bonds and we expect this also [ph] to expand in the coming months. Based on MSRB data, we estimate the secondary trading in municipal bonds averages around $6 billion per day. We have implemented a tiered fee schedule based on maturity and trading value, and currently expect the fees per million traded will be between $350 and $400. With three trading days remaining in April, estimated high-grade market share is running above the first quarter level. Total average daily trading volume for April is similar to the first quarter 2016 level, while market volumes are slightly low. Slide 5 provides an update on market conditions. Overall market volumes reported by trades hit record levels in the first quarter with high-grade volumes up 12% and high-yields volumes up 9% from a year-ago. The expansion of trading volume reflects the growing size of debt outstanding in the credit markets and the global demand for yield. Fixed income mutual funds fund-flow stabilized, while dealer inventories remained well below historical levels. Many dealers have scaled back their credit market making activities, while others have exited entirely. Our solutions are increasingly valuable in a market where the traditional providers of liquidity are adjusting to the constraints of new regulations and higher capital costs. Slide 6 provides an update on Open Trading. Open Trading volumes more than doubled of year over year, reaching a record $37 million in the first quarter. Over 82,000 all-to-all trades were completed during the quarter compared to 35,000 in Q1 2015. Open Trading average saving volume was up 36% sequentially versus the fourth quarter. We were especially encouraged by the increasing number of unique liquidity providers or price markers on the platform, which grew to 527 firms, up from 346 in Q1 a year ago. This expanding pool of participants helped drive a 259% year-over-year increase in Open Trading price responses. In the first quarter of 2016, transaction cost savings for U.S. high-grade open trades averaged 5 basis points in yield and high-yield trades at average savings of 0.5 or $5,000 per million traded. We continue to invest in new and innovative trading protocols to expand the set of open trading solutions for our clients. Our most recent technology release includes private trade, order blotter matching to limit information leakage for larger trades as well as open trading functionality for the municipal bond market. We are encouraged by the growing success of open trading as an alternative pool of liquidity for large and growing global credit markets. Slide 7 provides an update on Europe. Our European business continues to grow with 46% year-over-year increase in trading volumes from European client during Q1. European client volume growth was driven by Eurobond, emerging markets and U.S. credit products trading. Data revenue was up 17% year-over-year. We are also encouraged by the rapid adoption of Open Trading in Europe with 65% of Eurobond inquiry now being submitted to Market List. The ECB has recently announced plans to have investment-grade corporate bonds denominated in euros to the asset-purchase program beginning in June. The current expectation is that most of these bonds will be purchased in a primary or new issue market. Depending on the size of the corporate bond purchases, this could crowd out private sector purchases of corporate bonds and as the margin reduced overall secondary turnover with some bonds. MiFID II is expected to be implemented in 2018, expanding opportunities in electronic trading, data and regulatory reporting. The regulations will require increased regulatory transaction reporting for both investor and dealer firms and will bring greater transparency to European markets. We are enthused about our growing involvement in European markets. Now, let me turn the call over to Tony, for more detail on our financial results.