Tradeweb Markets Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
April 30, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Record revenue quarter: first quarter revenues surpassed $500 million with 24.7% year-over-year growth, marking the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue gains.
  • Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 54.6% in Q1, up 88 basis points year-over-year, reflecting ongoing balance of growth and profitability.
  • Credit business pricing model is evolving: fixed subscription fees and increased minimum fee floors will boost recurring fixed revenues from 7% toward 13% of credit revenues while retaining roughly 85% variable fees.
  • Balance sheet strength: ended Q1 with $1.3 billion in cash and equivalents and declared a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share, up 20% year-over-year.
  • Momentum continues into April with revenue growth trending ~30% higher versus April 2024 and average daily revenues above Q1 levels, driven by diversified growth across all four asset classes.
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Earnings Conference Call
Tradeweb Markets Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Tradeweb's Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and will be available for playback. To begin, I'll turn the call over to Managing Director of Investor Relations, Sameer Murukutla. Please go ahead.

Sameer Murukutla
Sameer Murukutla
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Tradeweb

Thank you, and good morning. Joining me today for the call are our CEO, Billy Hult, who will review our business results and key growth initiatives, and our CFO, Sara Furber, who will review our financial results. We intend to use the website as a means of disclosing material, non-public information, and complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. I'd like to remind you that certain statements in this presentation and during the Q&A may relate to future events and expectations, and as such, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements related to, among other things, our guidance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements is contained in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and periodic reports filed with the SEC.

Sameer Murukutla
Sameer Murukutla
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Tradeweb

In addition, on today's call, we will reference certain non-GAAP measures as well as certain market and industry data. Information regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to GAAP measures, is in our earnings release and earnings presentation. Information regarding market and industry data, including sources, is in our earnings presentation. Now, let me turn the call over to Billy.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Thanks, Sameer. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q1 earnings call. Before I start, I'd like to congratulate our colleague, Ashley Serrao, on the birth of his second daughter, and we're excited for his return following his paternity leave. I'm extremely proud of the Tradeweb team for delivering the best revenue quarter in our history. We achieved strong double-digit revenue growth for the seventh consecutive quarter, and for the first time, we surpassed $500 million in quarterly revenues. This milestone is a testament to our team, who have worked tirelessly to drive durable growth over many years. The first quarter was anything but quiet, marked by an evolving macro backdrop and geopolitical risks at every turn. Despite that, we believe technology continues to drive markets towards greater connectivity than ever before. We thrive in change and complexity, and we continue to invest into our strengths.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

We're on this continuous journey of learning, and we remain hyper-focused on the next wave of growth and innovation across our global marketplaces. Diving into the first quarter, strong client activity, share gains, and a risk-on environment drove 24.7% year-over-year revenue growth on a reported basis. We continue to balance investing for growth and profitability as adjusted EBITDA margins expanded by 88 basis points relative to the first quarter of 2024. Turning to slide five, our rates business produced a record revenue quarter driven by continued organic growth across swaps, global government bonds, and mortgages. Credit was led by strength in munis and credit derivatives, and further supported by growth across global corporate bonds. Money markets was led by the addition of ICD and aided by record quarterly revenues across global repos. Equities posted double-digit revenue growth, led by growth in our global ETF and equity derivatives business.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Finally, market data revenues were driven by growth in our LSEG market data contract and proprietary data products. Turning to slide six, I will provide a brief update on two of our focus areas: U.S. Treasuries and ETFs, and then I will dig deeper into U.S. credit and global interest rate swaps. Starting with U.S. Treasuries, we saw dramatic moves in the U.S. Treasury market. In fact, over 25% of the trading days in the quarter saw daily yield movements that were twice the historical average. Our first-quarter market share of 23% drove record revenues, up 13% year-over-year. Our institutional business delivered record revenues as well, with key performance indicators remaining strong. We hit another quarterly market share record, exceeding 50% for the fourth consecutive quarter in institutional U.S. Treasuries versus our main electronic competitor. Automation continues to be an important theme, with institutional U.S.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Treasury AiEX average daily trades increasing by 15% year-over-year. Turning to our U.S. Treasury wholesale business, we delivered the highest revenue quarter in our history. This was driven by record adoption of our streaming and sessions protocols, along with continued contributions from r8fin. Wholesale remains a key area of focus as we prioritize onboarding more liquidity providers and enhancing our various liquidity pools in line with our holistic strategy. In equities, our ETF business generated record revenues as volatility increased over 50% during the quarter, and we continue to deepen our integration with our clients. Our efforts to broaden our equity presence beyond our flagship ETF franchise continue to pay off, with record equity derivatives revenues up over 20% year-over-year. Looking ahead, we're continuing to make inroads by onboarding new clients, and the pipeline remains strong as the benefits of our electronic solutions continue to resonate.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

A key competitive advantage has been our AiEX solution, with average daily trades increasing by over 100% year-over-year. Turning to slide seven for a closer look at credit, high single-digit revenue growth for the quarter was driven by strong double-digit gains in both credit derivatives and municipal bonds. Global cash credit delivered low single-digit revenue growth due to product and volume mix, with retail credit revenues being down 20% year-over-year, primarily reflecting a risk-off tone among retail investors amid rising macro uncertainty. Additionally, the elevated volatility in March drove higher discounts being hit in our wholesale business. Overall, automation continues to surge, with global credit AiEX average daily trades increasing over 15% year-over-year. We achieved a record 9% block share in fully electronic U.S. investment-grade trading and our second-highest block share in U.S. high yield at over 4%.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

This growth was driven by continued adoption of portfolio trading, RFQ, and Sessions Protocol. Our institutional credit business continues to scale as clients leverage our diverse suite of trading solutions. Institutional RFQ average daily volume grew over 25% year-over-year, with strong double-digit growth in both IG and high yield. Portfolio trading average daily volume also increased 10% year-over-year, with record volumes across both IG and high yield. During the quarter, we saw our largest portfolio trade by size and volume at over $8 billion in volume, involving over 3,500 line items. AllTrade had a strong quarter with nearly $220 billion in volume, up almost 10% year-over-year. Our all-to-all average daily volume grew over 25% year-over-year. The team remains focused on expanding our network and increasing the number of responders on the AllTrade platform. In the first quarter, the average number of responses per all-to-all inquiry remained steady year-over-year.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Lastly, Sessions average daily volume grew nearly 10% year-over-year. Looking ahead, U.S. credit remains a key area of focus, and we're confident in the longer-term revenue wallet in this asset class and the way we're positioned across all client channels. Since 2019, we've made meaningful progress, growing our fully electronic U.S. credit market share by 1,100 basis points. This growth has come from putting clients first across the full ecosystem, and we continue to recognize the critical role our dealer partners play. As we've successfully reached critical scale in our credit franchise, we are evolving our pricing model by introducing subscription fees and increasing minimum floors with certain dealers. When we were building a business like credit, it was natural for dealers to start with a fully variable pricing model as they were unsure whether the platform would succeed.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

As our business has scaled and becomes a large part of the broader trading ecosystem, a mix of variable and fixed pricing becomes a mutually beneficial model across our credit business to incentivize long-term growth and innovation. In addition, as we have grown significantly, we are also able to rebalance the revenue model by introducing or optimizing variable buy-side fees, ensuring we're capturing the full value we deliver across both sides of the marketplace and maximizing our opportunity for the revenue pool. We also understand that our role in the market isn't one-size-fits-all and varies by channel. While the institutional channel is the holy grail of the industry wallet, it relies on the risk management that occurs in the wholesale channel.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Given this, we offer pricing incentives in wholesale to support our dealer clients' risk management, which in turn strengthens our collective ability to execute on our future growth opportunities in the institutional channel. We believe there is still a long runway for growth, with plenty of opportunity to innovate alongside both buy-side and dealer clients. We're currently working on the next generation of our institutional portfolio trading offering, focusing on enabling clients to build customized, criteria-based portfolio trades. On the wholesale side, we're working with clients to improve post-Sessions match rates and are actively exploring new dealer-initiated workflow solutions as the dealer community looks for faster and more efficient ways to recycle risk. Beyond U.S. credit, we're continuing to prioritize our emerging markets' credit expansion efforts.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Our goal is to build a robust end-to-end trading solution focused on onboarding both global and local dealers while expanding our local network to deepen market connectivity. We expect to launch our Saudi Arabian offering in the coming months and are making steady progress in onboarding local dealers across several key EM regions. While still early in the journey, EM credit revenues grew nearly 20% year-over-year in the first quarter, signaling strong momentum. Moving to slide eight, global swaps delivered record revenues driven by a combination of strong client engagement amid a dynamic macro backdrop, a favorable mix shift towards risk trading, and a 2% increase in weighted average duration. Altogether, global swaps revenues grew over 40% year-over-year. Our core risk market share, which excludes compression trading, was second highest ever, rising over 250 basis points year-over-year.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Total market share declined from 22%-21%, largely due to a significant reduction in U.S. and European client-related compression volumes, which carry much lower fee rates. During the quarter, we achieved the second highest share in our history across other G-11 and EM-denominated currencies. The first quarter truly showcased the diversity of our global swaps revenue base, not just across currencies, but across a broad and expanding client set. We posted record institutional swap revenues with new highs across U.S., European, Sterling, G-11, and EM swaps. This growth was supported by an 11% increase in active clients. Importantly, client growth was broad-based, spanning hedge funds, bank clients, asset managers, and insurance firms as we continue to deepen our global relationships across a wide range of clients. Finally, we continue to make progress across emerging market swaps and our rapidly growing RFM protocol.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Our first-quarter EM swaps revenue rose over 60% year-over-year, and we believe there is still significant room to grow given the low levels of electronification. Our RFM protocol saw average daily volume rise over 70% year-over-year, with adoption picking up. Overall, we believe the long-term growth potential for swaps revenue is significant. We are excited about the opportunity to deliver more solutions across both the cleared and uncleared swaps markets. With the cleared swaps market still only about 30% electronified, there is substantial room to further digitize manual workflows. As global fixed income markets and the broader swaps landscape continue to grow, we see meaningful opportunity to support our clients through deeper automation and innovation. Let me turn it over to Sara to discuss our financials in more detail.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Thanks, Billy, and good morning. As I go through the numbers, all comparisons will be to the prior year period unless otherwise noted. Slide nine provides a summary of our quarterly earnings performance. As Billy recapped earlier, this quarter we saw record revenues of $510 million that were up 24.7% year-over-year on a reported basis and 25.8% on a constant currency basis. We derived approximately 40% of our first quarter revenues from international clients. Recall that approximately 30% of our revenue base is denominated in currencies other than dollars, predominantly in euros. Our variable revenues increased by 27%, and total trading revenues increased by 24%. Total fixed revenues related to our four major asset classes were up 14% on a reported basis and 15% on a constant currency basis.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Rate fixed revenue growth was primarily driven by an increase in minimum fee floors for certain dealers and by the addition of dealers to our mortgage and U.S. government bond platforms. Credit fixed revenue growth was primarily driven by the migration of certain dealers to a subscription fee model and by prior increases to our subscription fees in 2024. Other trading revenues were up 8%. As a reminder, this line fluctuates as it reflects revenues tied to periodic technology enhancements performed for our retail clients. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA margin of 54.6% increased by 125 basis points on a reported basis when compared to our 2024 full-year margins. Moving on to fees per million on slide 10 and a highlight of the key trends for the quarter. You can see slide 16 of the earnings presentation for additional detail regarding our fee per million performance this quarter.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

For cash rates products, average fees per million were down 8%, primarily due to negative mix shift changes within U.S. government bonds and lower European government bond fee per million. For long-tenor swaps, average fees per million were up 42%, primarily due to a decline in compression activity and greater risk-taking volumes. For cash credit, average fees per million decreased 11% due to a mix shift away from retail, the migration of certain dealers from fully variable plans to fixed, and dealers in our wholesale channel hitting volume tier discounts given the elevated volatility in March. For cash equities, average fees per million increased 17% due to a mix shift towards EU ETFs, which carry a relatively higher fee per million.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Finally, with money markets, average fees per million increased 54%, primarily due to the inclusion of ICD and were partially offset by a mix shift towards repos, which carry a comparatively lower fee per million. Slide 11 details our adjusted expenses. At a high level, the scalability and variable nature of our expense base allows us to continue to invest for growth and grow margins. We have maintained a consistent philosophy here. Adjusted expenses for the first quarter increased 22% on a reported and 23% on a constant currency basis. Given the strong environment to invest for long-term growth, during the first quarter, we continued investments in digital assets, consulting, and client relationship development. Adjusted compensation costs grew 24%, with the vast majority as a result of discretionary and performance-related compensation and the addition of ICD.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Technology and communication costs increased 35%, primarily due to our previously communicated investments in data strategy and infrastructure. Adjusted professional fees grew 19%, mainly due to an increase in tech consultants as we augment our offshore technology operations and build incremental scalability. Adjusted general and administrative costs decreased 11% due to favorable movements in FX that resulted in approximately a $2.9 million gain in the first quarter of 2025 versus approximately a $900,000 gain in the first quarter of 2024. This was partially offset by a pickup in travel and entertainment. Slide 12 details capital management and our guidance on our cash position and capital return policy. We ended the first quarter in a strong position with $1.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and free cash flow reached approximately $834 million for the trailing 12 months.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Our net interest income of $13.3 million decreased due to a combination of lower cash balances and interest yields. With this quarter's earnings, the board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per Class A and Class B shares, up 20% year-over-year. Turning to guidance for 2025, we continue to expect adjusted expenses to range from $970 million-$1.03 billion. We continue to believe we can drive margin expansion compared to 2024, although it will be more modest compared to last year since we expect to capitalize on the anticipated healthy revenue environment by accelerating investments to support our current and future organic growth. We expect our CapEx spend to increase as the year progresses into our previously communicated range. We continue to expect 2025 revenues generated under the master data agreement with LSEG to be approximately $90 million.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

As Billy highlighted, we expect a modest shift between our credit fixed and variable fees in this year. In the second quarter, we expect our credit fixed revenues to increase by approximately $6-$7 million from the first quarter, up 62% at the midpoint due to the expected introduction of minimum fee floors and the migration of certain dealers to subscription fees. We would expect the shift in 2Q to be total revenue neutral, resulting in a corresponding $6-$7 million drop in variable credit fees, equivalent to approximately a $9 drop in our cash credit fee per million from first quarter levels. As a reminder, fee per million is really variable fee per million calculated as variable revenues over total volume. Now, I'll turn it back to Billy for concluding remarks.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Thanks, Sara. We want to build upon the success of the present by continuing to be an ambitious company. We continue to focus on moving more voice in paper markets to more transparent markets and pivoting into new markets organically or via M&A. Every day, we ask ourselves, what is the special sauce that we can provide to the market to make our clients' search for liquidity more efficient? I want to briefly touch on the market conditions in April. Macro uncertainty and the emergence of a global trade war triggered rapid repricing of risk across both equity and fixed income markets. While conditions may have felt stressed, our clients remained highly engaged on the platform. As many of our large dealer clients noted during their earnings calls, we continue to see an active and resilient two-way market.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

We believe moments like April clearly demonstrate how both dealer and buy-side clients have been investing in their electronic trading workflows. In today's environment, where the long-term impacts of deglobalization on growth, inflation, and the overall rate outlook remain uncertain, we see an even greater need for a resilient and efficient electronic trading ecosystem. Our clients are the lifeblood of Tradeweb. We believe the global multi-asset footprint we've built is one of our strongest competitive advantages. We feel very confident in our long-term growth outlook. We remain focused on driving innovation and value across the global markets, further enhancing our one-stop shop offering both organically and inorganically to support all four of our client channels. With an important month-end trading day left in April, which tends to be one of our strongest revenue days, overall revenue growth is trending approximately 30% higher relative to April 2024.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Revenue growth this month is being impacted by one less trading day. Focusing on average daily revenue, we are trending higher than the first quarter as momentum in the business continues. The diversity of our growth remains a theme as we are seeing double-digit volume and revenue growth across all four asset classes. Our IG share is trending below March levels, while our high-yield share is tracking ahead of March levels. Finally, I would like to conclude my remarks by welcoming Rich Repetto to our board of directors. Rich is known to many of you on this call and brings more than 25 years of industry experience to our board and a valuable perspective. I'd also like to thank our clients for their business and partnership in the quarter and recognize my colleagues for their efforts that contributed to the record quarterly revenues and volumes at Tradeweb.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

With that, I will turn it back to Sameer for your questions.

Sameer Murukutla
Sameer Murukutla
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Tradeweb

Thanks, Billy. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question only. Feel free to hop back in the queue and ask additional questions at the end. Q&A will end at 10:30 A.M. Eastern. Operator, you can now take our first question.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our first question comes from Chris Allen with Citi. You may proceed.

Chris Allen
Chris Allen
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citi

Morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Billy, I was wondering if you could dig into the rate market commentary a little bit more.

Chris Allen
Chris Allen
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citi

Wondering kind of the overall health of the rate market here, any impact of the move and the long into the curve on customers, any color on the basis swap spread trades. Lastly, from a current positioning perspective, how are people thinking about duration and risk appetite here?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah. Chris, how are you? Hopefully, you can hear me okay. Like a combination of the Knicks losing last night plus my allergies has me a little hoarse. I hope you're doing well. I think if you remember well when we did the r8fin acquisition a little while ago on the earnings call, I talked about the fact that I thought it was a good time to place a bet in the rates market. Then on the last earnings call, I remember Alex asked a question about our interest rate swap business.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I made another point with Sara around, I think it was a good point in time to be in the rates business. I'm not right all the time. Definitely right about that as we kind of think about what happened through the month of April. That sort of day at the Monday after Liberation Day, I think the sort of words like unprecedented, we've kind of all been through the Lehman sale in 2008, COVID, March of 2020. We're talking about kind of headline kind of historic moves. We would kind of characterize it in a very simple way, like a massive drawdown in risk assets alongside a weaker dollar, sharply higher rates, and volatility exacerbated by sort of levered position unwinds, right? And then big, big position reversals.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

The way we kind of think about it, obviously, is the 30-year Treasury yield was the largest weekly move higher since 1982. I think I was in seventh grade. I know Sara was not even born yet. U.S. high yield spreads widened by 150 basis points over a two-week period. That is the largest two-week spread widening outside of the crisis and that COVID period of time. Largest mortgage basis widening since COVID. These are, like, again, unprecedented moves. As that volatility played out, I would say, Chris, we kind of did what you would expect, which is we paid very intense attention to platform reliability and the underlying plumbing of the market function. We have been investing as a company in infrastructure for these moments of stress. The good news, I would say, is that our clients stayed engaged and for sure electronically oriented.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Without any concept, you know us well, without any concept of kind of victory lap, but as the leading rates marketplace, my feeling is we excelled. In April, three days in a row of volumes above $3 trillion a day. On the automation front, which is something we watch closely, I think an important indication of how we think about client stickiness, April average daily trades utilizing AiEX grew over 20% versus the first quarter of 2025. That is an important stat. I think what we are seeing is, as the industry standard of the rates business, like stickiness, frontline stickiness around automation. You ask a great question, and I think it is essentially kind of where do we go from here?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

As we kind of think about where we go from here, I think it's important for us to really kind of say something in a very straightforward way, which is the market function held up. It was resilient, right? We looked at the bid-asks. It obviously got more expensive in areas of the curve where you would expect it to get more expensive, but it held up. We look at things like cover prices and the ability for liquidity to move, and that kind of held up. We looked at how our pricing updates occurred, and that held up. When you think about a market function that was preserved, that was resilient, and then you think about kind of where we're headed from here, I would say headed from here, a little bit more of the same potentially, right?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Tariffs can and will continue to drive market volatility, period, right? Tariffs on, tariffs off, uncertainty, right? There is going to be this continued focus on lower rates that will be offset by the reality that inflation remains high above the Fed target, okay? Debate will continue. Instinct is, as that debate continues, this is very good for the forward macro outlook of our rates business, right? We are going to continue to focus on working with our clients, managing our clients through this period of volatility as partners. We are a very focused company, and my very strong instinct is, as the rates leader, we are going to continue to prosper in the environment going forward. A challenging market, a challenging time. We are engaged and focused and looking forward to continue to excel in a way that you would expect us to. Thanks for the question.

Chris Allen
Chris Allen
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citi

[audio distortion], thank you.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Fannon with Jefferies. You may proceed.

Dan Fannon
Dan Fannon
Managing Director and Research Analyst at Jefferies

Thanks and good morning. A couple of questions on credit pricing. Where do you think you are in the transition from variable to fixed pricing with the dealers that began this quarter? Can you expand upon your comments around the timing of why now in terms of these changes starting to pick up?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Sure. Hey, Dan, how are you? Good question. Thanks. Let me maybe start for a quick second, high level, and a combination of Sara and I are going to kind of tackle this one with you. I start with this kind of concept that you have heard me talk about and Sara talk about how the credit market specifically requires this concept of balance, right?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

From our perspective, very clearly, dealers are fundamentally important to everything we do, period. As you know well, dealers have been sort of the story that dealers have been the sort of most historically resistant to change and the electronification of markets. Our approach has always been to bring them in as our strongest, most important partners, right? When I say that, what I mean is we want them front-edged on the platform, participating to provide liquidity front-edged all the time. We are always going to stay leading with our top-of-view partners on idea generation. That is a very, very important kind of point, I think, right? That is the tenet for how we have built our credit business. Quite honestly, it is the tenet for how we have built all of the markets at Tradeweb, right? It is an advantage for us, right?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

The other piece of it that I would say, which you also know well, is we've always taken the sort of strategic point that we want to kind of play across the entire market structure spectrum. When I say that, I mean the retail piece, the wholesale piece, and the institutional piece. We do that really for kind of two reasons, right? First of all, maybe most importantly, we have a strong belief here that market structure and micro-market structure shifts. We've seen that shift take place in government bonds. We've seen that shift take place in credit. We want to play a part in all of these liquidity components, period, right? The other thing I would say is that we feel very strongly that we can compete independently in all three of those segments.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Obviously, in credit, we have a long-standing role on the wholesale side, working with the dealers. My very strong instinct around that is that where the footprint is smaller and you have a smaller network of clients, we want to make sure that we remain as that partner and win the long game and position ourselves to sustainably scale our business, okay? Given the depth of our client relationships and our footprint in all three of these channels, we understand, I think clearly, that the wholesale channel is essential in going after how we characterize to you the big prize, which has and continues to be the institutional channel.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

To that end, we have worked with our clients in the wholesale space as volume has been growing consistently to shift gradually towards fixed fees, which lays how we describe to you the groundwork for this collaboration, if that makes sense, right? If you want to maybe pick up some of that, Sara.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Sure. Maybe I'll hit a little bit more just in terms of timing, Dan. Everything Billy's framed is really important. Given the size of our credit business, we think it's positive to increase this % of recurring revenues given the scale, showing the strength and commitment to our platform from both the dealers Billy mentioned across institutional and wholesale. Just in terms of context, if you looked in the first quarter a year ago, 2024, our credit fixed or recurring revenues as a % of total credit revenues was less than 7%.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

We can compare that across the other asset classes and see that it's low, quite low relative to the other mix in terms of recurring versus variable. We worked with our dealers and with our clients to shift towards that more recurring nature and revenue. We alluded to in our remarks, you'll see more of that shift in the second quarter. That 7% probably trends closer to 13% by the end of the second quarter. I think that'll be more in line with our other businesses. Importantly, the largest part of that shift in the second quarter is really around increasing minimums. Increasing the floors and the commitment of our dealers is really revenue neutral, as we discussed. I think importantly, it still leaves 85% of our credit revenues fully variable, which leaves lots of room for strong revenue growth with volume.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

In fact, in April, we saw double-digit revenue growth in credit. I think overall, we believe these changes set up our credit growth algo really well to continue by growing our market share and our revenue in partnership with dealers and clients and really pursue the 50% of the market that remains on the phone while increasing that penetration of those higher fee-per-million businesses that we're still working on in RFQ and all the all. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of sense around timing and the bigger picture. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Fannon
Dan Fannon
Managing Director and Research Analyst at Jefferies

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Hey, Billy and Sara. Good morning. Just staying on the credit business maybe for another minute, I was hoping you guys could discuss the announcement that came out of Citadel Securities earlier, effectively pitching to banks to handle their bond trades. I guess, what are the implications for the e-trading of credit broadly and then Tradeweb specifically? Maybe follow-up just to Dan's question around the kind of revenue growth algo discussion within credit. It sounds like you do not think this will cap the opportunity set for Tradeweb when it comes to more volume-driven businesses. Obviously, some of that shifts to fixed now. Maybe just expand a little bit on that and how you view the credit growth algo in the next couple of years.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah. Hey, Alex. I am going to let Sara kind of hit that second point about the cap.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah, obviously, some of those moves that we've been doing have been actually sort of almost to kind of attack the wallet in the best way. Sara will kind of talk about that. It's a good question about Citadel. I'm not sure you asked a good question. I'm not sure if it's completely necessarily oriented all towards credit in terms of the overall ambitions of Citadel and how they're looking at some of the partnerships I think that they're looking to create. At the end of the day, as you know well, we formed a very strong partnership with Citadel kind of across the board. The overall instinct is, as they kind of started off in global government bonds and then hitting into global swaps and now moving into credit, they're going to be, quite frankly, competitive.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I think the instinct is the orientation is that Citadel sees significant opportunity in some ways to broaden out the dealer group and do direct business with clients as some of the European banks have shrunk their presence in these markets. I think, first and foremost, their game plan is about providing those clients direct liquidity. I think that they're putting the time and energy and the effort and the technology to do that. As they're doing that, my other instinct is they're looking to create maybe some other avenues to create distribution by working with some of the dealers and the banks that maybe don't have the level of sophistication and pricing that Citadel does. They don't need me to talk about the fact that that might be a good game plan. It probably is.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

The general view here is all of this is quite good for our business. We've been in close contact with them, Alex, in a way that you would expect. We think the concept of Citadel continuing to provide strong pricing and credit allows for more velocity in that market. We feel like the ambitions they have in the space is good for us. The dialogue remains very, very strong with them. They're continuing to make strong progress in credit and also, as you know, be a leading dealer in the rate side of the business. Feeling quite good as some of these technology-oriented market makers continue to make investments in the space that this plays out quite well for us.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I do think it's a matter of time before there become more firms oriented like Citadel that continue to enter into these spaces, mostly because, to your question, which Sara is going to answer, the wallet is strong. I think that's a really important kind of component to this. That wallet around the client-dealer space in the business is quite strong. That does feed back to your question about our willingness to 100% protect our reach into that piece of the wallet. You take a little bit from there, Sara.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Yeah. No, I appreciate that, Alex. I mean, I think really simply put, the notion of having 85% of the fees, more than 85%, be variable in nature really shows that there's really no constraint in terms of the revenue growth. I think it's a balanced business.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

You want to create stickiness, and you want recurring revenue coupled with the ability as volumes grow and as new protocols get developed to participate in that upside. We like that mix of 15%, 85%, and think that it's a long way away from having a capped revenue opportunity. I think as it relates to the algo for credit, and it's probably very similar for many of our businesses, but it's really around driving market share, introducing new protocols, and growing and adding new clients. When we think about how we drive market share and add new clients, we've talked a lot about our investments. The great news is we have such a profitable model that we've really been able to accelerate a lot of investments in this space.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

We see technology through things like AiEX, responder technology that we're adding, as well as people like some of the regional salespeople that we've been talking about really helping drive—nothing happens overnight. I wish it did—but really help drive that market share opportunity in some of the most lucrative protocols that are out there, as I mentioned, RFQ and AiEX. Importantly, new protocols are a huge opportunity in credit. We have talked about 50% of the market really remaining more voice-oriented. That is really dealer-initiated flows and opportunities that we see. We like our positioning given the strength of our wholesale business. We see strides that we are making there to really partner with the dealers and innovate around things like dealer RFQ and dealer-initiated flows through our portfolio trading business and our wholesale business.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

I think the algo is really important, and I think we're really feeling strong about that balance of 15% recurring and 85% plus being variable in nature.

Alex Blostein
Alex Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you both.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Benjamin Budish with Barclays. You may proceed.

Benjamin Budish
Benjamin Budish
Director at Barclays

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. Billy, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the recent launch of portfolio trading for European government bonds. I'm curious, how does the use case compare to credit? What does it mean for the ultimate level of electronification? Is there a place for this sort of protocol in the U.S. where it's more homogenous? Lastly, would there be any fee rate implications if we were to really pick up that we should keep in mind?Thank you.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah, it's a good question. We do try to talk about Tradeweb as being an innovative company, and that is important to us. We work with our clients on important enhancements. I think, as you've heard us talk about this, portfolio trading is kind of top of the list of something that we've done. We're also just super practical. When something's working, we're like, "How do we scale this technology into other areas?" Right? From our perspective, kind of portfolio trading is a perfect example of that. This is working really, really well for us in U.S. credit. It's a differentiator for us. We're the leader here. Where else can we scale this into? Great coordination inside of the company because we do have a very strong kind of global lens here.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

It was a matter of time before we figured out that, obviously, from our perspective, portfolio trading would have a very strong impact into our European government bond product. Our clients, historically, in a lot of ways, have been under-resourced around technology. The instinct is they're getting more sophisticated now around that search for liquidity. Traders have begun to transcend how we think about this concept of market silos. I think portfolio trading, in a good way, kind of exemplifies how we talk about the concept of technology being able to break down barriers and kind of harmonize execution flows. I'm talking in kind of interesting techno speak. I think we're positioned well to develop these solutions across asset classes. In Europe, one of the things you have, which you know well, is this concept of intra-European sovereign curves.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Clients do tend to look at relative value trades across those curves. Those become inclinations in terms of how portfolio trading will work. There was no way to really do electronically all-or-nothing lists across those curves. Pragmatically, we solved the problem, which I think is something that we do well. We have Enrico Bruni running our international business, Troy Dixon running our U.S. business now. He's got a very strong kind of mortgage background, as you know. We're going to spend a lot of time thinking about things like, "Will portfolio trading work well for U.S. spread-based products?" I think an example would be specified pools, which we think fits that model kind of well. The company's focused on these kind of continued innovations, capital I, but we're also just trying to be super pragmatic.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

What's working, and how do we apply what's working into other markets? Let's be resourceful about that. I think, in a good way, hopefully, that's an example of how we just think about kind of continuing to expand our technology across different markets. Good to hear your voice, and thanks for the question.

Benjamin Budish
Benjamin Budish
Director at Barclays

Great. Thank you, Billy.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yep.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Schmitt with William Blair. You may proceed.

Jeff Schmitt
Jeff Schmitt
Research Analyst of Financial Services and Technology at William Blair

Hi, good morning. On the regulatory front, if this administration were to loosen up banking regulations, could you discuss how you might benefit from that, what that could mean for turnover? I'm thinking specifically just about capital requirements for holding treasuries.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Great. Hey, Jeff. I'll take that one. Nice to hear your voice. I think it's a great question.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

At a high level, we think changes to the SLR ratio could be one of the most impactful changes to increase the resilience and liquidity of the Treasury market and a strong positive for us. It means banks could have more capital to hold U.S. Treasuries. Really, that allows them to facilitate more trading, which should lead to lower yields and improved market depth, which we think is one of the strongest platforms in rates for us, is a real positive. Maybe just backing up for everyone who isn't totally familiar with it, I think SLR is a supplementary leverage ratio. For banks, loosening that means reducing the required percentage of capital that they're holding against bank assets. Importantly, SLR, unlike other measures, is risk-insensitive, meaning all securities, whether they be corporate bonds or Treasuries with different maturities, contribute equally to that measure.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Today, having the same level of capital potentially for lower revenue margin market banking businesses in U.S. Treasuries as a bank might have to hold against higher revenue, higher margin businesses like high-yield credit as an example, allows our view that when these constraints are lifted for those banks that were constrained on the ratio, they can and do typically hold larger Treasury positions. That is the reason we think they can facilitate more turnover and improve liquidity, narrowing bid asks. I think probably the best data point to look at when you are trying to assess what is the implication in terms of the multiple on turnover, and every market is different. I would go back to COVID when the Fed exempted Treasuries from the SLR requirement. In that circumstance, you saw very specifically SLR-constrained banks really increase their Treasury positions and turnover and lower their profit margins.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

There is a lot of research out there by the Fed where you can look at those assumptions. Generally speaking, we are always a proponent of regulation that increases transparency and liquidity across markets, and we think this would be a strong positive for our business.

Jeff Schmitt
Jeff Schmitt
Research Analyst of Financial Services and Technology at William Blair

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. You may proceed.

Ken Worthington
Ken Worthington
Broker, Asset Manager, and Exchange Equity Analyst at JPMorgan

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to hear your thoughts on changes to perception of U.S. exceptionalism. How does this sell off in the U.S. Treasury market, depreciation of the dollar, potential deterioration in the U.S. exceptionalism influence Tradeweb's business, maybe not just in rates, but maybe your other asset classes as well?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Good question, Ken. As you're framing it, you're kind of talking about what we've gone through in April, the concept of a weaker dollar, kind of sharply higher rates in a way I was describing before. There's this concept, obviously, of what are we talking about here? Right? Are we talking about a sort of classic kind of unwind in risk, or are we talking about something more? When you are kind of asking the question about something more, I think what you're asking a little bit, quite honestly, is, is there damage to the brand? Is there damage to the U.S. brand? That's really the question that you're asking, I think. The inclination we have here is no, but the fact that you're asking the question probably means something. Right? Look, eyes wide open.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I said before we're in kind of historic unprecedented zones. You take kind of nothing off the table. I don't know if you had a chance to see Mike Cudzil from PIMCO talk about a version of this question on CNBC last Friday, but he was talking about the way that the market was functioning that made him feel positive that we had not done sort of any kind of real damage to the brand. We have to kind of understand that when you're in unprecedented zones, you have to be prepared for anything. I do come back to this concept that we have this very diverse business here. When we think about our business, you know this, but our rates business drove our growth in 2024, but our credit business drove our growth in 2021, equities in 2022, money markets in 2023.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

That tells you a bit about this kind of diversification story around our business. Our international business represents 38% of our revenues in the first quarter. That's up from basically less than 30% in 2016. I like to talk about the fact that our EM revenues are up over, I think it's up over almost 55% year-over-year in the first quarter. That becomes this concept of this global marketplace. What we talk about a lot is this one-stop shop for fixed income where the markets are more connected than ever. These become big, big principles as we navigate through kind of historic moments in the market. I think your question is really, really important. Hopefully, I'm answering it in a really direct way. We love the fact that we have this leading U.S. rates platform.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

We think this is going to be the marketplace going forward. The concept of us having this significantly strong international business is a big piece of the Tradeweb story that sometimes does get lost in the sauce of U.S. rates and credit. The ability that we have to differentiate ourselves as this global platform is a big deal. You're asking a really good question, Ken, as always, and thank you.

Ken Worthington
Ken Worthington
Broker, Asset Manager, and Exchange Equity Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Michael Cyprys
Michael Cyprys
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you. Good morning. Just a question on digital assets. I think you mentioned the areas that you're investing in. I was hoping you could talk about your strategy there, where you see some of the most compelling use cases for digital assets. As you think about the tokenization and blockchain solutions and opportunities there, what roadblocks or hurdles limit this from being a reality today? How do you see that being overcome?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Yeah. It's a good question. At our core, you know this, we're a technology company. Right? We say that we're a technology company. We've always kind of prioritized, I think, from our perspective, partnering with our clients to help make their workflows more efficient. You've heard us kind of talk that way. The strategy carries through 100% consistently to our approach to digital assets and other emerging technologies. We're investing with the goal of creating a distributed ecosystem that democratizes these global financial markets, allowing participants to interoperate seamlessly, efficiently, and at scale. You're right. The client interest in digital assets continues to grow.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I think we're pretty, in a lot of ways, kind of eyes wide open in that we're taking a pretty deliberate approach through investing in infrastructure and partnerships. I think we're positioned very, very well to support our clients as this landscape continues to evolve. We have invested alongside kind of our—I use the expression like smart money clients, but we've invested alongside our smart money clients like BlackRock, like Goldman on this. I think you're going to see more investments from us in the future. I think we're a little bit moving from this concept of being, I kind of say to Sara, like the Switzerland around this space to, "Let's pick some where we think the winners are." I do think when you think about the sort of guardrails around kind of collateral management, we feel like there will be winners.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

We're going to kind of think weigh in on where we think that those winners live. Then we look at the sort of the reality of some of the markets that we live and breathe in really benefiting from some of this enhancement. They can be markets like the TBA mortgage market or the repo market. We look forward to playing that leadership role as these markets move maybe from a settlement perspective in a different direction. It's an exciting time around the space. We have some of our best thinkers kind of working at it on the company and the kind of partners to help us navigate, I think, that you would expect us to. Feeling good about directionally kind of where we're headed there.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Maybe just one other point I'd add on that is I think it's a unique technology. We have definitely, as Billy said, partnered with what we think is smart money, but we have also really gotten our hands dirty from a technology perspective. We have made investments, but we also are internally very close and part of building technology that is well integrated with these aspects like blockchain. It is not from afar when Billy says we are really spending time and our smartest people are on it. It is really to make sure it is well integrated with all the plumbing we already have.

Michael Cyprys
Michael Cyprys
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Good point. Thank you.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Fellinger with Autonomous Research. You may proceed.

Richard Fellinger
Equity Research Analyst at Autonomous Research

Hi. Good morning. I wanted to ask one on capital allocation. Excess cash continues to build on the balance sheet, and given M&A has historically been the priority after organic growth, just curious how the current market uncertainty informs your appetites for deals today and if those conversations have gotten easier or harder with the unique environment we're in. If it has become harder, at what point would you consider being more opportunistic on the buyback to kind of weigh out the current uncertainty?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Good question. It's going to be, again, like a nice combination, Sara, of me and you on this one. I think we would start with a very kind of straightforward comment, which is M&A continues to be our preferred use of cash. We're going to apply the kind of rigor around that you would expect us to, right?

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Which is, first of all, and I say this loudly, and Sara says this loudly as well, the culture around M&A is extremely, extremely important to us. We look for kind of networks that we think are under-resourced around technology. That is the simple lens that we apply all the time. My general instinct is kind of twofold on this. One is putting forward the kind of organic growth numbers that we put forward leads to momentum and the ability to do larger and more interesting kinds of deals. The other thing I would say is, as a public company, the ability to have a good track record around doing deals. Sara has been at the front of this, integrating and doing good deals, I think gives us, again, this continued momentum to do something.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

I'm feeling personally optimistic and excited about the future around M&A. Sara, you take this from me now.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Sure. I mean, I think let me hit a little bit of the share repurchase question that you asked. I think we've been really consistent, and Billy and I have both been completely consistent about this. The waterfall of how we want to allocate capital remains the same. Organic, and then as Billy mentioned, M&A, then share repurchases and dividends. Share repurchases for us, we're committed to offsetting any dilution from equity comp. Really, beyond that, the opportunistic part of share repurchases will be a function of looking at accretion. Obviously, we want to be disciplined around that topic. As it relates to M&A, I think there's a couple of interesting points to add to what Billy said. We're focused on strategy, right?

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

The strategic benefit of pursuing, whether it's a large acquisition or an investment or a partnership, tends not to change month to month, quarter to quarter based on the environment. That said, I think given our balance sheet, which is quite strong with $1.3 billion of cash, $500 million undrawn revolver, no debt, we remain probably amongst a relative positioning of pretty nimble relative to other acquirers. I think we like that seat in terms of our ability to be opportunistic to pursue things that strategically make sense over the long term, things that expand our client network. Billy's talked about digital. We've talked about private credit before. I think strategy is the most important thing to focus on.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

I do say all of that, and being CFO, financial discipline is really important, especially when you have $1.3 billion sitting on the balance sheet and no debt. We remain very committed to being disciplined. In particular, we want to make sure that we're growing revenue. These transactions would have to be accretive to both revenue and/or earnings growth. We've talked about EPS accretion being something that we look at as a hurdle over the near term for transactions. With that in mind, we like our positioning, and we think strategy is really important, but we feel quite nimble and the ability to be opportunistic.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Thank you for the question.

Richard Fellinger
Equity Research Analyst at Autonomous Research

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Billy Hult for any closing remarks.

Billy Hult
Billy Hult
CEO at Tradeweb

Thank you all for joining us this morning. Excellent questions, and hopefully, we always answer genuinely and transparently. We appreciate your time. Again, a special congratulations to our friend Ashley for his baby. We know he's listening. Thanks very much, and everyone have a great day. Thank you all.

Sara Furber
Sara Furber
CFO at Tradeweb

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
Analysts
    • Chris Allen
      Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citi
    • Michael Cyprys
      Managing Director at Morgan Stanley
    • Ken Worthington
      Broker, Asset Manager, and Exchange Equity Analyst at JPMorgan
    • Richard Fellinger
      Equity Research Analyst at Autonomous Research
    • Billy Hult
      CEO at Tradeweb
    • Alex Blostein
      Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
    • Sameer Murukutla
      Managing Director of Investor Relations at Tradeweb
    • Benjamin Budish
      Director at Barclays
    • Jeff Schmitt
      Research Analyst of Financial Services and Technology at William Blair
    • Dan Fannon
      Managing Director and Research Analyst at Jefferies
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