Nasdaq Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 25, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today to Atul Garrett, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Nasdaq's Q1 2024 financial results. On the line are Adena Friedman, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer Sarah Youngwood, our Chief Financial Officer John Zekka, our Chief Legal Risk and Regulatory Officer and other members of the management team. After prepared remarks, we will open the line for Q and A. The press release and earnings presentation are on our website. We intend to use the website as a means of disclosing material non public information and complying with disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.

Speaker 1

I would like to remind you that certain statements in this presentation during Q and A may relate to future events and expectations and constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from these projections. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from forward looking statements is contained in our press release and periodic reports filed with the SEC. Further, any references to organic growth will exclude the impact of changes in FX rates and the impact of acquisitions and divestitures, which this quarter is substantially all related to AxiMSL and Calypso. The financial results of these businesses are included in solutions revenue within the Financial Technology division.

Speaker 1

Also, please note that we will discuss certain financial results on a pro form a basis, which means that we are showing the results as if we've included Calypso and Acxiom SL results in the Q1 2023 and excluded the impact of changes in FX rates. Reconciliations of U. S. GAAP to non GAAP results can be found in our press release as well as in a file located in the financial section of our Investor Relations website at ir.nasdaq.com. I will now turn the call over to Adena.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Otho, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today, my remarks will cover the following areas: our outlook on the external environment as well as highlights from our Q1 financial and operational performance, including innovation milestones and key progress updates on our cross sell efforts and synergies. I will then turn the call over to Sarah for a review of our financial results. I'll start with our outlook on the current economic environment.

Speaker 2

Recent data including sustained consumer spending and labor force strength suggests that the U. S. Economy remains resilient despite heightened geopolitical risks and a higher cost of capital. The U. S.

Speaker 2

Markets are generally performing well, reflecting that economic resilience as well as the potential future productivity benefits that derive from the adoption of generative AI and other sector specific performance trends. This strength in the U. S. Economy has U. S.

Speaker 2

Growth projected to outpace other advanced economies. As such, economists continue to expect a soft landing in the U. S. Although other advanced economies are seeing slower growth, recent data shows improvement in manufacturing and services, particularly in Europe. Global inflation has trended sharply lower over the last year, although it is starting to show some signs of persistence as it moderates globally.

Speaker 2

Markets are still expecting rates to begin to decline later this year in most major markets, which will be a positive for corporates and for the real estate sector, including new homebuyers. With the strength in the markets, we've begun to experience an uptick in IPO activity. In the Q1, the U. S. Markets welcomed 39 operating company IPOs, the most in 2 years, highlighted by 9 IPOs with market caps in excess of $1,000,000,000 Additionally, as we referenced in our most recent Nasdaq IPO Pulse Index, we're seeing 5 out of 6 leading indicators of future IPO activity continue to improve, suggesting an improvement in the U.

Speaker 2

S. Public equity capital raising environment over the coming months. As we look towards the remainder of the year at NASDAQ, we see a healthy pipeline of exciting companies preparing to enter the public markets, but their timelines will be dependent upon continued strong economic and market performance. Taking a closer look at Nasdaq's business environment, we continue to capitalize on attractive opportunities for sustainable growth through our diversified business platform that is well positioned to succeed through economic cycles as evidenced by our solid Q1 performance with double digit growth in our solutions revenues. We've aligned our business against key industry shaping megatrends, the modernization of markets, the transformation of the investment landscape, the drive towards sustainability and increasing financial services investment in resilience and risk management, where we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on strong sustained client demand, which we'll cover throughout our call today.

Speaker 2

Before we move on to our financial results, I want to mention Borst of Dubai's recently completed secondary offering of NASDAQ common stock. Specifically, Borse of Dubai sold a position of their stake representing approximately 5% of NASDAQ's total shares outstanding. The secondary transaction priced on March 19 and closed on March 22 with strong investor demand resulting in an oversubscribed transaction. Following the transaction, Borsa Dubai continues to hold just over 10% of Nasdaq's total shares outstanding. Additionally, Isak Hazim, the Chairman of Borsa Dubai will continue as a valued member of Nasdaq's Board of Directors.

Speaker 2

Our relationship with Vorsa Dubai is multifaceted, spanning many years and NASDAQ continues to be a trusted technology provider and brand partner to Boursuit Dubai. We look forward to their continued support as a shareholder of NASDAQ as their insights and contributions have and will continue to shape our path ahead. Turning now to our financial results. I'm pleased to share Nasdaq's solid financial performance for the Q1 of 2024 with strong double digit growth in solutions revenues. In the Q1, we achieved $1,100,000,000 in net revenues, an increase of 7% compared to the prior year quarter on a pro form a basis.

Speaker 2

We delivered 13% pro form a revenue growth across our solutions businesses during the quarter. In addition to strong performance across our Financial Technology division, our index business had a stellar performance in the quarter. Our annualized recurring revenue or ARR increased 7% year over year on a pro form a basis to $2,600,000,000 Across the company, we supported revenue growth and continued investments, while delivering a 53% operating margin for quarter. This represents a 1 percentage point of operating leverage against the prior year quarter, both on a pro form a basis and when excluding Adenta. Our solid performance in the Q1 of 2024 illustrates our continued ability to execute against our strategic vision, delivering value and growth to our clients and shareholders amid a dynamic operating environment.

Speaker 2

Now let's review the highlights of our operational accomplishments and client successes by division, starting with Capital Access Platforms. In the Capital Access Platforms division, we delivered 15% growth, highlighted by outstanding performance in our index business. With the strong close to 2023 and subsequent market rally at the beginning of 2024, our index business had an exceptional momentum in the Q1. The NASDAQ 100 reached record highs multiple times during the quarter. And we are pleased to announce that our index business overall crossed the $500,000,000,000 threshold in ETP AUM for the first time during the quarter, finishing the period of $519,000,000,000 Over the last 12 months, we saw $46,000,000,000 of net inflows, including $21,000,000,000 just this quarter alone.

Speaker 2

We also worked with clients to launch 29 new products tracking Nasdaq Indices, demonstrating our steadfast focus on innovation and global distribution. This momentum contributed to our index business delivering 53% growth, which represents 38% year over year core revenue growth in the quarter as well as a one time item that Sarah will describe. This quarter also marks the 25th anniversary of the Invesco QQQ ETF, representing more than 2 decades of providing investors with access to some of the world's most innovative companies within our Nasdaq 100 Index. In addition to this milestone, we were honored to be named the Index Provider of the year by etf.com, which further validates our efforts to improve investor outcomes through product introductions, innovation, performance and support. Our data and listings business was up 1% year over year as global growth in our data business was offset by headwinds from delistings and a muted IPO environment.

Speaker 2

In the Q1, our U. S. Listings business achieved a 69% win rate when considering NASDAQ eligible operating company listings. In total, we welcomed 22 operating company IPOs, raising nearly $4,000,000,000 in proceeds, including CASB KZ, Astera Labs and BrightSpring Health. In addition, 4 companies representing $9,000,000,000 in market value switched their listings to NASDAQ during the quarter, including SAIC.

Speaker 2

In our data business, we continue to make progress with the signing of new customers to enterprise agreements with additional growth driven by our international expansion strategy, reflecting the importance of creating a frictionless data experience with multiple delivery capabilities for our global client base. Turning to our workflow and insights business, which grew 4% year over year, we saw continued weakness in Corporate Solutions as lower sales in 2023 will continue to have an impact on our financial performance in 2024. While our sales cycles have been starting to improve over the last 6 months, they continue to be meaningfully longer than what we experienced in 2021 and the first of 2022. New sales are also impacted by a persistent lower slower IPO environment. We are generally able to demonstrate the value of our IR and ESG solutions beyond the complementary IPO package to newly listed companies once they've had a few months to experience the rigor of the public market.

Speaker 2

While we're encouraged by the early signs of an improving IPO environment, any IPO market improvement that we may experience in the coming quarters will take time to translate into improving sales and revenue results for our Corporate Solutions business. In our Analytics business, we achieved high single digit growth in the quarter and we continue to deepen our strategic alliance with Mercer, one of the largest global investment consultants. During the quarter, Mercer incorporated our new eVestment ESG analytics for asset manager diligence and insights into their assessment process. We're excited about this expansion and see additional opportunity to deepen and expand our partnerships with the asset management community going forward. Across both analytics and corporate solutions, our proprietary data remains a strategic differentiator.

Speaker 2

For example, in analytics, we continue to develop innovative data products in our data link offering that are attractive to traders and the investment community, and we have solid growth in our market lens product offered through our eVestment platform. We're also focused on enhancing our products through the use of AI. In Corporate Solutions, we're advancing Nasdaq for advantage with AI powered workflow tools that and are collaborating with Microsoft's iconic AI incubation lab on a series of planned AI enabled features. As part of this partnership, we're launching a new capability that creates executive summaries for Board members and supports corporate secretaries in preparing and summarizing Board documents. We're currently testing this feature with clients in a beta release.

Speaker 2

Turning next to the Financial Technology division, we delivered 10% growth in the quarter. Overall, we're encouraged with a very strong client response and engagement across the new division, which further reinforces our view that our clients are looking for strategic partners that can help them navigate the complexities across the financial system and operate more efficiently. As part of the transition of the Calypso and Acxiom SL businesses to NASDAQ, we hosted our first ever financial technology conference in New York City earlier this month. The event brought together more than 170 clients from over 80 accounts. Feedback from the clients is positive, highlighting their belief that Nasdaq is the right owner and a trusted partner that will invest in the Calypso and Acxiom offerings to fuel both the next wave of modernization and help them mitigate, manage and capitalize on today's environment.

Speaker 2

Through the event, clients were educated on the Nasdaq organization, the product roadmap strategy for the Acxiom SL and Calypso offerings and on NASDAQ's comprehensive suite of solutions. This has created new commercial conversations that the team is currently pursuing. Now let's turn to our performance highlights, starting with our Financial Crime Management Technology business, where we achieved 23 percent revenue growth and 24.5 percent ARR growth over the prior year quarter. We advanced our leadership position among small and medium sized financial institutions, signing 28 new clients during the quarter. As a reminder, the 4th quarter is our biggest bookings quarter each year and we have a strong pipeline of sales targets to execute on as we progress through the year.

Speaker 2

We also continue to fight our fight to advance our fight against financial crime with the full production launch of our first of the first of our AI co pilot tools that we're calling Entity Research Co pilot. This tool which is offered through the bedrock platform at AWS offers fully automates workflows with generative AI to improve investigator efficiency. By automating tasks related to research, summarization and documentation, Verifin offers significant efficiency gains that allow banks to scale their crime fighting efforts without increasing headcount and enables them to shift resources and investment to higher value activities and more complex investigations. We're encouraged by early user results, which show that these enhanced solutions through these enhanced solutions Verifin delivers up to a 90% reduction in alert review time for investigators compared to legacy approaches. We rolled out this new capability in Verafin through a beta program in the second half of last year and we announced this week that we're moving to full production and rolling out availability to all of our bank clients.

Speaker 2

Next, I'll discuss the Capital Markets Technology, which is comprised of our Trade Management Services, Market Technology and Calypso Businesses. Overall, Capital Markets Technology grew 6% year over year with 9% growth in ARR. Calypso had a particularly strong performance with total revenues and ARR growth both demonstrating strength in client demand for our solutions. Calypso had 25 upsells and 1 new client sale during the quarter. While we're early on our journey of unlocking the cross sell opportunities across the division, we executed on an opportunity with a client who was looking to adopt a data connector between Calypso and Acxiom SL, which highlights the synergies between these two products.

Speaker 2

Net market technology had a more challenging quarter largely due to a tough comparable quarter in 2023. We experienced solid growth in ARR, but a decline in revenue from professional services, primarily because of a significant delivery fee that we received in the Q1 of 2023. Within Market Technology, we accelerated our strategy to modernize markets by bringing leading technologies to our customers. We signed agreements to upgrade 3 matching engine clients to our next generation platform during the quarter and we launched a large global clearing and custody provider to the Nasdaq risk platform. Let's turn now to our regulatory technology business, which is comprised of our Acxiom SL and surveillance businesses where we delivered 11% growth.

Speaker 2

Our Acxiom SL business experienced strong sales and renewals throughout the Q1. The product had 20 upsells during the quarter and one new client sale. With the upsells, we had 3 new ESG sales to GSIB clients. In our surveillance business, we had 26 upsells and 5 new client sales during the quarter. Across the business, we saw continued cloud adoption with 55% of total NTS clients now in the cloud at the end of the Q1, which represents an increase from the end of last year.

Speaker 2

As we reflect on the Financial Technology division's 1st full quarter, we're very pleased with our financial and operational performance. We delivered revenue growth in line with the medium term outlook that we announced at Investor Day with strength across many areas of business as well as continued innovation in our product offerings. Since the formation of the Financial Technology division, we've executed on 6 cross sells, including 1 this quarter, highlighting the strength of our One Nasdaq go to market approach. In addition, we have multiple cross sell campaigns underway and we're pleased with the growing share of cross sell opportunities within our pipeline. As such, we're showing early progress towards our 2027, dollars 100,000,000 plus cross sell target.

Speaker 2

Moving to market services, where we're navigating our complex market backdrop, particularly against a strong 2023 1st quarter comp. We experienced a 9% decline in revenue. The U. S. Options business had a lower revenue quarter due to lower volatility compared to the prior year quarter, which included turbulence in the banking system, as well as increased competition in U.

Speaker 2

S. Options from new entrants and shifts in retail activity resulting from the lower profile. Despite these headwinds, Nasdaq maintained its market share lead over the number 2 operator in U. S. Multi listed equity options and our proprietary U.

Speaker 2

S. Index options products, notably NDX, continued to gain strength with record revenues, volume and share. In the NASDAQ stock market, we're also pleased to confirm the launch of Dynamic Mellow, which commenced its rollout across symbols on April 15, with the rollout scheduled to be completed by mid May. As we've discussed previously, Dynamic Mellow is the 1st SEC approved AI powered order type designed to improve fill rates and create greater efficiency for our investors. In Europe, where overall market liquidity continues to be challenged, we were able to maintain strong share and capture across our equities, derivatives and fixed income markets as we continue to add value to our clients through our data analytics and new trading products.

Speaker 2

We also continue to advance our efforts to bring transparency to nascent markets. Early in the Q2, puro.earth released a new report tracking the rapid expansion of global carbon removal markets over the past years. With piro.earth as well as our carbon market technology, we experienced strong growth in volumes and revenues as the market continues to mature with greater supply coming online. And we've remained well positioned to capitalize on growing demand for carbon removal credits by bringing much needed transparency, standardization and registry services to this emerging space. As we move forward, we are focused on retaining our leading market position across all of our markets and continue to build on the strong growth that we've seen in our proprietary NDX options products and Imperial Earth.

Speaker 2

To wrap up, we're pleased to deliver another quarter of solid results that were in line with the medium term outlook we provided at Investor Day. In Nasdaq's core businesses, we delivered well in what we can control within a tougher market environment, including a continued muted IPO environment and lower volatility. Across our solutions businesses, we delivered double digit revenue growth, including strong Financial Technology results and exceptional index performance. Within Financial Technology, our recent acquisitions of Acxiom SL and Calysto as well as Verafin continue to progress well and remain in line with expectations. With our top line performance combined with continued expense discipline, we maintain our exceptional margin profile for the company.

Speaker 2

All told, our performance underscores the durability of our business model and our ability to deliver growth across uncertain environments. With that, I will now turn the call over to Sarah to review the financial details.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Adena, and good morning, everyone. Turning to our financials. My commentary will focus on non GAAP results and year on year growth rates and operating margins will be provided on a pro form a basis unless noted. You can find all the same metrics on an organic basis throughout the earnings presentation. Turning to our Q1 results on slide 10.

Speaker 3

We reported net revenue of $1,100,000,000 up 7%, with solutions revenue of $871,000,000 up 13%. Operating expense was $524,000,000 up 5%, resulting in an operating margin of 53%, up 1 percentage point and with EBITDA margin at 56%. Overall, this resulted in diluted EPS of $0.63 Turning to slide 11, with pro form a revenue growth of 7% for the quarter. As you can see in the last part of the chart, results included a $16,000,000 one time revenue benefit related to a legal settlement within index tied to the recruitment of revenue. Excluding this, total net revenue increased 6%.

Speaker 3

And on a net basis, the 6% was outbound performance. Overall, beta factors were neutral this quarter, with index market performance primarily offset by the impact of de listings in capital access platforms and lower volumes in market services. The 6% of alpha included 5% growth from our existing clients and a strong 3% from new clients, cross sell and other product innovation, with churn at a low 1% level and a 1% decrease from market share and capture in market services. Turning to slide 12. ARR totaled $2,600,000,000 up 7%.

Speaker 3

As you recall, ARR excludes most of index. We had 12% growth in FinTech with strong contributions from each of the 3 sub divisions and 1% growth in Capital Access Platform, with trends in analytics partially offset by the impact of delistings, the slower IPO environment and related slower sales in Corporate Solutions. Annualized SaaS revenue totaled $932,000,000 up 16%. SaaS was 36% of ARR, up 3 points on a pro form a basis. Let's review division results for the quarter, starting on slide 13.

Speaker 3

In Capital Access Platform, we delivered revenue of $479,000,000 reflecting growth of 15% or 12% excluding the one time benefit I mentioned. Index revenue increased by 53% or 38% excluding the one time benefit. We achieved record highs in ETP AUM, averaging $492,000,000 during the quarter, which is roughly $150,000,000,000 higher than the prior year period average. This includes strong market performance as well as higher futures trading volume and capture. Importantly, we also had net inflows of $46,000,000,000 in the last 12 months, including $21,000,000,000 this quarter.

Speaker 3

This performance is the result of strength of our data brand and the relevant and innovative products we have launched over many years. Licensing revenue for futures and options contracts linked to the Nasdaq 100 Index also had high teens growth, reflecting higher futures and options trading volumes, up 5%, driven by growth in Micro Nasdaq 100 futures contracts, as well as the positive impact from higher capture rates of our partner. Moving to data and listing, where revenue was up 1%. Within listing, the benefit of 20 23 IPOs and pricing was offset by the $10,000,000 impact of last year's delistings and downgrades. The roll off of prior year's initial listings revenue didn't have a material impact this quarter, but will increase during the year.

Speaker 3

Within data, we continue to see global expansion driven by international demand, mostly offset by normal levels of client share. Workflow and Insights revenue increased 4%. Within this, analytics grew high single digits, reflecting our continued ability to monetize the value of our data across the investment management and trading community. Our proprietary data is key to our alpha generation throughout NASDAQ. And within analytics, we provide valuable client insights through investment and data link.

Speaker 3

The stress in Analytics was partially offset by Corporate Solutions, which was flat in the period, as we continue to see elongated sales cycles at levels comparable to the Q4 of 2023, as well as fewer sales opportunities due to the challenging listing environment. In total, ARR for capital access platforms was $1,200,000,000 for the quarter, up 1%, with offset growth from pricing, up sales and new clients, mostly offset by de leasing and the continued impact of slower sales cycle among our corporate clients. The division's operating margin was 58% for the quarter. Excluding the one time benefit, the margin was 57%, up 3 percentage points. The increase was driven by higher revenue, partially offset by inflation and growth oriented investments.

Speaker 3

Looking forward to the full year 2024 revenue. Due to the market backdrop negatively impacting Corporate Solutions. We expect growth in workflow and insights to be below its medium term outlook, whereas the strength in our index business gives us confidence that within 2024, we can perform above our medium term outlook. Taken together, we continue to expect our 2024 performance to be within the overall revenue outlook for the Capital Access Platform division. Moving to Financial Technology on slide 14.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, last week we provided 2023 quarterly information for Axiom Selt and Calypto. And today, we provided quarterly pro form a divisional results for 2023, both of which can be found in the appendix of the presentation. This should help you incorporate pro form a comparison in your model. The division delivered revenue of $392,000,000 for the quarter, up 10% in line with our medium term outlook. The growth reflects strong performance in Financial Crime Management, Calysto and Axiom SL at 23%, 23% and 15% respectively, with strong client engagement.

Speaker 3

This was partially offset by a tough comp in Market Tech due to a significant professional service delivery in the prior year quarter, which we noted at that time and makes the year on year comparison less meaningful. ARR was $1,400,000,000 up 12% with all subdivisions contributing to this strong growth. The key contributors to the difference between total revenue growth and ARR growth were lower year on year professional service revenue growth due to the tough comp for market tech as well as less robust project delivery across our products in the quarter, partially offset by upfront revenue from on prem renewals, particularly for Calyxto. Before we move to subdivision results, a few words on the strong performance of Acxiom SL and Calypto. Combined revenue of $151,000,000 increased 20% versus last year with good client momentum.

Speaker 3

We had a high level of upfront renewal revenue. We also had higher cloud based revenue and slightly lower professional services revenue. As we look forward, we continue to expect combined Axiomedsal and Callisto revenue to be in line with the full year expectations provided at Investor Day. As we progress through the quarters, we will provide some context to support your modeling. On the back of a strong Q1, which delivered revenue growth above our ultra trench, we expect lower revenue growth in the Q2, due in large part to the timing of renewal.

Speaker 3

Combined, Actuemacel and Calysto ARR of $473,000,000 was up 15% or up 16%, excluding the impact of a significant 20 23 bankruptcy noted last quarter. This is in line with our full year expectations as provided at Investor Day, and we maintain this outlook for the year. Moving to the subdivision's results. Financial Crime Management Technology revenue was $64,000,000 up 23% with ARR of $243,000,000 up 24.5 percent, reflecting continued penetration of the core SMB client base, adding 28 new clients in the quarter, with full year 2024 SMB client wins expected to be at least that of 2023. While we had no new Tier 1 or Tier 2 bank signings in the quarter, we continue to have active and positive engagement with a strong pipeline of client opportunities, which we expect to sign in the coming quarters.

Speaker 3

Regulatory Technology revenue was $90,000,000 and ARR was $328,000,000 both up 11%. Excluding the impact of churn related to the liquidity events of March 2023, Revenue and ARR were up 12% 13% respectively. Surveillance grew 6% for both revenue and ARR, reflecting strong sales as well as the continuation of the cloud transformation of this business with 55% of NASDAQ trade surveillance customers now in the cloud. Axiom SL grew revenue 15% and IRR by 16%, reflecting strong sales. In the quarter, nearly 50% of new bookings were in the cloud, highlighting the continued cloud journey for the business that is obviously beneficial for both our clients and NASDAQ.

Speaker 3

In Capital Markets Technology, we delivered revenue of $238,000,000 up 6%, with ARR of $821,000,000 up 9%. Calisto had a strong quarter with revenue up 23% and ARR up 14%. Revenue included a strong contribution of on prem renewal revenue. The business had 16% of new bookings from their cloud, a lower proportion than what we expect for the year due to timing. The combined Market Tech and Trade Management Services business, which is what we used to call Marketplace Tech, was slightly down in revenue, but up in ARR, again driven by the significant professional service delivery in the prior year period that provided a tough comp.

Speaker 3

This impact was somewhat offset by the partial quarter impact of pricing increases, coupled with strong client activity and testing revenue within Trade Management Services. Looking forward to the full year 2024, we expect the combined Market Tech and Trade Management Services to be well positioned within the 3% to 5% range with a muted second quarter and the growth being back ended. The division's operating margin in the Q1 was 45%, up 2 percentage points. The margin expansion reflects strong top line revenue growth and the beginning of synergy realization, partially offset by higher compensation and benefit expense and expense related to revenue and investments in growth. And wrapping up the division with Market Services.

Speaker 3

Net revenue was $237,000,000 for the quarter, down 9% versus an extremely tough comp. The short story here is 1 percentage point or $3,000,000 relating to our share of non recurring industry adjacements to the TACE plans. The rest was about half beta half alpha, with beta drivers across tape, 1 fewer trading day and volumes in Europe. And most of the alpha story tied to last year's exceptional capture in our U. S.

Speaker 3

Options business during the bank liquidity events in the Q1. $0.13 per contract traded in 1Q 'twenty three was an exception in a consistent 2 year trend of capture at $0.12 which is where we were in the Q1. The division's operating margin of 56% in the Q1 represents a 6 percentage point decrease from the prior year period as a result of lower revenue as well as ongoing investments related to both capacity enhancement and modernizing our market. Turning to slide 16. This quarter's non GAAP operating expense was $524,000,000 reflecting pro form a growth of $24,000,000 or 5%.

Speaker 3

This is driven by inflation, supporting our revenue growth and investments. This compares pro form a revenue growth of $76,000,000 or 7%, reflecting positive operating leverage. Now on to guidance. We are updating 2024 non GAAP operating expense guidance to $2,125,000,000 to $2,185,000,000 to reflect FX, equity compensation and less uncertainty on revenue growth. The midpoint represents pro form a growth of just over 5%.

Speaker 3

This includes a full year of ADEMSA, FX and the in new benefits of net expense synergies. Excluding Ademza, Nasdaq's expense growth would be around 4.5%. In addition, the Q2 will reflect our annual merit adjustments and equity grants. And therefore, we expect expense to increase just under $20,000,000 from the Q1 of 2024, assuming stable performance and exchange rates. On synergies, we have actioned approximately 40% of our $80,000,000 of net expense synergies through the end of 1Q 2024, with the P and L benefit weighted towards the second half of twenty twenty four and into 2025, given some transition periods.

Speaker 3

We are confident in the 70% action by the end of 2024 and would note that it won't be linear. Additionally, we continue to expect a full year tax rate of 24.5% to 26.5% on a non GAAP basis. Turning to slide 17. Strong free cash flow continues to be the hallmark of NASDAQ. In the quarter, we had $504,000,000 of free cash flow.

Speaker 3

Please note that cash flow generation in the Q1 is generally elevated versus the rest of the year. Once again, we had a cash flow conversion ratio above 100%, at 106% for the last 12 months. In terms of free cash flow utilization in the quarter, we paid a quarterly dividend of $0.22 per share or $127,000,000 for a 35 percent payout ratio and we did not repurchase any shares this quarter. We also repaid the remaining $340,000,000 of our term loan, in line with our prior commitment of prioritizing deleveraging. And finally, we repaid $67,000,000 of commercial paper.

Speaker 3

Excluding commercial paper, all of our outstanding debt is now fixed. Our all in pre tax cost of debt was 4.0% as we exit 1Q 2024. Turning to leverage. Our gross leverage ratio declined from 4.3 at the end of last year to 4.1 at the end of 1Q 2024. In addition to the stated debt repayments, our leverage ratio decreased 0.1 times from the impact of FX, amortization of debt issue costs and stronger EBITDA.

Speaker 3

We are reiterating our expectation to achieve gross leverage below 4 times, 9 to 12 months ahead of our initial goal. As I reflect on this quarter, I would highlight strong client adoption and growth in Solutions overall and particularly in Index, Analytics, financial plan management, Axiomacel and Calypso strong progress on synergy actions and building our cross sell pipeline and continued actions on deleveraging. As we look ahead, I continue to be impressed by the balance and diversity of the business model, enabling us to grow the top line with strong margins and to effectively execute our capital allocation plan. We are well positioned to deliver on our One Nasdaq strategy and achieve durable organic revenue growth and profitability. Thank you for your time, and I will turn it back to the operator for Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our first question comes from the line of Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Could you please add more color on the cross sell campaigns to achieve the $100,000,000 target? What is the plan for the rest of this year? Does it mainly cover the cross sell within a denser or between denser and Verifin or across the whole company? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Owen. Sure. So we actually described the current cross sell campaigns at Investor Day a few weeks ago and it really covers across the FinTech division. So one of the cross sell campaigns is really focusing on bringing more of the Calypso risk management, collateral management capabilities into our market operator clients. Another one actually is working with the Calypso clients to bring more Acxiom SL capabilities.

Speaker 2

So bringing in Acxiom SL into some of the capital markets firms where they have new regulatory obligations that they're facing. And then the third is introducing some of the Verafin clients to the AXMSL team as well and the Calypso team, particularly actually on the treasury management capabilities within Calypso that we think are relevant to the Tier 3 banks that we that, are really a big part of the Verifeng client base. So those are the 3 main campaigns we have. But I would tell you, it is actually really interesting as we talk to our bank clients, our broker dealer clients, our exchange clients. When we have conversations today, it generally will start with 1 product and then move to a second.

Speaker 2

I was actually talking to one client just the other day where they're an Acxiom cell client and they're really interested in anti thin crime. So we can kind of look holistically at the strategic relationship in ways that we haven't been able to do in the past. So it's been a great start, and we hope to be able to show some tangible progress. It will take time for these opportunities to turn into contracts. As you know, it takes time to contract with banks.

Speaker 2

But we are very encouraged by the early conversations we're

Speaker 1

having. Got it. That's helpful.

Speaker 4

Just a quick follow-up on Barathon. I think you didn't sign Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks this quarter, but the number was still pretty strong. Can you please talk about the pipeline for the rest of this year for Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks? And also give us an update on the international expansion opportunity? Thanks a lot.

Speaker 2

Sure. Yes, sure. So you're right. We didn't sign any new clients, but we are working really well in implementing the clients we signed last year and that's going quite well. And we have a lot of very, very good pipeline of companies either that we're in the middle of doing proofs of concepts for or we're in the middle of contracting.

Speaker 2

And so we do feel very good about our ability to continue to sign those clients as we proceed through the year. And it's interesting. So the challenges that we're really focused on that we bring to the clients, usually the first way to get in the door at least is through the fraud detection and investigative capabilities because it's just such an easy and clear return on investment that we can show them in terms of reducing false positives and increasing fraud found. Another area of focus right now for a lot of the bigger banks is check fraud and we have a new check fraud capability that we're rolling out that we think is really best in class and we're really excited on our engagement there. And then with our new, our entity research copilot tool that really supports our anti money laundering capabilities.

Speaker 2

And with a 90% reduction in investigative time, we actually think that could be a really great way for us to engage with larger banks in addition to of course our entire clientele. In terms of the international expansion, we're focused, I think we've mentioned at Investor Day primarily on Canada and the UK and some of those are progressing quite along and some of them are still very early conversations.

Speaker 4

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Alexander Blostein from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. Thank you.

Speaker 6

So maybe starting with the Denz as well, really strong year over year revenue growth. You pointed out about 20% and it sounds like a lot of it is coming on the Calypso side. So can you kind of help us bridge the sources of growth, particularly at Calypso? As you think on the forward, how you see that opportunity unfold for Calypso specifically over the course of this year and into next?

Speaker 2

Sure. Thanks, Alex. Actually, I'll go I'll cover Calypso and Axiomis altogether. So, I mean each of them, but I think Sarah did a really nice job of laying out the growth for each of the products as well as combined. And what you're seeing is some of it is timing of renewals.

Speaker 2

So we did have a really good renewal quarter for Calypso and Acxiom SL, But particularly with Calypso with more of the on prem deliveries, our on prem renewals, which you know is a good revenue driver for us in terms of how we recognize the license fees. But if you look at just ARR growth, which is really kind of takes out some of that one time benefit and just looks overall at the strength of the platform, They're both growing in the mid teens ARR growth. And I think that that's just showing strong demand across the clientele. For Calypso, it's risk management, treasury risk management, capital risk management. And I think that they're really that's a big, big focus of banks and we still are in that sweet spot of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 banks that we can sign across the world.

Speaker 2

I think with Acxiom SL, it's all about new regulation. And so we had the ESG modules that we sold as the GSIBs was really interesting. We're definitely making progress on signing around the Basel requirements and other new regulations that are coming. And so I would have to say it's a pretty consistent demand cycle for both products and we it's been great. I mean the clients are really excited to work with us.

Speaker 2

As well as also talking about like that one connector, that one client that did the connector between Calypsa and Axon itself. What that means is they're already a Calypsa client. They know they have new regulation instead of having to like create a whole new data integration for Acxiom SL, we're able to take the data from the Calypso and automatically import it into Acxiom SL. And that lowers the time to market for us to implement the Acxiom product and obviously makes the Acxiom product more appealing. So, pretty excited about what we're doing across both products this year.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for that. And then

Speaker 6

my second question is around the Marketech business. You flagged that you signed agreement to upgrade a number of clients. I think you said 3 to a new matching engine, next gen platform. Can you help us maybe contextualize what that means in terms of revenues? Is it stronger revenue?

Speaker 6

Is there any sort of installation fee upfront? Profitability of those platforms, is there any meat around the bone

Speaker 5

would be great? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. Yes. So I think when we sign new clients to the NextGen system, whether it's trading or clearing, we do have implementation revenue. Now we're calling that professional service revenue that comes in as they work through the implementation. We'd start to receive the license revenue upon delivery.

Speaker 2

So that's a little bit of a difference between, Clipsacxiom versus Marketech. But what we're finding is when we work with them on the next gen systems, first of all, it allows them to have flexibility to consider cloud, for the first time, right. So markets both on trading and on clearing and settlement, it allows them to start to understand that they can deliver these and start to operate in cloud, which would increase our share of wallet if that's the way they choose to go. But even without that, we do have some opportunity to upsell them on the renewal because it's really world class technology and also provide them additional services. So for an example, with one client that we're working with, they also are taking risk management capabilities, which is cloud delivered as well as market operations capabilities, which are cloud delivered.

Speaker 2

So we have an ability to actually continue to upsell them on other components of what it means to run a market. And those are all cloud delivered, so they're much easier for us to implement for them. And that's the way that we're working with these our Market Tech clients to continue to get a bigger share of their spend, while also giving them more value and modernizing their business.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Dan Fannon from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to follow-up on Capital Access. You talked about some pickup in listings, but clearly still slower than we've seen previously in previous years. But curious about the revenue impacts.

Speaker 7

I think you mentioned still some flow through of the delistings that occurred. So wondering how we should think about the revenue progression this year? And then also tying that to workflow and insights, it sounds like any rebound or recovery in that segment is also tied to a pickup and listening. So just curious about the outlook there and what really will get that business kind of accelerating growth?

Speaker 2

Sure. I'm going to hand the first part of the question over to Sarah and I'll talk about corporate solutions.

Speaker 3

Yes. So what you're looking at in data and missing and missing in particular is that we are coming into the year and that's what we've discussed for a while at this point with some headwinds. In particular, I gave you the $10,000,000 for the delistings of last year and the downgrade. And so that's the impact for 1 quarter. And so you have that as well as I also mentioned that as you go into the year, we're going to start seeing the effect of the cost of 2021 not being as well replaced by the following classes.

Speaker 3

So the amortization of the initial leasing fees is also a headwind not so much for this quarter, but for the rest of the year. So you start with that. And of course, you have offsetting that some benefits of like pricing as well as the new IPOs, but this is a lot of headwinds to offset. So this is the context there. So the IPO environment would certainly help if it came in the second half, but it's a slow moving machine where you would have that amortized.

Speaker 3

And therefore, it is hard to offset those existing fees, which are the full impact.

Speaker 2

Yes. So that I think we started to talk about that towards the end of last year, but I think it's important to recognize that as Sarah said, it's a slow moving train in terms of both the impact of the deal of the environment, but then also the impact of an improving IPO environment. Now how that parlays into corporate services, one of the things that we've talked about over the last several years, Ann, is kind of the flywheel effect of having when we have an active IPO environment, we get more companies to come into the market, They start to understand the needs for their investor relations capabilities. They want to modernize their governance and ESG reporting for their clients And they start to look not only at the IPO package we give them, but other upsells and capabilities we can offer them. And that's a positive flywheel.

Speaker 2

Now in a tougher environment where we have companies you listed, but also fewer new customers to sell to, that's also having kind of the flip effect on market or on the Corporate Solutions business. So we want to make sure you guys understand those dynamics. When we think about Corporate Solutions overall and we've had this business for a long time, we've kind of described it as kind of a business that has, I would say, kind of low to mid single digit type of growth environment as a general matter when markets are normalized. And this isn't necessarily a totally normalized environment. So we're wanting to give you that context, so you think about that what that means for the overall workflow and insights business.

Speaker 2

And that's why Sarah shared with you kind of our full year view of that business as compared to outlook versus the index business, of course, where we're having a very strong start to the year and we anticipate that that would be that would come in above our outlook for the year.

Speaker 7

Great. That's helpful. And then I guess just on the index business based upon quarter to date or year to date activity, can you give us a sense of when the tiering might occur with the pricing with CME based on where things sit now?

Speaker 2

I mean that generally occurs in the Q2. I don't think that we have a precise answer to that, but it generally occurs in the second

Speaker 7

quarter. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Michael Cho from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, good morning, Dean and Sarah. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to touch on Acxiom and Calypso as well. I mean, it looks like you said ARR trends are healthy and clearly the increase in subscription revenues are helping that growth this quarter. I guess, can you just help us unpack a little bit about how much price and upsells was the driver here in terms of that revenue growth and how that mix might change in the coming years?

Speaker 8

And is there a different approach to that when we think about Acxiom versus Calypso? Because clearly they serve different markets and different solutions.

Speaker 2

Yes. So I think that I would say, 1st of all, as we said before, we have about half the revenue increases tend to come from upsells and half come from pricing changes in new sales. We don't try to break that out further than that. And I think that's generally the case. I don't know if it's precisely the case for this quarter, but that's the general way that we consider the revenue growth.

Speaker 2

In terms of how that might change over time, I think that really has more to do with we continue to roll out the cloud capabilities for our clients because that gives us a chance to do more for the client and therefore get a higher value for our solutions. And so that creates a pricing lever for us, but that's because we're providing more value. So as we continue to progress with the cloud and new bookings in cloud, As you saw with Acxiom, we had 50% of new bookings in cloud. We were a little slower this quarter on Calypso, but that's kind of more of a timing thing. I think that we believe that that will continue to progress our ability to have that as a pricing lever, but also make it to that the revenue is more stable over time.

Speaker 2

You have more predictable revenue streams in the years ahead, but we are in that transition period. So that transition period creates the ability for we want to make sure we're giving you color on those on prem versus cloud, so that you can kind of walk with us through that transition period to those benefits from cloud over

Speaker 8

time. Great. Thanks for that. And then just a quick follow-up on market Place, Tek. I think I heard, Terry, you say the 35% for 2024 in terms of revenues.

Speaker 8

1, I just want to make sure I caught that right. And 2, what's the driver there in terms of the back half loaded in terms of revenue growth? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. So, you've only well that we will be well positioned within the 3% to 5% range there. And I did say, Amuse's Q2 and the growth being back ended. And I think Adena wanted to comment on that.

Speaker 2

Yes, I just want to say we have some deliveries that we're delivering kind of partway through the year that obviously then turn on the license revenues and so that can help. And then we feel that we have a good pipeline of growth and new clients that we'll be able to deliver growth as we go through the year. But we feel very good about as you said, it's within the range and I think you said strong within the range. Yes.

Speaker 3

And I would just add also that the project delivery, which was a tough comp, it's possibly a tough comp in the Q1, but also a bit in the Q2.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We had a question on index options with NDX. How can you tap into the growing popularity with index options just given your strong brand with the NASDAQ 100 Index? I think your share of index options is only about 1%, but the growth rates are high and the revenue capture is very attractive in this business.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Craig. Yes, you're right. So we have a great opportunity there and we've been putting a lot of focus on that. It's been a good collaboration between our index team and the options team.

Speaker 2

So what's nice is we have all of that within NASDAQ. So together they're working on building a really good robust trading ecosystem for the NDX options platform as well as building on institutional demand for our index products, which then drives interest in hedging and other things that would then drive interest in the index options. So it's definitely kind of taking hold. I think we had a really strong uptick in volumes in the index options year over year. It was like 80% increase, and then like 15% quarter over quarter increase in the volumes in the index options.

Speaker 2

So it's that's definitely been a really great bright spot and we agree we're just at the beginning of what we can achieve there.

Speaker 9

Thank you, Adena. And just for my follow-up, it's on the comparison between ARR and revenues, given the growing focus you have on ARR. As you move into more subscription and reoccurring businesses, should we see more of a delta between these two metrics on a quarterly basis?

Speaker 2

I would actually say that as we move more towards cloud, there should be less of a delta. But that's a long transition. I think we have to recognize that for the Aktmsl, Calypso and Marketech businesses, those are still primarily an on prem delivered solution with transitions to cloud. Whereas for the Financial Crime Management business, it's entirely cloud as well as NTS now, that's a SaaS business. So the majority of those revenues, you'll see more of a the ARR are looking closer to total revenue.

Speaker 2

So that delta, I would say, will persist for a while. But we're trying to give you enough transparency so that you can understand the difference and you understand the trends that are driving the differences. But when we look at our business, we say what's the underlying health of our business, we are focusing on ARR. And that to us is a better reflection of the overall client demand as opposed to like individual deliveries and professional services.

Speaker 9

Thank you, Tina.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Benjamin Buttes from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just following up on that last question from Craig. Is there anything you can share about sort of the upcoming pipeline in 2024 in terms of on prem versus cloud implementations? Just I know you're kind of guiding and talking about the business on an ARR basis, but just as we think about our models, is there anything specific we can think about quarter

Speaker 2

by quarter? Yes, quarter by quarter, I think we're not going to provide that level of detail. I would say if we look over the last year and we kind of looked at Eclipse and Acxiom SL over the last year, I think it was around 40%, is that right? 40% new bookings.

Speaker 3

Yes, almost half.

Speaker 2

Yes. So almost half of the new bookings were cloud last year. I think that as we're starting this year, we saw 50% of the new bookings for Acxiomis Cell were cloud this year, and with Calyxta being lower around 18%. But as we said before, it's more of a timing issue. So we would hope to be able to get around the same level over the course of the year, but we're not able to provide you kind of quarter by quarter.

Speaker 2

I think we just are giving you a little bit more overall color for the quarter in Axi MediCell and Calypso just to help you model, but not to that level of precision.

Speaker 5

Got it, understood. And then for my follow-up, I just wanted to ask on the IPO win rate, just Q1 looks a little bit lower than what you reported in the past, but is that sort of just a function of the quarter itself? And based on the pipeline for the rest of the year, do you have any expectations on should that sort of trend back upwards? What are your thoughts there? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. Yes. So I think every quarter is a little bit of a different story and based on the nature of the companies that are going public. But our overall view is that we have a great strong pipeline. We have a great platform.

Speaker 2

We're very confident in our ability to keep our win rate high and we're really excited about the companies that are looking to go public in the next hopefully in the next quarters. And also I would also mention that over the last year, our win rate was 80%. So we have to look at it a little bit over a longer period of time. But we have 80 companies in the pipeline to go public on NASDAQ and we're really hopeful that they feel good about being able to tap the markets in the coming quarters.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Simon Klinch from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could just going back to the cross selling opportunities. At the Investor Day, you mentioned you're sort of starting to build an enterprise sales team. That's something relatively new to the Nasdaq story as I understand.

Speaker 4

I was wondering if you could update us on how that's progressing. Are you have you already built it? Is this now a fully functioning team and driving the cross sells? Or is that momentum still to come?

Speaker 2

Yes. Actually, we had just had a meeting about it across the management committee last week where we talked about how we're going to approach enterprise sales and making sure that we have across NASDAQ, we have good connective tissue to make sure that we can deliver for the enterprises. And we're doing a lot in talking and tackling. So first is making sure we have kind of an enterprise sales organization. The second thing is we're doing a lot in that data management of our client data to make sure we can look at our client data across the franchise and be able to have line of sight across franchise so that we can actually talk to the clients on an enterprise basis.

Speaker 2

And then in terms of the sales commissions to the way the enterprise sales team works with the product sales teams, we've designed a commission plan around that, that I think really helps drive behaviors and alignment. So that's all of that's actually just that enterprise sales team is being built within FinTech, but the collaboration across the FinTech division, the CABP division of market services is really, really strong. And we hope to be able to demonstrate really good strength there going forward. That's a big part of our ability to achieve the cross sell target, but we definitely have made a lot of progress already.

Speaker 4

Okay. That's great. Thank you. And then I think just lastly, I was wondering if you could perhaps expand a little bit more on the very strong flows we've had in the index business and in particular interest outside of the Nasdaq 100 franchise. I mean, could give us a little bit more detail about that and just how to think about the momentum and sustainability?

Speaker 2

Yes. So you're right. So that we've given us that at Investor Day that I think is worth mentioning. So about 70% of our revenue comes from the Nasdaq 100 franchise, but another 30% comes from other indices that we have in terms of innovative indexes around AI, cloud and cyber as well as momentum and other factor indices that we have around the world. So it actually is a pretty diversified platform.

Speaker 2

And in the terms of the inflows, it's pretty mixed, meaning that it's coming from all of our index products with probably strength coming in on some of the innovation indexes, the NASDAQ 100 as well and on global distribution. So we've definitely been really focused on globalizing the distribution of our products and bringing in investment and inflows across the world. So those are probably the ones that are getting the most inflows, but it isn't just the NASDAQ 100. And what's really interesting is it's been very consistent. Whether or not the markets are up and down, we're seeing inflows.

Speaker 2

And so I think that that's also showing that investors are kind of seeing through a quarter and reflecting on the future of the economy and they want to be a part of that. So that's what we're seeing in terms of inflows.

Speaker 4

Thank you so much. This is great.

Operator

Thank you. And I show next question comes from the line of Kyle Voigt from KBW. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning. Maybe just a couple of follow ups. So first is a follow-up on Dan's earlier question on the workflow and insights business. It still sounds like the analytics business is posting high single digit solid growth. I think the Corporate Solutions that likely implies kind of flattish, and you had the elongated sales cycles.

Speaker 9

I guess, can you just talk about the average sales cycle for that business and kind of the lag time that you'd expect between when the IPO environment ramps and when you ultimately expect to see an acceleration in revenues in that Corporate Solutions business?

Speaker 2

I think that the reason why we wanted to give you that level of disclosure this quarter is to help you understand kind of how we see the year. I think that as if the IPO environment ramps up and that's it's an if, we and obviously it's a win at some point, but in terms of looking at it within the year, if we see improvement there, we tend to have, I would say, probably on average kind of a 6 month sales cycle would probably be a good average around maybe 4 to 6 months in terms of an average on sales cycle for clients. But then of course they also have to understand what that they need the product. So if they go public, they start to recognize that they really want more intelligence about their investors. They really want to make sure they have the right ESG reporting and they start to work with us more holistically kind of as they season.

Speaker 2

And then there, I would say maybe like sometimes it can be very quick sales cycle, but we'll say like 4 to 6 months is a general view. So you're talking about more going into 2025 to start to see momentum if we have a recovery in the IPO environment.

Speaker 9

That makes sense. Thank you. And then just a follow-up on kind of capital priorities. It sounds like over the near term, number one priority still remains deleveraging. I guess with the tune of Bravo and Locke coming later this quarter, can you just talk about any willingness to restart buybacks or start to deploy some capital towards buybacks this quarter?

Speaker 9

Should we really expect that to be 100% allocated towards deleveraging near term?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Kyle. So in terms of the capital prioritization, we're super consistent with what we said at Investor Day. We were really glad to be able to pay down the term loan this quarter and to end the quarter at 4.1. We are totally committed to all of the timelines that we have given at Investor Day. So the 9 to 12 months ahead, you can consider that to be something that we will deliver.

Speaker 3

And within that, we're keeping some flexibility to consider share repurchases, if it makes sense. And that would be in particular related to the employee issuance. So offsetting the issuance, we think, is important. But when we look at it comprehensively, we are very, very focused on the deleveraging in particular because when you look at the EPS on acquisition dilution, given some of the higher debt costs that we can repay, even at our current stock price, it's still a really attractive proposition to do that. And of course, the cash flow accretion is something that we are focused on.

Speaker 9

Understood. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hi, great. Thanks. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just moving over to Verafin, your continued strong growth in new SaaS clients. And then just trying to get a sense of what that might mean for the cadence of revenue growth in that segment as we move throughout the year, if you think that can improve from the 23% level already pretty strong?

Speaker 10

And then the rollout of the entity research copilot is, just your thoughts on how that might contribute to revenue progress throughout the year in that segment?

Speaker 2

Sure. Yes, we're not going to provide you specific kind of views of the revenue growth other than we say that it's mid-20s and we feel good about the overall outlook there. I think that as with the CoPilot capability, the way that we're rolling out CoPilot would be the same that we're rolling out any new module that we provide to our small to medium bank clients. So when a small to medium bank client signs up for Verafin, they sign up for the platform. And we then introduce new modules into that platform or new capabilities into that platform through their contract period.

Speaker 2

And then at the end of the contract period, we walk through with them what's the return that we've offered them through that period and therefore what would be the price increase that we think is appropriate for the value that we're providing to them. So as we roll out the CoPilot capabilities, we get usage across the platform across the banks. It will help us show a really strong ROI for them. So that in our renewal talks, it becomes a part of that conversation. But it's not a module that we're selling discreetly to them.

Speaker 2

We want them to use it. We want them to integrate it into workflows that we want them we want this product to be as sticky as possible and as valuable as possible, for the renewal conversations. As we look up market into the Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks where it's all new sales and where we're selling modules. So as we go in and talk to them, are the modules that are the most straightforward to sell across our platform or the fraud modules because it's a very clear calculus of return to them. But as you talked about AML, it's a much more complicated problem.

Speaker 2

And now we have this new tool that we can offer through our AML solution that shows a clear return. So in addition to doing a great job of rooting out criminal behaviors and money laundering, we also can show them we're going to save them a ton of time and resources on the investigative side of it. So we do think it will help us with sales, it will help us show value to the platform and we can look at that as part of the pricing that we discussed with them when we sign them. So that's basically how we're using this tool to kind of drive sales retention and upsells.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our last question comes from the line of Michael Cyprys from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about the Adensa business, now that it's been about 6 months or so since close. Just curious in conversations with clients of Calypso and Acxiom, where you see the strongest moat across their business capabilities and where is the room for you to improve the moat as you kind of look out over the next couple of years?

Speaker 2

Yes. I'd say, 1st of all, one of the really big let's start with Actimacelle. One of their strongest elements is that they're completely global. They connect into over 100 regulators across more than 50 countries. And so when they're talking to a bank that has any business in any country, they can say, look, not only can we solve the problems within country, but we can help you with your entire global business and all the regulatory reporting needs.

Speaker 2

It also it's a machine like it's an amazing team of people. They have deep regulatory expertise. And so when soon as a new rule is even introduced or contemplated, they're already writing the requirements to bring that into the tool. So we're ahead of the rules every time the new rule comes out with a new module. And it's interesting also, there's obviously a lot of new regulation coming, but we just I think do a great job of providing a very elegant way to ingest their data, deliver solutions, make it really efficient and on a global basis.

Speaker 2

Now when it comes to Calypso, I think that what we're finding there are 2 elements of Calypso that are just like world class best in class. One of them is our collateral management capability. It's just excellent. And so we can walk in and show that we can really make them much more efficient managing their collateral, which then gives them better ability to drive liquidity across their franchise, it frees up capital. The second thing is kind of clearing risk management, trading risk management.

Speaker 2

So that again, they can unlock liquidity and unlock capital for the use in the markets. And then the third is on the treasury side. That's been a fast grower both on the brokerage businesses, but also buy side. So any active trading buy side clients, the treasury tool has been a really good growth area for us. So I think those are the areas where we just feel like we're best in class and that drives a lot of great conversations with the clients.

Speaker 9

Great, thanks. And just a follow-up question, I was hoping you maybe could elaborate a little bit on the new product roadmap strategy for Acxiom and Calypso as you look out for the rest of this year?

Speaker 2

Yes. So, well, first of all, we are in a kind of what I'll create an upgrade cycle for Calypso. So we have a new version that we're rolling out and we're working to make sure we get all of our clients onto that version this year. So that's driving renewal activity. I think that but more generally, we have also the Basel III and Basel IV endgame is a driver of revenue growth and demand.

Speaker 2

And clients are really talking about it more as a when and how big as opposed to if. And so I think that customers who are forward leaning are already signing with us to make sure that they're entirely ready. And with this Calypso Acxiom, data transfer capability, we're also working with some of our Acxiom clients on some Calypso capabilities that help them manage their capital more efficiently while they're managing their regulatory needs because that's going to be a big element of focus for the regulators. So I have to say, I do feel like those are the areas where we're seeing a product roadmap in year. Multi year product roadmap is about making sure we continue to modernize the cloud delivered solutions, make sure that we can do that super efficiently for them.

Speaker 2

We have more modern data management capabilities that allow us to unlock more functionality within the platforms and make the products even more valuable to them.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our Q and A session. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference back to Adena Friedman, Chair and CEO, for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Great. Well, thank you very much. So as you heard throughout the meeting, NASDAQ continues to make progress on our 3 key priorities, integrate, innovate and accelerate, which will underpin our leadership and momentum as we move through the year. United behind these strategic priorities and powered by our market leading platforms, we're firmly positioned to unlock our next phase of resilient and scalable growth. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress throughout the year.

Speaker 2

Thank you all very much and have a great day.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Nasdaq Q1 2024
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