Intercontinental Exchange NYSE: ICE reported what executives called the strongest quarter in the company’s history, driven by record activity in its derivatives markets, continued growth in data and network technology, and improving performance in its Mortgage Technology business.
Record first-quarter results and shareholder returns
Chief Financial Officer Warren Gardiner said first-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings per share were $2.35, up 37% year-over-year, on record $3.0 billion in net revenues, up 18%. Adjusted operating income was a record $1.9 billion, up 26%, with “meaningful contributions from all three of our operating segments,” Gardiner said.
Adjusted operating expenses were $1.035 billion, in line with the midpoint of updated guidance, which Gardiner said reflected performance-related items such as license fees and compensation tied to results. For the second quarter, the company expects adjusted operating expenses to be “consistent with the first quarter,” in a range of $1.030 billion to $1.040 billion.
Gardiner also highlighted record adjusted free cash flow of $1.2 billion. ICE repurchased about $550 million of its stock during the quarter, including an incremental $200 million in mid-February, and returned “nearly $850 million” to shareholders including dividends.
Exchange segment: interest rates and energy drive record quarter
ICE’s Exchange segment generated record net revenues of $1.8 billion, up 27% year-over-year, with transaction revenues up 33%, Gardiner said. He pointed to the company’s interest rate complex, which grew “nearly 70%” versus the prior-year period as customers sought to manage duration risk.
In energy, Gardiner said ICE’s global oil complex increased 47% year-over-year, while natural gas and environmental products—representing “half of our energy revenues”—grew 37%. He added that energy open interest through April remained up 6%, and interest rate open interest stood 63% above year-ago levels. Ben Jackson, president of ICE, said March marked the “highest monthly volume in ICE’s history,” exceeding the prior record set two months earlier by more than 70%, and total average daily volume rose 45% year-over-year for the quarter.
Jackson emphasized that the company views open interest as a key indicator of market health, arguing that “rising open interest alongside record volumes signals that customers are building and maintaining positions, not speculating and exiting.” He cited changes in U.K. rate expectations that drove activity in SONIA futures, with SONIA average daily volume up more than 120% year-over-year and open interest “more than doubling.” ICE also saw record volumes in Euribor futures and options, including a day when it traded “over 9 million lots of Euribor futures,” Jackson said.
On energy markets, Jackson said the company’s performance was strong in January and February, before geopolitical events later in the quarter increased risk management demand. He reported record Brent average daily volume up 60% year-over-year and record participation up 10%, as well as record TTF (European natural gas) average daily volume up 61% and record participation up 12%. Jackson also noted that ICE Risk Model 2 has been deployed across more than 1,000 energy contracts to improve portfolio margining efficiency.
In response to investor questions about a recent pullback in energy volumes, Jackson said ICE is seeing open interest above year-end levels and “all-time records across futures and options” even in the past week. He also cited strong growth in options, with options open interest up 40% across ICE’s options franchise, and about 25% for oil, gas, and environmental markets.
ICE’s recurring Exchange revenues from data services and NYSE listings reached a record $405 million, up 10%, with exchange data and connectivity services up 13%, Gardiner said. He added that the NYSE welcomed 25 new operating companies, facilitated what he called the largest transfer in its history with AstraZeneca, and maintained retention “above 99%.”
Fixed Income and Data Services: evaluated pricing, indices, and network demand
ICE’s Fixed Income and Data Services (FIDS) segment posted record first-quarter revenues of $657 million, up 9%, Gardiner said. Transaction revenues grew 14% to a record $143 million, while recurring revenues reached a record $514 million, up 8%.
Within Fixed Income Data and Analytics, Gardiner said revenues were a record $322 million, up 7%, supported by pricing and reference data and momentum in ICE’s index business. ICE ended the quarter with a record $829 billion in ETF assets under management tied to its indices, up 21%, and said there is now “approximately $2 trillion” in assets benchmarked to ICE indices.
Jackson stressed the proprietary nature of evaluated pricing and its integration into regulated workflows, noting that ICE evaluates about 3 million illiquid instruments daily across more than 150 countries. “This is not data that can be scraped, inferred, or generated synthetically,” he said.
Gardiner said data and network technology revenues increased 11%, supported by demand for ICE Global Network, Consolidated Feeds, and desktop solutions. He described ICE’s private data center network as connecting “over 750 data sources and 150 trading venues across 24 countries,” and said it is benefiting from “higher messaging activity and AI-driven demand for capacity.”
On the outlook for recurring FIDS growth, Gardiner said first-quarter momentum increased confidence in targets ICE set “towards the higher end of the mid-single digit range” for the full year. He cautioned, however, that growth in the data network technology line could moderate in the second half as the company laps the impact of selling Hall 5 capacity in its Mahwah data center, and noted that index AUM-linked revenues can fluctuate with markets.
Mortgage Technology: growth led by transaction revenues and platform modernization
Mortgage Technology revenues were $539 million, up 6% year-over-year, and Gardiner said that on a pro forma basis inclusive of Black Knight it was the segment’s strongest quarter since Q4 2022. Recurring revenues were $401 million, helped by product adoption and the “beginning of normalization” in Encompass contract renewals; Gardiner noted recurring revenues included roughly $4 million of one-time items and said second-quarter recurring revenues are expected to “remain around current levels.”
Transaction revenues increased 22% year-over-year to $138 million, driven by higher Encompass closed loan revenues and double-digit growth in closing solutions supported by refinancing activity, Gardiner said. Jackson said the integration of Encompass with MSP is increasingly positioning ICE as an end-to-end platform spanning origination, servicing, and secondary market execution.
During Q&A, Jackson said ICE has worked through many renewal-related headwinds tied to customers that signed in 2020 and 2021, and reiterated that the company increased per-closed-loan fees during renewals, positioning it to benefit when volumes return. He said transaction revenues in the “legacy Encompass business and closing business alone” were up about 30% in the quarter.
Jackson also pointed to implementation activity and cross-sell momentum, citing a “record number of clients” on MSP and one new MSP deal in the first quarter after six new deals last year. He said United Wholesale Mortgage is now live on the platform, and named Huntington Bank as a large super-regional bank signed in April for Encompass while already being an MSP customer.
Strategic initiatives: AI, tokenization, and private credit
CEO Jeff Sprecher framed the quarter as the result of “an all-weather business model” built to perform through cycles. He said ICE is deploying AI in production across its organization, including code writing, pricing workflows, index calculations, client interactions, and identifying loan servicing issues. Sprecher also described an “AI model-controlled protocol server, or MCP server,” hosted in an ICE data center and available on ICE Global Network to provide access to ICE’s non-proprietary data under existing license agreements.
On tokenization, Sprecher told analysts ICE believes the main benefit will be “a rewiring of the movement of money and value,” enabling faster settlement and potentially higher transaction volumes. He said ICE is building a tokenized securities platform at the NYSE that combines its Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based distribution and settlement for 24/7 trading, pursuing regulatory approval “under existing federal law.” Sprecher also noted an MOU with Securitize to serve as the first digital transfer agent supporting tokenized security issuance and lifecycle management on ICE’s platform.
Executives also discussed ICE Private Credit Intelligence, launched with Apollo as an anchor partner. Sprecher said private credit has grown significantly but lacks standardized reference data, and ICE is “beginning with the data layer,” establishing reference data, governance, and permissioning. Jackson and management also referenced expanding alternative data sets, including the launch of a Polymarket Signals and Sentiment product distributed via ICE feeds.
Asked about M&A appetite, Sprecher said ICE continues to evaluate buy-versus-build decisions, while noting that stock repurchases represented a significant deployment of capital during the quarter. He said the company weighs potential acquisitions based on terminal value and whether ICE can enhance a third-party business in ways its management cannot, compared with the returns from buying back shares.
About Intercontinental Exchange NYSE: ICE
Intercontinental Exchange NYSE: ICE is a global operator of exchanges, clearing houses and data services that provides infrastructure for the trading, clearing, settlement and information needs of financial and commodity markets. Founded in 2000 by Jeffrey C. Sprecher as an electronic energy trading platform, the company has grown through organic expansion and acquisitions to operate a broad portfolio of assets spanning listed equities, futures and options, fixed income, and over-the-counter derivatives.
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