Earnings call transcript: CME Group Q3 2025 earnings beat EPS forecast

CME Group reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025 with a slight beat on earnings per share (EPS) but a miss on revenue forecasts. The company posted an EPS of $2.68, surpassing the forecast of $2.64, while revenue reached $1.5 billion, falling short of the expected $1.53 billion. The market reacted with a 1.6% drop in pre-market trading, reflecting mixed investor sentiment. According to InvestingPro data, CME maintains strong financial health with an overall score of "GOOD" and has consistently paid dividends for 23 consecutive years, demonstrating remarkable stability.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $2.68 exceeded expectations by 1.52%.
• Revenue fell short of forecasts by 1.96%, at $1.5 billion.
• Pre-market stock price declined by 1.6% to $264.3.
• Record market data revenue, up 14% year-over-year.
• Significant growth in cryptocurrency futures trading.

Company Performance

CME Group’s performance in Q3 2025 was marked by a mixed financial report. The company’s EPS growth continues, with a year-to-date increase of 9%, despite a 3% year-over-year decline in overall revenue. The firm maintains a strong position in the market, particularly in cryptocurrency futures and market data revenue, which reached record levels. Trading at a P/E ratio of 26x, the stock appears fairly valued according to InvestingPro Fair Value calculations. Discover 8 more exclusive ProTips and comprehensive valuation metrics with an InvestingPro subscription.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $1.5 billion, down 3% from Q3 2024.
• Earnings per share: $2.68, slightly above the previous year.
• Adjusted operating income: $1.1 billion.
• Operating margin: 68.4%.
• Adjusted net income: $978 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

CME Group’s EPS of $2.68 surpassed the forecast of $2.64, resulting in a 1.52% positive surprise. However, revenue of $1.5 billion missed the forecast of $1.53 billion by 1.96%. This divergence between EPS and revenue performance may lead to cautious investor sentiment.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, CME Group’s stock experienced a 1.6% decline in pre-market trading, falling to $264.3. This movement reflects investor concerns about the revenue miss, despite the positive EPS surprise. The stock remains closer to its 52-week low, indicating potential market uncertainties.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, CME Group expects total adjusted operating expenses for 2025 to be $1.625 billion. The company is preparing for 24/7 cryptocurrency trading in 2026 and exploring tokenization opportunities with Google Cloud. Strategic initiatives also include expanding event-based contracts and focusing on retail strategy and market innovation. With analyst consensus showing mixed sentiment and price targets ranging from $204 to $312, investors seeking deeper insights can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro, covering detailed analysis of CME’s growth prospects and market position.

Executive Commentary

CEO Terry emphasized the company’s strategic focus: "Our strategy is one of distribution and efficiencies." He also highlighted the inevitability of global 24/7 trading: "24/7 is coming across the world, whether we like it or not." These comments underscore CME Group’s commitment to innovation and market leadership.

Risks and Challenges

• Revenue decline may indicate broader market challenges.
• Investor concerns over missed revenue forecasts.
• Potential volatility in cryptocurrency markets.
• Macroeconomic pressures affecting trading volumes.
• Competition in the derivatives market.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about CME Group’s retail strategy and potential mergers and acquisitions. Discussions also focused on the launch of BrokerTec Chicago and the growth of market data revenue. Analysts showed interest in the company’s expansion into sports-related event contracts and credit futures.

Full transcript - CME Group Inc (CME) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Welcome to the CME Group third quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, I would like to inform all participants that your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today’s conference. I would now like to turn the call over to Adam Minick. Please go ahead.

Adam Minick, Executive/Speaker, CME Group: Good morning, and I hope you’re all doing well today. We released our executive commentary earlier this morning, which provides extensive details on the third quarter 2025, which we will be discussing on this call. I’ll start with the safe harbor language, and then I’ll turn it over to Terry. Statements made on this call and in the other referenced documents on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statement. Detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in the filings with the SEC, which are on our website. Lastly, in the earnings release, you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures following the financial statements.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Terry.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Adam, and thank you all for joining us this morning. I’m going to make a few brief comments about the quarter and the overall environment. Following that, Lynne will provide an overview of our third quarter results. In addition to Lynne, we have other members of our management team present to answer questions after the prepared remarks. The third quarter average daily volume of 25.3 million contracts represented the second highest third quarter average daily volume in our history, following the record quarter a year ago. Customers continue to turn to our markets to manage their risk exposures, as demonstrated by quarter-end open interest of 126 million contracts, the highest open interest at the end of September in the last five years, and continuing to grow in October.

We also set records in large open interest holders and interest rates, equity indices, and cryptocurrencies in September, despite a general pullback in volatility across asset classes during the quarter. Our team remains focused on future growth and innovation, including the extension of our product offerings. Our crypto complex traded a record 340,000 contracts per day in the third quarter and was up over 225% relative to a year ago. This growth was aided by the early success of Solana futures and XRP futures, which were launched earlier this year. Other new products with record volume in the third quarter include credit futures, one-ounce gold futures, and agricultural weekly options. We also introduced trading opportunities that facilitate stronger links between cash and futures markets.

FX Spot Plus, which was launched earlier this year and provides the benefits of futures capital efficiencies to spot market participants, set new volume records in every month in the third quarter. BrokerTec Chicago, launched just two weeks ago, is also off to a strong start and enables participants to trade futures and cash products side by side at our facility here in Chicago. Going forward, innovation will continue to be a key driver of our performance and our ability to serve clients in an increasingly complex and volatile global market. During the quarter, we announced the upcoming extension of our cross-margin agreement with DTCC to enable increased margin savings to end-user clients. We are also pleased to announce the extension of our FTSE Russell Index derivatives license through 2037. This announcement will ensure the continuity, efficiency, and value to our clients, along with our other suite of equity products.

Additionally, we announced our intention to offer 24/7 trading of cryptocurrency futures and options beginning early next year. Finally, we announced a partnership with FanDuel to develop and distribute event-based contracts beginning later this year, which we look forward to talking to you about today. While we are proud of our record results we have delivered the last several years, our focus will always be on the future needs of our customers and how we can continue to evolve to meet those needs. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Lynne to review our financial results in more detail.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Thanks, Terry, and thank you all for joining us this morning. During the third quarter, CME Group generated revenue of $1.5 billion, down 3% from the very strong third quarter in 2024. The average rate per contract for the quarter was $0.702, resulting in clearing and transaction fees of $1.2 billion. Market data reached a record level, delivering over $200 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, up 14% to $203 million. Continued strong cost discipline led to adjusted expenses of $487 million for the quarter and $405 million excluding license fees. Our adjusted operating income was $1.1 billion, or a 68.4% operating margin for the quarter. CME Group had an adjusted effective tax rate of 22.6%.

Adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at $978 million and $2.68 per share, both slightly above the extraordinarily strong third quarter last year and represented the third highest quarter of any in our history. Capital expenditures for the third quarter were approximately $19 million, and cash at the end of the quarter was approximately $2.6 billion. CME Group paid dividends of $455 million in the third quarter and approximately $3.5 billion over the first nine months of the year. Turning to guidance, we expect total adjusted operating expenses for the year, excluding license fees, to be approximately $1.625 billion. That’s $10 million below our prior guidance and a total of $25 million below our expectation to start the year. All other guidance remains unchanged. We’re proud of the continued strong results the firm has delivered during the quarter.

During the first three quarters of 2025, CME Group reported the three highest quarterly adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share in our history. Year to date 2025, we have grown adjusted earnings per share by 9% over a record 2024. We continue to see strong customer demand for our products, as demonstrated by growing open interest and new records in large open interest holders. Our focus remains on driving earnings growth for our shareholders by expanding our customer base, serving the needs of our clients through innovative products, and providing unmatched capital efficiencies. We’d now like to open up the call for your questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Please press star two if you would like to withdraw your question. Again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Dan Fannon with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning. Terry, can you talk about your long-term retail strategy? This quarter you announced the partnership with FanDuel. You obviously have your micro complex. As you think about your offering today, do you think you can scale this offering organically to where you want it to be, or is this an area where we could see potential M&A?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: You know, it’s a good question, Dan, and I will tell you that the strategy evolves. I don’t think that a lot of people would have seen what we saw happen over the last five to seven weeks as it relates to prediction markets in the NFL with retail, and they had that penciled into their analysis a year ago. My point being is this market is ebbing and flowing every single day. Our strategy is one, and I’ve talked a lot about it, is distribution and efficiencies. I think that the announcement with FanDuel is very important for CME Group. We’re looking at 13 million potential accounts that will have access to CME Group’s products, but more importantly, have access to have a view of CME Group and our distribution of our product lines for the future.

As we work with our retail brokers today who have continued to grow, and if they didn’t, you’d have to wonder why certain people’s valuations are going up dramatically. You look at the sale of like a NinjaTrader to Kraken for a very large sum. That goes to show you that the retail business seems to be doing quite well in our industry with the valuations being put on them. We are in a very strong position. I will say this, and I’ll say it again. I haven’t said it in a while, but in 2017, when we went forward with Bitcoin, a lot of people thought, well, what are we doing? I think that our credibility of our institution, which we protect very mightily, is very important to the institutional participant who wants to also participate with retail in some of these newer asset classes.

That’s something that I think that we can work with and partner with, some of the new retail entrants coming in, whether they’re in the prediction market side, whether they’re in the gaming side with our partner of FanDuel, or whether they’re Robinhood or others that are opening up futures accounts by the second. Our future, our retail strategy is vast, it’s global, and it’s going to continue. I think it’s going to continue to grow. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to do an acquisition to grow that strategy. I think with what we have in place and we put in place over the years is what others are looking to utilize in order to grow their business.

I will say credibility is absolutely paramount in markets, and CME Group is a very credible institution that’s looking at different asset classes with the retail participants, and I’m excited about the future. I don’t think there’s anything off the table, Dan, I don’t want to say, but I think we’re in a strong position to grow our retail business with or without having to do M&A. I would suggest right now we would probably be more inclined to do it without M&A.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Mulle with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. We’ve, like you said, seen pretty explosive growth in event contracts. A lot of that growth has come from sports-related event contracts. I think in the initial press release that you put out with FanDuel, there was no mention of sports contracts, but there’s maybe been some media reports that suggested you’re looking at sports. To the extent you could comment on whether that’s in the cards, would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Patrick. I will comment on that because I think sometimes, unfortunately, headlines can be very deceiving, and you need to read the entire article to understand what was being said. I think you’re referring to the Bloomberg article that came out recently that CME Group is going to list sports events in their headline. If you go on to read it, you will see that I have said numerous times on podcasts, publicly on television, to you, to others, that my partner at FanDuel, when they are prepared to move forward with events on sports, I would be prepared on day one in order to offer that to them on my DCM. As long as the U.S. government is not going to object to the self-certification of these and consider these swaps and not gaming, it doesn’t matter what my opinion or anybody else’s.

That’s the government’s opinion, and we will proceed accordingly. That is yet to be decided, Patrick. That will be a big decision for my partners in the JV at FanDuel to decide how they want to proceed. I think it’s undeniable, as I stated earlier, that no one saw this coming. This might be a football phenomenon because there’s a lot of eyes on football. We’ll have to wait and see how the sports prediction markets play out post-football. There are certain event contracts that I’m not very enamored with. When you look at some of these predictions on political events, I think those can be very dangerous to participate in. I do understand the size of a presidential election, that maybe you can say that’s okay, but some of these smaller elections I get concerned about.

Some of these other events that are out there, to me, just are nothing more than readily manipulable markets, which is against the Commodity Exchange Act. I think you have to really be eyes wide open when you’re looking at this. You’re correct, Patrick. Most of these are sports events contracts. For us to say that we’re going to list them or not is a decision yet to be made. I’ll make it in connection with my partner at FanDuel, which has not been resolved just yet.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Patrick, just to add one thing, as you noted in our release, we just put out some more information to our clients about the products that focused on markets. As Terry mentioned before, for us, this is really about distribution and getting our products in front of that retail community. That has been and continues to be our focus.

Okay. That’s a great caller. If I could just squeeze a quick follow-up in, given that a significant amount of the user volume on some of these traditional sports books is being done in parlays, do you think it’s feasible to offer parlays on a large scale in prediction markets, considering that, you know, the venue doesn’t act as the house? What are some of the considerations that would be necessary to facilitate parlays?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Before I get into the operational issues of how you would run a parlay, I guess we’d have to say these have not been out very long. They’ve been out, what, a couple of weeks, I think, right now on these parlays. I don’t know how much uptake they’re getting. I haven’t followed that market on the prediction markets. I will say this. A swap is categorized or defined as something that’s commercially or economically beneficial. When you start getting into parlays on prediction on sports, I think sometimes you might be crossing that line. Is this legitimate or not? Is this a sports gambling contract, or is this an economically beneficial and has the exposure for the client that is commercially concerning, which is the definition of a swap contract today? It has to have an economic benefit to it.

I’m not sure how they’re looking at these parlays at the agency. I have not spoken to them. The government’s been closed. The government’s been closed for three out of the four weeks, I believe, since these parlays have come out. I don’t know if they’ve had an opportunity to opine, not to my knowledge. Patrick, to be honest with you, I don’t know from an operational standpoint. I’m not going to even ask my team to speculate because this is something that we are not taking a big look at on the parlay side.

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Budish with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Maybe just one more follow-up on the prediction market side. As you think about the range of contracts you might offer over the next several years, it does seem like there’s some differences to your traditional product suite, more frequent events that might require different kinds of data feeds. Is there anything structurally different about this market that might necessitate a higher or lower operating margin, higher spend? Does it require more advertising to reach retail customers? Does it require more frequent lifting of new contracts that aren’t as long tenured as things like your WTI contract and so forth contracts? I’m just curious how you’re thinking about those other sort of operational aspects.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Ben. You’re only strictly speaking about events on markets, not on sports, correct?

Yes, really, really any event contract. I mean, I think sports are the obvious example because there’s so many, you know, so many different events, like, the frequency is much higher. More generally about event contracts, I guess all.

I’m going to, yeah, I get your question, but I want to be cautious about making sure that when we answer the questions from you and others that we are defining a market, a prediction market on markets, and a prediction market on sports because those are two different things that are obviously, some are in the courts. There are some objections to others. Prediction markets on markets is allowed in all states and is not being contested in any states or opposed, I should say. Tim, I’ll let you talk about that on the operational side and on the sales side and the promotion of. I’ll ask Julie Winkler to comment as well.

Tim McCourt, Executive, CME Group: Great. Thanks, Terry, and thanks, Ben, for the question. I think even when we look at the product announcement we put out the last few days with respect to the event contract offering at CME Group on our traditional benchmark products, we are introducing things such as hourly event contracts. We’re introducing multiple event contracts throughout the day across our traditional markets as well as Bitcoin and Ether. When we look at what makes CME Group a very useful tool for our clients across all customer segments, we have a tremendous amount of scale both on the operational and technological front that we have the capabilities to list these event contracts intraday. We scale very well in terms of whether you look at it as our existing option complex where we have options in every asset class on every day of the week.

The ability to meet the customer demand for where they want to trade these events throughout the day is something that we’re well established at doing at CME Group. I think, frankly, this differentiates us in the marketplace and why customers come to us. When you look at the scale that we have both from the operational aspect, the clearing aspect, as well as the distribution we have with over 100, you know, over 130 retail partners, this is something we tap into with every new product launch that we do, whether it’s an event contract or an institutional-grade new equity index contract. The way we approach building markets is to leverage the scale we’ve built over the last several decades, and this would be no exception with respect to event contracts.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Julie, you want to comment about how the cost of going forward of promoting these assets, these products in this asset class?

Julie Winkler, Executive, CME Group: Yeah, thanks for the question, Ben. You know, how we think about this, I mean, we have 130 of these critical distribution partners that Terry referenced earlier. When you think about that customer journey, those partners are the ones that are responsible for opening the accounts for those retail accounts, onboarding them, doing the KYC. For us, we certainly have cooperative marketing agreements with them to help, particularly with what Tim was referring to, new product launches. In general, those firms are going to continue to spend money, you know, well above that in order to attract new clients to their platform. We don’t see a demonstrable change in that spend going forward to be able to offer these products.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Tim. Ben, and also to Dan and Patrick, I want to be perfectly clear when it comes to sports events. CME Group is not opposed, not opposed to listing sports events on our contracts, on our DCM. What is critically important is the federal government has to make certain that they approve these contracts. I won’t sit on the sidelines. It doesn’t matter what my opinion is, if what these are or not they are. If they are allowed, CME will participate in some way if we think it’s the right thing for CME to do for our clients and our ecosystem, as it goes into what Dan was referring to earlier, our total retail strategy. I just don’t want you to think I’m dancing around the question. I’m not. We will be prepared. We’re operationally ready to do this stuff.

The question is, we want to make sure that our partners are good to go and this is the right thing for us. We don’t have an opinion to a point where we’re not going to do it because we think they’re gambling or we’re not going to do it because certain people didn’t ask us. If the federal government allows it, we will be taking a strong look at listing these markets. I just want to make sure everybody’s clear on that, that we’re not shying away from that.

Tim McCourt, Executive, CME Group: I understood. That was excellent.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Adam.

Tim McCourt, Executive, CME Group: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Bryan Durkin with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, folks. Sorry to stick with prediction markets here, but maybe just to focus on the financial contracts only that are at CME. Can you talk about just the structure of this arrangement? First of all, is this essentially cleared in a club fashion? With the FCM that you’re cooperating here with FanDuel, just to clarify, would this then be open to all other retail platforms to connect into? I guess, would you be listing these prediction contracts on CME and therefore your 130 retail partners can also link into these and trade them? Is the financial arrangement around that, would that flow directly to CME for those other retail partners, or is that part of the joint venture with FanDuel?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: The answer to your latter part of your question is absolutely everybody will have access to our contracts regardless of the relationship that we have with FanDuel. As it relates to the economics, with FanDuel, I don’t know how much we’ve disclosed, but Lynne, if you want to comment any further on that, we have a relationship with them in the ownership of the FCM, our non-clearing FCM, I should say. That’s about that.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Thanks, Bryan. As Terry mentioned, our FCM would be one of many potential participants. Just like any other contract on CME Group, this is open to any of our FCMs that choose to offer that product once they meet the requirements. This is not an exclusive relationship. Our FCM will provide access to clients that want to come through that entity, but there could be several others that provide that service to clients as well.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: As far as if you’re asking how we’re looking at the economics going forward, I think that is something that’s still a work in progress. We have to see, as always, how new markets, how they grow, what they look like, how we structure them, and then how we price them. We have many different models, as you can imagine, depending on how this moves forward on the market side. Potentially on the sports side, there’s the entertainment side, there’s the political side. These things, you know, it may not be a one-size-fits-all type of pricing model either, but we don’t have the answer to that question yet.

Maybe just to clarify, if the clients are coming through FanDuel, like if they’re FanDuel clients or they’re coming through that FCM, I would imagine, obviously, that’s going, you know, the economics of that are consistent with the joint venture arrangement. If it’s coming through a different online broker, coming directly to your markets, would that still be part of this JV or would that be just going right to CME Group?

You’ve summarized it yourself properly, Bryan, but I’ll let Lynne finalize it.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: I think the thing you need to think about is our DCM and DCO fees are consistent just like they are for all of our products. That’s something that’s available to all participants. The FCM would be no different than any of our other FCM participants.

Julie Winkler, Executive, CME Group: Just like the current market, the FCMs will have a fee, a commission that they charge to clients that come through their entity. That piece will flow through the FCM. What ends up being charged to the clients and the FCM is going to be consistent across the board because it’s a requirement. That’s just part of how we need to operate.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Nothing is different about this arrangement that changes how those clearing and trading fees will be charged to the market.

Great. That’s a good caller. Thank you.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Bryan.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I’m not going to ask on predictive markets.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Come on, Dan. You know you got one.

Energy volumes were down this quarter after a long run of really strong growth, like, you know, more than a year. With geopolitical risks stabilizing and moderating, I guess, what is the outlook for growth, for energy, particularly in the context of particularly strong volumes you had earlier this year? What are the factors that might be driving share shifts in oil and gas markets? Because we’ve seen share move around more recently. Thanks.

Derek, Energy Market Specialist, CME Group: Yeah. Hey, Kenneth. Derek, thank you. We are certainly seeing the market that over, let’s be honest, over the last two and a half, three years, we’ve seen WTI trade in effectively a $10 range. I think we had done a lot to develop and grow and expand participation in our energy markets overall, particularly in crude. You’ve seen us push out growth in our options complex, shorter dated options in low volatility environments. Those have proven to be very successful tools for adapting to a different volatility environment. We actually set some new records in volume and short dated options over the course of WTI earlier this year. You’ve also seen us push out very successfully our record growth in our crude scrape contracts, which actually put a moat around our physical WTI business as WTI continues to globalize.

Where you see growth in our complex year to date in crude oil specifically, we’re seeing that most effectively in Europe and Asia, where we continue to see double-digit growth there as U.S. crude and refined hits boats, hits the shores of Europe and APAC, and more customers in those countries are trading our products. When you look at the share shifts this quarter, we’ve actually seen WTI futures shift back to CME. I think we’re at 76% for Q3. That’s up from 74% last quarter. We are maintaining our roughly 91% share in our WTI options markets. We continue to innovate there. When you step back and look at the broader drivers, there were very much some geopolitical tensions earlier this year that drove activity.

When you look at the year-to-date business in both crude and refined as well as natural gas, both those complexes are up about 10%, 11%. When we look at Q3 specifically, while WTI drifted a little bit lower, that sequentially saw some decrease in growth, lower volumes across the board for everybody. We saw share shifts back into CME. Where we’re really focused right now is the natural gas business. Even in Q3, we saw our natural gas complex grow 2%, led by NACAS options up 12%. When you look at the continued record amounts of liquefaction and export of U.S. LNG today at 15 or 16 DCF, that will go to almost 25 in the next three years. That means more U.S. gas priced and indexed directly to Henry Hub, the market that we’ve got 7% to 9% share of, continuing to globalize.

You know, we see very much energy a part of the overall picture. Natural gas is not just a transition fuel. It’s a fuel for the future. Whether you look at the strong growth in our open interest this year, continued growth in the innovative part of the curve that we’ve built and developed on crude, and the continued push into natural gas, we think we’re answering customer need and growing globally. I’m confident that we can continue to do that as the world consumes more U.S. energy product.

Great. Thank you very much.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Dan.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Allen with Citi. Your line is open.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Morning, everyone. I wanted to ask about the oyster sale. What are the proceeds after tax? How are you thinking about capital deployment here, given either buyback flexibility, current stock price, and balancing that versus the fifth dividend?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Chris. I’ll let Lynne comment, start, and then I’ll join in when she’s finished.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Yes. Chris, the proceeds from the sale were about $1.55 billion. The net proceeds are going to be very similar. We were able to bring back some cash from the equity as well. I would use that as your starting point. In terms of the use of those proceeds, we are bringing a recommendation to our board in the coming weeks. We certainly have a number of valves in place that we can use, but we want to, given the current environment, make sure we’ve done a full review with our board on the potential uses of that capital.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Chris, I think it’s really important that everybody understands our debt dividend is the lowest in the sector. We have been very disciplined making sure that we don’t have a lot of debt. We’ve been able to grow organically. We’ve been able to do things, whether it’s through JVs, whether it’s through partnerships that are not multi-billion dollar investments. We’ve been very blessed to grow our business with that respect. The examples being one with obviously Google, the other with FanDuel, and some of the other things that we’re continuing to focus on. We understand that we don’t need to be sitting on mountains of cash like this. I don’t want to front-run my board by any stretch of the imagination. We will be looking forward to bringing a proposal on how we return that capital very shortly to you and the rest of the team.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Thanks.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Chris.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to focus on 24/7 trading. I understand in crypto markets, you’re going to be enabling that early next year. I was hoping you could elaborate on some of the hurdles you’ve had to overcome. What could be the scope to enable 24/7 trading for other products? What could make sense next, the timeframe around that? More broadly, how do you think about the role of tokenization as a catalyst to support 24/7 trading over time? How are you experimenting with that today or may over the next year or so?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Michael, thank you. All three of those are very good questions. I’m going to take them in reverse order because in order to get 24/7 and do some of the things that you referenced, you need to have potentially a tokenization of tokenized cash in order to facilitate. I will ask Ms. Sprague to give you a little update as our project with Google on tokenized cash is looking, how we’re going with that. She can even go into the 24/7 from a risk management standpoint. We’ll save the other products for myself, and I’ll talk about that at the end. Maybe, Suzanne and Sunil can comment on the operational and then the tokenized cash.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. As Terry mentioned, we do know that tokenization is a hot topic, and we’ve been fortunate to be partnering with Google over the past few years towards that initiative. We do continue to progress our efforts with them, starting with tokenizing cash to begin with. The technology that they bring to the table through the Google Cloud Universal Ledger does enable tokenization of other types of assets, both on the product side and the collateral side. We plan to continue progressing with our initial phase, tokenizing cash through the end of this year and enabling that for go live in 2026. That will allow the value outside traditional banking hours, starting with cash and then potentially other assets in the future. It is an important element for risk management, as Terry mentioned.

On the general risk management side, we also think it’s prudent to make sure that the collateralization in the system supports those exposures that can accumulate, especially over the weekend. Our approach will be to make sure that collateralization in the system is consistent with the risk that participants can bring over the weekends, just how we monitor that activity today, knowing that markets open on Sundays, for example. We look forward to the offering, building in many phases and think that the tokenization efforts we have underway with Google are timely in being able to roll that out for 2026 as well.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Julie, you’re reading that.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: On the operational side, I think we were the first exchange to operate 23 hours every day of the week. Here, we’re just adding additional sessions over the weekend. We are well positioned to do so, especially because of our investment in our Google transformation. This gives us the ability to actually give our clients access to our markets and our clearing services while also continuing to do maintenance and upgrades. That’s the challenge that not just us, but our industry has to overcome to provide 24/7 services across markets and clearing.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Michael, as it relates to other asset classes, I have said this for a while now that I think 24/7 is coming across the world, whether we like it or not. This is not something that we’re leading. I think going forward with crypto makes a ton of sense for CME Group because they do have a market to go seven days a week. Today, we do have the reference rate pricing associated with it because there’s cash markets that are facilitating seven days a week. Some of these other asset classes, there’s not been a huge conversation or a demand coming from them to go 24/7. It doesn’t mean that won’t change. I think we’ll have to do a wait and see how it comes out with crypto to begin with. I don’t know if we’ll be a leader or a fast follower on other asset classes on 24/7.

We’ll analyze that as time goes on. I will tell you, there has not been a big demand coming from my other asset classes to trade on seven days a week. There’s a cost associated to the FCMs. There’s a cost associated to many different entities that they’re not quite sure if the squeeze is worth the juice, as they say. We’re waiting to see how all that plays out. We’re not saying that’s not going to happen, but we’re not leading with that, obviously, and we’ll keep a close watch on that. I will tell you what, we will always be prepared if, in fact, that’s where the market’s going.

Got it. Thanks for all the color. It sounds like you’re preparing for 24/7 to be in the position. Is that for next year? It seems like you’re waiting maybe for client interest before you pull the trigger on it. Is that correct?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: We’re preparing for 24/7 for crypto for 2026. I would say that internally, we’ve looked at other asset classes if, in fact, we needed to go there or wanted to go there or there’s a demand to go there. I think operationally, Sunil said it right, where we’re 23.5 hours a day, five and a half days a week now, six days a week, I guess, with Sunday. We are basically there if we wanted to go there. We have to add in Saturday, and it’s just adding in a couple of sessions. The question is, what’s the cost associated with it for the client and what’s the demand for the client? I don’t see a big hurdle with talking to my team if, in fact, we wanted to go to these other asset classes. There are other factors that take in place. The U.S.

Treasury market might be different than the ag market, and the ag market might be different than the equity market. You have to align with different associations, different cash markets, what they want to do, not do. The crypto market is pretty much a natural right now because of the structure it has in place.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. This is Anthony on for Alex. I wanted to hit on collateral balances and to what extent maybe you’re seeing the 30% cash minimum affecting client allocation decisions. If you could give an update on what that looked like in the third quarter and what that stands at now.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Anthony. I’ll let Lynne comment.

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Sure. Our averages in the third quarter for cash, we averaged $135 billion, and we earned 33 basis points on that. On non-cash collateral, we averaged $156 billion, earning 10 basis points. In the first half of October, the cash balance has been fairly steady. We’re at $134 billion on average, and the non-cash has ticked up a bit. We’re at $164 billion on average.

Thanks.

If you look at the percentage, the 30% minimum, we are still seeing a bit more in cash. This third quarter, we were at about 46% in cash. That’s obviously a customer decision on how they want to allocate their collateral. We also have seen in past volatile times where we might see more cash upfront, and it might kind of normalize over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a little bit more optimization going forward, but it held pretty steady at that mid-40% last quarter and this quarter.

Conference Operator: Does that conclude?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Okay, Anthony. Good.

That’s helpful. Thanks.

Thanks, Anthony.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Kyle Voit with KBW. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe a follow-up on the Google partnership, but more related to the Google-related investment spend. Can you just give us an update on where you expect that to ultimately shake out in 2025? Remind us how you expect that component of that trend into 2026 as we’re thinking about the building blocks for 2026 expense growth. Lynne, outside of the Google spend, any other notable puts and takes on the expense side we should be aware of as we look out into 2026?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Kyle. Lynne?

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Yeah. Expenses related to Google this quarter were about $27 million. The vast majority of that, $26 million, you’ll see in the technology fees with about $1 million in professional fees. Year to date, we’re running at about $71 million in total spend related to Google. Our guidance embeds within that about $100 million in total expense. That is down, and that’s part of the reason why we did cut our guidance. At the beginning of the year, we were expecting more like $115 million. We were able to identify a number of savings opportunities working closely between the technology and finance team. We’ve really been managing that spend in the cloud as we’re getting more, you know, facile with some of the different tools we have, so we’ve generated a fair bit of savings there. We’ve been really moving a lot more towards internal support.

Those pro-fee numbers last year were more in the $4 to $5 million per quarter, and they’re now down to about $1 million. That is where you’re seeing some of those savings come through on the expense side. In terms of 2026, we’ll certainly provide detail on that. It will be part of our overall guidance. I would say with our changes to expenses this year, some of these savings we’ve been able to generate not just on the pro-fees and the cloud expenses, but also you’ve seen our depreciation and our occupancy expenses come down pretty meaningfully over the course of the year. Our cost growth this year is relatively low when you look at that versus our historical levels.

I would view this as kind of the baseline that we will be building off, but just some of these opportunities are more ones that we were able to find and take advantage of, but these aren’t necessarily annual type events where we’ll have that level of cost offset. We’ll provide more guidance in February. I would say this cost growth being lower is more the ability to take advantage of some of those opportunities that we had.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Thank you, Kyle.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Clinch with Ross Chilton Co. Your line is open.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, maybe Terry, if you could talk about the BrokerTec Chicago and just give us a sense of, I guess, what how this strategy might actually change the fortunes of BrokerTec within the context of U.S. Treasuries and actually from a competitive standpoint between all the different protocols. You know, is this something that can actually revive the fortunes of, say, club versus streaming, etc., etc.? Thanks.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Yeah, that’s a great question, Simon. I’m going to ask Mike Dennis to chime in, and then I’ll make a comment when he’s finished. I’ll ask Mike to chime in since he’s been leading this initiative. Mike.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Yeah, thanks, Terry and Simon. Good morning. Appreciate the question. BrokerTec Chicago went live on October 6th, and it’s very exciting because this is the first time in CME Group history that we have our cash fixed income markets sit side by side with our core futures and options markets. We had a very successful market at open, and we experienced two-sided markets in all seven of our cash instruments. We had trades happen in the overnight session on Sunday and into the first day of trading. Over $1 billion of notional has traded since launch across all seven tenors, and we launched about two and a half weeks ago. The full curve is being quoted more than 90% of the trading day. What’s also exciting is that over 25 firms have connected to the new central limit order book, including banks, props, and brokers.

To kind of answer a little bit of your question, 66% of the volume has traded at price points not available on the BrokerTec New York club, which gives clients choice depending on their trading strategy and market conditions. We’ve also seen some new-to-BrokerTec clients connect to the new club and place trades already. We’re pretty excited about new client acquisition and also what we can do next with BrokerTec Chicago, different trading modalities, product enhancements, etc.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Just to add to that, I think what’s really important, and I don’t want to gloss over it, Simon, is that when you looked at our press release on BrokerTec Chicago and you had dealers in there being quoted about how important this offering was to them, they were a driver of that with Mike and his team about putting these side by side for the efficiencies thereof. As you know, you referenced it in your question, the Treasury market can go to multiple different places. When you have some of the largest participants in the world looking for this type of offering from CME Group, which we gave them, it does attract other participants, which Mike referenced from the props to the hedge funds. We think this could continue to grow, and we’re excited by the leadership of the dealers pushing this going forward.

We’re excited by BrokerTec Chicago and what we think it can do for our cash franchise, which in return will help grow our futures franchise.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Great. Thank you very much.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Simon.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking our question. Market data revenues were strong and up 14% in the quarter. Can you provide any context behind the good quarterly result? Also, can you talk about opportunities to raise pricing in data next year?

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Thanks, Greg. Julie?

Julie Winkler, Executive, CME Group: Yeah. It was our 30th consecutive quarter of revenue growth, a quarter of record. We were very excited about that, up over 14%. What we’re seeing, Craig, is increased growth across nearly all of the segments of the business, both on the professional and the non-professional subscriber side. I think it just speaks to the depth of our product offering. I particularly point out this quarter the growth overseas of subscribers. Our market data business is significantly based on our international customer base. Seeing really good signs in APAC and EMEA of demand for our market data, which typically then leads us to see transaction-based revenue to come at a later point in time. I think in terms of pricing, we have already announced, and did so in August, the price increases for next year of 3.5%. That will be across many of our data products across the rack rates.

That change will take effect on January 1st of 2026.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Craig, just to emphasize on what Julie said, not maybe directly to your question, but when you look at the value of market data, especially CME Group’s market data, what it can do to help some of our clients grow through risk management, through other protocols that they use our data for, it’s very exciting about the growth of that business along with our product lines that are tradable. We’re excited by the growth of this business. You got to remember, just 10, 12 years ago, we were charging zero for market data. We’ve come a long way growing this business. Maybe 15 years ago now. We’ve come a long way growing this business. I think it’s been a very prudent strategy for us.

Thanks, Terry. We also had a follow-up on BrokerTec Chicago to Simon’s question.

Go ahead, Craig.

I was curious.

Go ahead.

Hey, I was curious, where do you expect the volume mix to end up balancing or normalizing between BrokerTec Chicago and BrokerTec Secaucus? I know we’re very early innings here. I think you launched on October 6th. Roughly, what % of the volumes have been from new clients to BrokerTec? You just highlighted that in Simon’s question.

Are you referencing Secaucus or Chicago or both or combined?

You had two kind of two-parted there. What is the, where do you think the mix ends up between BrokerTec Chicago and BrokerTec Secaucus? Like 80, you know, like 20, 80?

Yeah, I got it now, Craig. Yep. Okay. Mike, do you want to, I mean, it’s a speculative answer, but go ahead.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Yeah. No, I appreciate the question, Craig. It’s hard to say. It’s been about two weeks since we launched BrokerTec Chicago. I think forecasting how volumes are going to be split or how volumes are going to look is very difficult. I do think you saw in the press release dealers that are excited about the launch. We mentioned Morgan Stanley. We mentioned Citi. We mentioned JP Morgan. I think it’s going to be dependent on market conditions. There could be times when people point to the Chicago club just because they might be trading a relative value strategy or the market might be a little quieter and they can trade in 16ths. I think people will continue to trade on the New York club, especially in terms of heightened volatility, where they want to move large stacks of liquidity.

Early days, hard to speculate, but we’re excited to see it live. We’re excited to have these products sit side by side with our core futures and options product. We’re excited to attract new clients to the venue. Like I said earlier, we’ve seen some new clients who have never traded on BrokerTec trade on BrokerTec already. We’re excited about new client acquisition as well.

Thank you.

Good, Craig?

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Go ahead.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from Ashish Sabhadra with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Will Chee on for Ashish Sabhadra. Thank you guys for taking our question. Maybe if you could just provide a little bit of commentary on RPC. I know there’s a lot of moving parts there, but I think in the summary, you guys mentioned that it was kind of a lower proportion of micros and decreased volume tiering. Could you give us a sense of maybe the impacts of those two effects? Does the shift in micros have any shifts in retail trading behavior?

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Lynne?

Lynne, CFO, CME Group: Yeah. We’re going to see the largest impact on the shift in micros. That’s really going to impact the equity portion of our RPC. We saw a similar contribution in metals from micros. It’s about 36% of micros volume. In equities, it went from 47% last quarter down to about 43% this quarter. You saw an uplift in our equity RPC largely due to that shift from micros towards full size in the mix. It’s hard to disaggregate entirely these shifts and which were the pieces that impacted that rise in RPC because it’s going to get into not just that shift, but also the customer mix between member and non-member.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Oh, hey, thanks for taking the follow-up. I just wanted to ask about credit futures. I was hoping you could elaborate on the progress there, how you see the use cases versus other alternatives in the marketplace. If you could elaborate on some of the steps that you’re taking to broaden out user engagement in credit futures. More broadly, as you facilitate a stronger link between cash and futures markets and rates and FX, to what extent might connectivity with cash credit markets make sense to enhance client value and support growth?

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Thanks, Mike.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Mike Dennis.

Mike Dennis, Executive, CME Group: Yeah, Michael, it’s a great question. I’ll talk a little bit about credit futures, and kind of some things we’re thinking about in the cash markets. We highlighted a cash market initiative, BrokerTec Chicago. I’ll ask Tim McCourt to talk about another cash market initiative we had this year, FX Spot Plus. For credit futures, we saw strong growth this quarter in credit futures. Open interest hit a record in September. The outreach with Julie Winkler’s team, the CDNS team, has been very strong. There is a great mix of clients that are, you know, reaching out to CME Group who we’re reaching out to to talk about credit futures. Many asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and props. What we’re hearing from the customer base is that our central limit order book for credit futures is very liquid, and there’s tight bid-ask spreads.

Credit futures are just an extremely valuable product for the fixed income marketplace because it allows asset managers greater flexibility in managing credit exposure. These products are unique. We have margin offsets for Treasury futures as well as S&P 500 futures. We’re excited to see this product growing, and feedback from our clients has been very positive. We have about 300 sales opportunities in the pipeline for credit futures. Those 300 opportunities are across all different client types. It takes time for folks to, you know, onboard often for products, but we’re very happy about the trajectory. Tim, I don’t know if you want to share a little bit on FX Spot Plus.

Tim, Executive, CME Group: Sure. Thanks, Mike. I think a consistent theme that you’ve heard in our opening remarks is around continued product innovation and meeting customers where they are to make sure they have the risk management tools they need to access our markets and manage the risks. I think certainly credit futures is a great example of that. Another one we mentioned where it’s really about bringing these markets together and offering new transactional handshakes to allow clients to access our market is FX Spot Plus. That is something we launched back in April. Since its launch, over 70 entities have traded on FX Spot Plus, including 40 banks, the majority of which have not previously interacted with the FX futures market. As Terry mentioned, off to a great start where we had a single-day record of over $5.6 billion on September 11th.

We’ve had single-day volumes exceeding $5 billion for Spot Plus over four days throughout September and continue to grow from here. Even when you look at the innovations we’ve rolled out over CME Group, we continue to introduce new products, new offerings, and combining cash and futures markets to make sure our clients can access all the liquidity they need during these continued uncertain times when they might need it the most.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: You know, Mike, I think it’s interesting that when you look at the U.S. corporate or the U.S. debt today at $37.5, $38 trillion, going to God knows what. That market versus the corporate market, people are deciding where they want to participate. Do they feel more comfortable in a corporate bond versus the U.S. government? Okay, I’m not so sure they do. Because there’s such leverage in both right now or such debt in both, it’s a very interesting dynamic the way I look at it. I think both of these different markets between the cash U.S. Treasury market and the corporate for the credit markets will be very active over the next several years as we continue to go through these cycles of high valuations of corporation on the stock market and then the demand for people needing to sell debt.

It’ll be quite fascinating to see how this all plays out.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Conference Operator: Thank you. I would like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

Terry, CEO/President, CME Group: Thank you all very much. We appreciate your interest in CME Group and have a great holiday season. Be safe. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you for participating in today’s conference. You may now disconnect.

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