Forge Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:FRGE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So considered a 2024 strategy, and if we come back and decide to shift it and be more focused on revenue in follow-on quarters this year, we’ll come back and let that be known to the investor community as we see fit. Mark, you want to add…

Michael Cho: Thanks for all the clear. Go ahead, Mark

Mark Lee: Michael, I was just going to say, I mean, when you think about institutional customers who are getting increasingly reactive in the private markets there and you think about kind of the size of trades and you think about the take rates that we charge, you can understand that we also have to be thoughtful about how we want to price the bundling of data and trading because obviously, there’s just huge upside to be able to get dominant market share, a customer’s trading activity, right? And so it’s considering both. And that’s why we kind of talk about having the strategy to bundle the two together. I think the combination of trading plus data is just kind of the winning combo in terms of positioning ourselves with our customers relative to competitors.

Michael Cho: No. That makes sense. And I appreciate all the color there. Just a quick follow-up on M&A. I think, Kelly, I heard you say or discuss kind of maybe Darius [ph] for potentially more accelerated scale in the business and maybe that can get plugged with M&A or considerations of M&A. I guess my question is, are there some areas or segments of the business or of the market that seem of higher interest to you today. Thanks.

Kelly Rodriques: Yes, I don’t think we’re ready yet to talk about, but I think what you could assert from the priorities that we’ve laid out around institutional, what we call data domination and issuer-centric relationships. We’re looking at any differentiated player that’s got scale that have an aligned focus in the areas of our priorities. And so when we talked about the launch of Pro, that really lines up under our institutional focus. So anybody that’s out in the business that operates with a high level of integrity, focused on institutions is interesting to us. Anybody that’s out in the business that’s got scale, that are focused on issuers and reputationally are in a good position with issuers. That’s interesting to us.

And clearly, high-quality sources of data where the data is proprietary and owned by a potential competitor are areas that all line up to our priorities for 2024. But we don’t have anything or anybody specifically that we’re ready to talk about yet.

Michael Cho: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator: And we have no further questions in our queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Dominic Paschel for closing remarks.

Dominic Paschel: Great. Thank you, guys, for joining us for this year-end call, was a bit longer. We are available for questions, just ping ir@forgeglobal.com, and we will definitely engage. Thank you.

Kelly Rodriques: Thanks, everybody.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

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