Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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I mean, AUM fees, particularly the last two quarters, those have been something that have weighed on us a little bit. I don’t know exactly where those are going to go next year. It does feel like certainly in areas like fixed income, we could see some stabilization. And frankly, fixed income could very quickly become a very attractive asset class. So look, we’re having some really good conversations with customers. We are a data superstore, if you will, We’re indices, we’re end-of-day pricing. We have analytics. We have got desktops. We’ve got fees. It’s a really diverse business. And so it’s an opportunity for us to have conversations with customers in this kind of environment than we are to maybe find ways to save but spend more with us. And that’s something I think you’ve heard us talk about the last couple of years.

So there’s nothing really different about our target. But again, we’re certainly cognizant that it’s a somewhat challenging environment for a lot of our customers at the moment.

Lynn Martin: Hi, Dan, this is Lynn. I’m just going to jump in with a bit more color on what Warren said. I think this segment, in particular, really illustrates the all-weather nature of the ICE name. And the ability for this segment to grow 13% in spite of some of the challenges Warren has highlighted really underpin that. If you look at the execution side of the business, volatility has certainly been a tailwind, but importantly, new products and new customer acquisition has also been driver of our growth, new products in the CDS clearing side of the business, including our CDS options. In terms of ICE bonds, we’ve actually been able to grow our institutional market share. Institutional business in the muni asset class, in particular, is up 205% in Q4 alone, 175% for the full year.

And we’ve been able to gain in muni about 650 basis points of share in 2022, really driven by the work we’ve done with the institutions to plug into their workflows. Now obviously, some of the macro forces have impacted the fixed income and data and analytics line, as Warren highlighted, slightly slower sales cycle in our pricing business. AUM trends driving out of our higher capture products into our lower fee capture products. But I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the outsized performance of our other data services line, where we haven’t seen a slowdown in the sales cycle. And this was really fueled by demand for capacity, which was up 18% in the quarter, double-digit growth in our desktop and derivatives analytics businesses as well as strong growth in our fees business.

So I think when you take a step back and look at the segment overall, we couldn’t be more optimistic about the ability for that segment, in particular, to grow, compounding in a variety of macroeconomic positions because of the all-weather nature of the name.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ken Worthington of JPMorgan. Ken, your line is now open.

Ken Worthington: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe to follow up on Rich’s question, but with a focus on oil I wanted to dig a bit deeper into some of the changes that are being made there. You mentioned on the last call that you were taking Russian molecules out of the benchmark and highlighted the reconstitution maybe adding to activity levels in Brent. Given that Russian oil continues to flow pretty actively in Europe, is the reconstitution helping or hurting like you thought? And then secondly, I think Midland WTI has been added to Brent. To what extent do you see this inclusion making Brent an even more relevant benchmark? And as we think about Brent as a competing product to WTI, might this shift further drive share to ICE and Brent in oil?

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