MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Daniel Fannon: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Michael Cyprys: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I was hoping you could share your latest thoughts on the regulatory landscape. Is there anything in particular that you guys are watching that could be a helpful tailwind for the business or maybe a little bit of risk on a headwind side that we could see in the coming years? And then specifically, just curious, the latest you’re hearing on the proposal to cut the TRACE reporting time from 15 minutes to 1-minute, what sort of impact that might have? Thank you.

Chris Concannon: Sure. From the regulatory side, obviously we have a global footprint, so we are mindful of regulations across the globe here in the U.S., obviously, we’re still tracking the SEC’s proposals around the treasury market. They’re obviously very favorable towards all-to-all and we continue to hear support for all-to-all and treasuries by regulators. T1 is another proposal that we’re tracking quite closely, obviously the requirement to move settlement to T1 does have an impact on institutional straight through processing and many times that can be favorable to electronic trading more broadly and electronic processing. So T1 is one we look out for, and while it’s a lot of work for everybody, it’s slightly favorable to the electronic solutions over the long-term.

The TRACE proposal moving to a 1-minute reporting time, if you look at the market, the majority of the market is near that reporting time today, obviously, manual reports take a little bit longer. But we would expect that to improve, again, similar to T+1 straight through processing and electronic trading more broadly. In Europe, we continue to hear from the regulators around, what is an MTF, the perimeters of an MTF, and what needs to be in an MTF? And it’s certainly having an impact on the regulatory environment, where we see potential new entrants in alternative platforms that try to aggregate trading. It’s very clear in Europe that MTF regulation is becoming more restrictive based on those trading perimeters. We operate in MTFs throughout Europe, so we’re quite comfortable in that environment, where you need to be an MTF to step into our space.

But, more broadly, we don’t see any regulatory wins that have material detriment really much more positive to support electronic trading across the globe.

Michael Cyprys: Yeah, great. Thanks so much.

Richard Schiffman: One thing I would just add to that, Michael, if there’s any change in bank capital requirements to the tighter side that’s going to be a tailwind for electronic trading, certainly for all-to-all trading, because that liquidity has to get made up somewhere else and if it becomes harder for the banks to be providing it, it’s going to open the door for a lot more activity in Open Trading.

Michael Cyprys: Great. Thank you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Alexander Blostein: Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question. So, a little bit of a bigger picture question for you guys, and I appreciate all the discussions around some of the new initiatives, but I guess when we look at Slide 11, where you outline progress on Auto-X, CP+, algo trades, et cetera. They’re all up into the right, but the high yield or high grade rather market share has been relatively range bound, as we talked about for the last couple of years. So are they just taking share of the back book? So kind of like the legacy RFQ business and that’s kind of the change in client behavior that you’re observing, but it doesn’t really materialize in higher market share and what in your view will necessarily sort of change that? So as you think about high grade goals over the next couple of years, what could that look like on the back of these initiatives?