Patrick Moley : Okay. Great. That’s it for me. Thanks.
Douglas Cifu: Thank you.
Operator: Please standby for the next question. The next question comes from Kenneth Worthington with JPMorgan Securities. Your line is open.
Kenneth Worthington: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe first for Joe. In terms of capital management you purchased I think $36 million of stock this quarter. That was lower than the level of repurchases we’ve seen over the last year. And if you look at 1Q 2023, you spent roughly double on buybacks last year despite 1Q 2024 having a lower stock price and a lower average stock price. Any reasons for the more modest buybacks this quarter? Was it just sort of truing up relative to ANTI or something else philosophical?
Joseph Molluso: No, it’s nothing philosophical. We have these ranges that we posted that at different levels of net trading income. This is what you should expect in terms of the ranges. The amount of kind of free cash flow, we have doesn’t, necessarily line up precisely with those ranges every quarter. So there’s ebbs and flows. When we embarked on our share repurchase program, we made a decision that we’re just going to use the proceeds and apply them to the stock price, as it is. And I think looking back over three-plus years that we’ve done this, I think we’re satisfied with where it came out. And you should expect fully that we would — we’re going to be within those ranges that we published. And the first quarter, is even if you just annualize it, it’s right there in the range that we’ve — that we posted for six a day. So I wouldn’t read anything into that.
Kenneth Worthington: Cool. Thanks. And then just a follow-up on the Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin ETFs have moved from strong inflows in 1Q 2024 to closer to breakeven so far in 2Q 2024. If flat Bitcoin ETF flows were to persist, does that impact the revenue opportunity for you in Bitcoin or crypto broadly?
Douglas Cifu: It’s a good question. I think we really more look at kind of like gross flows, as opposed to net because that means there’s a portfolio reallocations and opportunities Ken. I mean, certainly look I mean when the Spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved as I said earlier, that was massive and you follow and I track your metrics that you put out every day there were massive rejiggering from the closed-end fund to the handful of the ETFs. And certainly, that was episodic and that’s not going to happen again. But there has been a consistent nice pattern. And again, I think the best analogy is really looking at like another commodities market, and the most analogous one would be gold. And so in that marketplace every day, there are people that are getting in and out of ETF positions and getting it in and out Spot or reallocating from a different asset class.
So if you look at digital assets and Bitcoin specifically, as just a slice of a pie that wealth managers are now looking at in, institutions that are looking at as an investable asset over some time period. That’s the thing that is compelling. It’s no longer, in my view, a novelty asset that people are sort of trading and has like this somewhat nefarious tinge to it. It is now an investable asset that is on a meaningful number of platforms and is certainly being, advocated for lack of a better word or allocated by gatekeepers. And so that means, that there’s going to be volume. You’ll have spikes when hearing [ph] is approved and when options come on and when the UK and Hong Kong and blah blah blah, but the theme here is that you now have a large investable asset class, there’ll be volatility opportunities.
And the underlying asset class for better or worse has a certain amount of volatility to it. And the other interesting thing is, it’s a 24/7 market in the form of spot. So I think there’s a lot of attributes to it that are compelling, from a market-making standpoint and provide a lot of opportunity for a firm like ours that is scaled, global and can manage the intricacies if you will from the various forms that Bitcoin and these other points will take be it Spot ETF or future.
Kenneth Worthington: Great. Thank you. And Go Panthers.
Operator: Please standby for the next question. The next question comes from Chris Allen with Citi. Your line is now open.
Q – Chris Allen: Good morning, everyone. Nice quarter and again a nice one by the Panthers last night. Maybe just on block ETFs. You noticed a greater contribution than crypto this quarter. Can you help us think about, how that business breaks down between equities and FICC? What the drivers have been? I think you talked about efforts to broaden distribution. Maybe give us some color on that front. Because that to me, seems like a more sustainable business from a longer term relative to maybe a crypto where we are seeing a little bit lower flows in the near term. So, any color there would be great.
Joseph Molluso: Yes. Great. I mean I think, I mean just from a metric standpoint, what we saw in the quarter was roughly double what we saw in 2021 in terms of ANTI performance. So, that’s a significant result. In terms of like what the breakdown is what we have ascertained and what we’ve built over the last couple of years is you have to kind of be in everything Chris and you have to be global. And so certainly we’re very proficient obviously in equities. That’s the entomology if you will of the firm. And so that’s very good. But there you have to be competitive in fixed income and commodity products. And certainly there’s more margin and there’s more risk and there’s more challenges associated with being in fixed income and indeed in crypto as we’ve indicated.
