Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) Earnings

Management highlights

This is the strongest quarter in ICE's history. Results are product of deliberate strategy, discipline execution, and platform built for this environment. Exchange platform was used as intended to absorb complexity, facilitate price discovery. Fixed income and data services business built on high quality data, governance, etc. Mortgage technology business continues to advance with platform modernization and client integration.

Guidance

Second quarter adjusted operating expenses to remain consistent with first quarter and be in the range of 1 billion 30 million to 1 billion and 40 million dollars. Adjusted free cash flow generation was a first quarter record 1.2 billion. First quarter purchased approximately 550 million of own stock. Returned nearly $850 million to shareholders during the quarter. Confident in trajectory for balance of 2026 and beyond.

Segment performance

First quarter adjusted earnings per share were $2.35, up 37% year-over-year. Net revenues reached a record $3 billion, up 18%. Adjusted operating income totaled a record $1.9 billion, up 26%. Exchange segment: First quarter exchange net revenues reached a record $1.8 billion, up 27% year over year. Transaction revenues grew 33%. Interest rate complex grew nearly 70%, energy global oil complex grew 47%, natural gas and environmental products grew 37%. Recurring revenue streams, exchange data services, and NYSE listings franchise reached a record $405 million, up 10%. Fixed Income and Data Services segment: First quarter revenues totaled a record $657 million, up 9% year-over-year. Transaction revenues grew 14% to a record $143 million. CDS clearing business revenues increased 18%. Recurring revenues reached a record $514 million, growing 8%. Fixed income data and analytics achieved record revenues of $322 million, up 7%. Data and network technology revenues increased 11%. Mortgage Technology segment: First quarter revenues totaled $539 million, up 6% year-over-year. On a pro forma basis, inclusive of Black Knight, this represents strongest quarterly performance since Q4 2022. Transaction revenues totaled $138 million, up 22% year-over-year.

Risks & headwinds

Today's call may contain forward-looking statements subject to risks, assumptions, and uncertainties. For description of risks that could cause results to differ materially, refer to 2025 Form 10-K, 2026 First Quarter 10-Q, and other filings with the SEC.

Analyst Q&A

• Q: Hello, everyone, I wanted to dig a bit deeper on the health of the energy marketplace.

  A: Hey, it's Ben. As you alluded to in the way you framed your question, our markets were doing and performing very well even before the Iran conflict broke out...

• Q: I wanted to build on Chris's question on the cyclical to one on the secular. Can you talk about the energy trading business and how Gulf Oil is posed to expand?

  A: It's Ben again. You hit on a very interesting part in the way you asked that question. Because the thing I would start with when you think about market share in the Gulf...

• Q: I wanted to ask about tokenization. Just curious to get your latest views there, and it's blockchain-based. settlements reduce settlement times to near instant just curious how you think about that impacting clearing revenues and collateral economics across your platform and more broadly uh curious your views on any sort of gating factors regular regulatory technology or client readiness as you think about you know what determines whether tokenized security scale over the next couple years versus more of a 10 plus year time frame

  A: michael that's a very good question this is jeff um so i i think embedded in your question is is the view that we have which is which is the main benefit of tokenization is going to be a rewiring of the movement of money and value and that essentially it's going to allow that to happen on the internet as opposed to the conventional banking wires and as your question suggests it's it's going to allow that to happen quickly with bearer instruments and will change your ability to self-custody or work with third parties very quickly to provide custodial services...

• Q: Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe switching over to fixed income data and data and tech, just noticing the really straight line improvement in growth here. You know, FIDS overall recurring revenue going up, you know, 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, and now 9% on a year-over-year basis the last five quarters. And it looks like the contributions coming both from FIDS and data and network technology with data and tech obviously now in the double digits. So can you just talk about, you know, what have been the two or three or so biggest drivers organically for that and Outlook throughout 2026? I assume the Polymarket initiative is going to be included in this area. uh and then i guess just overall i guess the punch line is does this uh does the mid single digit revenue growth guidance and fits uh recurring revenues seem conservative given the really strong momentum here

  A: hi it's chris i'll take the first part of that let me kick it to warren for your last part of your question you know certainly the appetite for data across the entire segment with some of the comments that Jeff made around AI and things that we're doing that. There are three real components that we have in the portfolio... Hey, Brian, it's Warren. And then on your question around the guidance, it was obviously a really good start to the year. And so that gives us a lot of incremental confidence in the targets that we set, which were towards the higher end of the mid single digit range for the full year...

• Q: Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. I wanted to touch on mortgage, seeing a decent improvement here recently. Obviously, the overall base is still relatively low, but the momentum seems to be building a bit. So I was hoping you could speak to what you're seeing with respect to, I guess, the recurrent revenue improvement sequentially, where that's sort of coming from, And as you think about the opportunity to start charging on over address, if volume picks up, where you guys are in that process, kind of how far away are we to start to see some of those benefits?

  A: This is Ben. So what you see is a combination of different factors. So we did have, as we've talked about many times, some headwinds on subscription revenues with clients that have renewed or signed onto the platform back in 20 and 21...

• Q: Thanks. Good morning. So Jeff was hoping you could talk about your appetite for M&A currently and how that weighs against the shareable purchases here in the short and medium term.

  A: Sure. This is Jeff. I, you know, would refer you a little bit to Warren's prepared remarks that, you know, one of the big M&A transactions that we did in the quarter was to buy back our own stock, which we think is, you know, had disconnected from the fundamentals of the company. And we had the flexibility and obviously cash flow generation to do that...