Virtu Financial, Inc. Q4 FY2025 earnings call

• Focus on growth through investing in infrastructure, acquiring talent, and expanding capital base.
• Fourth quarter results positively impacted by favorable operating environment. Incremental capital added and its dynamic deployment had a meaningful impact.
• VES had a record quarter with accelerating client engagement, new clients onboarding, and existing clients doing more business across all products, brokerage, algos, venues, workflow analytics, and all geographies.
• Increased invested capital by $625 million in 2025, with $448 million in the second half, generating an average return of 100% over the year.
• Full year 2025 cash compensation ratio was 19%, within historical range, reflecting focus on retaining and acquiring top talent.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Market Making reported adjusted net trading income (ANTI) of $7.8 million per day, and for the full year 2025, it was $6.7 million per day. Virtu Execution Services (VES) reached $2 million per day in the quarter and $1.9 million per day for the full year. Both segments benefited from favorable market conditions, elevated volumes, and strong execution by the team.

• Continue to expand capital base, strengthen infrastructure, and deploy capital where greatest opportunities are seen.
• Maintain quarterly dividend of $0.24 per share.
• Long-term goal of being through the cycle at $10 million per day.

• Uncertainties in new markets or asset classes due to potential lack of perfect regulatory or legal certainty.
• Market conditions affecting the ability to deploy capital, with possible quarters where buffers are greater if opportunities aren't present.

Q: The dollar value of your 605 quoted spreads looked like it declined sequentially. So is it fair for us to conclude that this quarter's strong performance came from areas outside of equities, and if so, can you provide some granularity on which asset classes were the largest contributors to your sequential growth?

A: It's about the favorable operating environment with higher volatility, up VIX, up equity share volumes, and drivers like asset rotation, fixed income, currencies, commodities. We're a scaled global firm not just retail flow, VES had a record quarter with all businesses performing well across products and geographies.

Q: Production markets, obviously, it seems like hey take an even larger role in the headlines every day. Can you give us your updated thoughts on participating in the asset class and whether sports or non-sports contracts would represent a more attractive entry point in the space?

A: We're optimistic about new markets but being careful due to regulatory/legal uncertainties. Evaluating how markets shake out, some markets more similar to current trading, with market making activities like cross-exchange arbitrage to investigate.

Q: You mentioned you deployed incremental capital during the quarter. Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of the incremental capital that you did deploy. And as we look to the coming quarters, if market conditions are accommodative, what is the magnitude of incremental capital that you could deploy if you so chose?

A: Total increase in trading capital from 2024 to 2025 was over $600 million, $450 million in the second half. Deployed pretty much all of it, but maintain buffers in regulated entities. Long term, with historical returns, expect to deploy more capital through organic growth and prudent borrowings depending on quarters.