Looks like we're going! Anyways, so, next up here, we have, Intercontinental Exchange. First of all, thanks for joining us. I'm Alex Kramm. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Senior Analyst at UBS, covering exchanges and business services. And as I said, next up is, ICE. I'm very excited to have Lynn Martin here, who is the President of the NYSE Group, but also Chair of Fixed Income and Data Services.
Mm-hmm.
Hopefully, I got that right.
Yep.
I feel like you've worn a lot of hats at the firm. So given I know there's clearly a lot of things going on at ICE, which is par for the course for the firm over the last, I don't know, 15 years or so, that I've covered the stock. But given Lynn's position, I'm gonna try to keep it to the data and Fixed Income businesses, and obviously, the NYSE Group.
Mm-hmm.
I know there's a lot of focus on mortgage. Maybe we'll get there-
Mm-hmm.
Maybe we'll have time for some follow-up, and I'm sure she'll be happy to tackle those, too.
Mm-hmm.
But why don't we start with the data business-
Sure
Side here. So again, thanks for being here. So you know, a few years ago at the Investor Day, I think the only Investor Day you ever had, you laid out targets for your data business to grow mid to, I think, high single digits.
Mm-hmm.
You've resegmented the business since then, so I think it's a little bit of apples and oranges, but, like, you still, do you think those targets still apply to that pitch business today, can you talk about the growth algorithm more broadly?
Yeah, I absolutely. First, thanks for, thanks for joining us. It's always great to be with you, Alex. I think the growth algorithm is still very, very relevant, and I think we've proven that growth algorithm, particularly on the mid-single digits. That's where we've really landed. I'd say probably, we probably shouldn't have included M&A when we wound up talking about organic growth, you know, in retrospect, that's probably something we shouldn't have done at that Investor Day. But yeah, we're very confident in the mid-single-digit growth algorithm. We've been executing on that now for, gosh, since 2015, when we formed Data Services. So I can't believe it's been eight years since we formed that business, and we've shown continuous execution there.
But as you rightly point out, Alex, you know, the Data Services business in 2015 looked a little different from the Data Services business today, 'cause we resegmented the business. I think the key component there is we don't see a demand for data abating. I'd say data is really the common thread, if you look at all of our segments. It applies to all of our segments, and the opportunity applies to all of our segments, our three segments. Our exchange segment, where we've continued to do really well and execute on data growth. This year, the Fixed Income and Data Services segment, which is probably the highest proportion of Data Services , comes out of that segment.
Then the opportunity in mortgage, even though we're not gonna spend a tremendous amount of time talking about mortgage, we just see a tremendous amount of opportunity given the assets we've acquired, both on Ellie Mae and now Black Knight, which we closed on, just last week. We've, you know, taken the deliberate approach as we think about data, to be focused on a first strategy, observable data, high-quality data, data that can be measured and maintained. We've developed an amazing ability to take unstructured data in markets, the data that's in the [either], distill that to the most useful pieces of data, the most true pieces of data, and then harness that, package that with better-known data sets in the market, data sets that the market is used to consuming.
I think that's where we see, you know, the biggest tailwind, that ability to distill that really high-quality data, tie it back to data the market is used to consuming, and leverage that, expose it to the market to add transparency to each of our- continue to add transparency to each of our, our marketplaces or our segments.
Very good start. Now, I will have to obviously point out that the growth more recently has been a little bit lower.
Yep.
Maybe again, what's weight, what's weight on this business, and what are the potential things that could actually change that?
Yeah. So the area that has slowed is the Fixed Income Data and Analytics portion. So that would be, I said data applies across all the segments, that would be a portion of the Fixed Income and Data Services vertical. You rightly point out that it has slowed. A couple of things there. It's been a really challenging environment. I don't have to tell anyone in this room, it's been a really challenging environment for Fixed Income over the last 18 years. We're starting-- or 18 months, we're starting to come out of that. We're seeing the way we're seeing the market start to reemerge is twofold. Already, number one, the amount of Fixed Income funds that are being created, we're starting to see upticks in the amount of funds.
We started to see that trend with new funds created at the end of Q2, and that trend has continued a bit into Q3. And then secondly, seeing a recalibration and continued growth in the amount of AUM that benchmark against our Fixed Income indices. Right now, we're at record levels of the amount of AUM that benchmarks against our Fixed Income indices. Amount of AUM against all of our indices is $526 billion, which is tremendous considering five years ago, when we acquired the Bank of America index, we had less than $100 billion benchmarking against those. But importantly, you've seen the recalibration there away from the lower capture indices into the higher capture indices.
We have different capture rates based on the indices that we put out, with equities, munis, and even high yield being our higher capture products, as opposed to Treasuries, which is where last year you saw the flight to quality, everyone running to the Treasury indices. So we're really excited about that. That's the area that's gonna probably normalize the fastest. So you're gonna see the growth in that portion of the business start to manifest itself to the bottom line quicker than you will start to see the rest of the business.
The one area that we have called out, and understandably in this environment, is the elongated sales cycle, which we've been subject to, you know, over the last 18 months, and that really has impacted our new logo capture in the Fixed Income Data and Analytics side of the business, given the various levels of approvals that a contract needed to go through. When I was running the business, you know, head of a desk or a procurement person could sign off on a contract. And since last year, you know that in many times now has to go up to a CFO or someone along those lines for approval. So there's a variety of steps that have had to undergo.
We're starting to see that pressure abate just a little bit, but I think that's because of some of the macro factors I just mentioned in the market, like the amount of Fixed Income funds starting to grow. Hopefully, we'll start to see debt issuance come back. So the demand is continuing to increase. The demand is what's gonna really start to tighten that sales cycle.
Great. Then maybe just digging in a little bit more, to parts of that business, in particular, the core pricing business-
Yep.
The legacy business. You don't break out how much that is, but maybe, maybe we can talk to it a little bit. But you made a comment on the earnings call recently that you've actually been picking up market share.
Yeah.
Right? And again, in the numbers, you don't really see that. But, so maybe you can talk about that a little bit more. In particular, as you compare yourself to some of the other firms out there-
Mm-hmm.
to call up Bloomberg, for example. I've had some conversations with folks who said, like, "Hey, the Bloomberg data is becoming more relevant because their indices are still the predominant indices, and as the longer benchmark or measurement periods move over time, the less legacy data is needed, and all the new stuff, Bloomberg just continues to be very, very relevant." So that was a mouthful of a question, but I guess it speaks to competition a little bit. So maybe talk about how you're gaining market share while it seems like people have this also.
Yeah. If we look at some publicly available data, which is the Form N-PORT filings for the mutual funds in the market, we are continuing to gain share. The challenge that you're seeing is part of Pricing and Reference Data very large portion of Fixed Income Data and Analytics, and that's really where the growth rate has been stuck. That's the elongated sales cycle, that's the macro factors. If you don't see a growth in the amount of funds, if you see the amount of funds decrease, and you see not a lot of new issuance, there's only a finite amount of securities that are being consumed by an amount of funds.
So even if you pick up share, that gets offset by the fact that the amount of funds either stays stagnant or decreases or the amount of securities in the market stays pretty flat. So that's where you see that a bit washing out at the moment, and unless you've got the sales cycle opening up, you're not giving back any price increases, things of that nature.
But you feel good about your-
I feel, yeah, we feel really good about our position.
I will ask one more on competition-
Sure.
-because some of those Fixed Income platforms in the marketplace that you're all very aware of, they're also making-
Yep.
[Noise on end-of-day pricing]
Yep.
and wanting to enter that market, which really is a good market. So again, you know, how are you positioned well against those entrants, considering that more and more trading happens there?
Yeah. Well, depends on what asset class you're talking about. I would say that more and more trading is happening on us, given the growth we've had on some of our execution platforms, particularly in munis, where we've had fantastic growth, given our penetration into the institutional side of the business. The thing with end-of-day pricing is, in order to switch end-of-day pricing providers, you have to restate your history. You have to have a full historical background. That means you have to evidence how the fund would have performed during various shocks in the system. And unfortunately, we have had some shocks in the system. We have had, which caused volatility in the market. We have had everything that has happened in 2022 in terms of interest rate cycle, moving up, moving down, all sorts of volatility.
So in order for one of those other platforms to gain share, they would have to restate the entirety of a fund's history in order to replace us. So we tend to feel really good about the fact that we're very sticky. And the opportunity there is, just continues to be very sticky. We've been able to translate that, though, into gaining share on the execution side of the business, quite honestly, because given the fact that our real-time data just gets better and better, we made a tremendous amount of enhancements to that real-time data. Sorry, this is off. That real-time data as a result of the activity that we've seen, the pickup of activity that we've seen in our execution platform.
Maybe that's a great segue to put my happy face on and actually ask about areas of growth. I mean, what, what are you excited about? Maybe talk to some—I mean, you just alluded to real-time data, but maybe to some of the other things that you're doing.
Yeah.
And most importantly, given that you just said how big the Pricing and Reference Data business still is, like, when can this stuff actually move the needle so you can see those growth at some point?
Yeah, hopefully, we're starting to see the-- We're seeing the green shoots of that with the normalization of the money coming into various Fixed Income indices and dynamics around the new constantly, and hopefully when that debt issuance, which I think it will at some point, we'll be back to the more normal growth rates there. But, you know, one of the big macro trends that we're executing on and really excited to talk about in the Data Services business, and the data component that hits each of our different verticals, is this concept of AI. Everyone's letter of the year, and how we've been executing on that for and how well we're positioned to continue to execute on that for the next, you know, medium to long term. So we take two steps back.
We have two businesses that are uniquely positioned to benefit from a subscription basis, in the trend of further automation, adoption of large language models, adoption of AI, specifically our connectivity business, which you see our connectivity revenues hit both the exchange segment as well as Fixed Income and Data Services segment. They wind up in both. The reason for that is the compute power required for these models continues to increase. That translates to demand for more power, more data, and access to more connectivity. Our demand for our power in our data centers is at a record high. We've had filed wait lists, things of that nature, because we're bringing more and more power online, and I don't see that demand abating as people continue to adopt these models. So long term, we're really excited about that opportunity.
Then one thing we've started talking a bit more about is what's driving the growth in our desktop and tools portion of other Data Services . Our desktop and tools business is a visualization platform, small part of the business, but we do have that very focused on that energy segment. Additionally, we've got which the number of users in that chat platform is at a 15% cumulative annual growth rate over the last 5 years. We're now approaching 125,000 users connected to that, to that chat platform. Within that chat platform, you have the ability. You've got two tools: you've got one that's a compliance tool, which is these things continue to be regulated. Price discovery continues to be more and more regulated. Your clients do want, you know, a log of that. So that's one monetization opportunity.
The other monetization opportunity is this recognition software that we started talking about. The recognition software has been in production for 10 years. It's a large language model, proprietary large language model we developed. We, it's only open to our ecosystem, and it is smart enough to detect if I'm talking to you about the fact that I keep coughing, or I'm talking to you about a trade idea. If I'm talking to you, it detects that I'm talking to you about a trade idea, it pops in a fair value, and it underlines the trade. What that means is, if it's underlined, it gives you the fair value. Really, it might give you a value as to what, you know, and the data that we're seeing in the market thinks is fair value in that trade.
As an options product, it would, you know, throw in some Greek as well. And if you're happy with the price you've just agreed with your counterparty, the underlying functionality will allow you to submit it to our execution platforms and clearing houses. Now, we started to see the effects of this in our energy market, people starting to meaningfully use this about two years ago. We've spent a lot of time investing in this, in this area, so in production for a decade, took a while for the technology to be tuned enough where it was used as an efficiency tool.
So 2021, we started to see some of the effects of that in our energy markets, very small, but the amount of share that is coming from that tool has increased over, the last two years since we, since we first saw folks using it. More recently has moved into utilities. So we think they're now, because the the model, the large language model, has gotten smarter, we think there's a lot of applicability across different, different asset classes. So there's a bunch of room to run there, and it is still a very, very small portion of our energy market. So you'll see that pop up in terms of revenue in our other data solution subscription standpoint, but then, of course, anything that adds to energy volume, you'll see in the exchange segment.
I think, given our expertise in data, given the fact that we've been such a trusted source for data, I think the AI trend positions us incredibly well, not just for these two products, but large language model needs good data in order to achieve the efficiency that it promises to, or that the buyers do. So I think we're incredibly well-positioned. That's why I'm still so bullish on the data business and the prospects for the future, going back to the question you asked just a bit ago.
Just super quickly, as a follow-on, that 125 thousand users-
Yeah.
You've been at this, I think, for a decade or so in the energy business. That is, is that applicable to other asset classes?
Yeah, it's not just in the energy market. The 125,000 users is energy mainly, but then also equities too.
I mean-
Equity options, equities, derivatives.
Other asset classes.
Absolutely.
Shifting gears, I remember, still on the growth side, that a few years ago, when you first acquired IDC International-
Mm-hmm.
was a big focus area.
Yeah.
I don't want to be 80% US or something. I may be wrong here, but I think the international market was super fragmented, and I think you were very excited about almost, like, rolling up that space or really consolidating, becoming the one shop for everything. Where are we on that? Is that still something that you spend a lot of time on?
Yeah, I'd say that's-
opportunities there?
Yeah, that is definitely still there between there and Asia, the APAC region. Those are two regions where there's still opportunity. That's been an area where we've been slower to act because we had COVID hit us. I think the one thing that COVID was really challenging for... It was fine for existing relationships that we had. It was fine for these types of meetings. It's really tough for customer acquisition, true new logo acquisition, not new buying centers within an existing logo, and that was one of the areas we had identified in Europe, in particular, true new customer acquisition as an opportunity. Now, it's opened back up, and folks are back to traveling, as evidenced by the fact that, you know, you're all sitting in a room today. We continue to see that as a big opportunity.
Shifting gears to pricing-
Mm-hmm.
and pricing power a bit more. Now, obviously, I cover a lot of data service companies.
Uh-huh.
Many of them are here today, and it seems like when they talk about pricing as much as they do, I feel like 3%+ pricing is kind of the norm. Over the last years of higher inflation, those numbers have even moved higher. It seems like when I look at you guys, you don't seem to play that card as much. You seem more careful. So first of all, is that right? We've seen on the future slide, you've changed pricing a little bit for the first time in a while.
Mm-hmm.
But more, more on your data business, is this something you're a little bit cautious on, or it may be an opportunity to do a little bit more in the future, or how should we think about pricing?
You know, it's always served us well, the approach that we had to pricing, which is we price for value, and we don't go to our customers and have an immediate hike up in, in pricing, whereas some of our competitors tend to, tend to do that. On the exchange data side, the exchange data side is stair steps, more than anything, where you won't see pricing changes for a while, and then you will see a pricing change, and then you won't see it for a while, and you will see a change. But on the exchange data side, we're always looking, always pointing back to liquidity in market and new product and product innovation. So we hold ourselves a bit accountable, to defending why we raise prices on the exchange data side of the business.
I think the same thing applies on the Fixed Income side of the business and Data Services side of the business. It has served us well to not be the most aggressive in price, but play for the long term. It's why we're able to gain share, it's why we're able to win takeaway opportunities, because we just have a different philosophy.
Shifting to the trading side of the business, but still within the Fixed Income and-
Yeah
-data solutions segment. Now, yeah, can you talk about your trading platforms here a little bit more? The trends have been great.
Yeah.
It's actually been a nice offset to the recurring revenues, have been a little bit slower for the last couple of years, but you're clearly a player when you think about Tradeweb and MarketAxess, maybe some others out there. So, so does it make sense? Subscale, usually, you try not to be subscale in any of the businesses you're in, so why, I guess, why are you in these businesses? How do they help the data side? And maybe what are the opportunities that I may not be thinking about to scale them or be more accurate?
Yeah, I mean, there's been... As with any acquisition we do, the first thing we do is upgrade the technology, because sometimes we find businesses that have core technology. Great thing about our playbook is we know how to take core technology, upgrade it, and then take it to the next level. The TMC acquisition, BondPoint and TMC acquisitions are pretty good examples of that. I think we when we resegmented the business in 2020, it just I changed our go-to-market. And, you know, the way we were thinking about that team previously had been very focused on doing that hard work of the technology upgrade. So they were really well on the path there. So it was easy to change the go-to-market. And it's really resulted in us being able to gain share in muni.
You know, we got into that business really because, given the strength of our assets in the market, if I think about Fixed Income, that is the portion of Fixed Income that has the longest room to run in terms of electronification. We've a lot of what's driven the growth that we've seen over the last year and a half in the execution side of the business, has been our penetration into institutional and really driven by the muni market. The nice thing about going to the hardest market, the muni market, is munis are frequently traded as a spread to treasuries. I'm sure you all know that, so forgive me. But that's enabled us to gain some share in the Treasury markets more recently, as those are now the products that are starting to gain traction.
So you know, it's, I think it's still early days, probably mid-cycle of what, you know, the electronification of Fixed Income really looks like. It's gonna be a data-driven trend, though, and given the data assets that we have, I think we're extraordinarily well positioned to continue to take share, to continue to evolve our platforms.
Speaking to the trends that you just electronic, et cetera. I guess it would be if exactly to talk about regulation for a second.
Yeah.
I remember when you sat on the FIMSAC committee at the SEC, I think that thing is basically flunked or inactive, I think they call it. But nevertheless, there are certain rules on Fixed Income regulation. U.S., in particular, they were watching clearing of treasury market, treasuries. Some folks are talking about credit, trade reporting needing to be sped up and what that could mean. So, yes-
Yeah.
I mean, when you... And, and there's probably more that you're paying attention to. So how, how do you think about the re-regulation? What are you watching? And again, how drive more platforms, generate demand for data. What, what are you seeing, and how could it impact you?
Yeah, FIMSAC was a great use of time. It was three years long. It was a use of time. You know, the thing that I was really proud of is, you know, one of the subcommittees I chaired was the Muni Transparency Committee. I really like the muni markets, which is why I talk about them so much, because I find them to be just such an interesting market structure and such an interesting market that's ripe for innovation. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that market in particular. There are some recommendations that came out of FIMSAC that are still winging their way through the ATS registration. That was a FIMSAC recommendation.
Trade reporting actually was one of the others that we recommended in terms of the time. I think the SEC went a little bit further than what we had recommended at FIMSAC, but yeah. I think we tend to have been able to use regulation as a tailwind. If you look at things that are systemic regulation, like the implementation of Dodd-Frank, you know, we saw that as an opportunity early on to be a tailwind for us. We have Dodd-Frank forcing the central clearing of CDS. We created ICE Clear Credit, which I think has 95%+ market share of CDS clearing, which is tremendous. You know, a decent size chunk of our Fixed Income and Data Services revenue.
Anytime there is additional regulation, particularly regulation that's adding transparency, it's something that we're highly interested in because the infrastructure we have in place, the networks we have in place, the various assets we have in place, we think we're incredibly well positioned to capitalize on that.
Okay, then maybe just lastly, then we'll switch to the NYSE, but this is a conference, so data is the topic.
That's great.
But, I guess, how does M&A fit into your mindset in those businesses, right?
Yeah.
Like, clearly, I said, you guys with your hands full with AI at the moment, but clearly, this is an area of innovation or your data businesses. So clearly, there's got to be some inorganic opportunity. So, you know, what are you seeing? What are you excited about? I know your hands are full, but clearly, there's got to be some more to tuck in. So, maybe just summarize how M&A fits into your thinking.
Yeah, we always look for bolt-ons. I mean, I think the far majority of our acquisitions at ICE are these smaller bolt-ons. The bigger we get, the bigger, the smaller bolt-ons get. I think a good example of that is we bought the RISQ, R-I-S-Q business at the end of 2021, after about a year after we had bought Ellie Mae, which was our largest acquisition at the time. Because we identified a gap with that business, which was good geospatial data and how that would evolve to climate data. But then importantly, how having good geospatial data could really fit into our mortgage vertical too, because what that business does is it divides the U.S. into a grid, and it goes down to the parcel piece of information.
So that's got applicability on the climate side, but that's also, which is where, you know, we got to know those guys through, but it also has clear applicability in our mortgage business, and we had already had our sights set on continuing to build out our mortgage vertical. So I don't think we'll shy away from, you know, the smaller bolt-ons and tuck-ins, but, you know, we're highly cognizant of executing the opportunities we have in front of us, having just completed the Black Knight acquisition, given the size of the Black Knight acquisition and the opportunity we see with Black Knight to really provide an end-to-end solution to our mortgage tech customers.
Great. Well, with the few minutes we have left, why don't we switch over to the NYSE Group part of your job? The more visible job, I think, for you often.
Yep.
I see you on TV plenty. But, you know, and usually we see you on TV because of IPOs happening then.
Yeah.
So maybe, I think, everybody in this room is curious about markets reopening, IPO coming to the market. So, seen a few things here, but, yeah, what do you think? Why should we be excited, and, yeah, what are the, what are the private companies saying?
I think in Q2, you saw a soft reopening, the start of a soft reopening of the IPO markets. You saw some large deals get done, and you saw all sorts of types of deals get done. I'm just going to rattle a few off. You saw Kenvue, which was a Johnson & Johnson spin-off, but they raised $3.8 billion at their IPO. You saw [audio distortion], which was a real traditional IPO. You saw Savers, you saw Fidela, Kodiak. The reason I just rattled those off is that's a mix of spin-offs, it's a mix of traditional IPOs, it's domestic, international, it's across different sectors. Energy, consumer, and financials were the three sectors that we saw. The deals got done, and a lot of those had popped at their IPO.
You know, the stock went up when it opened, and we found the right value. And deals got done a lot of times at the high end of the range, which is a really good sign. It's a really good sign for the companies in our pipeline, and it is a good sign in private companies. In our pipeline side, yeah, there is demand in the market, because that was the big question: Is there investor demand in the market for good companies? This quarter, you're continuing to see that. Now you're starting to see some tech deals go out. Again, all different types of tech deals, different types of structures, too, if I'm honest. So we'll see how the next six weeks go.
We've got a large backlog that looks like it's going to go in October, too. I think if they go well, I think that sets us up for a good reopening in 2024. Can't say when in 2024. I don't know if it's going to be January first in 2024. I don't know if it's going to be April in 2024. But it is giving the companies in our pipeline the confidence that they can raise capital. The volatility has abated. The thing that I always talk about at conferences is VIX, looking at the volatility indicator in the market. When you've got the VIX above 20, you're not going to have a lot of IPOs. Last year, you saw it at 30, 35. You saw markets moving all over because private companies, CEOs are not necessarily worried about IPO day.
They're worried about the weeks that follow, the months that follow, the years that follow, having to explain that stock chart to you all about, you know, what's going on with your IPO price, and then where the stock is currently trading. There's less volatility in the market, that's up nicely, and now you've seen the VIX below that 20 level-ish, which is, you know, optimal time for the companies to start to come out. So assuming the next six weeks go well, assuming that volatility stays where it is, I think, I think we're setting up for the opening in 2024.
And then on the trading side-
Sure
... I think there's been a view that in equities and options, a lot of growth during COVID, and that can only fall off from these elevated levels. I mean, anything you would point to that gives you confidence that these businesses can grow, or do you share the sentiment that maybe we're looking to peak? And then any other things like market share that you're watching to make sure you-
Yeah
Get those businesses, which are well composed, still very relevant, and drive a lot of other things that they continue to be close.
Yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about those businesses, controlling what we can. So obviously, the volatility, the counter to the, you don't have a lot of listings, new listings, at least in volatile markets. You do have a lot of trading. Last year, we saw continued high levels of trading. This year, with volatility abating, trading volumes have abated, a bit. The area that in some respects, a little fortuitous, it's all happening, is we're completing our final migration to our state-of-the-art trading platform, the most deterministic performance platform in the market. That completes with our last medallion going live at the end of October, which is our Amex options platform.
We're really excited about that because it's been heavily invested in, and the early signs that we're seeing all being on that platform are very positive in terms of ways we can optimize to gain further share in the market. So we're, the transactions team is very focused on continuing to hone that platform, make it the most optimal platform, optimal response times we can possibly have, while continuing to manage the load on the platform. The amount of messages that we've seen go through it is really off the charts. 500 billion messages, incoming order messages on a given day.
In really volatile times, it's tremendous, just handling it with so really happy with the performance of it so far, and I'll be happy when we're done, and we can then work on the next stage of it, which is pruning the platform.
I'm watching the time, and I think we've 3 minutes left. I think we have maybe room for 1 or 2, if anything is in the audience. If not, great. Just then maybe just 1, 1, since we are still on the NYSE here, just a question on anything else that are not listed on trading that we should be paying attention? You talked about data a lot. I don't know if there's anything else on the data side or other side on the exchange business, on the NYSE business?
Yeah, I mean, the data side of the business continues to do really well. It's been, you know, a good contributor to the growth that we've seen in the subscription portion of the exchanges business. So when you think about our three verticals, that's where you see that demand for connectivity, demand for our exchange data, continue to be quite strong. And we've been able to capitalize on those trends in the market.
Then maybe, since nobody wants to ask it, maybe we'll just finish away from your business for a second.
Yep.
Because clearly everybody's been focused on the Black Knight acquisition. Nobody from the management team has talked publicly yet about that deal post-close. Can I hear more in a few weeks? But anything from your perspective that, you would point out that you had to make some concessions to, relative to the original deal, but maybe just a quick reminder why we all should be excited-
Yeah.
or you guys are excited about what you actually took over and what we should be watching over the next 12, 18, 24 months.
Yeah. I mean, the investment thesis from a strategic perspective was very focused on providing an end-to-end solution. We like to provide end-to-end solutions to our clients. It's a theme that we run in multiple verticals. We do that through technology. So if there is an opportunity to take a market using technology, transform it from analog to digital, as you heard Jeff say, we can't think of a market more analog, the paper-intense market of buying a home in the U.S., and do it on a wholesome basis, providing an end-to-end solution to a client, we're going to go do those types of deals. And that was the strategic behind Black Knight. The assets we got are the ones that actually complete that thesis, because the one bit that was missing from our mortgage vertical, our mortgage segment, was the servicing component.
We had the origination, the reporting, the closing, we didn't have the servicing. So what happens to your mortgage when you have to pay it monthly, prepayment, refinance, all those types of things, all the things that happen within that, that life cycle. That was a bit missing, and that we now have that as a result of the acquisition. And, you know, we're just see a tremendous opportunity to apply our expertise at taking analog markets, turning them into digital, and applying really good technology. And it's going to be one of those stories that we're, we're going to be able to upgrade, invest in the technology to make it state-of-the-art from an offering perspective.
Obviously, a side effect of all this, anytime we do an analog digital conversion, is really the data that comes out of it, which is a tremendous opportunity that we're excited about. Again, when we think about what really ties all of our segments together, where the opportunity continues to be, is that data component. The data business is very electronic, the data expansion and Data Services. And it is a variety of approaches, but also as an opportunity to digitize those markets that are in the process of digitizing. And the data that provides the opportunity in mortgage to drive down costs to the end consumer, add efficiency and add transparency to a pretty opaque market that affects the end consumer, is a tremendous opportunity for us.
We have to stop on a better note. So fantastic. Thanks, Lynn, for being here today, and excited to watch what's how this plays out over the next few years.
Thank you.
Thanks, guys. Bye.