All right, good morning. Welcome to day two of our financial services conference. I'm Ben Budish, Barclays analyst, covering the U.S. brokers, asset managers, and exchanges. And with us kicking off today, Ian Lowitt, CEO of Marex Group. Ian, thanks so much for being here. Welcome.
Thanks, Ben. Thanks for inviting us, and you know, thanks to everybody here in the audience who braved the 7:30 A.M. start to sort of hear about Marex.
That's a good place to start. Marex is one of the newest publicly traded companies at the conference. Can you maybe just talk a bit about what Marex does? What's the key value proposition that you're providing to your clients?
Sure. Yeah, as you mentioned, you know, we're recently listed. We listed towards the end of April, so we're whatever that is, you know, but a little bit less than five months as a public company. It's you know, we've been doing well, so it's it felt like it's been going, you know, pretty well. You know, becoming a public company listing on Nasdaq, I think was, you know, the, the right step for the firm, given all the success we'd had growing the firm over sort of circa the last decade or so. We, you know, have been able to increase profitability sequentially every year for essentially a decade now, with 34% average growth, and we're on track for another very strong year this year.
So with that track record, I think that there was receptivity in the public markets, and we were able to to list successfully. And, you know, the stock has performed well since then, so we're extremely pleased about that. And then there are all these sort of intangible benefits that we are sort of receiving as a public company, where I just think with, you know, the added scrutiny that you get as a public company, there's just a lot more sort of comfort that various stakeholders have, you know, in your firm, whether that's your clients, prospective clients, regulators, rating agencies, banks, even staff. So, you know, that's all terrific.
And obviously, as a public company, you have, sort of a currency that makes you more credible around acquisitions, and the stock itself, you know, is a way to bring the firm together. So all of that's, you know, going extremely well. You know, in terms of your question about what Marex does, I mean, typically, I think if people are to try to understand Marex, it's sort of useful to just understand the ecosystem that we're a part of. You know, people are very familiar with, how important infrastructure is to the successful functioning of the financial markets. And as people think about infrastructure, typically, you know, they think about the exchanges and the clearing houses.
And I think that's largely because, you know, those firms have just been so successful, and they represent sort of substantial amount of market cap. And so many of the investors are just very familiar with, you know, the CMEs, ICEs, you know, other sort of exchanges. You know, what I think people have sort of spent less time trying to understand, in part because there are very few firms that make this their business, as Marex does, is how do people connect to those exchanges? Because if you're ICE or you're CME, you're not dealing directly with the firms. You're working through clearing members, of which, you know, Marex is one, and one of the largest.
And, you know, they don't do the work to sort of assess the creditworthiness of sort of individual potential users of their service. And when it comes to making margin calls, if, you know, the futures or options actually move in value, they call the clearing member rather than the firm itself. And so there's this connective layer between the world of clients and the world of exchanges. And what Marex has done is sort of build out a business that's all about creating that connectivity between clients and those exchanges. And because you're providing that clearing service, you know, typically those clients are also looking for you to provide execution services, either as agent or as market maker. And we've had sort of great success building that out.
And then, if there isn't an on-exchange instrument that works for a client, they look for a bespoke solution. We have an ability to do that. So that's essentially what the firm does. We, you know, looking to build out that connectivity layer between clients and exchanges. We're having great success doing that, and we're also providing these ancillary services. And by being very focused on that, you know, we've been able to deliver, you know, terrific track records.
Great. Well, maybe just talk about some of your more recent results. So can you unpack a little bit about, you know, what we saw in the H1 of this year, how the macro environment impacted the business? Maybe some of the dynamics in the metals market where you know, particularly kind of surprised to the upside in Q2?
Yeah, look, we obviously had a very strong first half. Revenues are up 27%, profitability was up 28%. Extremely pleasing, that was across all of our different segments. So we had double-digit growth across all of our segments. But as you point out, you know, metals were sort of a standout. You know, in terms of the backdrop, exchange volumes were up between 8% and 9%. That was skewed towards commodities, which were up around 22%, and that obviously plays, you know, to our benefit.
And then in the second quarter, you had just an unusual and very positive environment for our business in the metals market, where, you know, some changes in how Russian metal was handled on the LME created, you know, a great deal of interest in in the sort of metals product and quite a lot of sort of underlying volatility. And, you know, our business is set up to support clients. We were able, I think, you know, to gain some amount of share and certainly position ourselves very successfully with a lot of clients there and, you know, generate a lot of profitability.
You know, what's sort of heartening and important about that whole episode is not just the impact it had on second quarter earnings, but on what it did in terms of being able to create credibility in the market, that if you're sort of dealing with a counterpart, you want somebody who's completely reliable, who will quote you prices at whatever size you want to transact in. And Marex was able to establish that with a number of quite significant counterparts, and that positions us well to gain share going forward.
... Great. And what about Q3? You know, what are you seeing so far? And maybe what's your kind of near-term outlook? You know, how are you seeing the geopolitical environment impacting trading volumes, you know, spreads, that sort of thing? Any thoughts on the potential impact of the upcoming election on activity on your platform?
That's a lot in that question. I think that we've certainly expected and are seeing sort of a more normalized environment in Q3. So it you know, it's not as sort of buoyant as what we saw in the second quarter, but it's still very strong, and the firm is performing well. You know, we did provide guidance to the market suggesting that we'd make between $280 million and $290 million this year. That was sort of anticipating a more normalized environment for the rest of the year, as well as interest rate declines in the sort of H2 of the year. So we we'd anticipated those changes, and that's broadly sort of playing out you know, as we expected.
You know, in terms of, you know, how exposed we are to geopolitical events or sort of elections, I mean, we've really tried to build a business that has a great deal of recurring revenues, and our clients engage with us essentially to hedge out their positions. So in that circumstance, you're not dealing with, sort of the firm taking risk, and, we're just sort of servicing the flow of our clients. And as a sort of consequence, while you're never completely insulated from those kinds of, sort of macro items and geopolitical risk and, and elections, we've tried to insulate ourselves as much as we can, and so we don't anticipate those being particularly significant for us.
Understood, and I want to maybe dig into kind of your growth strategy a little bit, but just, you know, being the lazy analyst I am, you know, I appreciate that you provided full year guidance. So just curious, you know, do you expect to provide guidance every time you report? What's your thoughts on, you know, how you're going to message to The Street?
Yeah, I think that we certainly don't intend to provide guidance on a sort of continuous basis. We did feel, though, based on how strong, in particular, our second quarter was, where we were, you know, as you know, about 50% ahead of sort of the consensus estimate, that we didn't want to leave the market, you know, with a view that we thought we could just continue at that pace. You know, that would have been a sugar high, and really, we wanted to sort of signal that we anticipated the market returning to sort of more normalized levels, and that was sort of the reason that we provided that guidance.
So I think that we would provide guidance when it feels to us that there's, you know, a real need for us to do that, but it's not intended to be regular.
Understood. So maybe digging into the growth strategy a little bit. You know, you've identified a number of key initiatives, geographic expansion in the Middle East, APAC. Can you talk a little bit about the progress so far and, you know, longer term, how big of an opportunity do you think these can be?
Yeah, look, I think that the way that we think about growth is that you need to add clients, and you need to do more business with your existing clients. That has a couple of dimensions to it. Obviously, if you expand geographically, you can add additional clients, and as you add our products, you could service your existing clients with sort of additional access to the firm, and you can do more with them. So that's really how we think about it. In terms of the specific geographic opportunities, the Middle East really does feel like an extremely vibrant area for us. We see, you know, a number of clients have moved from Europe and Switzerland, maybe in particular, and established themselves in the Middle East.
There are a lot of staff who are sort of keen to move with their clients or just sort of move to that region. With the acquisitions of ED&F and OTCex, we have a core of about sixty people, and we see genuine and substantial opportunity to service a client base that, you know, is sort of based in the Middle East. Now, we also see, you know, an opportunity in APAC. We've sort of added clearing to our offering by joining ASX and joining SGX, and that really has transformed what we can actually do with clients. You see so much power of bringing people onto your platform and see how, you know, that can sort of drive up the engagement you have with clients, as well as sort of the level of profitability.
So, you know, certainly the adding of clearing to our offering in Australia has made a huge difference. We've recently expanded out, you know, into New Zealand, where we're offering, you know, a series of products to clients. And the clients that are being covered out of there are already seeing sort of the benefit of, you know, having access to the range of products we actually have, you know, within Marex. So that's all, you know, going very well. So we see lots of opportunity to expand out on the same model, servicing client flow, providing them with access to clearing, and then servicing their liquidity requirements, either sort of as an agent or as a market maker, and adding in solutions, and it's working, you know, extremely well for us.
I'm just curious, to what extent is the opportunity predicated on new clients that are specific to those geographies or servicing your already global clients that are already doing business there but want to partner with you there? Or is it all, you know-
Yeah, it's really a combination of those two things. So, you know, probably more about sort of adding clients who are regional and then, cross-selling them into, you know, other regions. So I think that's probably the bigger driver of that. But for example, you know, SGX, there are clients we have in Europe who want to have access to that particular exchange, and so we're certainly seeing an opportunity to provide access for our existing clients to that product set. But probably, you know, the majority of it is, adding new clients in that region, providing them with local product, but then also giving them the opportunity to transact with a sort of broader set of products, and that's also a driver of growth for us.
Understood. Well, in addition to geographic expansion, you've talked about new products as a key part of the strategy. So how do new products fit in? What does the current, you know, roadmap look like?
... Again, our intention is to increase the resilience of the firm by broadening it out and diversifying it. And you know, adding new products really does make a big difference to our ability to meet that particular goal. Obviously, we have a number of different initiatives, but probably the two that are the most substantial for us are environmentals, where you know, we just see real genuine interest for a large number of our clients to participate and engage in environmental products. And that's a business which is quite substantial for us already and growing quite quickly. And then the second is you know, within the clearing world you know, we're adding LCH swaps to our existing set of products.
We're the first non-bank to obtain, you know, that license, and we see that as a very substantial opportunity for us. So, you know, we're sort of also adding, you know, in various ways, physical oil trading, actually physical oil broking, you know, some stuff in FX. So a couple of sort of smaller activities, but those two are probably the ones that are the standouts.
Got it. And you mentioned this a little bit before, but in terms of, you know, cross-selling clients to new products and how integral is this to expanding the business rather than the product-specific, geographic-specific, how much can you, you know, how much more can you do with your existing clients?
Yeah, I think that, that's the key for us. You know, the amount of cross-sell that we actually have in the firm at the moment is, it's indicative that this is a really substantial opportunity, but it still feels like it has an enormous amount of runway. And it's the best way that we know to increase sort of the resilience of the firm, the diversification of what we do. And there are many, many examples. I mean, there's a, you know, a clearing client that we have, who does sort of fixed income clearing with us in the U.S. When they look to expand to do energy trading in Europe, they engage with us, they clearing energy with us in Europe, and they're also looking for us to provide them with access to sort of liquidity in energy markets.
You know, that's a sort of a perfect example of how having that broader set of products, as well as a very strong relationship, it gives you an opportunity to become much more relevant to those particular clients, as well as sort of supporting, you know, all of those additional businesses. So it's a very real opportunity to us. And what we need to do is organize the firm in a way that puts us in the strongest possible position to sort of capture those cross-sell opportunities. And I think there are enough real examples inside the firm of the success of that that it really has, you know, substantial traction.
Great. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your client base itself. You know, what, what is the mix of users with real hedging needs versus, you know, financial players, speculators? And among that base, how do you think about the opportunities for growth?
I mean, our base has sort of historically been very focused on sort of commodity consumers and producers, and that was the Marex heritage, and that was sort of the core of what we actually did, and it was the predominance of our revenues. We realized that if we were going to continue with our track record of sequential growth through a whole range of different market environments, that it was sensible for us to diversify into a broader set of products, and in particular, sort of the financial products, whether that's equities, it's sort of credit rates, FX. And we've had real success sort of adding to the commodities core, which still represents sort of probably 45%-55% of our revenues.
You know, a series of sort of financial players who engage with us around sort of financial products. You know, the commodity players either have an essential requirement to hedge out their either their consumption or their production of sort of commodities, and so that's extremely sort of sticky, recurring revenues. You know, financials, you know, may be a little bit more volatile, but it does allow us to establish ourselves as sort of a critical player, providing sort of access to markets, either as agent or as market maker. And we're increasingly seeing, you know, those financial players, whether they be large banks or they be sort of asset managers or sort of private banks, utilizing the firm in all of those sort of different ways.
So it's all about, you know, ways to create new avenues for growth, as well as to add to the resilience and diversification of the firm.
Got it, makes sense. Let's dive into some of the different parts of the business, maybe starting with clearing. It's the largest part of the business.
Right.
It's grown meaningfully over the last couple of years. Maybe just to level set, how does this form the base of your business? You kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier. How does it form the base? How does it kind of play into the other parts of the business?
Yeah, I mean, you know, as you noted, so the clearing is about half the profitability of the firm, and it's also sort of the heart of the offering we make to clients. So, you know, as I sort of described earlier, if you want access to an exchange, you need to work through a clearing member, and we're setting ourselves up to be the largest non-bank sort of clearer and are enjoying, you know, sort of genuine success at that. You know, it's a 50% plus margin business, sort of in the current environment, so, you know, extremely attractive business. It's a hugely important relationship to the client, you know, that ability to access markets through your clearer. It's typically involving the CEO or the CFO in the decision on who your clearer is.
It embeds the firm in sort of the downstream processes of, you know, of your clients. You're providing them with sort of critical information for their sort of back-office processes, for their risk management. It tends to involve a lot of work to get people onboarded, but once they're there, you know, they remain sort of reliable clients for an extended period of time, and those revenues are easily forecasted and extremely resilient. So it's a terrific base to have, you know, your firm built around. And then, as I sort of indicated earlier, it also sort of leads to, you know, other business in terms of supporting the flow of those particular clients. So, you know, we see a lot of potential growth. We're 2% of our total addressable market in our set of products.
There's a great deal of share to be gained, and, you know, we're just very excited about our plans to build out to be the largest non-bank provider of these services.
Can you expand on that a little bit? You know, the process by which you gain share. What's the current state of competition in clearing? What sort of, you know, for investors that may be less familiar, what differentiates one clearer versus another? What makes one better than another, and how do you see, you know, competition unfolding versus the kind of traditional, you know, bank FCM competitors?
Yeah, I mean, you know, historically, the largest providers of these services have been banks and investment banks, and they still are the largest provider, but what I think is going on in this particular space is that, you know, the banks and the investment banks are sort of sharpening their focus with regard to which clients they want to service and which products they actually want to invest in, and, you know, to be a clearer, you have to continuously be updating sort of your systems. You need to be making, you know, fairly substantial investments, and you need to, if you're going to sort of succeed at it, you really need to be very committed to it.
And, you know, for a variety of reasons, many banks have sort of de-emphasized this as sort of one of the offerings they, you know, they provide to the marketplace. And what that's done is it's created a, you know, a really important opportunity for firms like Marex, who really are very comfortable just being a clearer and provider of sort of the ancillary liquidity services. And what clients are looking for is an investment-grade rating, because, you know, being a clearer, being somebody's clearer is, you know, critically important to them. They want to make sure that it's a sort of reliable player.
They like the fact that this is sort of the core of our business, and so at times of stress, we're going to stick with our clients, and we've been able to demonstrate that over a series of periods of sort of dislocation in various markets, including the Ukraine invasion, the most recent sort of move in sort of copper prices and there are others.
So we find that sort of focus on customers, the fact that we're just into sort of servicing customers rather than taking any positions, you know, on behalf of the firm, the investment-grade rating, the fact that we can connect people to fifty eight different exchanges, which is probably a broader number of exchanges than anybody else, that we're very comfortable, you know, sort of servicing a very large number of contracts, both financial and physical, you know, I think sort of differentiates us and it puts us in a spot where, you know, we're gaining share in a slow but steady way, which I think is exactly the way one would want to do that.
Got it. Maybe one last question on clearing. So clearing obviously benefits from growth in collateral balances.
Yes.
Collateral requirements can change, sometimes meaningfully over short periods of time. So can you talk a little bit about how balances have grown, shifted over the last few years? And maybe just one other kind of important, you know, financial aspect, how you share NII with your customers?
Yeah. So, as you pointed out, you know, the exchanges set margin levels, and at periods of market turmoil, they tend to increase those margins, sometimes with a lag. But certainly the balances that people have to place in order to maintain the same positions typically goes up when markets are much more volatile, and then when markets normalize, they tend to reduce, you know, the margin rate. So in terms of that, times of turmoil tend to mean that there's sort of more cash that clients have to post with you, so you can post on their behalf to the exchanges, and that's obviously very good for your clearing business.
You know, what that also does, though, is, you know, take some amount of liquidity out of those markets, and so, you know, it makes some of the sort of flow businesses, sort of less active. The reverse of that, which is when, you know, the exchanges actually lower their margin levels, it actually increases the amount of activity that we see in some sort of the flow businesses. So you have natural offsets, you know, within our mix of businesses, you know, to that particular effect. They don't tend to happen that dramatically, but they can. And they tend to increase far faster than they decrease. But when we look at our overall client balances, you know, they do tend to be higher when margin rates are higher.
But underlying what's going on is sort of a gradual increase in our sort of normalized balances as we're adding clients to our platform. So we're adding probably between three and five clearing clients every week, and we're seeing our balances grow even in a normalized way, although there will be obviously fluctuations driven by the level of sort of margin required by the exchanges. In terms of interest income, obviously, you know, when you're posting, you know, sort of cash to the exchanges, they pay you something for that, and to the extent that clients are leaving some balances with you, you invest that in typically with banks on, you know, overnight, and you're generating some return, you know, from that.
So the clearing activity is more profitable when rates are higher, and we sort of anticipate that those will sort of come down over whatever it is, next 15 months or so per the sort of forward curve. Now, what we find is with about 60% of our balances, you know, we share that interest income with our clients and typically take out a fixed, a fixed amount, so between 100 and 150 basis points. And what that does is it, you know, lowers the sort of sensitivity of the firm's earnings when rates come down, because for 60% of the balances, you're essentially just taking a fixed spread. And it's only on the 40% where we're retaining essentially all of those balances, where we're impacted, you know, by declining rates.
... Got it. Maybe moving over to the market-making part of the business. So the market-making segment had a really strong quarter, as we talked about earlier, driven by the Russian restrictions put in place on the LME. So how do you think about maybe high level of growth more broadly? And then for us, as we're thinking about activity in a given quarter, and we can track exchange volumes, we can get a sense for volatility. Obviously, we had this surprise where your spreads kind of widened, driving the outsized profitability this quarter. So how should we be thinking about, you know, broader market activity and how it translates to your results?
Yeah, look, I think that, you know, not just within market making, but more generally across the firm, the fact that we're involved in so many different asset classes really does dampen the volatility of the earnings in it. So, you know, while obviously we have an extremely strong metals franchise, we also have a strong franchise in Ags options as well as, you know, we make markets in sort of refined oil products. So, there's actually diversification within market making, and while it... There will be sort of periods where each of those are enjoying particularly sort of buoyant circumstances.
As a sort of more general matter, we see a sort of minimum level of activity because most of the clients actually have sort of genuine needs, and they need to hedge out their exposures, and they come to us, you know, to do that. And so the way I think about it is that there's a recurring level of revenue and profitability in market making, which is broadly, you know, at one level, across the cycle. I mean, it's gonna move up and down a little bit. But then there are these opportunities that you get in particular markets when you have dislocation. And again, because what you're doing is servicing the flow, not taking risk positions. What that does is it sort of creates a sort of positive upside.
So we're looking to create a business that, at some level, is sort of flowed at some level of profitability, which is just sort of representative of the underlying flow, and you'd expect that to be growing as we're gaining share. And then you have periods where you can generate additional profitability because the markets are just supportive, and that's the way I think we think about market making.
Got it. And what about from a risk perspective? How do you think about managing risk on a daily basis? How do you protect from black swan events?
Yeah, I mean, and that's obviously the critical sort of skill that you need, you know, in a firm like ours. You know, I think that because we focus on servicing customer flow, and we're genuinely not taking sort of proprietary risk in this, we're trying to make, you know, our market making, by example, be as close to agency as we possibly can. I mean, obviously, it's not identical, but you're trying to move the risk out as quickly as you can, and we operate with very modest levels of our, you know, $2-$3 million of 99.75 confidence. And so we're intrinsically, you know, we're not exposed to a lot of risk, but obviously there is risk.
You know, there's credit risk, there's, you know, some amount of market risk, and, you know, we're very attentive to it, very disciplined around it, and because this is just so the nature of our business, you know, we've had an excellent track record of, you know, managing it.
Great. Maybe moving on now to your hedging and investment solutions business. So you issue structured notes, which you use in some capacity to fund other parts of the business. Perhaps just for those in the room or those listening, can you explain, you know, what exactly those are and how they, you know, kind of facilitate that funding?
Sure. Structured notes are essentially, you know, a way to embed a derivative in a Marex, bond, which is sort of issued to, you know, whoever wants a particular investment return. So, you know, it could be, you know, the best of, you know, three equity stocks or, you know, some combination of that. So there's almost an infinite variety of how, you know, investors might choose to express particular views, which they then, sort of embed in a, in a structured note. So the exposure on that is sort of hedged out completely. And there's some amount of sort of sales credit that results from it, but we also generate, you know, a decent amount of cash.
Now, we don't, we tend to just hold that cash on the balance sheet to be available to deal with sort of stresses in the marketplace, so we can continue to support our clients, so you know, what you'll see, you know, on our balance sheet currently is, you know, a level of residual cash just in sort of the corporate world, which is essentially matching the, you know, the amount of liabilities that are created by sort of structured notes, but the knowledge that we have, that excess liquidity gives us so much confidence that we can continue to support our clients, you know, through more challenging environments.
Understood. Maybe now pivoting to kind of capital allocation.
So you've been very acquisitive over the years. You know, how do you think about balancing margins, M&A, capital returns, dividends, you know, what's sort of your priority? You know, what's the framework there?
Yeah, I mean, I think our sort of framework is, you know, we're in the fortunate position of, you know, generating fairly substantial amounts of sort of capital each year. So, you know, at the guidance level that we've sort of indicated, we should be generating somewhat north of $200 million of profit after tax. And, you know, that's obviously available to support growth in the business. It's available to sort of provide a dividend. It's available to support M&A, then conceptually, it's also available to support buybacks.
We, as you point out, have to balance those different sort of requirements for capital, and I think the way we think about it is, you know, so the first requirement is support the organic sort of growth of the business to ensure we remain investment grade as we are growing the firm. You know, we see genuine benefit of sort of signaling to market the health of our business and our prospects with a progressive sort of dividend, which we announced, you know, in our most recent quarter. We, as you point out, there is lots of opportunity to consolidate in our space and make acquisitions. And we need to sort of balance all of those.
I think that, you know, the benefit of sort of operating at this level of profitability is that we are in a position where we can balance those all out.
Got it. And on the Q2 call, you mentioned there are some, like, bolt-on type acquisitions-
In the $10-$20 million range. You're hoping to close on some time in the back half of the year. Anything you can share there in terms of what sort of capabilities you're looking to add, or how you may be trying to, you know, expand from a customer base perspective?
I mean, I think the way we think about acquisitions is, you know, how do you acquire clients, and how do you acquire sort of capabilities that you don't currently have? So that's how we're sort of thinking about it. You know, we did raise a sort of primary in our IPO of, you know, $75 million, which is $70 million after the fees. And, you know, we've also sort of signaled to the market that we're looking for a 20% return on equity. So, you know, the 20% return on equity on the $70-$75 million gets you to, you know, $14-$15 million of earnings that we would look to generate as a result of the acquisitions that we're looking to do.
You know, what we are seeing is pretty substantial number of opportunities at a whole range of scale and size. It's really about making sure that the things that we do choose to proceed with do provide us with new clients, new capabilities. You know, we are interested in expanding geographically, so to the extent that one can actually find acquisitions that sort of help with that, you know, those are probably preferred. And we also know that we need to remain, you know, extremely disciplined around price because, yet again, we're a public company, everything's going to be examined. And I think that investors that have seen a terrific track record of acquisitions, but also want to see that, you know, we're going to remain disciplined as we move forward.
And, you know, we certainly, you know, have that discipline and, you know, we'll bring it to bear.
Got it. Maybe one more question on capital allocation in particular.
Um-
Thoughts on returning capital through repurchases?
... repurchases versus dividends, to the extent there are, you know, no acquisitions on the horizon that you would be looking to do immediately.
Yeah, I think that it comes up in many conversations with sort of investors, and I think different people have different preferences. You know, I believe that being able to signal the confidence that management and the board has with regard to our longer term prospects, you know, by paying a dividend and describing it as progressive, is extremely valuable to investors and prospective investors. I think that's why the board sort of chose to do a dividend. And, you know, we also want to, you know, sort of limit dilution from any sort of stock plans. And so I think that that will probably mean that, you know, we will be doing, you know, some buybacks at some point in the future, to be determined exactly what that is.
But we certainly, you know, see a role for both of those, you know, over time. And we're, you know, we're looking to balance all of those, use of capital. Supporting, our existing business and retaining the investment-grade rating is probably the most important, you know, the dividend, buybacks and acquisitions. And, you know, life is a balancing act as a, you know, as a management team, and, you know, we're looking to ensure we get that balance about right.
Great. Well, that's just about everything I want to ask you. I'll turn it back to you to see if you have any closing comments?
Yeah, I mean, all I would say is, you know, first of all, thanks to, you know, all of the investors who have, sort of trusted, you know, the firm and, and have, invested, in us. You know, we're very excited about our prospects. We certainly believe that, we're in a very attractive marketplace. We've built a firm that's sort of capable of taking advantage of, of that opportunity, gaining share, continuing to add clients and do more business with those clients. And, you know, notwithstanding the, you know, expected, you know, headwinds from, interest rates, coming down, which, you know, is definitely sort of a manageable level.
You know, we're setting up the firm so that, you know, we can deliver sequential growth, and, you know, we're very excited about our prospects.
Great. Well, we'll leave it there. Ian, thank you so much. What a pleasure to have you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.