Good morning, everybody. We'll go ahead and get started here. I am Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Capital Markets Technology Analyst here at Raymond James. Presenting this this morning we have Nasdaq, and on their behalf, we have Chief Strategy Officer, Jeremy Skule. Format's just gonna be a Q&A fireside chat. With that, Jeremy, welcome.
Thank you. Good to see you.
It's great to have you here. It's your first time attending the event, so maybe just to start out, can you share your background and your role with Nasdaq?
Sure. I joined Nasdaq 14 years ago. I joined to basically turn around their brand and reputation at a particular moment. Led marketing for them. I also rebuilt the marketing function, go-to-market strategy, and the whole tech stack. From there, I took over the strategy function. We introduced a new strategic framework. We codified the vision and direction the company was going to move in, worked on some new capital allocation processes and procedures, targeting some new growth vectors, and then about a year and a half ago, added to the Verafin Financial Crime Management team and had the fortune and opportunity to work with all the great people, a part of that business, and I am Executive Chairman of the Financial Crime practice as well.
It's a lot of hats to wear.
It's a lot of hats. It's a lot of fun.
Nasdaq refers to itself as the trusted fabric of the world's financial system. You're the Chief Strategy Officer. Can you talk about how that role for Nasdaq extends across the company's three segments?
Absolutely. We talked about really 3 pillars. One is modernizing markets, two, driving the innovation economy, and three, building financial integrity and trust into the system. When you think about our 3 divisions of Capital Access Platforms, when you think about our scaled financial technology division, and you think about our Market Services division, that is what we are doing and focused on to become the trusted fabric of the financial system. All of that wraps up in an awesome $86 billion TAM that we are going after. It's a huge opportunity. The team is very focused around this concept of the trusted fabric and ensuring we deliver on that for our clients.
A recurring topic during last week's Investor Day was how the three segments operate as One Nasdaq, and how that translates to flywheels throughout the organization. What are some of those examples?
I'll give you some that we talked about at Investor Day, and I'll just give you some other anecdotes that I think are super interesting about how our business operates. Certainly the listings business, seven consecutive years of most capital raised than our competitor. We had the largest switch in history in Walmart. All of that fuels our trading business, our index business. When you have the most innovative companies that are part of your index, you tend to attract great capital flows, and we've certainly demonstrated that.
Our mission-critical nature of our technology, the synergies that exist across the fintech division and what we provide our clients, we now have some of the largest banks and brokers in the world asking us, "What more can you do for us?" We have a scaled financial technology division that is delivering risk, financial crime, surveillance, et cetera, to all the banks. Third area is really what's coming in terms of 23/5 tokenization. Those represent phenomenal opportunities for us to bring new international participants into our markets to reduce fragmentation of liquidity around the globe, and then also for our data business represents a significant opportunity to grow that franchise. The anecdotes of this, I would say, are interesting to me just in the way Nasdaq works.
When you think about our Market Services and trading business, it is a scaled Nordic business, and we also have a financial technology sales operation that is scaled in Europe. Those relationships have been instrumental in opening doors for our financial crime business to go into Europe. Similarly, when you talk about One Nasdaq, we are scaled financial crime business in North America with 2,700 plus clients. When our listings business wants to spend time with small to mid-size banks that are listed on Nasdaq or possibly going to list or transfer to Nasdaq, we leverage the Verafin relationships to create scaled opportunities for our listings franchise. That is how One Nasdaq works. It is really a phenomenal one approach to delivering for our clients.
Very interesting. A key goal for Nasdaq has been driving resilient growth that can persist across various macro cycles. Can you drill down a bit into how that manifests itself at Nasdaq?
Absolutely. One of the things that I really appreciate about the Nasdaq platform is the balance of the business. When you see volatility in the markets, and you may see, okay, some extreme volatility could impact possibly a slowdown in corporate activity. Usually during that time, we are seeing phenomenal performance on the trading side of the business. There's a balance there. What we've realized in this amazing fintech business that we've established is mission-critical technologies are durable across cycles. We saw that across Liberation Day, and we're seeing that today too, that these are just businesses and products that people need and want regardless of macro cycles. We feel really good about the balance and durability of the model that we've built, and that's what gave us a lot of confidence to raise the medium-term outlook on solutions.
Nasdaq has some businesses that can be intensely competitive. Listings, which you mentioned earlier, equities and options exchanges, even some areas probably within financial technology. Why is Nasdaq winning competitively, pretty consistently throughout the organization?
Yeah. I would say it's, you know, it starts with our people, like, we love to compete. Over the last decade plus, as you know, Patrick, we've seen competitors come in on listings, we've seen competitors come in on trading of equities and options. We've seen emerging fintech startups. We've seen all of it, we have had success through those competitive influxes. It's just our people love to compete, our products are extremely competitive, we feel really good when we look across, and you see you've got a phenomenal Market Services business that has more organic opportunity in front of it than I've seen. You've got a fintech business where we've got, I think it was 1/2 of our top 300 clients are only using one product, phenomenal opportunity there.
When you look at the listings business, the index business, and our data business, they are the envy of the industry. We've got great people, great businesses, and great assets to compete.
A big theme of the conference this year has been how software and service providers may or may not face a disruptive threat from AI. I think that was a topic that Nasdaq addressed quite well last week, pointing to several aspects of your businesses that create a competitive moat. Can you touch on some of those attributes that you think are most important?
Yeah. I mean, for those of you that saw the Investor Day, we had sort of like 6 attributes, and then where each product kind of fit on the scale of extremely differentiated to moderately differentiated. When you look at our product portfolio, the vast majority are extremely differentiated products. We spent a lot of time doing analysis on these products to make sure that we could come across as credible to our investors in this analysis. When you look at, for instance, one of the attributes was golden source data. Obviously, I work with the financial crime business quite closely. Our consortium dataset is unmatched, it's unparalleled, and it is really, really delivering a phenomenal work product to our clients.
It's a give-get model, and the more clients we sign up, the better the algorithms get in rooting out fraud. We've added 700+ clients in the 5 years that we've owned Verafin, and the model has improved dramatically. We feel really good about that set of golden source data, and there's other products. You talk about, like, I'm just gonna give some examples. You know, embedded workflow and embedded subject matter expertise. When I think about Calypso, that is a product that is extremely embedded with our clients that we bring a tremendous amount of insights to, a tremendous amount of know-how, and that is embedded into the product. The mission-critical nature of our technology. When you think about our Market Technology franchise, we are running and building capital market ecosystems all over the world.
I would say that's universal in terms of the nature of our technology franchise that we build. You talk about secure and resilience. Obviously, when you think about security that's critical to any exchange operation, and we are able to bring that level of exchange-grade security to all of our products. Obviously, if you're delivering for your clients, you're delivering a high level of ROI. We highlighted last week several examples of delivering extremely high levels of ROI. In that chart, we talked about 2x ROI, and that was something that every product in our portfolio is delivering on and well above. This is something we're extremely passionate about.
We feel like we've got a product set that is, as you highlighted, Patrick, phenomenal attributes that insulate us from any AI threats. In fact, as Adena talked about during her presentation, we started our AI journey almost a decade ago. We are well-versed in building this technology into our product roadmaps and understand what it takes to make sure that our products are protected.
Again, kind of building off of that point, you also spoke last week about how your cloud capabilities and your unique data position Nasdaq to drive innovation with AI itself. What are two or three areas where you're already monetizing AI?
Yeah. One that's near and dear to my heart is the agentic workforces that we've rolled out in our financial crime business. We rolled out an enhanced due diligence agentic workforce and a sanction screening workforce. We have seen phenomenal interest and uptick amongst our clients. Over 350 clients are already using the product. It will be a process as people get comfortable using agentic workforces, as risk departments get comfortable bringing this technology into the institutions. It has been a phenomenal reaction from the client base. I think it also speaks volumes about the opportunity set when you have a scaled client base that trusts your products and services, how quickly you can scale new products and initiatives into that client base.
That is a process that we started with sort of a freemium model, where they get a certain amount of usage, and then we'll move into charging separately, which it will be new for the financial crime business. We're gonna take that technology, and we're gonna look at our surveillance business, where we're processing 1 trillion transactions a day across 200 + countries and say, "Okay, if we're gonna leverage agentic across these workforces, how do we take what Verafin's doing and move it into our surveillance product areas?" There's a lot of opportunity for monetization in the future. Just so everyone's aware, we hold regular product roadmap reviews at Nasdaq.
Within those product reviews, we are looking at the roadmap and how we are embedding AI technology, how we are building agentic workforces into that product roadmap so we stay competitive and are delivering products that deliver for our clients.
The AI-driven market sell-off has led to Nasdaq being aggressive recently in its share repurchase efforts. Is it also perhaps making or providing some attractive valuations as you contemplate potential tuck-in acquisitions? Related to that, you know, as you're looking at, you know, potential M&A, you guys have kind of ruled out large-scale M&A. Kinda what's a broad framework for how you are thinking about things?
Yeah. We are extremely focused on organic growth. We've got a $38 billion SAM that's growing quite nicely, and we feel really good about the opportunity on the organic growth front. That is the focus today. As we think about doing potential bolt-ons, considerations would include, does it enhance our product? Does it deliver in something as we evaluate buy versus build? Is this something that we definitely feel like we can't buy? Is it additive to our financial profile? Is it something that is a cultural fit within Nasdaq? Those are the things that we are gonna look at as we look on bolt-on. I would just say this, the organic path in front of us is very real and meaningful, and that tends to be the focus right now.
Makes sense. Tokenization and always-on markets were another key topic of your Investor Day. What's a realistic timeline for 24/5 trading and tokenized equities to receive SEC approval and start gaining market adoption?
Yeah. It's a great opportunity in front of us. I think when you talk to people that have been in and around the markets, they will say this is a moment in time for sure where markets are fundamentally changing and evolving. We have said that we see this as a second half of 2026 opportunity for 23/5. Tokenization will also take time. We are actively engaged. What is unique, I think, in what Nasdaq can do is we can represent the entire market. We can represent issuers and investors and bring together solutions that are compelling to both. That's what we're focused on doing in a regulated environment. We see this as a big opportunity certainly for our data business.
We see this as an opportunity for our trading business. We see this as something that we can bring to our issuers as another consideration for them as well. This will take time to evolve. It definitely will.
If I can just drill down on...
Please.
-this there real quick. You said like it's an offering that you can provide to issuers as well. Is this something that issuers are coming to you right now and saying, "Hey, this is an opportunity that we wanna have better dialogue with our investors"? Or is this kind of still kind of to be determined in terms of what their attitudes about it would be?
I would say it's they're curious, but it's to be determined what their attitudes will be. We wanna do this when and if we do this in an issuer-friendly way.
Makes sense. Another current event topic is event contracts, it sounds like Nasdaq is looking to get into that space via binary options contracts. How do you think about the opportunity to build a competitive moat in that space as well as the potential revenue opportunity?
It's interesting. We are gonna do this, as you saw in our filing, in a very regulated way. We got approval for our Nasdaq-100 options, which are European-style options, which are gonna basically allow. It's very intuitive option for retail investors, allow them to bet directionally on the movement of a Nasdaq-100 and the like. That is something that we're focused on and implementing, and so we're excited about that. We wanna do this in a regulated manner. We wanna create safeguard rails for investors, retail and institutional. That is the mechanism in which you're gonna see us operate. It's a first step. It's a first step, and I think you'll see more from us on this front.
Speaking of your trading businesses, you spoke last week, again at the Investor Day, about how retail is now responsible for around a quarter of U.S. equities volume and maybe 45% or so of U.S. options volumes. I think it's a fascinating topic overall. Future growth upside from here.
We see it as durable. One of the things, and Patrick, you know this better, but one of the things that I'm extremely proud of at Nasdaq is we took the time over the last 5-7 years to invest significantly in the capacity to handle and be ready for the opportunities that are present now. The volume growth, whether it's options or equities, has been phenomenal during that time period, and retail's been a big part of that. We see it as a durable trend, especially as we innovate on the product front. I would tell you that the, as I said earlier, the Market Services franchise sees a lot of organic opportunity through product innovation to continue to stay in front of it. The growth has been phenomenal. Obviously it's hard to tell.
We don't make predictions on volumes and things of that nature. It seems like a very structural trend that's changing. I'm curious, do you view it as that?
I think for the most part, yes. I think just the growth of the brokerage platforms and the number of accounts.
Yeah
... they have and their education in derivatives in particular, I think seems very structural.
If you think about 23/5, and if you think about tokenization and how that could evolve over the years to come, it feels like it could continue.
Yeah, I think that's fair.
Yeah.
Beyond Market Services, Nasdaq is now targeting 9%-12% annual revenue growth in your collective solutions businesses. Underlying that is an outlook for 10%-14% growth in financial technology. What drives your optimism that financial technology can continue to post double digit growth over the next 3-5-year period?
Yeah. It's a great question. We feel really good about the financial technology franchise. We are seeing phenomenal engagement with our clients on the product suite that's offered. As I mentioned earlier, we're getting questions from our clients about what more can you do for us? When you think about the 300+ that only use one product, or excuse me, half of the 300+ that only use one product, there's amazing upsell muscle that's available to us that we've already been exercising on. As we talked about in Investor Day, we're about $45 million into our $100 million target. We see that as something that, and that's on the cross-sell, and we see that's something that's certainly achievable, and that we're going after.
When I think about each of the product areas, they're experiencing really good traction with their client base. When I look at Verafin, we're at 22 + enterprise clients. When I look at the upsell motion across 2025 in fintech, you're at 450+ upsells across a fintech franchise. You're just seeing the traction in these businesses that gives us the confidence that we can stay within that range and growth. We've had certainly some market cycles that we've had to weather over the last two years plus, and to be able to move through those cycles and achieve what we've achieved gives us a lot of confidence that we're on the right path here in that business.
On the 9%-12% solutions growth, I think we've got a lot of levers there that we can pull to get to be within that range. I think people should understand, we've been within that range for 4 of the last 5 years, so it's something that we feel really comfortable in achieving.
Yeah, that's a really good point. And one of those businesses that's helped you deliver those results has been your index-
Yes
... business. you expect your index franchise to deliver high single-digit to mid-teens annual growth over that next 3-5 year period, which would actually be deceleration of what it's done in the-
Yeah
the prior period. 36% of inflows into linked ETFs in 2025 came from products launched during the last five years. I thought that was a really interesting statistic.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people just think it's the QQQ.
Yeah.
What are some of the areas that you're having success with in index?
54% of the AUM came from products in the last 5 years. I mean, I'm sure you all know this, it's a phenomenal growth business with really attractive margins. I would say this is a team of people that are constantly innovating, constantly rolling out new products, and our brand is enormously helpful in attracting assets. While we didn't put in our sort of attributes slide brand, but when you talk to each of the business, and this one in particular, brand really matters. We bring a lot of credibility and trust to that and people trust the quality and the precision of the work we do in the index franchise.
product innovation is going to continue at pace, and that's what gives us a lot of confidence in the growth of the franchise. The QQQ is without a doubt an amazing anchor, and certainly in my view, the envy of the industry. The diversification of the AUM and product set is really phenomenal, and I would expect that to continue.
Makes sense. Lastly from me, just as we finish up here, what are some of the key takeaways that you want to make sure people walk away with from today?
For me, when I joined Nasdaq, we traded at 7 times earnings. You know, we have built a phenomenal franchise. We have a scaled financial technology division that's growing double digits with great margins. We have a Market Services franchise that is got more organic opportunity in front of it than I've seen before. We have a data listing and index business that is the envy of the industry. We have phenomenal assets that are highly engaged with our clients and that is delivering great value for shareholders. Having been here 14 years and seeing the evolution of this organization, I'm super proud of it.
I sit here today looking out and saying, "I think there's more opportunity in front of Nasdaq than any time in my tenure." It's a quite exciting time to be a part of this franchise, and I think we're gonna do great things in the years ahead.
All right. Terrific. Well, we'll wrap it up there. There will be a breakout downstairs after this. Thanks everybody for joining us. Thank you, Jeremy.
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Good to see you.