All right. Hello again. I'm Alex Kramm, Senior Research Analyst at UBS, covering the U.S. exchanges and business services companies. Excited to have Billy Hult here, CEO of Tradeweb. I think, Billy, it's the first time that we're sharing a stage together, so-
My honor.
Thanks, I'll leave it at that. But no, thanks for coming down to Florida. I think it's, it wasn't a hard sell at, this time of the year. Anyways, I usually like to start these discussions, very big picture. So maybe just to get us started, over the last few years, Tradeweb has grown revenues at a 15% rate organically. So a lot of different markets and asset classes you guys are in, very diversified business. So maybe just very big picture, what gives you confidence that these businesses can continue to grow at these kind of rates in the next few years, medium term?
Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Alex. Really appreciate it. Great conference. I was mentioning to you before, like, amazing combination of investors that, like, we know really well, plus a bunch of new investors, so it's been, like, super productive. Sometimes you can be, like, locked inside of a room all day and feel like you wanna kill yourself. This has been, like, just, like, fantastic group of investors, so really appreciate it. Feeling, like, super amped about 2026. I think you laid the frame out kinda perfectly, and when we kinda think about why we're excited, we probably think about it for a couple of different reasons, one of which may be, like, the setup. We think the setup plays really well, and so when we think about the setup, you start with kinda like how we arrived here.
So it's been an interesting, obviously, bunch of years, you know, in the markets and for our business, kind of from, you know, zero rates, zero inflation, to the big kinda run-up in rates, big inflation burst that occurred. Now it feels like we're in, like, this kind of, like, good zone around having a general kind of, kind of frame of reference around where we are in the rates world. As I kinda say all that, I would say, like, a couple of kinda interesting pieces around that. Feels like, you know, the Fed has kinda more to do, but that being said, there is a lot of discussion on, like, the timing of it. That kind of debate in the market, particularly on the macro side of the market, tends to play very, very well for our business.
So that becomes kind of a good outcome in terms of, in terms of the setup. And then the second thing I would say, which I think, you know, is really important, we talk about, you know, the concept of deregulation and the things that are happening around deregulation. Hard for me to perfectly describe how much oomph, you know, the banks have in their, in their markets business, in their trading businesses, like, that big strut is kinda back. And as you know very well, Alex, including UBS at the top of the list, you know, Tradeweb has always had a very strong kind of partnership, connectivity, you know, with the big banks. And so to see the...
You know, I talked about this on the earnings call, to see the, the trading numbers and the way that the banks are performing in the businesses that a company like Tradeweb kinda lives and breathes in, macro, credit, mortgages, et cetera, really, really good outcomes for the banks to be doing as well as that they're doing. So that kinda plays really well to us. Those are the things that we feel good about, you know, that we can't control, but probably more importantly, in terms of the things that we can control, you know, I would say there is still, like, this fundamental reality that, you know, Tradeweb, as much success as we've had across the board, from government bonds, mortgages, credit, ETF, global interest rate swaps, like, Tradeweb's biggest competitor in a lot of the businesses we're in is the phone.
And so when you think about in 2026, why our clients are still oriented towards picking up the phone, and you and I have had this conversation, doing business, you know, like it's 1986, it's usually because of large market-moving trades, risk-oriented trades, big, giant blocks, or a version of complexity or negotiation in the market. And so a huge area of the company's, you know, big focus is really around fundamentally solving those two things.
To be able to put the energy and the resource in terms of solving those things with the momentum, you know, that we have in our business, to your point, you know, since I've been CEO, now in my fourth year, you know, it's 11% growth rate, but really a big second half of the year in my first year, then 29% growth, then 16%-17%, you know, growth last year, a really strong December that we had at the end of the year. Then from my perspective, and you guys could probably hear my enthusiasm on the earnings call, a really strong January. And so to be able to problem solve with a little bit of momentum, I think is a tremendous advantage. So feeling really good about the kinda multi-asset class setup that we have.
Then importantly, technology is gonna continue to arrive, you know, in the marketplace. So half a step back, you have to think about what are the companies that are really set up to solve for, you know, the client's problems and to solve for the opportunities. And my instinct is, it's gonna be the kind of company that has an understanding that relationships matter, this is still a relationship-oriented business, and the kind of company that's set up with the network that we have. So that was a long-winded way of saying I'm excited.
I think, I think it sets up great for some of the other things we're gonna talk about.
Good.
Since you just mentioned a lot of macro and the good backdrop that you have, what about what you're specifically doing in the near term? Any initiatives in particular for 2026 that we should be aware of, that you're super excited about?... maybe go there for a second.
Yeah. So, you know, starting with when you and I first got to know each other back when we were going public as a company, my very strong instinct was there was understandable, not from you, but understandable kind of skepticism that a company that had lived and breathed in the rate space, could they really ultimately compete and be real in credit? And my instinct is, as a public company, one of the things that we've done really well is show that without question, we can compete in credit, and without question, we have the ability to be, you know, the real leader in credit. So combination of IG and high yield, combination of institutional, obviously in wholesale, you know, the company is not gonna take its eye off the ball on continuing to move things forward in credit. That is kind of priority number one.
I would say underneath that, you know, we have a great international business. It gets talked about, but maybe not talked about almost as much as it could be talked about. And so in a world where obviously, you know, geopolitical risk will be a day-to-day thing, central bank divergence globally is gonna be a day-to-day thing. We, we talk a lot about the De-dollarization kind of piece of the macro environment. Now, I think having a really built-out international business is really important. So big focus continuing on EM through our, through our international world. A combination of emerging market swaps and emerging market credit will be a big focus for us.
And then I would say kind of the third thing, if you think about credit, the kind of EM world, and then the third thing I would say is, you know, the, the rates complex will continue to be very, very interesting with more innovations to come, you know, specifically speaking inside of rates. So it's a little bit of this continuation of what we do. We don't take our eye off the ball in our kind of core businesses, and we continue to try to navigate change that occurs through technology, whether or not that's day-to-day change or change within market structure. They're really important, kind of interesting trends to navigate through.
Okay. I want to dig a little bit into the business, and you mentioned a little bit, but you didn't really lean into interest rate swaps in your last answer.
Yeah.
So maybe I want to start there because it is, unless something has changed, your largest business, and you also have a very strong market position in that business. And I sometimes actually think it doesn't get enough attention from investors, quite frankly. So your market share continues to move higher. The business is only 30% or so electronic today. So when we think about interest rate swaps, again, your largest business-
Yeah
Where do you think that can go or in terms of electronification? Then, of course, how do you keep your dominant market share position today?
Yeah. I was thinking about mentioning it, but kind of feeling you were gonna ask me, so I didn't want to kind of bury the lead-
It's nice how you see me like that.
Before you were gonna ask me.
Thank you.
If anyone is ever kind of wondering whether or not things can really change in the markets that we're in, in some ways, like, the Global Swaps platform is, like, the perfect example of how quickly, you know, a marketplace can change. And when I, when I say that or when I describe that, what I would say to you is, of all the different businesses that we were in, Global Swaps was, like, the most back alley of the back alley markets. It was voice-driven, always voice-driven, and will always be voice-driven until ultimately technology arrived in that market. And now, to your point, it's our biggest business, most profitable business, and in a lot of ways, I, I would agree with you, I think it's, like, our most important business. And so that's, that's a big deal.
It's also as transparent and as sort of whatever the opposite of back alley is, as spotlight-oriented as that business has become. It's also a business that still has, to your point, a lot of room to go on continued electronic penetration of voice activity. And so we're very, very focused on probably two or three things inside of the Global Swaps world. One, I would say, continued risk trades in swaps that we do through micro protocols. I talk a lot about this protocol called Request for Market. It's like just a different way of a client engaging in the marketplace, but it gets after the risk that's really important when you think about those kinds of volumes. Two, I would say continued. This is really important, continued market share in emerging market swaps.
That's a big emphasis for us. We are gonna focus on the non-cleared side of the swaps market as well. I would say not that there's like any, by definition, like, low-hanging fruit stuff. That's not low-hanging fruit. It's more structured swaps, it's more voice orientation, it's more negotiated types of trades. But from our perspective, you know, putting in the work to actually begin to solve for that kind of activity is important. And then lastly, and this is important, Alex, like, we work really hard at Tradeweb around solving, you know, different pockets of issues inside of market structure. So the company that you guys here in the audience know really well, mostly is focused on the institutional side of the business, but we're also big in retail and also quite big in wholesale. As you know, the wholesale side of the swaps market is largely voice-driven.
And so what we're beginning to do is to find the advocates, who have benefited from the electronification, on the institutional side to be our kind of bodyguards as we work through the wholesale side of the market in swaps. So this is still, as well as that business has been for us, and I would say probably the most, to your point, underappreciated kind of success story of the company, there's still a ton of room around further electronification there. And so, you know, that's the thing that we have to do, is focus where the activity is.
Okay, very good. Let me stay on rates. We should also talk about your legacy business, which you mentioned, right? U.S. Treasuries, I believe still the third largest business for you today.
Yeah.
I think electronification is pretty far along. There is more competition. So again, given that it's still a meaningful business and your heritage, where is the incremental growth coming from? And then you entered the wholesale market a little bit more a few years ago. Maybe it's been mixed so far. So is that still a big focus for you, and what's gonna turn that around?
Yeah. So, like, you're right. So, like, Treasuries was, like, the first market that we were in, like, way back when. I see Larry in the stands. You were working at Tradeweb when, like, that's what all Tradeweb was known for, was like a... We were a kind of client-dealer Treasury platform. So we've come a long way from being a, obviously a single, a single product, business. I think there's a real skill as a company to be ambitious around expansion and not take your ball off of, the most important businesses that you're in. So we really work, I think, on achieving, achieving that balance. I would say, you know, within government bonds, we have put a lot of time and effort into something that we call AiEX.
So if I were gonna describe that to the room, what I would say is, like, the first real breakthrough was getting people to stop picking up the phone and calling the salesperson and doing all of that stuff, to using actually Tradeweb through a, a login and a keyboard and a mouse and all of that stuff. The next big breakthrough, and I think we're still early innings in the breakthrough, but we're in the breakthrough zone, is much more of a move towards algorithmic trading. We call it AiEX connectivity, but it's basically smart searches that our clients use to find pockets of liquidity in the space with a tremendous amount of respect towards Bloomberg. And we've, you know, essentially been competing with them since day one.
Their orientation, not surprisingly, because they're so great at, like, the analytics and the messaging and the desktop of it all, you know, their orientation is always gonna be to be protective of the desktop. And in their protectiveness of the, of the terminal, there's an opportunity for us to run with what is this next wave of engagement, which is all gonna be around smart searches, you know? And so when I describe a smart search, what I would say is, you know, the random walk of guessing or looking for or trying to understand where liquidity might be is essentially coming to a version of an end.
So, you know, back in the day, when Tradeweb would spend time with a buy-side client and see how that client would actually use Tradeweb, they would see that, like, the client would click on, you know, Bank of America and then Citi and then Deutsche Bank, and they would maybe wonder why the client was choosing those three dealers. The answer was that that client just had his ticket arranged by, like, BCD, alphabetical. The reality is, as we're kind of, like, thinking about the skill sets continuing to evolve, clients are no longer guessing when they wanna buy $50 million 5-year notes, who are the 2 or 3 dealers they should show that inquiry to. They understand where the kind of act seller is.
My instinct is that's a wave of innovation that's gonna be really important, ultimately solving for the things that we care about the most: risk trades and complexity. We're really excited about that kind of evolution. We're putting a lot of energy there. We've hired, as you know, like, a bunch of really smart kind of data scientists, and we're, we're kind of plowing through that. You know, no one feels by any stretch, ever sorry for Bloomberg. But there's a vulnerability that they have just around the way that, you know, the machines are gonna connect to markets. I think that's, that's an important trend for us to make sure we're behind the right way.
Excellent. I need to turn to U.S. credit, of course. I think it's the one that you mentioned first when it came to 2026-
Yeah
Initiatives earlier. So if I go back over the last few years, huge success story. Market share seemingly was only going up in a steady trend. I think at the same time, portfolio trading was becoming a bigger part of the market. That helped you because you're a leader there, so... And still are a leader there. Seems like things have gotten a little bit more competitive. So if you look forward from here, you know, what are the biggest opportunities to kind of re-accelerate that market share-
Yeah
- again, that everybody seemingly cares-
It's true
cares a lot about?
It's true. You're 100% right. It's in some ways, like, the most competitive business that we're in, plus the most scrutinized. And so thus, my concept of, like, the... One of the things that we're focused on the most, obviously, you know, is credit. You know, understanding that story, I think, is important, as you, as you guys think about, like, the approach that a company like Tradeweb takes in credit. So I mentioned, you know, I mentioned how, how well the banks were doing vis-a-vis the kind of deregulation moment that we're having.
To make an obvious point, that wasn't always the case, and I think as credit was emerging as a more technology-oriented marketplace, reminder, the banks were going through, in some ways, like, the teeth of regulation, and in going through the teeth of regulation, they kind of pulled back some of the liquidity that they were providing in credit. So the immediate kind of table stakes protocol in credit, either if Chris was on stage, he'd be talking about Open Trading. Since it's me, I'm talking about all-to-all trading. The immediate protocol in credit that gained traction was a protocol that essentially disintermediated the banks from their clients. It kind of bypassed them in the search for liquidity and allowed BlackRock to connect with Vanguard out there in the liquidity pools.
Not surprisingly, the banks had a very strong reaction to that, you know, including UBS. And so, you know, Tradeweb, you know, because we have a history of working with the banks, our first kind of foray in terms of being competitive and trying to sort out how we would add value, was really through creating and being a part of trading protocols like portfolio trading, which is basically the opposite of all-to-all trading. It tends to be more non-competitive, and it breaks down these big, long bid lists and offer lists into a synthesized trade. It's a very, very cool protocol.
As I describe all of that, like massive move in this direction around open trading, all-to-all trading, and then massive move in this way around portfolio trading, what I've skipped is the most fundamental and in some ways, straightforward step in this electronification journey, which is RFQ trading, right? Which is something you remember, Larry, from, like, way back when. It's, like, the most basic way, RFQ to few. I'm a buy side client, and I wanna ask UBS, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley to price something. Ironically, as the market has now evolved and the banks have stepped back in, they've learned a lesson, they're better capitalized, the whole thing is now fitting together better.
My very strong instinct is RFQ trading is actually a very strong area of growth within the protocol segments of the market, and an area that we put a tremendous amount of time and energy in, partially leveraging the strengths that we've kinda gleaned off of AiEX and smart search routes. So, you know, credit is so interesting because, you know, the market structure developed in different ways than other businesses have, and it's not that we're going back to basics in it, but you have this amazing convergence now of, you know, the banks having learned a lesson. Oh, and by the way, firms like Citadel and Jane Street playing critical and very important roles as liquidity providers. So it is a...
It's a competitive market for sure, and a market with a tremendous amount of innovations that have occurred in a relatively short period of time. So the view in-house at Tradeweb is, the firm that's gonna win is gonna be the firm that can keep the banks on side as partners through this next evolution, plus continue to invest around innovation, plus, I would say, in a really, important way, have the kind of multi-asset class acumen to be able to bring in kind of adjacent markets, government bonds, et cetera, because credit trades on spread, and add efficiencies to the client workflows.
Okay. Since we're talking about U.S. credit, I think it's also a good position or time to talk about pricing. Because it does seem like in that space, in particular, competition is a bigger focus. There's some disruptive competitors out there. So would be helpful, because there's a lot of mix going on, but it would be helpful to also know how is pricing really trending on a like for like basis, what's happening in the space? And I know I asked about credit, but you know, maybe since we're talking about pricing broadly, are you seeing any pricing pressure elsewhere, for example, in your rates?
Yeah, it's a good question. It's a really good question because, like, talking about all these are great stuff and innovations and market share growth and... But like, pricing matters, and so I fully appreciate your question. I would say, like, a couple of things to start. One, you know, I made the point that we were, you know, we've been competing against Bloomberg, like, since day one. Everybody kinda knows this. Even though Bloomberg would kinda say that their trading business was for free, it really wasn't. That being said, from a line trader's perspective, when Tradeweb's charging, because we were commercial from day one and Bloomberg wasn't, we dealt with and we understood the realities of innovating and being commercial, and understanding that there was someone out there trying to undercut you on fees. So we have a long history on this.
The most important lesson I think I learned around building these businesses not that long ago was, I sat down as we were beginning to become marginally real and marginally successful in credit, and I sat down, Alex, with a guy at Wellington in Boston, a portfolio manager who we knew and who we liked, but he wasn't a good client of ours in credit. And he said to me something along the lines of, "With respect, if you go down the path of copying exactly what MarketAxess does well and charging us less, you will fail. You have to do more. You have to create innovation, you have to do something that actually saves me time and saves me money, and you have to do something from my perspective, that's better." That was a good piece of advice.
And that probably led us very clearly down the path of: Okay, let's not just do what they do well and charge less. Let's actually figure out, like, other things to differentiate ourselves, net spotting and net hedging, portfolio trading, and things like that. That being said, to your point, from my perspective, I wanna be, like, really clear about this. Never want to, like, ignore realities of, like, of price and pricing pressure. And we provide a service, and one of the things that matters to me a lot is... we are the preferred partner of the industry, and we have a lot of businesses where we have a lot of market share and a lot of momentum, and I never want the company to lose its place, hopefully, always number one in the queue on, like, problem-solving, you know?
And so we've been flexible, we've been understanding that there have to be moments in time where we have to shift the pricing model from variable to fixed, and we're gonna do those things. That being said, we are not giving up the wallet potential in our business. And we feel like, and I said this on the earnings call, and people had a pretty strong reaction to it, you know, the profitability that, you know, our partner banks have in the space that we live in is off the charts high. It's off the charts high. And so I'm pretty good, and I'll be pretty clear at making sure, you know, all these years later, that I remind the right person at, you know, at these firms, how well they're doing in the space.
which I think makes sure that people keep their eyes on, you know, the what they should be focusing on, which is the value ultimately that you're bringing to the equation. I say this all the time: Tradeweb has amazing clients, but the most important thing to understand is there's not a client that we have a more important relationship with than UBS does, or that Goldman does, or that Morgan Stanley does, right? So in some ways, we're the guardian of the bank's relationship with their clients in these really important markets, and we understand that. And I think that's a really, really important kind of premise to make sure that is kinda clear. so that's. It's an interesting time, though, for sure.
All right, moving on to some bigger picture questions now. I actually asked about this on the, on the earnings call already, but, maybe it's a good, good time to kind of dig deeper here, which is really this, this concept of tokenization of assets. Actually, it was a big focus already at this conference over the last couple of days. I know you have some initiatives already in the space, Canton Network, for example. So maybe talk about what you're doing, in particular, how it can be a driver of the business and, and how quickly it can play out. And then, of course, the flip side of, of it all, what if we're going down this route in certain, you know, asset classes, how do you actually stay relevant? How do you make sure you're not getting disintermediated-
Yeah
... as the market, maybe market structure evolves and there are other, other rails, I think I said on the last call?
That's a really good question. That's a really important kind of time to ask that question. Like, you know, two things to remind ourselves, like, the fixed income market's come a long way. It's gone from back alley to transparent. A lot of the ways that fixed income works really well. That being said, there's always kind of room for improvement. There's gonna be more and more transactions that wind up kinda on chain. We've been a company, I think, that's been pretty good at understanding, you know, in a lot of ways, who are the thought leaders in the space? Who are the smartest people in the room? How do we make sure we align ourselves with the best practitioners, most innovative person?
You know, not surprisingly, we always had a pretty close relationship with the hedge fund, DRW. They play a significant role inside of the rates dynamic. We know Don Wilson, who's the CEO and the founder of DRW. He's an innovator. So we were very well aware of what he was doing on the digital asset side. Sometime around December of 2024, January of 2025, he placed a phone call into me and said: "Hey, look, I think we have a one in three chance to be the kinda the collateral guardrails of the market." He's smart. He's not always right. No one's ever always right, but he's smart, and we had a very strong in-house instinct that he was maybe right and maybe onto something.
The good news is, he relied on us, or he understands the role we play really around, almost like herding cats, but we're able to have our own relationship with Goldman or our own relationship with BlackRock and help fill out that network. So we became kinda early investors and early adopters into the Canton Network, and that's been really good for us. In a lot of ways, we're learning a ton, which I think really, really matters all the time. Plus, we have some strong instincts that there are markets that we live and operate in that could fundamentally benefit from things like efficient, more streamlined settlement structures.
I've used the example a lot, Alex, of the TBA mortgage market, which as big of a market as it can be at various points in time, still settles, you know, 30 days, you know, et cetera, out in ways that precludes some types of firms playing really strong roles in that market. It precludes that market from hitting something that you guys hear about a lot that's really important, called like velocity. And so we're for that, and we're for more entrants or more entrants into that market, and we're for more velocity. And so therefore, we can partner with firms like Canton on really helping solve, you know, some of these kinda workflow situations. And so feeling like really, really good about this.
As you know, we moved one of our most talented people in the company into our Chief Product Officer. He's got a bunch of people working for him. I think the company's trying really hard to put the right level of focus and bandwidth into the continued kind of emerging technology disruptive world. It's a fascinating time around that.
... Since you just mentioned emerging technologies, you clearly teed me up well again to talk about, I guess, automation and AI in general. You talked about AiEX earlier and things like that, but like, yeah, maybe just coming back to that or hopefully expanding, like, what are the biggest use cases on things like AI and how has it already maybe helped your business?
Yeah. So it's like, it's a couple things. It's gotta make sure you are really bringing the right kind of people in-house with the right skill set, and we've worked very hard on making sure we're the kind of firm that the brightest minds in the space wanna work for. So we're really- we're really excited, Alex. We hired a woman named Sherry Marcus to run our our AI technology and our AI strategy. She's, like, off the charts. Combination of, I think an AI kind of... I don't quite have this at all. Actually, I'm very far away from it. That kind of AI cognitive brain, plus she has, like, real experience of thinking about and working about how machine learning and AI kind of lives and breathes in the market.
She's making our AI expertise, our AiEX-ness, the thing that we've already been kind of like running with and running with really well, she's making that better. And that's really important 'cause we view that as, like, a little bit of a special sauce and a little bit of something that our direct competitor can't compete with us on. And then another thing I would just kind of say is, obviously, like, we live and breathe in the world in the same way that you guys do, so we're always gonna be kind of oriented to, like, how do we make, you know, our day-to-day functions inside of the company ultimately more efficient and more effective?
I'm so for sure, you know, we're going down the path now where our investor relations team, which is amazing, obviously, you know, they're spending more time now around AI stuff to get themselves more organized, and that's part of life now. I find it very interesting. I made this joke to you before. Like, I was an English major in college, so it's, like, all kind of like pinch me moments to be working at a company and being the CEO of a company that is a bit in the forefront around this, but, like, specifically around fixed income in the forefront.
I view a very basic thing as fundamentally important, which is, like, all intelligence ultimately is always about learning, and so I push people, I hope, in the right way, to continually kind of learn, you know, specifically in this space, which Ashley and I were just talking about this, and it's like going down... like, not to say, like, go down rabbit holes, to go down rabbit holes, but make sure you're trying new things all the time because the, you know, the shape of it all is shifting and changing pretty dramatically, which is fun.
Okay. Shifting gears, one of the questions I get from investors a decent amount is about some of these new emerging players in the marketplace, and you mentioned them yourself, Citadel, Jane Street, so some of those companies. So some investors certainly view their growing presence as a risk to you. I know you're also partnering in some areas, so maybe just walk through this. Where are they partners? Where are they maybe disintermediating you or go around you? How do you see this all playing out?
Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting. It's multidimensional, right? Because, you know, there's no question that, you know, firms like Citadel, firms like Jane Street, firms like Hudson River Trading are, you know, fundamentally now real in fixed income and ascending into the world pretty dramatically. You know, Jane Street is Jane Street, and their numbers have been, you know, phenomenal. And Citadel, I think, you know, put them at the top of the list of one of the most kind of ambitious companies, obviously out there in the ecosystem. They're accelerating. You know, what Citadel's been able to accomplish in global government bonds, global interest rate swaps, now they're moving into credit. If the mortgage market moves in new directions, I would imagine that they'll kind of arrive there. They're accelerating.
They're doing that all at a time, not when the banks are back on their heels. That, I think, is actually pretty interesting, you know, 'cause we're a long way from the banks kind of being back on their heels and all this stuff being a kind of easy, easy peasy march towards, like, colonization of markets. Like, this is gonna be a pretty interesting kind of back and forth that will develop. I would say on the kind of frenemy side, don't feel that as much, again, genuinely, you know, don't feel as much like there's some thing that winds up all of a sudden making Citadel like a global operator of markets and we've somehow got disintermediated.
I would say, eyes wide open, you have to work pretty hard at getting the relationship in the right level of candidness around problem-solving with those kinds of firms. Genuinely, or generally, I should say, it's when the liquidity comes, they're there, and they'll pay you for it. But if the liquidity doesn't come, like, they're not, they're not around, right? And we've had to work pretty hard on establishing the kind of relationship that has always been the company's little bit of secret sauce, which is idea generation and being the partner with the smartest firms to solve problems. And so I sometimes feel like I'm a better spokesperson for them than they are for us, which is okay, 'cause not every relationship is perfectly symmetrical. But like where this plays out over the next couple of years, I think will be fascinating.
There's no question that we'll be talking about this dynamic for a while, because you have the legacy banks that held on to their, you know, their IP with a, with a, with an oomph in the business and oomph in their, in their step, you know, understanding what firms like Citadel have been able to accomplish in equities. And then you have firms, non-bank liquidity providers, firms like Citadel, seeing the levels of profitability that exists inside of fixed income. This is gonna be like, you know, the NFC West. This is gonna have, like, three teams that could play in the Super Bowl, kinda like in the same conference. It's like strength on strength, sort of. So it'll be a fascinating outcome in terms of this. My instinct is good stuff, because that's where innovation comes, you know, and everyone's kind of running much more aggressively.
The concept of, let me hope this electronic thing goes away, is kinda out of the equation.
I was gonna ask about expenses next, but Sara isn't here. I'm sure you're gonna be bored with it anyways.
Oh, no.
I'm gonna skip ahead, looking at the timer, if that's okay.
Yeah.
If you wanna talk expenses-
No, no, no
... you can. But, I think more important is capital allocation, in particular around M&A, 'cause since you've come in as CEO, I think you've been a little bit more on, I guess, on the forefront of it, or at least talking about being more willing and, and looking, and you've done a few deals, but they've been, you know, smaller, I guess, relative to the size of the company. So just maybe, to finish us off here, you know, where do you think M&A fits into the, the company today? What are the areas that, that you see, you see wanna participate in? Or the areas-
Yeah
... where you still think there's room for upside and-
Yeah. Three smaller deals that I think all went, like, you know, well, which I do think says a fair amount. I think it shows the market that we're capable, you know, capable of doing M&A in a bunch of different ways. That being said, I think, you know, not to say, you know, I am what I am, what I am, but I do think that the ethos of the company is a lot around ultimately building. And there's a reason, probably, Alex, why you started with, like, where do you see the most important opportunities going forward, you know, organically? Because there's a lot there, and there's a lot of focus inside of the company to continue to build out, you know, the presence that we have in all of these businesses. It's quite exciting for us.
That being said, we are gonna be open-minded, and I think make the kind of choices around M&A that you guys would expect us to. I think there will be, you know, consolidation moments that obviously will occur in the space, and I think, you know, the general view is, is that, like, the, the momentum that we have in the businesses, that we are in gives us, you know, opportunity to, to do the kinda deal that we think makes sense. I will say this just very, very bluntly: culture, I think, is, like, exceptionally, exceptionally important. There's a very strong culture at Tradeweb, and that's not the kind of thing, by any stretch, that we would be willing to kinda trade off as we look at, the opportunities in front of us. But, my instinct is you'll see...
You'll hear and see more from us, in the right way on that topic.
Good way to end it, I think. So everyone in the room, Billy, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Help me thank him.
Thank you, guys.