All right. Next up, we have a Tradeweb double header. We have Sara Furber, CFO and Troy Dixon, Co-Head of Global Markets. Tradeweb is a leading global electronic trading platform spanning rates, credit, money market funds, or money markets, ETFs, and increasingly, equities. Fresh off a record quarter, it was the first quarter you ever put up revenues above $600 million. Sara, you lead finance and corporate development. Troy joined the executive team from Tradeweb's board at the end of 2024, after a career running a structured products fund on the buy side and some RMBS desks on the sell side. You now oversee Global Markets. Sara, Troy, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks, Pat.
Thank you.
All right, kicking things off, Troy, we don't get to hear much from you on the earnings call, so I'd love to start off getting to know you a little better. I mentioned that you've seen and experienced Tradeweb from both the buy and sell side. Would love to get your thoughts on what you thought of Tradeweb as a platform from those seats, and what ultimately led to your decision to want to join the executive team.
Yeah. Thank you for having me, Pat. My background is, I'm a lifelong mortgage trader. Ran structured product trading at Deutsche Bank, then 12 years prior to joining Tradeweb, I ran my own structured product, alternative asset manager. I joined the board 3.5 years ago now. It's been an interesting journey kind of going from outhouse to in-house. I would say I've known Tradeweb from the very early days, to kind of make you laugh a little bit. I remember when Billy and I go back 30 odd years, and I remember when he told me he was going to Tradeweb, and I'm like, "Where are you going? What are you doing?" I go back that far with him.
I was involved in sort of the first two consortium deals, both in the mortgage side and then as they built the credit business. I know the company really, really well. The thing I would say, both from a buy side and a sell side perspective, Tradeweb has always been the white glove service from the standpoint of electronic execution platforms. They've always had huge and high connectivity at a people-to-people level, which I felt like was important as you sort of try to figure out what the problems are and figure out solutions to those problems, and going back both buy side and sell side. I think, though, the epiphany for kind of me and Tradeweb, and kind of part of the reason, or the main reason why I decided to come in-house was there's a couple things.
One, I realized in getting on the board the unique spot in the overall ecosystem that Tradeweb held. As I thought about the progression of how important technology, smart order routing, and at the time, machine learning around doing your relative analysis was becoming, I realized that technology was going to be a more important part of that execution process once I got on the board. I looked around and I said Tradeweb had, over the last 25 years, it carved out a really unique space within the overall universe.
When Billy first kind of approached me around coming in-house, I was, one, humbled, but two, I was excited because being on the board, I recognized that if we think about the data that sort of flows through the pipes of Tradeweb, and we think about the future of execution, and the global nature of how people are transacting, there was nobody sort of footprinted like Tradeweb, and I was excited to come in and sort of help try to lead the company to the next iteration. It's been an exciting 16 or 17 months since I've joined, and I couldn't be happier.
Great. Well, thank you for that, Troy. Maybe shifting gears to the environment. I know you'll be posting May volumes and metrics tomorrow, you might be limited in what you can say about May. Could you just walk us through what you're seeing across the business broadly? How has the macro environment and geopolitical uncertainty kind of shaped client conversations and activity year- to- date?
Yeah. I can tell you, May has been a really healthy month for us. We have definitely seen a pickup in client activity. Average daily revenues for May are up nearly 15% year-over-year. Structurally higher than May last year, and also a pickup from some of the more muted client activity we saw in April. We're feeling really good about the environment. It's interesting to see, given you wouldn't even say May has necessarily been the most volatile month. I think it shows the engagement of clients on our platform and the breadth and the increase we've had in innovation. When you think about macro, year-to-date, we've seen a lot of action, right? We've seen a lot of debate on rates. We've seen debates on inflation. We've seen oil prices, geopolitical uncertainty.
As we look forward, I think we expect to see a lot of variables and a lot of debate continue, particularly globally on rates. Certainly more change coming with the Fed. I think where we sit, we feel like that environment is really good for our business, right? We've got rising global debt levels. We've got the banks very active and engaged. We've got hedge fund clients expanding globally. As we think about our ability to innovate, solve problems for clients, and have debate in the market around multiple asset classes and multiple geographies, I think it's a really positive environment for our business.
Sure, I think that's a good intro to my next question. Rates is half of your business, half of revenues today. Global swaps is a big one. That's a market that remains roughly a third electronic. Maybe Troy, from your seat, where are you seeing marginal adoption happening within that business? How do you think about the pace of swaps electronification over the next few years? If I could add on to that, perpetual futures has become a big talking point recently. How are you thinking about perpetual futures globally and any maybe disruption risk that it could create in any of your markets?
Obviously, swaps has been sort of the bellwether business for us over the last several quarters. I think there's this anticipation that that can't continue in perpetuity. As we step back and think about that overall footprint of the market, right, as you mentioned, it's roughly 30% electronified, right? Then we kind of break it down into sort of three or four categories, right? We've released RFM into the swap space as a protocol, and we're starting to get pretty good adoption. That is in an effort to start to move some of the large bulk risk transfer trades from voice to our platform, and we're early days, but we're getting a lot of great feedback on that. It's interesting, right?
RFM isn't this new protocol, it's just we're now applying different protocols across different portions of our platform, and we're really excited about that. The other thing we've sort of focused on is one of the products that effectively has no electronification is uncleared swaps. That's a huge universe of waterfall that potentially will go from behind the scenes to in front of the scenes from our perspective, and the transparency around that product will continue to grow. I think we are in a very good situation with regard to being able to monetize that and working very closely with both buy-side and sell-side as we figure out the electronification of that platform. If you think about it just from a metrics perspective, the unsecured space is as big as the secured space.
When you guys think about the revenue generation that we've had in the swap space over the last several quarters, and then you dovetail that into a swaps market that sits side by side and the large players in one are the same large players in the other, I think we have a unique right to win, and we have huge connectivity right now in trying to figure out the railings in that business. We also kind of talk about our emerging markets swaps business, which continues to grow at a pretty large rate. It's a scenario where we're able to lever our dollar swap business and our euro swap business into some of these emerging markets because they, obviously, if they're trading emerging market swaps, they're also trading either dollar or euro swaps.
We have this nice glide path into creating that platform, and that platform's roughly 20% electronified. There's tons of green fields from our perspective on that. The last sort of vertical is the wholesale space. Quite honestly, wholesale, for whatever reason, has sort of lagged electronification as a general rule, but the footprint, we think the TAM is a massive TAM, and for whatever reason, that has sort of not moved in the same way as cleared on the institutional side. We do think that the banks' immense pressure on fees, which we see every day, will pressure that off-screen execution to come on-screen in the wholesale space. Again, I think we sit in the catbird seat with regard to monetization of that space.
Swaps, as a general rule, we think are in the second or third inning around the electronification, and we've spent a lot of time and energy, and as I said, when I started, using white glove service to sort of figure out the problems and help to create the solutions. The perps thing is an interesting one.
Yeah.
Obviously, very topical. Obviously, a lot of conversation on it over the last couple of days as the stock price has sort of moved. As we think about perps, and I think about perps in my former life as a fixed-income trader, it's really competitive to futures, right? Because of you don't have to put up a bunch of margin, and it's a short-dated exposure. Quite honestly, we're not novices in the perps space. We've been spending a lot of time and energy on, what does a perp look like? Do we launch our own perp and we serve as the oracle? Do we use a platform like Hyperliquid or our own platform?
We've spent a lot of time and energy, but our thought process on it, quite honestly, was it'll create greater velocity in fixed-income markets, and it doesn't really compete on our cash business, which is where we make our money. Our theory was it just creates more hedging, more basis, more risk on, if you would, from an overall macro standpoint. We looked at it as additive from our platform, but obviously, the stock price is telling a slightly different story, but we feel firmly on that point. If you take a step back also, if you think about that product, right, and the relationship that we've already built with Kalshi, there's a theory where if that does become a tradable instrument, it trades on our platform.
Particularly if you think about it going from historically, and perps is historically a retail product to an institutional product, it makes sense that Kalshi and us will work on institutionalizing that product set. The last point I'd make on it is from a regulatory standpoint, the CFTC approved Bitcoin perpetual. I think there will be a lot more individuals or institutions opining to the extent that that moves into core fixed-income assets, where obviously the CFTC has a lean towards.
Figuring out crypto and moving the velocity of that particular product set. I think there'll be a lot more debate as we think about this if perps was to move into other products. At the end of the day, I feel like a vibrant perps market in fixed income actually benefits us as it creates greater basis trading and greater velocity. Sara and I have been scratching our heads a little bit on that topic.
Just as a one-off, do you think there's more institutional interest for prediction markets today or perpetual futures?
Prediction markets.
Yes.
The reason I say that is perps, you have a natural offset to not using perps and using futures. Whereas prediction markets, because of their binary structure, there really isn't anything that's uniquely the same as binary. I've said this in many of my conversations, is like, I used to say when I ran big trading desk, I said to my younger traders, "If I gave you the employment number, it's not guaranteed that you actually make money because markets react in different ways." To the extent you have a prediction market where there's a binary outcome, if I give you an employment number, you're going to make money.
I think that uniquely sets up well for Tradeweb because in theory, and I go back to my trading days, if I can isolate the one part of my risk that I don't like and hedge that out, in theory, I take bigger risk, right? I create greater volumes. I think that's where I think institutional footprint views prediction markets relative to perps.
Sure. All right, let's talk about international growth. You've been one of the more aggressive U.S. names in building an international footprint in your sector. In the quarter, you reported that 44% of the revenues came from international. Where do you see that going from here, and what are you looking at as the most compelling growth opportunity outside of the U.S.?
Yeah, international has been a huge growth driver for Tradeweb. You just quoted it. When you think about a $2 billion top line, 44% in the first quarter. 40% of our business is coming from outside the U.S., 60% of our revenue growth is coming from international. It's a major driver. Within that, the two biggest areas that I think we are really excited about, EM, which you've alluded to. That's a business that's now run rating over $100 million for us and growing well in excess of 30%. Then APAC. Obviously, APAC is a number of different markets combined, but that market for us is large.
We've bolstered it with an acquisition for Yieldbroker in Australia a few years ago. When you think about that market, you also alluded to this, most of the markets in APAC are only 10%-15% electronified. Those are two big, compelling growth opportunities where we already have traction and scale and can keep scaling. Overall, I would say, particularly from my seat, it's not just two growth drivers. We always look for durability. In the first quarter, every asset class we had was up double-digit revenue growth in terms of international opportunities. I think about operating leverage and the network effects that we're seeing. We have international clients buying and accessing U.S. product. We have U.S. clients accessing international product, and that flywheel is continuing.
I think if you think about it, I think 60% of the revenue growth we saw in dollar swaps came from international clients. That's showing, okay, as that platform's scaling, you're going to see that benefit globally. Similarly, the U.S. client base is probably driving about 20% of that international product flow. International isn't just one bucket, right? International is a lot of different countries, a lot of different markets, a lot of different clients in that region. From my seat, that's an acceleration of revenue flywheel, and it's also an operating leverage flywheel because you get to leverage the infrastructure investments that we've made in those products.
Sure. You mentioned $100 million run rate in EM. Another business that's become quietly $100 million revenue run rate business for you is equities. It doesn't get talked about a lot, it has consistently been a double-digit grower for you all. What's the strategic vision for that equities business, what do you attribute some of the recent growth to?
Obviously, our equity business is focused around ETFs right now. The ETF market has obviously grown significantly. I want to say our equity business has grown at north of 15% a year since 2020, right? Nobody really talks about it as that being one of our huge revenue streams. Now we're sort of working through options and extending that footprint past just the ETF space. Obviously we're super excited. We've sort of made that footprint through technology and innovation, which I think is sort of the linchpin of how we build businesses, where we've done block RFQ in that space, and we've definitely garnered a fair amount of market share in this space. We really feel like it dovetails nicely into our credit business as well as you think about ETFs and unwinding of ETFs and the underlying asset classes within that.
We're working hard to kind of figure out how we connect what is our institutional credit business with regard to our ETF business as well, and we think that there's a fair amount of TAM that we can excavate from that perspective if we get that right. We're pushing forward, both from a technology and innovation standpoint, connectivity standpoint, and obviously, as Sara said, that business is a global business, and so the opportunity's not just here in the U.S. We have a fairly large footprint in Europe as well.
Okay. One of the things I want to hit on i n a lot of meetings today is AI. We've been talking about it. As AI trading becomes more automated and it takes hold and you see more AI trading agents being deployed, I think it's mostly going to be focused on retail right now, but how is Tradeweb positioning itself for that shift?
Part of the reason that I joined the firm is I felt like we were in a really unique spot with regard to AI. The reason I say that is if we break down AI, it's really just a manifestation of data, right? If you think about agents and smart agents, the fact that we have 25 years of data in rates, we have an extended amount of data in the credit space, both institutional, retail, and wholesale. You think about the data we now have in the ETF space. From our perspective, we sit in a very unique spot. I'll tell you a quick story. We hired a woman, Sherry Marcus, to run our AI platform, right? She's a very impressive background. You look at her resume and it's like she worked AWS, she worked CIA or something.
I'm interviewing her, and she's like I wasn't really interviewing. We were having a conversation about me trying to talk her into coming. I said to her, I'm like, "Sherry, why do you want to come to Tradeweb? Like, in theory, given the prominence of AI and your background, you can go anywhere and do anything." In our office, on our TV, it said $2.7 trillion average daily volume. She said, "That's why I want to come here. You guys have the data, and I can manifest it in really unique ways." That kind of was like the aha moment for me with regard to our footprint and how important we will be in the execution and the evolution of AI as we think about it transacting with each other.
Early days, but Sherry's done a great job in her first eight months, and I think part of the reason why I'm excited about where our credit platform's going is that's been her initial focus, is around implementing a lot of our data into AI tools with regard to chatbot and our pricing model. Early days, but exciting times.
Sure. Another big trend, Sara, that I want to ask you about is related to corporate treasurers, where the keynote today is the DTCC CEO. They're looking to tokenize treasuries starting in July. There's a lot of talk that tokenization could revolutionize corporate treasury management and really dramatically improve balance sheet efficiency for all kinds of companies. I've heard upwards of 40%-60% for some financial services companies from tokenizing treasuries and improving efficiencies. You acquired ICD in 2024. How is ICD positioned for that trend, and is there a meaningful revenue opportunity there?
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think Tradeweb as a whole is really well-positioned for that trend, and we've spent a lot of time talking about Canton and work with DTCC in terms of some of the work they're doing to tokenize their collateral pool. Specifically to ICD, it's an acquisition we did two years ago. We're incredibly pleased with how it's performed. They had record results in the first quarter. Essentially what it is is a money market fund portal, but a portal for corporate treasurers to access and to manage their cash and short-term liquidity needs. Today, there are a lot of traditional money market funds. One of the things we see as an opportunity, as tokenized money market funds become more available, putting that onto the platform, and we're well underway on that work, can alleviate certain frictions that corporate treasurers face.
You think, and I think about myself as a CFO, there are times where you want to move money or liquidate funds after market, intraday, on the weekend, and those things aren't as easy in traditional money market funds, and potentially the tokenized versions of them will enable some of that to happen more seamlessly. That said, corporate treasurers don't want to have a separate wallet, at least from the client feedback we've gotten, and manage other complexity. They want it in the same format. ICD connects to a number of different systems that those corporate treasurers need to function. Think about a treasury management system. You want that same opportunity to sit alongside the other tools that you are using.
From our seat, we think having that front door for corporate treasurers, having the trust in how we've onboarded something into the system and it's already connected, is a big part of the potential opportunity. It's probably too early to say what the revenue opportunity is. I think corporate treasurers are very measured in how they make changes. We think having that toolkit alongside T-bills on our platform is really important. The other thing that I would say is as you think about how a world evolves in a tokenized market, one of the other things that ICD's well-positioned for is there are new scaled companies, there are crypto native companies, and the regulatory environment for them are changing. They can actually be clients of ICD in a way that didn't really exist four or five years ago.
I think ICD is well-positioned in two different parts of the balance sheet, so to speak, for the long-term trend, as is the longer Tradeweb business.
Sure. Maybe just, Sara, ending on a question about capital allocation, cash flow profile you have today. How do you think about the balance between M&A buybacks and dividends, and is there any appetite for larger, more transformational deals that make strategic sense? I think a few quarters ago, Billy might have hinted at something. Anything to say there?
Sure. Big picture for everyone, the long-term philosophy on how we allocate capital is the same waterfall that everyone's heard from me. We talk about organic, inorganic, share repurchases, and dividends. Like our organic business, there's lots of opportunities, and we are more than able to fund that. From an inorganic perspective, we think about every tool in the toolkit. Things from principal investments, which you've seen us do a lot more of this year, to M&A. That can be bolt-on and larger M&A. What I would say about M&A is we have the cash, the excess cash on the balance sheet. We obviously have the ability to pursue that. Strategic fit is really important, and we see a number of things. A number of opportunities are sitting on our pipeline that we are really excited about strategically. The financial discipline is also really important.
We want to see things that accelerate revenue growth. We want to see things that can help us produce more operating leverage, and we want to make sure that they're EPS accretive within a near-term horizon. The confluence of how you time pursuing those acquisitions is a combination of having that strategic fit and the financial discipline, and I think we have a really good track record of being opportunistic and not chasing. From our seat, I think that's really important. I would just say the only other piece is on the third piece of our waterfall when we're talking about share repurchases, we have accelerated our share repurchases. We think the stock has dislocated from fundamental intrinsic value. Quarter to date, we've purchased nearly $100 million of stock. We have over $400 million left on the authorization.
We like that return of capital. That doesn't preclude our ability from doing any of the other measures. On a near-term basis, that's certainly a use of cash that we think is a positive one.
Sure. All right. Well, I think that's a great place to end, Sara. Troy, thanks so much for joining.