Howard Lutnick: I wouldn’t use the term non-core. These are businesses that are deeply consistent with our business model across the capital markets. They are, I think, the term that people like to understand is they are completely separable. I mean we have numerous products that it’s an exchange or electronic peer marketplace, which to acquire from us, they would be easily separable and able to be sold. So, I think we are open-minded to it. We cannot understand why the company trades at the multiple trades at, but we understand that. And so therefore, if there were assets that the company had that would trade at the kind of revenue multiples and profit multiples that some of the electronic trading platforms and exchanges trade at, I think we would be open-minded to such a transaction.
And as you correctly said, selling things at double-digit multiples of revenue and buying back our company at mid-single-digit multiples of earnings, sounds like a smart thing for management to do, especially since we are the biggest owners of this company’s shares, and we really like that idea. So, we understand it. You spoke to us about it, some of our shareholders spoke too about it. We understand it, and we heard you, and we’re open-minded. But those things happen — if and when they happen, we are not making any promises, but that would be our thinking of return policy. We historically paid dividends. We’re now buying back shares. We like that model of buying back shares that we have had the opportunity to buy other companies incredibly accretively to what we think our long-term prospects are, and we’re going to continue to do that.
So, acquisitions, of course, if correctly priced, we’re open-minded to and we’re generating cash, buy back shares. And if we, of course, were able to do a transaction, then we would just be much more aggressive in buying back those shares.
Patrick Moley : Okay. And then on FMX, I’ve got to ask it, but — so just to clarify, you are planning to still announce the strategic partners and financial details before the end of the year. Did I hear that right? And then just going — once the CFTC approval comes, if you could maybe just talk a little bit about your expectations for market share growth and volumes there? And maybe just what you view as some of the competitive advantages that FMX will offer its customers compared to your biggest competition there in CME?
Howard Lutnick: So, our current plans are — it’s sort of one of two things. We’ll either at least it is the company’s desire and expectation to at least this quarter, announce our strategic partners. We may in discussions with those strategic partners they’re able to lay out all of the transaction details, but that we are still in discussions with our strategic partners now. So, it will be either at least the names. That’s our objective, but also transaction details. We just need to work that out with all the partners. CFTC. We are — again, we work closely with the CFTC going through the process of getting our exchange approved. We are very confident — we remain very confident that, that we’ll just come in its due course of time, and we are working through that.
That is not a stress point for us internally. It just works. Lastly, your question about market share. So, the futures market is a gigantic opportunity for us, and it has a wide breadth across the capital markets. So, I would suggest our first year that we are open is going to be a year which we would call breadth opening every account that we possibly can across the capital markets, having all the FCMs, all the trading firms, getting everybody on the network. Now as you know, because our treasury platform has been growing 7 points market share over the last year, we have broad-based users, right? But the futures market is much, much, much, much broader. And as you bring on this much broader number of users, of course, that will grow our treasury business dramatically as well.
That’s why we look at these things together. So, first year, let’s call it breadth, second year then begins depth. And once those two years are completed, then you’re going to see bare-knuckled competition. So that’s what I would say it’s sort of a one, two, three. First year you’re going to see us defining breadth, second year is making sure we have depth, meaning every customer, every area of every customer, every portion of every customer, how much are they doing, how much can we get them on, get them on the network, get them using and get the network effect going. And then year three will be significant, significant competition. And this is an opportunity for this company that is at a scale that is far, far different than the value of this company today.
