Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Benjamin Jackson: Thanks, Ben. This is Ben. So great name by the way. So from a cross-sell perspective, that’s the beauty of this business that we’ve established that when you look across all of the offerings that we have across our ICE Mortgage Technology network, we touch almost every lender with some of our – with one of our services on our platform. And we have 3,000 of them that are on our Encompass platform. And we continue to have great success across the spectrum of bringing in new Encompass customers that are utilizing other services that we have on our network and getting new wins across all of the segments that we service. So think of whether it’s a bank, a nonbank originator, a broker, a credit union, we continue to have success across each of those segments.

And we’ve also leveraging the overall enterprise that ICE brings to bear. We’ve been able to leverage that to reposition and have some wins with large banks replacing legacy infrastructure that historically, the business wouldn’t have been well positioned to win. So we feel great about that part of the business. In the environment that we’re in, we have seen customers very focused on rightsizing their organizations rightfully so with the headwinds that they’ve seen. And they’ve been very focused on the core platforms that they run, and Encompass is one of the key ones. So that’s why we continue to see great strength there. At the same time, innovative companies and entrepreneurs that are thinking ahead don’t want to have to – as the market is going to turn, and it will turn at some point, don’t want to have to chase volumes by hiring armies of people.

Again, they want to try to automate and become as efficient as possible in their processing. And that’s why we continue to have great success in areas such as AIQ, which we’ve now rebranded to our ICE data and document automation platform. And some of the examples that we talked about in the prepared remarks were JPMorgan Chase, obviously, significant bank selected us last year. They’ve just gone live on the platform this year. So we’re starting to see some of that to come into our performance. And on the back of that, a top 15 lender and CrossCountry Mortgage has now selected us. So we see innovative companies out there looking to invest in efficiency and automation going into the future.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question today comes from the line of Alex Kramm, UBS. Please go ahead, Alex. Your line is now open.

Alexander Kramm: Yes. Hey, good morning everyone. Just a quick one on pricing, actually. Last quarter, you obviously made some price moves on the energy trading side. It looked like that came through pretty nicely. So just wondering any lessons learned from there, and can you extend that into other areas is really the question? I mean, you didn’t touch any other Futures businesses. Maybe broadly on the Exchange side, around market data and some of the success you’re having in energy data in particular, are there more opportunities for pricing that you see now versus previously since you’ve gone through this experience on pricing here?

Warren Gardiner: Yes. Alex, it’s Warren. It’s a great question. And so in terms of the pricing changes we made within the energy complex, as we said last quarter, those were a handful of oil contracts. So we didn’t touch everything within energy, but certainly decided at that moment in time, it was a good moment in time to capture some of the value we brought to the asset class over the last number of decades, frankly. And so we spoke to you last quarter, mentioned there would probably be a few pennies of benefit to the RPC. I would say it’s about – it was about $0.03 to $0.04, if you will, so in line with what we were expecting on that front in terms of the benefit from those price changes, all else equal. As we look across the rest of the futures platform and frankly, the rest of the ICE platform, the philosophy as we approach and apply here is going to be the same and has been the same since the beginning.

And that’s when we see opportunity to capture value that we’ve created for people and our customers and the asset classes that we operate, we’ll think about doing that and frankly, be selective about it and pick our spots. And so I think as you’re thinking about that as we move into next year and future years as well, we’ll be taking that same approach. And so we did have some success with this on the energy side. Again, I think it’s a recognition of, again, the value we created because we certainly see very strong volumes and very strong open interest continue. And I think you’ll just see us take a similar approach across the rest of the ICE business as we move into our budget season this year and think about it into the future.

Alexander Kramm: So more of a next year opportunity is what I’m hearing from you. Sorry for the quick follow-up.

Warren Gardiner: So I wouldn’t expect pricing changes this year. So yes, it will be next year and beyond.

Operator: Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Simon Clinch from Atlantic Equities. Please go ahead, Simon. Your line is now open.