Cboe Global Markets Reports 2019 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results

CHICAGO, Feb. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE) today reported financial results for the 2019 fourth quarter and full year.

"Our fourth quarter results reflect lower year-over-year trading volumes industrywide as lower volatility dampened trading, particularly in our suite of proprietary products, which experienced exceptionally strong trading in 2018's fourth quarter," said Edward T. Tilly, Cboe Global Markets Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "I am pleased to note, however, that in 2019 we significantly strengthened our foundation for further growth by investing in initiatives aimed at growing our proprietary products; completing our technology migration while delivering on our synergy targets; and launching new initiatives, such as our plan to acquire EuroCCP and launch pan-European derivatives trading and clearing.  Additionally, we further enhanced our foundation for growth through this week's acquisitions of Hanweck, a real-time risk analytics company, and FT Options, a portfolio management platform provider.  Our forward momentum leaves us well positioned for ongoing growth and to continue to deliver increased value to our customers and our shareholders in 2020 and beyond," Mr. Tilly added.

"We faced difficult comparisons this quarter versus last year's record fourth quarter results; however, we continued to exercise prudent expense management, with adjusted operating expenses down 14 percent, in line with the fourth quarter revenue decline," said Brian N. Schell, Cboe Global Markets Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.  "During the quarter, we also maintained our ongoing commitment to returning capital to shareholders in a disciplined and consistent manner with $70 million of share repurchases and $40 million of dividends.  During the year, we returned nearly $157 million to shareholders through share repurchases and over $150 million through dividends, increasing our dividend by 15 percent with the third quarter dividend payment, used $350 million to reduce debt and continued to fund investments in our business," Mr. Schell added.

Consolidated Fourth Quarter Results -Table 1
Table 1 below presents summary selected unaudited condensed consolidated financial information for the company as reported and on an adjusted basis for the three months ended December 31, 2019 and 2018.

• Total revenues less cost of revenues (referred to as "net revenue") were $280.3 million, compared to $334.4 million in the prior-year period, reflecting lower trading volumes across business segments, particularly in options and futures in our proprietary index products, including SPX options and VIX options and futures, which had particularly strong trading volume in the fourth quarter of 2018.
• Total operating expenses were $161.1 million versus $158.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2018. Operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2019 include a $23.4 million provision for notes receivable, included in other expenses, associated with the funding for the development of the consolidated audit trail ("CAT"). Adjusted operating expenses¹ of $95.6 million decreased 14 percent compared with $111.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, primarily reflecting a decrease in compensation and benefits as a result of lower incentive-based compensation.
• Operating income declined 32 percent to $119.2 million and adjusted operating income¹ decreased by 17 percent to $184.7 million.
• The operating margin for the fourth quarter was 42.5 percent compared to 52.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. The adjusted operating margin¹ for the fourth quarter was 65.9 percent, down 70 basis points from 2018's fourth quarter, reflecting lower net revenue.
• The effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2019 was 24.4 percent compared with 21.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. The effective tax rate on adjusted earnings¹ in the fourth quarter of 2019 was 24.7 percent compared with 22.1 percent in last year's fourth quarter. The higher effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2019 was primarily due to tax benefits associated with re-measuring net deferred tax liabilities recognized in the fourth quarter of 2018.
• Diluted EPS for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $0.77, down 37 percent. Adjusted diluted EPS¹ was $1.21, down 21 percent compared to 2018's fourth-quarter results.

Business Segment Information:

Discussion of Results by Business Segment:

Options:

• Options net revenue of $139.4 million was down $35.1 million or 20 percent from the fourth quarter of 2018, primarily due to lower revenue from net transaction fees¹, offset somewhat by lower royalty fees and higher market data revenue.
• Net transaction fees¹ decreased $47.0 million, as total options average daily volume (ADV) decreased 15 percent and revenue per contract (RPC) decreased 20 percent compared to the fourth quarter 2018. The variance in the options RPC was mainly due to multi-listed options representing a higher percentage of options volume. The RPC for multi-listed options decreased 34 percent, primarily due to a shift in volume mix by order type and higher volume rebates versus the fourth quarter of 2018. The RPC for index options increased 2 percent, reflecting a shift in the volume mix by product.
• Cboe's Options business had market share of 37.4 percent for the fourth quarter of 2019 compared to 38.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, reflecting the lower mix of volume contributed from index options.

U.S. Equities:

• U.S. Equities net revenue of $75.5 million was down $6.0 million or 7 percent, primarily due to lower revenue from net transaction fees¹, offset somewhat by higher revenue from non-transaction fees.
• Cboe U.S. Equities had market share of 16.4 percent for the fourth quarter of 2019 compared to 17.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, due in part to higher volume traded off-exchange and a higher percentage of volume traded in the closing auctions, where Cboe did not compete.

Futures:

• Futures net revenue of $30.9 million decreased $9.5 million or 24 percent, primarily due to lower net transaction fees¹.
• Net transaction fees¹ decreased $10.3 million or 28 percent, reflecting a 33 percent decrease in ADV, offset somewhat by a 6 percent increase in RPC.

European Equities:

• European Equities net revenue of $21.6 million decreased by 11 percent, reflecting a decline in net transaction fees¹, offset by an increase in non-transaction revenue. In local currency, net revenue was down 10 percent. Average daily notional value (ADNV) for the overall market was down 25 percent during the quarter and ADNV traded for Cboe Europe was €6.5 billion, down 39 percent from last year's fourth quarter, with net capture up 23 percent.
• For the fourth quarter of 2019, Cboe European Equities had 18.4 percent market share, down from 22.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, primarily a result of off-exchange trading and closing auctions accounting for a larger share of trading, largely driven by low market volume and low volatility.

Global FX:

• Global FX net revenue of $12.9 million decreased $0.8 million or 6 percent, primarily due to lower net transaction fees¹ compared with the fourth quarter of 2018. ADNV traded on the Cboe FX platform was $30.1 billion for the quarter, down 14 percent from last year's fourth quarter, offset somewhat by a 6 percent increase in net capture per one million dollars traded of $2.80 for fourth quarter 2019 compared to fourth quarter 2018.
• Cboe FX had record market share of 16.0 percent for the fourth quarter of 2019 compared to 15.3 percent in last year's fourth quarter, primarily reflecting customer adoption of Cboe's new full amount product offering.

2020 Fiscal Year Financial Guidance

The company provided guidance as noted below for the 2020 fiscal year.  This guidance does not take into account the company's planned acquisition of EuroCCP and its investment in launching pan-European trading and clearing.  The company plans to update its guidance for 2020 after the acquisition closes, which is expected in the first half of this year.

• Adjusted operating expenses are expected to be in the range of $435 to $443 million, up from the previous guidance of $420 to $428 million, reflecting the company's recent acquisitions of Hanweck and FT Options, announced February 4, 2020. The guidance excludes the expected amortization of acquired intangible assets of $120 million, which the company plans to include in its non-GAAP reconciliation.¹
• Depreciation and amortization expense, which is included in adjusted operating expenses above, are expected to be in the range of $34 to $38 million, excluding the expected amortization of acquired intangible assets of $120 million.
• The effective tax rate¹ on adjusted earnings for the full year is expected to be in the range of 26.5 to 28.5 percent. Significant changes in trading volume, expenses, federal, state and local tax laws or rates and other items could materially impact this expectation.
• Capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $65 to $70 million, which includes expenditures associated with the company's Chicago headquarters relocation occurring later this year and its trading floor relocation planned for 2021.

Capital Management

The company paid cash dividends of $40.1 million, or $0.36 per share, during the fourth quarter of 2019 and utilized $69.5 million to repurchase 0.6 million shares of its common stock under its share repurchase program at an average price of $115.76 per share.  For the full-year 2019, the company paid cash dividends of $150.0 million, or $1.34 per share, and utilized $156.9 million to repurchase 1.4 million shares of its common stock under its share repurchase program at an average price of $110.42 per share.  In addition, through January 31, 2020, the company used $26.6 million to repurchase 0.2 million shares at an average price of $117.20, resulting in approximately $273 million of availability remaining under its share repurchase program as of January 31, 2020. 

At December 31, 2019, the company had adjusted cash and financial investments² of $207.9 million. Total debt as of December 31, 2019 was $867.6 million.

Earnings Conference Call

Executives of Cboe Global Markets will host a conference call to review its fourth-quarter financial results today, February 7, 2020, at 8:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. CT. The conference call and any accompanying slides will be publicly available via live webcast from the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.cboe.com under Events & Presentations. Participants may also listen via telephone by dialing (877) 255‑4313 from the United States, (866) 450‑4696 from Canada or (412) 317‑5466 for international callers. Telephone participants should place calls 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. The webcast will be archived on the company's website for replay. A telephone replay of the earnings call also will be available from approximately 11:00 a.m. CT, February 7, 2020, through 11:00 p.m. CT, February 14, 2020, by calling (877) 344‑7529 from the U.S., (855) 669‑9658 from Canada or (412) 317‑0088 for international callers, using replay code 10137501.

About Cboe Global Markets

Cboe Global Markets (Cboe: CBOE) is one of the world's largest exchange holding companies, offering cutting-edge trading and investment solutions to investors around the world. The company is committed to defining markets to benefit its participants and drive the global marketplace forward through product innovation, leading edge technology and seamless trading solutions.

The company offers trading across a diverse range of products in multiple asset classes and geographies, including options, futures, U.S. and European equities, exchange-traded products (ETPs), global foreign exchange (FX) and volatility products based on the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX Index), recognized as the world's premier gauge of U.S. equity market volatility.

Cboe's subsidiaries include the largest options exchange and the third largest stock exchange operator in the U.S. In addition, the company operates one of the largest stock exchanges by value traded in Europe and is a leading market globally for ETP listings and trading. 

The company is headquartered in Chicago with a network of domestic and global offices across the Americas, Europe and Asia, including main hubs in New York, London, Kansas City and Amsterdam. For more information, visit www.cboe.com.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. You can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "may," "might," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential" or "continue," and the negative of these terms and other comparable terminology. All statements that reflect our expectations, assumptions or projections about the future other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible to predict all risks and uncertainties, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.

Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the loss of our right to exclusively list and trade certain index options and futures products; economic, political and market conditions; compliance with legal and regulatory obligations; price competition and consolidation in our industry; decreases in trading volumes, market data fees or a shift in the mix of products traded on our exchanges; legislative or regulatory changes; our ability to protect our systems and communication networks from security risks, cybersecurity risks, insider threats and unauthorized disclosure of confidential information; increasing competition by foreign and domestic entities; our dependence on and exposure to risk from third parties; fluctuations to currency exchange rates; our index providers' ability to maintain the quality and integrity of their indexes and to perform under our agreements; our ability to operate our business without violating the intellectual property rights of others and the costs associated with protecting our intellectual property rights; our ability to attract and retain skilled management and other personnel, including those experienced with post-acquisition integration; our ability to accommodate trading volume and transaction traffic, including significant increases, without failure or degradation of performance of our systems; misconduct by those who use our markets or our products; challenges to our use of open source software code; our ability to meet our compliance obligations, including managing potential conflicts between our regulatory responsibilities and our for-profit status; damage to our reputation; the ability of our compliance and risk management methods to effectively monitor and manage our risks; our ability to manage our growth and strategic acquisitions or alliances effectively; restrictions imposed by our debt obligations; our ability to maintain an investment grade credit rating; impairment of our goodwill, investments or intangible assets; and the accuracy of our estimates and expectations. More detailed information about factors that may affect our actual results to differ may be found in our filings with the SEC, including in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 and other filings made from time to time with the SEC.

We do not undertake, and we expressly disclaim, any duty to update any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

The condensed consolidated statements of income and balance sheets are unaudited and subject to reclassification.

CBOE-F

Trademarks:
Cboe®, Cboe Global Markets®, Bats®, BZX®, BYX®, EDGX®, EDGA®, Cboe Volatility Index® and VIX® are registered trademarks of Cboe Global Markets, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Non-GAAP Information

In addition to disclosing results determined in accordance with GAAP, Cboe Global Markets has disclosed certain non-GAAP measures of operating performance. These measures are not in accordance with, or a substitute for, GAAP, and may be different from or inconsistent with non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. The non-GAAP measures provided in this press release include net transaction fees, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating income, adjusted operating margin, adjusted net income allocated to common stockholders and adjusted diluted earnings per share, effective tax rate on adjusted earnings, adjusted cash and financial investments, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin.

Management believes that the non-GAAP financial measures presented in this press release, including adjusted operating income and adjusted operating expenses, provide additional and comparative information to assess trends in our core operations and a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Non-GAAP financial measures disclosed by management are provided as additional information to investors in order to provide them with an alternative method for assessing our financial condition and operating results.

Amortization expense of acquired intangible assets: We amortize intangible assets acquired in connection with various acquisitions. Amortization of intangible assets is inconsistent in amount and frequency and is significantly affected by the timing and size of our acquisitions. As such, if intangible asset amortization is included in performance measures, it is more difficult to assess the day-to-day operating performance of the businesses, the relative operating performance of the businesses between periods and the earnings power of the company. Therefore, we believe performance measures excluding intangible asset amortization expense provide investors with an additional basis for comparison across accounting periods.

Acquisition-related expenses: From time to time, we have pursued small bolt-on acquisitions and in 2017 completed a larger transformative acquisition, which have resulted in expenses which would not otherwise have been incurred in the normal course of the company's business operations. These expenses include integration costs, as well as legal, due diligence and other third party transaction costs. The frequency and the amount of such expenses vary significantly based on the size, timing and complexity of the transaction. Accordingly, we exclude these costs for purposes of calculating non-GAAP measures which provide an additional analysis of Cboe's ongoing operating performance or comparisons in Cboe's performance between periods.

The tables below show the reconciliation of each financial measure from GAAP to non-GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of those items detailed below and are referred to as adjusted financial measures.

EBITDA Reconciliations

EBITDA (earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization) and Adjusted EBITDA are widely used non-GAAP financial measures of operating performance. EBITDA margin represents EBITDA divided by revenues less cost of revenues (net revenue). It is presented as supplemental information that the company believes is useful to investors to evaluate its results because it excludes certain items that are not directly related to the company's core operating performance. EBITDA is calculated by adding back to net income interest expense, income tax expense, depreciation and amortization. Adjusted EBITDA is calculated by adding back to EBITDA acquisition-related expenses and impairment charges attributed to noncontrolling interest.  EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as substitutes either for net income, as an indicator of the company's operating performance, or for cash flow, as a measure of the company's liquidity. In addition, because EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA may not be calculated identically by all companies, the presentation here may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures of other companies.  Adjusted  EBITDA margin represents Adjusted EBITDA divided by net revenue.

SOURCE Cboe Global Markets, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cboe.com