Miami International Holdings, Inc. (MIAX) Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by. My name is Gary, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Miami International Holdings, Inc. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to John T. Williams, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for MIAX's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I am John T. Williams, head of investor relations. With us today are Thomas P. Gallagher, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Lance Emmons, Chief Financial Officer. We will also have Douglas M. Schafer Jr., Chief Information Officer, and Shelly Brown, Chief Executive Officer Futures and Chief Strategy Officer of MIAX, joining us for the Q&A session following our prepared remarks. Our earnings announcement was released prior to this call, and we have published an accompanying slide presentation on our investor relations website at ir.miaxglobal.com. In addition, this call is being webcast, and an archived version will be available there shortly after the conclusion of the call. Our discussion today includes forward-looking statements that are based on the expectations, estimates, and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends, and other matters that are not historical facts. The forward-looking statements in our discussion are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not place undue reliance on them. We refer you to our earnings press release and filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could impact the future operating results and financial condition of MIAX. We do not intend to update any forward-looking statements made on this conference call to reflect events or circumstances after today or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP measures as defined and reconciled in our earnings materials. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tom.

Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We had a solid third quarter. Net revenue grew 20% year-over-year. We gained market share, and we meaningfully expanded margins while investing in the business. We also made real progress on the futures side, including getting retail distribution for our Bloomberg products underway. Three things stood out this quarter. First, our options business continued to grow. Net revenue was $131 million, up 20% year-over-year, and options market share increased to 17.4%. Second, we continue to operate the business efficiently. Adjusted EBITDA was $71 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 54%, up more than 1,000 basis points year-over-year. Notably, we made that progress while continuing to invest in our options business and our Bloomberg Financial Futures suite. Third, we continue to execute our futures business strategy. In mid-October, we announced NinjaTrader as the first retail broker distributing our Bloomberg Financial Futures products, an exciting initial milestone. And last week, we launched four new physically settled futures contracts on MIAX Futures. Let me frame how we are thinking about recent industry trends. Three things are reshaping our industry: growing retail investor interest in derivatives, a pipeline of large IPOs that expands the opportunity for options, and a regulatory environment that continues to evolve. All three should reward a company that stays disciplined and ready to move. Lance, can you maybe go to yours real quick? I am just having a little allergy here.

Yes, absolutely, Thomas. It is that timing year. So thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Third quarter net revenue was $131 million, up 20% from the prior year period. We continue to manage expenses carefully. Adjusted operating expenses were $60 million, compared to $62 million a year ago, mostly flat year-over-year, and a growth rate well below our revenue growth. We are continuing to invest in new products, but are doing it on a largely fixed cost base, and we remain disciplined. As mentioned, adjusted EBITDA was $71 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 54% compared to 44% in the third quarter of last year. 1,000 basis points of year-over-year margin improvement as we continue to generate operating leverage tied to revenue growth with high incremental margins. Adjusted earnings were $50 million, up 25% year-over-year, and adjusted diluted EPS was $0.45. Now let us discuss our Q3 segment performance. Option segment net revenue was $113 million, up 19% year-over-year. Daily volume of 11.1 million contracts grew 15% year-over-year, slightly outpacing industry ADV growth. Options' second net revenues were driven by an increase in both net transaction fees and non-transaction fees. Growth in net transaction fees reflected higher industry ADV and market share, partially offset by lower revenue per contract. Non-transaction fee revenue growth of 38% was primarily due to increased member connections, our January 1, 2026 fee increases, and market data sales. For 2027, we plan to increase our access fees by approximately 10% effective January 1st. Q3 2026 included approximately $2 million in historical data sales from new products introduced earlier this year, similar to what we saw in Q1 and Q2. While this revenue has now materialized each quarter this year, the amount can vary meaningfully, so we suggest modeling it conservatively. Turning to market share and RPC. Q3 options market share was 17.4% compared to 17.2% in the third quarter of last year and 16.5% last quarter. Q3 RPC was $0.098 compared to $0.124 in Q2 and $0.11 in Q1. Recall that back in August, we discussed the factors expected to shape our second half RPC while noting that Q2 RPC was an outlier. With that in mind, the step down in options RPC from $0.11 in Q1 2026 to $0.098 in Q3 2026 was driven by three factors: changes we made during the quarter, the change in ORF effective July 1st, and several mixed factors which largely offset each other. Capture rates are always difficult to project, especially in the short term, but we are comfortable with our approach to pricing, and our focus remains on optimizing revenue. We continue to make adjustments to ensure RPC and market share remain in a healthy balance over time. Our equity segment net revenue was $7 million, up from $4 million in the prior year period, due to higher net transaction fees. Equity's capture was positive as compared to inverted in the year-ago period. Futures segment net revenue was $5 million, a 4% compared to the prior year period. Our Bloomberg Financial Futures products launched in May and did not contribute materially to our overall Q3 results. So segment-adjusted EBITDA continues to reflect our investment in launch incentive programs. International segment net revenue was $6 million, up 11% year-over-year. We continue to streamline sales and marketing efforts across our international listings business, which we believe offers attractive long-term upside. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $699 million and outstanding debt of less than $2 million, which matures in December. Our significant cash balance is a strength and will remain judicious in our deployment of capital while staying open to discipline opportunities that fit our strategy. Now, let us discuss our updated 2026 guidance. Full details, including comparison to our prior guidance, can be found on slide 17 of the earnings deck. With 1 quarter remaining of the year, we are lowering our full-year 2026 adjusted operating expense guidance range to between $254 million and $257 million. That compares to the prior $260 million to $270 million range and reflects our continued careful expense management in Q3 and over the course of the year. Our expense expectations for Q4 include a planned increase in marketing costs, including Bloomberg Futures quoting incentives. We now expect our full-year share-based compensation expense in a range between $30 million and $32 million, narrowed from the prior $29 million to $32 million range. We expect full-year capital expenditures in the range between $43 million and $46 million versus the prior $40 million to $45 million range. We chose to pull forward some Plan 2027 CapEx to mitigate expected cost increases, similar to what we did earlier this year. We expect depreciation and amortization in a range between $36 million and $38 million, now from the prior range of $35 million to $39 million. Our Q3 adjusted effective tax rate was 26%, and we now expect our full-year rate will be in the 26% to 28% range versus the prior 27% to 29% range. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our ability to expand margins over time as revenue grows against a largely fixed cost base and as our new products scale. I will now turn it back over to you, Tom.

Great. Thank, thank you, Lance. I am going to have Shelly also talk a little bit about some of our options strategy in a moment or 2. But we continue to execute on the strategy that has really driven our success, that is building, launching, and operating high-performance exchanges. Today, that means bringing competition to retail financial futures with Bloomberg, meeting institutional demands in our agricultural futures franchise, and rolling out new functionality on our options exchanges. Shelly, why don't you talk to us a little bit now about the options business.

Then I will pick up with the next one. Thank you, Tom. Industry options volumes were again a tailwind in the third quarter. Retail participation, short-dated options, new listings, and structured products are all contributing to industry volumes. Importantly, we expect those trends to continue. Our Q3 market share was 17.4% and our focus remains optimizing revenue mix and driving share growth. For MIAX, share gains are driven over time by execution in our core business, options business, including market share expansion on our Sapphire trading floor. We hit a number of milestones in the trading floor in Q3, capturing over 12% of total industry market share multi-listed trading floor volume. We continue to see strong demand for members to have a presence on the floor and welcome a number of new market makers during the quarter. Now turning to our future segment. Yes, I will.

Pick up with that, Shelly. Thank you. We have made significant progress on 2 fronts, our Bloomberg Financial Futures products and our Agricultural Futures. On Bloomberg, we are pleased with where we stand today. Screens are lit, and we have four clearing members and four market makers active and connected. Retail distribution was a key milestone. And as we mentioned earlier, that is now happening as our Bloomberg TINI B500 and TINI B100 equity-indexed are available on NinjaTrader. We expect additional brokerage platforms to begin offering these retail-focused products in Q4 of this year. I want to take a moment to speak about why we believe these products will succeed over time. We are bringing a differentiated product to market, and it is built to work better for everyone who trades it, not just the exchange. That means smaller notional sizes, no exchange fees for retail traders, and free market data. Just a reminder on the big picture. On the big picture, we have a 10-year exclusive license with, um, with Bloomberg to list index futures, options on futures, and cash index options based on the B500, the B100, B500 volatility indices in North and South America. Success for MIAX equates to 3 things: expanding distribution, growing volumes, and improving capture rates over time. It is still very, very early, and we believe this is a significant opportunity to disrupt this category. We also have a growing agricultural futures product pipeline and recently launched four new physically settled fertilizer contracts in response to member demand. We expect more products will come as we build on decades-long relationships with our MIAX Futures Exchange members. We also recently announced OCC clearing membership and a $40 million capital increase for our FCM, Dorman Trading, bringing its adjusted net capital to $67 million. That capital supports larger volumes and new client growth as futures activity on our platform expands, including clearing for Bloomberg products that trade on our MIAX futures exchange. It also supports our FCM's customers across all the exchanges it serves. We are investing to strengthen and position our FCM as a well-capitalized partner for futures market participants. And let us be clear, a key benefit of our FCM joining the OCC is that retail brokers have an additional path to access our Bloomberg Equity Index futures. Trading on our MIAX Futures Exchange. Now I want to spend a few minutes on how our technology adapts to the different markets we serve. Our technology moat continues to set us apart. We built it in-house and we control it. Our options, futures, and equities exchanges are built on a unified technology foundation. That allows us to scale cost-effectively across asset classes while having the flexibility to match the unique functional and performance characteristics of each specific market model we employ. We also have the ability to mix and match between on-prem and cloud solutions to further maximize our cost savings. Four strengths define our technology: low latency, high throughput, determinism, and reliability. Different market models across asset classes demand varying degrees of ultra-low latency, throughput, and determinism. This allows our customers to reliably count on MIAX's existence, even during periods of market stress or high volatility. Knowing how a system will react during these conditions allows traders to take more risk with deeper and tighter markets. For example, on MIAX Options, our latency and industry leading is industry leading at just 36 microseconds at the 99.9th percentile, providing a maximum of 32 million quotes per second, with a 99.999% operational uptime since inception. Coupled with our built-in risk protections, this allows a market maker to be more aggressive while they take a more defensive posture on other exchanges. Turning to new products, the environment is moving quickly, and our regulators have been clear that they are embracing speed and innovation in our industry. We think that is constructive, and we welcome it. Today, we have all the pieces in place to act. SEC registered options and equities exchanges, a CFTC registered futures exchange and clearinghouse, an FCM, 2 international exchanges, and our technology stack. We are in a great position to evaluate and launch new products as demand develops, both domestically and internationally. Building on these pieces, we will file with the SEC to list cash settled binary index options, which will include our licensed Bloomberg indices. We will also file with the SEC to list cash settled binary KPI options, cash-settled binary KPI options. A number of other significant developments have occurred in our markets this year, including the approval of certain types of perpetual futures, tokenization, various types of event contracts, and extended trading hours in both options and equities. Let me speak for a moment on perpetuals. Regarding perpetuals, our ONIX Futures platform could support them with a few technology enhancements. We see them as a possible extension of our product offerings and an opportunity, not a replacement. We do not believe perps are having an impact on industry options volume, which we believe and we confirm continue to grow, and we do not see evidence of any cannibalization. On 2 other emerging areas, such as tokenization, extended trading hours, and prediction markets, we recognize that market structure is evolving and that customers in the industry are increasingly focused on them. On predictions markets, our 10% stake in Rethera gives us an additional way to participate. So, whether in PERPs, tokenization, or other asset classes, we will move decisively and be prepared to commit capital when demand warrants and clarity emerges. That is how we are proceeding. Keep executing on the strategy that got us here, and stay ready to move on what is next. Now, as I close, it is a dynamic and exciting time in our industry at MIAX. We continue to execute the strategy that we laid out when we entered the public markets: safely build, launch, and operate exchanges, and respond to what our customers want. This approach has driven strong revenue growth and margin expansion since going public. In retail futures, we believe there is a potential for growth that follows a path similar to what we saw in retail options. Our near-term priorities are clear. Roll out new functionality across our options exchanges and the Sapphire trading floor. Competition to financial markets and financial futures with Bloomberg, meet institutional demand, in our agricultural futures and bring new products to market. We are making progress on all of these priorities. The tailwinds that accelerate our growth over the last few years are intact, and we have the flexibility to embrace new opportunities as they develop. I am as excited about the opportunities in front of us today as I have been at any point since we started MIAX. So, thanks again for joining us. Doug and Shelly are here with me and Lance, and we can start our Q&A, operator.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to get a, I am going to get back to the RPC and just double-click there. So, Lance, I appreciate the comments and the 3 factors you laid out there that contributed to that decline. But I was hoping you could maybe just give us a better sense for what impact each of the 3 buckets had on the decline. And then on the pricing piece in particular, I think Shelly last quarter mentioned reverting some of the July Pearl fee changes. So what pricing is still in place today versus what was unwound? And do you think the Q3 RPC is a clean reflection of the current fee schedule, or should we expect some rebound here? Thanks.

Yes, yes, Patrick, sure, I can cover that. Yes, so as you said, if you kind of throw out the second quarter and bridge from sort of Q1 at $0.11 to Q3 at $0.098, the ORF was about $0.006 of a penny, sort of split between sort of the new model for ORF, and then also just, you know, naturally kind of goes down over time as volumes grow much faster than our regulatory costs. The bulk of the balance was the fee changes we made in July, partially reversing some of them, but to a much smaller effect in August. So I think that was probably about, you know, $0.008 or $0.009 of a penny. And then, you know, just sort of mixed impacts were, you know, plus about $0.003 of a penny. Tough to predict where Q4 is going. I think maybe the best guidance I can give is that in October we have a, we have not made any additional fee changes. At this point, we do not anticipate making any for November. We could still make something tomorrow, but at this point, we have nothing planned. I think, you know, sort of that $0.10 range, or that $0.10 mark, I think might be a good reset point from this point. And of course, you know, mix could always have an impact, uh, you know. As volatility increases, uh, we tend to see less uh, business go through things like auctions, which uh, which have generally have a low capture rate across the industry. Some lower volatility in the third quarter. And then, of course, there is always, you know, interactions with member mix, members going up and down tiers, some based upon their own, you know, especially on the consolidator side, some of them winning and losing businesses, you know, business from month to month.

Okay, that is great, Kohler. And then just as a follow-up, OpEx was down year-over-year. You have cut the full year guide twice now. Can you just talk about the levers that you have been able to pull thus far? And then as we think about 2027 and beyond, what levers are left to pull and how should we be thinking about the operating levers that you can generate from here. Thanks.

Yeah, yeah, great question. So I think, look, from from uh Q, let us say, let us take Q2 to Q3, we will go sequentially. So some lower marketing costs, primarily around the timing of our marketing around the, the launch of the Bloomberg products kind of took a dip during the summer as expected. We expect that to pick up, or that is picking up in the fourth quarter, both sort of company-wide and Bloomberg-focused branding events, but also customer events and incentives. So that will pick up, and has picked up in the fourth quarter. I think the rest is we will have to pick up in some headcounts, a little bit in the fourth quarter. But, you know, I think as we focus on our roadmap for next year, I would expect that to pick up a little bit as well. We have got a lot of projects in the pipeline, new products in the pipeline for next year that we are excited about. And again, we think those have some pretty good return on investments. So I think that will pick up a bit as well. But I think those are probably the 2 biggest levers. We certainly, like everybody else, have seen some pressure on technology costs, both sort of software hardware maintenance as well as CapEx. I think we have done a good job or the best job as we can do of sort of mitigating some of that by ordering some hardware early that worked for us pretty well in the first quarter of this year. We are doing it a little bit as well to sort of pull in some CapEx that we originally had planned for next year. We pulled it in a little bit in the quarter. Obviously, it will not have an impact on D&A since it is so late in the year. And then, look, I think like everybody else, we are seeing increases in sort of data center costs and hardware maintenance costs. But I think we do a pretty good job or the best job we could do in sort of mitigating those cost increases. And, of course, we will give full-year guidance with the fourth quarter numbers in early February. All right. Thanks, Lance. That is it for me. You got it, Patrick. Thanks, Patrick.

The next question is from Jeffrey Schmitt with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. So how much are you spending on the new product rollouts in futures, especially the Bloomberg products? And when should we expect those costs to begin rolling off? Is that kind of like a late 2027 or even into 2028? Thanks.

Yeah, I think, look, there is a couple different pieces, components there. Just first on transaction fees, right, we have very sort of aggressive fee waivers and rebates for market makers in terms of actual trading. And those kind of show up in the sort of inverted capture rate you see for financial futures. I think it was inverted about $1.42 per contract. Look, over time, as it goes, as we have more retail activity in there, more retail customers trading that product, those incentives will go away. Those inverted capture rates will sort of get to zero and then, you know, will be, I think as we sort of mentioned, you know, in sort of the, you know, tend to, it depends on the product, right? But, you know, looking more like around the quarter range, $0.25, $0.30 range. In terms of marketing dollars overall, I am sorry, just 1 other thing. In terms of quoting incentives, that is $0.5 million, maybe a little more per quarter, $0.5 million to $1 million a quarter to provide those quoting incentives. Those show up in OpEx because essentially they are paid regardless of whether or not there is a trade. It does not show up as a cost of revenue. Those, like I said, like the fees, as the fees go positive, those incentives kind of fall away. And then I think just in terms of the marketing and branding, I think when we see an opportunity to do some events with customers, find ways to expand the product, I think we will keep doing that, kind of like what we have seen this year, that is a couple million dollars, but again, we think that is some money well spent, especially on products. Because if you think about it from the options exchange point right up to this point, it is primary multi-listed products, not a lot of marketing around that. It is more just sort of corporate branding. But as we get into the prop products, it is it is, it is very important to spend some specific marketing and customer incentive around those products to build the market.

Right, okay. And then you have mentioned NinjaTrader is now live with the Bloomberg Futures products, and you have said additional retail platforms should come online beginning next quarter. So how quickly do you expect retail distribution to broaden from here, and what will be sort of the key drivers of adoption?

That is a great question, a follow-on question. Shelly, do you want to take that one?

So, we have a number of retail firms in the pipeline. Two have completed testing. One, as you said, NinjaTrader is live. We have a second that has completed testing. We expect them to go live probably next 30 days. We have 2 more firms in the pipeline that are that are close. So, and we are working closely with them to complete their connectivity and testing. And then, as Lance said, we will have marketing incentives and marketing programs with those firms. We will be jointly marketing to their customers both um, retail and professional customers that use their platforms.

Great. Thank you, Jeff. Next question is from Kenneth Worthington with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. So, thank you for the color and pricing. I wanted to dig more into the relationship between pricing and market share and options. So, we saw the market share bounce in the quarter, but MIAX, you know, seems to have given up maybe more in terms of pricing, um, than we would have expected. So can you talk about why pricing contracted to the degree it did without seeing more market share gains to kind of show for it? So mix seems to be part of it. Maybe talk about the other factors that also contributed to this pricing to share dynamic that we saw in Q3.

Yes, thank you, Ken, for that question. Shelly, do you want to take this one?

Sure. As you know, generally speaking, market share and pricing are negatively correlated. But sometimes it depends. On the market conditions, that does not necessarily hold. It varies from month to month. A lot of the pricing, a lot of the RPC, well, some of it has to do with the fee changes we made early last quarter. Some of it also has to do with with uh, the the quality of the market itself, how much customer volume there is, how much volume there is in different mechanisms, different trading mechanisms. There are a lot of variables there. And as customer volume grows as a percentage of volume, that will hit RPC across the industry. We saw some of that last quarter. These things are all variations that we see over time. Well, we cannot anticipate them. We expect them to happen over time. So I am not concerned at all about the lower capture with the slightly lower market share or not as much market share growth as one would expect.