Nasdaq - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 net revenue rose 10% year-over-year to $1.23B, with non-GAAP operating margin steady at 55% and non-GAAP EPS at $0.76; segment strength in Index and Financial Technology offset softer Regulatory Technology within FinTech.
• Index delivered a standout quarter: revenue up 29% YoY to $188M, period-end ETP AUM reached $647B, with $28B net inflows in Q4 and $80B TTM, reinforcing durable, asset-based fee momentum.
• Cash from operations was $705M in Q4 and $1.94B for 2024; deleveraging continued alongside disciplined capital returns (Q4 dividends $138M; $181M senior note repurchases).
• 2025 guidance: non-GAAP operating expenses of $2.245–$2.325B and non-GAAP tax rate of 22.5%–24.5%; management expanded the efficiency program to $140M annual cost savings by end-2025 (inclusive of the Adenza/AxiomSL-Calypso synergies).
• Strategic update: Nasdaq will exit its Nordic power futures business via sale to Euronext (migration planned by H1 2026); focus sharpens on core Market Services and FinTech growth vectors.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Index momentum: revenue up 29% YoY to $188M; record ETP AUM of $647B; net inflows of $28B in Q4 and $80B TTM underscored strong asset-gathering in insurance annuities and new client partnerships.
• Financial Technology resilience: division revenue up 10% YoY (adjusted up 7%); ARR up 12% organically in Q4, with Verafin net revenue retention at 114% and 102 new SMB clients; cloud bookings reached 60% in Q4 across AxiomSL/Calypso.
• Operating leverage: Q4 GAAP operating income rose 47% YoY; non-GAAP operating income up 10% YoY; non-GAAP margin steady at 55% on disciplined OpEx despite ongoing investments in technology and people.
• CEO tone: “2024 was a transformative year… executing well across strategic priorities,” highlighting integration of AxiomSL/Calypso and One Nasdaq cross-sell strategy.

What Went Wrong

• Regulatory Technology softness vs prior-year comp: Q4 Regulatory Tech revenue declined to $98M from $110M, reflecting timing and ratable revenue recognition changes for AxiomSL on-prem contracts.
• Q4 Market Services saw a $4M decrease in U.S. tape plan revenue despite strength in U.S. equity derivatives and cash equities; market-wide off-exchange shift remains a structural headwind.
• GAAP EPS declined 7% for full-year 2024 (to $1.93) due to higher amortization and restructuring expenses tied to Adenza integration, though Q4 GAAP EPS grew 72% YoY on operating improvement.
• S&P Global consensus estimates were unavailable at time of analysis; cannot quantify beat/miss vs Street for Q4 [GetEstimates error].

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Nasdaq Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Ato Garrett, Senior Vice President and Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

Ato Garrett (SVP and Investor Relations Officer)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Nasdaq's Q4 and full year 2024 financial results. On the line are Adena Friedman, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Sarah Youngwood, our Chief Financial Officer, and other members of the management team. After prepared remarks, we'll open the line for Q&A. The press release and earnings presentation accompanying this call can be found on our Investor Relations website. I would like to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call that involve risks. A summary of these risks is contained in our press release and a more complete description in our annual report on Form 10-K.

We will discuss our financial performance on a non-GAAP basis and adjust it for the impact of acquisitions, FX, and the previously announced one-time revenue benefits and Market Services in the Q4 of 2023, and in index in the Q1 of 2024. Definitions and reconciliations of U.S. GAAP to non-GAAP, plus adjustments, can be found in our earnings presentation as well as in a file located in the financial section of our Investor Relations website at ir.nasdaq.com. The Q4 marks the one-year anniversary of the acquisition of AxiomSL and Calypso. Going forward, we will report the financial performance for these businesses within the consolidated results of the respective subdivisions and will no longer disclose these revenues in an organic revenue growth reconciliation. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Adena.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Thank you, Ato, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. On the call this morning, I'll start with an overview of our 2024 financial and operational performance. I'll then discuss our strategic priorities and outlook for 2025 before handing the call to Sarah to walk through the financial results and outlook in more detail. Reflecting on the last year, I'm extremely proud of Nasdaq's progress towards becoming a scalable platform company and delivering on our vision to be the trusted fabric of the world's financial system. Throughout 2024, we substantially completed the integration of Calypso and AxiomSL, further showcased the value of our solutions, delivered on our growth objectives, and achieved our initial expense synergies and deleveraging goals ahead of schedule.

The Nasdaq team's ability to execute our strategy and create value for our clients provides us with confidence entering 2025, as evidenced by the strengthening of our competitive position and significant traction we are gaining with our renewed client wins, upsells, and cross-sells. Moving to our financial results for the year, Nasdaq's net revenues of $4.7 billion increased 9% from 2023. Solutions delivered 10% revenue growth for the full year, with growth in each quarter within or above the range of our medium-term outlook. ARR ended the year at $2.8 billion, an increase of 7.5% year over year. For the Q4, we delivered net revenue growth of 10% year over year to $1.2 billion, and Solutions revenue grew 9%. Moving to the full year performance of our divisions, Capital Access Platforms generated 3% ARR growth and 10% revenue growth in 2024, driven by an outstanding year of index performance.

Financial Technology delivered 10% revenue growth for the year. We delivered 12% ARR growth overall for the division, which included 23% growth in financial crime management technology, 11% growth for regulatory technology, and 9% growth for capital markets technology. Market Services achieved record full year revenue driven by higher volumes across the U.S. equity derivatives as well as U.S. and European cash equities. Turning to our operational highlights for 2024, the addition of AxiomSL and Calypso has greatly accelerated our journey as a platform company. In its first year, the Financial Technology Division delivered strong financial and operational accomplishments, which resulted from deep and meaningful engagements with our clients. Today, our Financial Technology Division has emerged as a vital force of innovation, as our more than 3,800 clients now see us as a complete partner in helping to solve their most critical challenges across risk, regulation, and trade infrastructure.

The financial system is at a point where transformation is technologically and culturally possible, with greater confidence in the banking and capital markets industry to implement cloud-based solutions. For example, according to Nasdaq and BCG's recent complexity report, the level of comfort among global banks to deploy cloud-based solutions has increased from 57% just five years ago to 93% today. Additionally, today, only 22% of banks prefer in-house built solutions for their regulatory and compliance programs. The large majority understand that external solutions provide superior capabilities to solve common industry problems, and they are seeking strategic technology partners who can provide solutions across multiple disciplines. This sentiment is evident across the division, as Nasdaq's enhanced product portfolio has strengthened our client relationships, which materialized through the signing of 263 new clients, 424 upsells, and 11 cross-sells this year.

Importantly, these collective wins represent our continued penetration across global financial institutions, and our cross-sells highlight our success in Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks. Notable examples include a major financial institution expanding from trade surveillance, AxiomSL, and Calypso to include a Nasdaq Verafin, and another Tier 1 bank adding Calypso to its existing AxiomSL solution. As the division continues to mature, we're confident that we will deepen our strategic relations with our clients even further while delivering broad-based growth. Now I'll turn to a review of our subdivisions within Financial Technology, beginning with Nasdaq Verafin, where a growing number of financial institutions recognize our unique and differentiated capabilities in helping them root out financial crime. Nasdaq's Financial Crime Management Technology business completed one new cross-sell with a Tier 1 bank for our wire fraud solution during the quarter.

Today, Nasdaq Verafin serves over 2,600 financial institutions, representing nearly $10 trillion in assets, including five Tier 1 banks. Building on the strength of Nasdaq Verafin's industry-leading offerings in North America, we've announced our launch in Europe, where we are engaging with clients across the region. Regulatory technology and capital markets technology are advancing the modernization of global markets, as well as our clients' ability to manage risk and compliance. In 2024, we had several marquee deals, which underscores our right to win across our serviceable, addressable markets. In the Q4, Nasdaq signed a long-term agreement to provide a future-proof regulatory management solution through AxiomSL to AuRep, a collaborative joint venture of banks and financial services providers in Austria. We look forward to providing additional details on this important partnership in the coming weeks.

AxiomSL also secured an upsell with Société Générale to manage its domestic regulatory reporting needs. France, India, and the Philippines represent key regulatory technology international expansion opportunities that we've unlocked in 2024, and the strong progress that we've made positions us well to build momentum in these countries in 2025. Surveillance signed 24 new clients during the year, including three new market regulators and our first market surveillance client in Taiwan. During the Q4, 100% of new trade surveillance clients were cloud customers, and as of the Q4, 68% of our clients are leveraging cloud for our cloud-based solution, up from 53% a year ago. Capital Markets Technology advanced its international strategy, expanding our client base in key markets, including Latin America, with notable wins across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

Calypso signed its 20th central bank, a major milestone in a key client cohort, with additional momentum expected across 2025. Market Technology signed nine new commitments in 2024 with existing clients as they continue to modernize markets, and we expect this trend to continue this year. We also signed three new crypto clients in the Q4. As we look ahead, our digital asset strategy continues to focus on helping the industry mature through infrastructure that enhances market liquidity, transparency, and integrity through the integration of the asset class within financial institutions. This is evident from the industry's adoption of our market technology surveillance and Calypso solutions. More broadly, Nasdaq is already active in this asset class with the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF and options for this ETF, as well as other listed crypto ETFs in our U.S. and European markets.

We see potential growth areas in digital assets, options products, and proprietary index options benchmarked to cryptocurrency indexes. We expect additional opportunities to arise as new regulatory frameworks provide clearer guidance, and Nasdaq will continue to strategically assess and pursue them in this dynamic space. Turning to our Capital Access Platforms division, we continued our strong success in attracting new listings to Nasdaq as the world's preeminent market operator, supporting corporate and investor decision-making through valuable data and workflow tools, and driving even more liquidity into the markets for our leading index franchise. In 2024, Nasdaq extended our listings leadership to six consecutive years as the top U.S. exchange by number of IPOs and proceeds raised. For the year, Nasdaq had 180 IPOs, raising $23 billion in total proceeds. This included 130 operating company IPOs, headlined by Lineage, the largest IPO of the year.

Overall, Nasdaq achieved an 80% win rate among eligible operating company IPOs in the U.S. for the year. In the Q3, we celebrated the 500th listing transfer to Nasdaq, cumulatively representing nearly $3 trillion of market value measured as of the date of each transfer. We continued our momentum in the Q4 with 14 new transfers, including Palantir, the largest exchange transfer on a U.S. exchange in 2024, bringing the total market value of switches to Nasdaq to over $180 billion for the year, and to start 2025, we welcomed Domino's, which began on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on January 2nd. 2024 was also an exceptional year for our index franchise, which delivered 31% revenue growth, ending the year with record AUM. Innovation remains at the heart of this franchise as we launched 116 new products in the year, with over half occurring outside the United States.

Importantly, 27%, 27, sorry, of these products were in the insurance annuity space, and 30 were launched in partnership with new index clients, delivering on our expansion pillars across innovation, globalization, and the institutional space. Within workflow and insights, analytics saw continued demand from asset managers and asset owners for our data and workflow solutions. This demand across the client ecosystem resulted in strong year-over-year growth. In corporate solutions, we focus on strengthening our offerings while managing through beta challenges as corporate buying cycles remained elongated throughout the year. We anticipate an improvement in this business as the IPO environment normalizes. Finally, in our Market Services division, we demonstrated leadership across our U.S. and European markets. We experienced strong adoption of our index options and multi-listed options products as index options revenue more than doubled year over year.

In addition, we delivered a record volume of shares and notional value traded in the Closing Cross this year, including a record Q4 in terms of volume of shares traded. We also made progress modernizing our markets with the migration of Nasdaq ISE to our next-generation derivatives platform Fusion in September. In addition, as part of our ongoing assessment of our business units portfolio and their alignment with our strategy, we announced that Nasdaq has entered into an agreement with Euronext to sell our Nordic Power Futures business. This transaction will sharpen our focus on our strategic growth areas as we lead the European markets. Moving forward, our European business is an integral part of our strategy as the combination of our U.S. and European footprint is critical to our ability to serve clients globally.

Overall, Nasdaq delivered robust growth across our business while achieving significant strategic and operational milestones. At our Investor Day in March, we introduced three strategic priorities: Integrate, Innovate, and Accelerate to deliver resilient and scalable growth. We successfully executed on these priorities and are well-positioned entering 2025. Through our relentless execution of our Integrate priority, our Financial Technology Division has a well-structured and highly functioning operating model, and we're deploying the one Nasdaq go-to-market approach to deliver holistically for our clients. In addition, our solid free cash flow enabled Nasdaq to lower its gross leverage ratio from 4.3 times at the end of last year to 3.6 times at the end of 2024. Nasdaq exited 2024, having actioned over 100% of our net expense synergies target, and Sarah will discuss our incremental efforts to deliver additional cost synergies and efficiencies.

Moving to our Innovate priority, we amplified innovation across Nasdaq, introducing and incorporating new AI-powered solutions and product offerings across each of our divisions in 2024. We've seen solid client adoption to date, and our product managers continue to work on delivering new AI features in their product roadmaps. Looking ahead, we have a strong innovation pipeline with various product launches expected over the course of the year. Within our internal business operations, our focus with AI adoption has shifted from exploration and experimentation in 2023 and 2024 to driving impact entering 2025. Our team is engaged in scaling our use of AI to deliver efficiencies and productivity enhancements across the organization, which is also reflected in the expanded efficiency program that Sarah will describe, and with our Accelerate priority, we drove 17 cross-sells since the Adenza acquisition closed, including 11 in 2024 and four in the Q4.

Cross-sell opportunities now account for over 15% of Financial Technology Division's pipeline, with several deals at advanced stages as we execute organized sales campaigns that showcase the cross-functionality of our solution suite and deepen relationships with senior decision-makers across our clientele. Nasdaq remains on track to exceed $100 million in run rate revenue from cross-sells by the end of 2027. Looking ahead to 2025, Nasdaq is well-positioned to build on our successful 2024 and deliver durable revenue growth. As we continue our journey to become a platform company, our transformation is built on four distinct strengths: a robust interconnected client network, purpose-built modern solutions that directly address our client-specific challenges, a scalable build-once-deploy-to-many approach across our technology and operational platforms, and standardized architectural principles and frameworks that unify our business and technology operations. These factors, coupled with our deep industry expertise, have elevated our conversations with current and prospective clients.

As our conversations continue to materialize into new client wins, upsells, and cross-sells, we're entering 2025 with strong momentum across our business. In addition, the solid economic backdrop bodes well for Nasdaq and our clients. In the U.S., consumer spending and relatively low unemployment continue to support GDP growth. Further, inflation and interest rates have settled into a more predictable state than we experienced between 2022 and 2024, giving investors more confidence in their ability to deploy capital. Overall, the global economy is expected to grow with help from strength in the U.S. and other parts of the world, including South Asia. These factors have contributed to creating a positive business environment to start the year.

For example, after several years of muted IPO activity, we expect more companies to list on public markets, with an uptake beginning in the Q2 of 2025, setting up a strong half of the year. We continue to have a healthy pipeline of companies that have filed to go public on Nasdaq. As these companies become public, we look forward to helping them navigate the public markets from the initial listings process to corporate governance, IR, and sustainability reporting needs. Finally, financial institutions across the global economy face complex risks, changes in regulatory regimes, and new trading opportunities, which are driving strong demand for our Financial Technology Division suite of solutions.

Whether it is keeping up with rapid technological advancements, meeting the changing and divergent needs of regulators across the globe, or protecting the integrity of the financial institution systems against financial crime, clients will continue to turn to trusted partners to help them navigate complexity through technology-first solutions, and we remain well-positioned to be that partner for them throughout any environment. The new administration enters the White House, signaling a more business-friendly, pro-growth agenda in the U.S. We believe this will unlock capital and liquidity to the benefit of companies, financial institutions, and markets. As it relates to the regulatory environment governing our clients, we're supportive of the traction that is gaining around smart, well-calibrated regulation. To wrap up, 2024 was a strong year in which we further advanced the evolution of Nasdaq as a leading partner to the global financial system.

Across the organization, we executed our strategic priorities, delivered on our key growth objectives, and achieved our synergy and deleveraging goals ahead of target. As we enter 2025, we're delivering on our strategy and remain confident in our ability to achieve our medium-term outlook. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Sarah to provide more details on our financial results and outlook for 2025.

Thank you, Adena, and good morning, everyone. Starting with annual results on Slide 11 of the earnings presentation. Net revenue of $4.7 billion was up 9%, with solutions revenue of $3.6 billion up 10%, and representing 77% of total revenue, an increase of one percentage point. Four-year divisional growth rates were consistent with our expectations.

Sarah Youngwood (CFO)

Operating expense was $2.162 billion, up 6%, in line with guidance for a 54% operating margin and 56% EBITDA margin, both of which were up by over one percentage point. This resulted in net income of $1.6 billion and diluted EPS of $2.82. Moving to quarterly results on Slide 12, we reported net revenue of $1.2 billion, up 10%, with solutions revenue of $949 million, up 9%. Operating expense was $556 million, up 6%, resulting in an operating margin of 55%, up 2 percentage points, and an EBITDA margin of 57%, up by over one percentage point. This resulted in net income of $438 million and diluted EPS of $0.76. Slide 13 shows the drivers of our 9% net revenue growth for the year and our 10% net revenue growth for the quarter.

We generated 7 percentage points of alpha for the year and 6 percentage points for the quarter, driven by new and existing clients, as well as product innovation, partially offset by lower market share in market services. Overall, beta factors contributed 2 percentage points of growth this year and 4 percentage points for the quarter, driven by higher valuations in Nasdaq indices and higher overall volumes in market services. Please note that our alpha analysis is conservative, as it includes on and off-exchange trading. If we had done the analysis with market share of on-exchange volumes only, alpha would have been 7% for the quarter and for the year. Lastly, as shown on Slide 14, we had ARR growth of 7.5%, with SaaS revenue growth of 14%. SaaS, as a percentage of ARR, also increased 2 percentage points to 37% compared to year-end 2023.

Let's review division results starting on Slide 15. In Capital Access Platforms, we delivered four-year revenue growth of 10%, with quarterly revenue of $511 million, up 11%, and with ARR growth of 3%. Data and listings revenue growth for the year was 1%, with quarterly revenue up 2% and ARR up 1%. Quarterly revenue was driven by higher data sales and usage, new listings, and pricing. This was partially offset by delistings and downgrades and lower amortization of prior period initial listing fees. As you recall, we expected a year-on-year revenue headwind of $3 million related to the amortization of prior period initial listing fees. This started in the Q3 of 2024 and was expected to last for four quarters. Two are done, and we are in line with expectations. We are on track for the next two quarters at $3 million.

After that, we expect the impact to fall to roughly $2 million in the Q3 and $1 million in the Q4 of 2025. Separately, we saw an improvement in delistings in 2024 versus 2023 and expect the related year-over-year revenue headwind to moderate from $10 million per quarter in 2024 to $8 million in each quarter of 2025. Index revenue was up 31% for the full year and up 29% in the quarter, with more than half of the quarterly revenue growth driven by alpha factors, primarily from strong net inflows contributing to higher asset-based revenue. ETPAUM included $80 billion of net inflows in the last 12 months, including $28 billion in the Q4. Net inflows, together with market performance, resulted in record average ETPAUM of $632 billion, up almost $200 billion year-over-year.

In Workflow and Insights, revenue was up 4% for the year and the quarter, with ARR growth of 4% as well. The increase in the Q4 revenue was driven by analytics, namely eVestment, with continued growth in demand from asset managers, asset owners, and consultants. New investment sales were up 11% for the year, with full-year gross retention up 2 percentage points. The broader corporate solutions environment remains unchanged, with revenue up 1% in the quarter. Full-year operating margin was 58%, with quarterly operating margin of 57%, both of which were up 3 percentage points. Excluding a one-time benefit to Index of $16 million from a legal settlement, full-year operating margin would have been 57%, up 2 percentage points. As a reminder, as we enter 2025, our contracted rate associated with trading of futures contracts will reset, as it does every year.

It will increase once we cross a specific volume threshold, which will likely occur sometime in the first half of the year. Now, looking ahead to 2025 performance more broadly across the Capital Access Platforms division, our current expectation is for full-year revenue growth to be within its medium-term growth outlook range of 5%-8%. Within the division, data and listings activity is improving, but listing revenue remains negatively impacted by delisting and amortization factors. As such, we continue to expect data and listings to grow within our medium-term outlook of low single digits in 2025. Index continues to generate strong alpha, given its very favorable positioning and additional growth opportunities. We expect to grow above our medium-term outlook of mid to high single digits in 2025. Recall that index revenue in the Q1 of 2024 included a $16 million one-time revenue benefit related to a legal settlement.

We exclude this item from our adjusted growth rate and will discuss our growth and any comparisons to the medium-term outlook on that adjusted basis, excluding that item. Finally, as a result of continued beta headwinds in corporate solutions, which will take time to ease even with stronger issuance environment, we expect workflow and insights scores to be below its medium-term outlook of high single- to low double-digit in 2025. Moving to financial technology on Slide 16, total division revenue for the year grew 10%, and revenue for the quarter was up 7% to $438 million, with ARR growth of 12%. The difference between quarterly revenue growth and ARR growth in fintech is driven by professional services fees and the impact of lower Calypso on-prem subscription revenue due to timing and a tough comp in the Q4 of 2023.

Meanwhile, ARR growth remained solid across the subdivisions, with strong client momentum, including the benefit of 120 new clients, 127 upsales, and four cross-sales in the quarter. On cross-sales, our campaigns are resonating with clients, as we achieved 11 cross-sales in 2024. Cross-sale opportunities now account for over 15% of the financial technology division's pipeline, including several deals in advanced stages. As we close these deals, we will no longer count them in our pipeline, which can create quarter-over-quarter variability in this metric. However, over the coming years, we expect our cross-sale pipeline mix generally to average at or above 10%, which is a level that positions us to exceed our $100 million run rate cross-sale revenue target by the end of 2027.

Financial Crime Management Technology revenue increased 22% for both the year and the quarter, with ARR growth of 23%, and with 102 new clients and one cross-sale with a tier-one client in the quarter. Net revenue retention was 114%, reflecting strong client engagement stemming from new product enhancements such as the GenAI Entity Research Copilot and targeted typology analytics. Regulatory Technology revenue increased 7% for the year and 6% for the quarter, with ARR growth of 11%, as well as nine new client wins and 64 upsales. AxiomSL revenue grew 7% for the year and 5% for the quarter, with two new client wins and 28 upsales, and surveillance grew revenue 6% for the year and 7% for the quarter, aided by seven new clients and 36 upsales.

The delta between ARR and revenue was due to softer professional services revenues, which should improve in 2025 based on signed deals in 2024. Capital Markets Technology delivered 8% revenue growth for the year and 4% for the quarter. ARR grew 9%, with nine new clients, 63 upsales, and three cross-sales in the quarter, with the cross-sale activity driven by continued client demand for market modernization. Calypso full-year revenue was up 17% and up 1% in the quarter, with four new client wins and 39 upsales, with a difference between the two revenue growth rates driven by deal timing. Together, trade management services and market technology had five new clients, 24 upsales, and three cross-sales in the quarter. Combined revenue was up 3% for the year and 7% for the quarter.

The quarterly revenue growth was primarily driven by strong growth in trade management services, mainly due to meeting additional capacity demands via our recent data center expansion. Looking forward, we expect improved professional services revenue in 2025 due to new clients for Calypso and market technology implementation signed in 2024, and we are starting the year with a strong proportion of signed engagements. Combined AxiomSL and Calypso revenue increased 13% for the year and 2% for the quarter, with ARR growth of 12%. We continued to drive the cloud journey of these businesses forward, with cloud bookings as a percentage of new ACVs coming in at 52% for the year and 60% for the quarter.

As Asser noted in the opening remarks, we will be reporting AxiomSL and Calypso within the consolidated results of their respective subdivisions going forward, and we expect combined AxiomSL and Calypso to perform within their medium-term outlook for 2025. Full-year financial technology operating margin was 47%, up 1 percentage point, and with quarterly operating margin flat at 49%. Looking ahead at our growth expectations for financial technology for 2025, we expect the division to grow within its medium-term outlook of 10%-14%, with financial crime management technology at the low end of its range of mid-20s, regulatory technology at the high end of its range of high single to low double digits, and with capital markets technology within its range of high single to low double digits.

Wrapping up the divisions with Market Services on Slide 17, we had net revenue growth of 4% for the year and 12% for the quarter at $268 million. The strong quarterly net revenue growth benefited from an increase in U.S. derivatives revenue, primarily due to record volumes and strong index options revenue growth, higher U.S. cash equities revenue from higher volume capture and market share available on exchange trading volume, as well as higher capture in European cash equities and derivatives, with these factors partially offset by a market-wide shift of U.S. cash equities volume off exchange and a decline in U.S. SIP revenue. Full-year Market Services operating margin was down one percentage point to 59%, with quarterly operating margin of 59% up one percentage point.

Excluding the one-time payment of roughly $7.5 million that benefited Market Services in the Q4 of 2023 and is excluded from the adjusted numbers, four-year operating margin would have been flat, and quarterly operating margin would have been up 2 percentage points. Moving to expenses on Slide 18, we had operating expenses of $2.162 billion for the year, up 6%, driven by strong investments in technology and people to support revenue and drive innovation and growth, employee-related cost increases, other increases largely due to inflation, as well as close to 1 percentage point of regulatory and people-related costs, which we don't expect to reoccur. This was partially offset by the benefit of Adenza-related synergies of 2 percentage points and additional efficiencies of 1 percentage point, half of which I will come back to in just a moment.

This resulted in an annual operating margin and EBITDA margin both up more than 1 percentage point versus the prior year. Regarding net expense synergies, we have actioned over 100% of the $80 million target we announced in relation to the acquisition of Adenza. We are now expanding this program to $140 million, including the $80 million already actioned. These run rate cost reductions will be actioned by the end of 2025. This is an increase of 75% in the same two-year time frame as we now include the entire firm and will capture other run rate efficiencies, including the impact of AI. As part of the expanded program, we expect related costs to achieve to be $140 million, with $72 million incurred to date through the end of the Q4.

The program has already reduced 2024 expense growth by 2.5 percentage points, 2 percentage points for Adenza, and 50 basis points related to the program expansion. It is expected to reduce 2025 expense growth by 2 percentage points, with a tail mostly in 2026. As always, you should expect that we will continue to reinvest a portion of these efficiencies into investments to support our growth. With this in mind, we are introducing our non-GAAP expense guidance for the year of $2.245-$2.325 billion. This guidance range reflects a non-GAAP organic growth rate of 6% at the midpoint, and as mentioned, it includes a roughly 2 percentage point benefit from the expanded efficiency program. Our 2025 guidance uses average 2024 FX rates as its foundation and does not reflect the benefits from the recent post-election strengthening of the dollar that has partly retrenched over the last few days.

We expect the 2025 non-GAAP tax rate between 22.5% and 24.5%, in line with the prior expectation we had set. Turning to capital allocation on Slide 19, Nasdaq generated free cash flow of approximately $1.6 billion in the year, including $439 million in the Q4. We repaid $815 million in debt in 2024, including about $180 million in the Q4, which we repurchased opportunistically. With that, we ended the year with a gross leverage of 3.6 times. In 2024, we paid dividends of $0.94 per share or $541 million, including $0.24 or $138 million in 4Q, representing a 34% annualized payout ratio. We repurchased 2.3 million shares of our common stock for roughly $145 million in the year, offsetting employee issuance, with no repurchases in the Q4.

We remain focused on reducing our leverage and expect to reach a 3.3 times gross leverage ratio before the end of 2025, while repurchasing shares to offset employee compensation-related dilution. We will remain opportunistic regarding any additional share or debt repurchases. In 2024, we set ambitious objectives, and I want to thank the full Nasdaq team for executing against them. I am proud of our accomplishments in the year. We delivered on our growth ambitions. We closed on a number of landmark client wins. We made progress towards our cross-sale target. We identified incremental cost efficiencies, and we executed against an accelerated deleveraging timeline. All of this reinforces my confidence in our growth story and our ability to deliver value to our clients and shareholders in 2025 and beyond. With that, let's open the line to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press Star one one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press Star one one again. We ask that you keep your questions to no more than one, but please feel free to go back into the queue, and if time permits, we'll be more than happy to take your follow-up questions at that time. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Alexander Blostein from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Alexander Blostein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning, everybody. Thank you for the question. I wanted to start with your outlook on workflow and insights. Obviously, it's a business that has been growing a little bit slower, presumably gets better with cross-selling once the listing business starts to pick up a bit, and there's sort of positive synergies with the rest of the franchise. Can you help us maybe just bridge how you go from this kind of low- to mid-single-digit range back to your targets, which seems to be still kind of ways off? Thanks.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Great. Thanks, Alex, as you mentioned, the corporate solutions business has had a lot of effects from a slower issuance environment, as well as, as we talked about, the delisting environment that we've been operating in over the last couple of years. And what we've been focused on is making sure that we're continuing to innovate within the suite so that as the buying behaviors become more normalized, we would expect that we have great products.

We're very well positioned competitively. It's just a matter of making sure that we have an environment where the buyers are in a position to be able to purchase our solutions. So it's both the IPO environment, moderating of the delisting environment, and then also, as you've noticed, the index performance and the growth of earnings across different sectors of the economy have been more towards, I would say, larger companies. And we have thousands of companies that use our solutions. So as a growth agenda in the U.S. economy picks up, we do actually believe that that also will drive more earnings potential for the broader economy, and that also will support more of a sales activity within that particular part of our business.

Now, in analytics, we're actually really excited about everything that's happening across what I would call the investment side, the investor audience within our workflow and insight solutions, and most notably investment, which is our biggest product. We had a couple of years where we were focused more on product enhancements and integrating some great data into the platform. We now have this incredible suite of solutions there, and we're growing at the high single digits with the investment, and we expect that to continue to be a great grower for us. So we do think that'll be helpful also in driving the overall growth rate of that part of the division up in the coming years.

Alexander Blostein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

And our next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Craig Siegenthaler (Managing Director and North American Head of Diversified Financials Equity Research)

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Our question is on the potential for large-scale deregulation of the U.S. financial services industry under the Trump administration. We understand you can't put the genie back in the bottle on many businesses like prop and merchant banking, but AxiomSL was seeing strong tailwinds for more regulations like Basel III and Endgame. If there is a reversal in bank regulations, how should this impact client demand for AxiomSL's offering and your reg tech growth trajectory, just given its core clients are banks?

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

First of all, I think we just remind everyone that our AxiomSL business is a global business. It serves banks all over the world. We've been opening new markets, as you mentioned, in India, France, Philippines, and other parts of the world. We have a great pipeline of opportunities across AxiomSL in the global business.

And as we've been engaging with U.S. clients, they are dealing with a changing regulatory environment, but one that still is an environment that requires a lot of solutions to help them manage regulation. So we see really strong demand for the product. I think that we, as we gave you the regulatory technology subdivision within financial technology, we expect it to be at the high end of our range in 2025. And so I think that we feel highly confident that we have a solution that meets a lot of different needs across different regulatory landscapes. One thing, just a point of fact, just to help you understand the nature of the business within AxiomSL, 69% of the revenue comes from non-U.S. banks, 31% comes from U.S. banks. Oh, I'm sorry, that's across Adenza. That's both Calypso and AxiomSL. So let me say it again.

So U.S. clients represent 31% of the revenues of the Calypso and AxiomSL businesses, and 69% come from non-U.S. banks. So we just feel very confident in the way that we see the engagements with our clients. I would look also more broadly at financial technology. As we think about it, we think, okay, if you have an environment where more capital can be kept within the banks, they can then deploy that capital into the markets. That drives liquidity across global markets. It drives demand for our technology among global markets as they prepare for and are prepared to be able to accept that liquidity. We also, if they're going, banks are suddenly in a growth mode, they're going to be going into new asset classes and new geographies, and that drives demand for our Calypso solutions.

So we have a lot of opportunities for growth across the franchise in different regulatory environments.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Patrick Moley from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Patrick Moley (Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just diving into financial technology again, you gave an outlook for where you kind of expected to fall within the range of the three businesses within that segment. So where do you think that leaves us for the full year in terms of the overall 10%-14% growth rate for the full segment? And then on financial crime management, I believe you said that you expected that to come in at the lower end. So maybe you could just talk about some of the drivers there. Thanks.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Sure. Actually, I'll start with that, and then I'll talk about the overall fintech division, so within the financial crime management business, we actually did a great job again this year of expanding our client base. We had 211 new clients sign up for the solution. We had another tier one bank sign with us in the Q4. We have a really nice pipeline of tier one banks that are in stages of our sales cycle, including completing POCs and other things, but as we've talked about in the past, and we talked about this at Investor Day, the mid-double digits growth rate is supported by three pillars of growth. So the first is within the small to medium banks, and again, we signed 210 of those, so we're really, really excited about that, or 211 for the year, and that's kind of the basis of our business today.

But as we expand, a growing part of our growth is going to come from those tier one banks, tier two banks. We now have five of those clients. We have an opportunity to expand those client relationships, and we are in talks with expansion plans. We have, as I mentioned, a nice healthy pipeline of additional clients there. But it takes time for those deals to manifest and show up in the financial performance. And so we're still very early innings there. And then global expansion. So that's the third pillar. And we just announced our move into Europe. We have several banks lining up for POCs with us in 2025. And so that, again, will play out to support that mid-double digit growth rate. But those things are still in the early innings.

I just want to remind everyone that half of the SAM, half of the serviceable addressable market in financial crime management is in those tier one and tier two banks. So as we expand there, that gives us a lot of opportunity to continue to have healthy growth, but we're still in early innings. And then more holistically for fintech, we don't give you a specific view as to how we see the year playing out, but we do expect that fintech will be within the range of the 10%-14%. And obviously, we have a lot of, I would have to say we had a lot of great sales in 2024.

We're going into the year with a really good line of sight into a large portion of our business growth. But the year changes as we go through the year, so we maintain our view that it will be within the outlook.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Benjamin Budish from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Budish (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Just following back up maybe on Alex's first question on workflow insights, I guess given your sort of optimism in the IPO pipeline, can you talk a little bit about the kind of conversion rate or what the timing looks like in terms of getting new sort of listed companies using some of those software solutions?

And I'm just curious, it sounds like a lot of optimism around some of the policies from the new administration, but the tone is clearly more negative on things like ESG and sustainability. And so as it regards your ESG solution, any sort of change in outlook there? Thank you very much.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Great. Thanks. So I would say this, the corporate solutions part of Workflow & Insights, which is the focus area of your question, that business is a bit of a lagging indicator, lagging behind the IPO environment. So when companies decide to go public, they do need solutions. We provide them a package as part of their IPO to introduce them to our solutions, but also to help them mature as public companies in IR and ESG reporting.

And so we then have a period of time where we offer those solutions complimentary, and then they will convert into, hopefully, as we do a great job, convert into paying clients. But we also have the opportunity during that time to upsell them on additional solutions within our suite. And so it does. We would like to see a nice, healthy, sustainable IPO environment. We definitely are seeing a moderation of delistings that'll help, but it will take some time for that business to recover into a more normalized growth rate. And then looking at specifically into ESG, what we've seen is actually a change in the demand structure.

Those solutions still are a small part of our overall workflow and insights business, but we are seeing the demand more coming from Europe and other parts of the world, as well as from global companies that operate in Europe because of the new disclosure obligations. And so that, just I would say the demand curve has changed a little bit more towards non-U.S. companies and non-U.S. operations, but that does mean we still have good opportunities across that business. And we'll continue to evaluate that as we see different policies develop in the United States.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michael Cho from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Cho (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I want to just touch on the regulatory topic as well, but just kind of under a slightly different lens. Adena, you've kind of previously discussed in the past about lightening the burden or the regulatory burden on public companies and making that option much more attractive. You've indicated some optimism in engaging the new administration around some of these efforts. So just for our context, can you just remind us and talk through some of the areas where we might see some of your efforts or just kind of general progress first? Thank you.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Sure. Well, we've actually had a pretty steady drumbeat of engagement with regulatory agencies, but we are actually quite optimistic that we have an administration that is listening and listening hard to what can they do to unlock growth in the country, what can they do to create sustainable growth in the country, and part of that is making sure that the public markets are working really, really well.

I just want to remind everyone, we've been evaluating this, but there's about $112 trillion of investable capital in public markets around the world. And that's as of the end of 2023, about $15 trillion in the private markets. So the public markets really drive the economies. And as we think about the life of a public company, there are elements of it that are persistent. So you have quarterly earnings, like we're having this morning. You have disclosures that are relevant and important for investors to understand. But then you also have other elements. And I would say that the proxy process has a lot of challenges in it that we think can be reformed that would make it so that it's a better environment for companies and more balanced between companies and investors.

We think that some of the accounting policies and the PCAOB, they took a very draconian approach in the last administration, and we see some opportunities there to make it more balanced, and then if we could have our way across everything, we would also look at litigation reform as a key element of improving the environment for public companies. Those are three core things that we also would say, and then the last thing I would say is making sure that there is disclosure to the public companies on what's happening in their stock. I think that we've got the 13Fs for long positions, but is there something similar for short positions in terms of giving companies better information and understanding of their investor base?

So all of those things are areas that we're going to be discussing, engaging with the government to see what their priorities are and see if we can make some progress.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Dan Fannon from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Daniel Fannon (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Wanted to get a comment around professional services, what they were as a total within the fintech. And then as you look going forward, you talked about, I think, momentum in the business, particularly in the reg tech in terms of new implementation. So could you talk about the outlook for professional service fees as we think about 2025?

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

So I don't know if we give a specific breakout. I'm looking at Sarah. We don't give a specific breakout of the professional services fees, but just as a reminder, we're a software product business. We want to deliver software. We want to deliver those products, and we want them to deliver well. So we see professional services as more, I would say, as a means to an end, meaning we want to deliver them. We have obviously put a great deal of effort into delivering those. We do also work with partners, but we want to get rewarded for the work we're doing to make sure those implementations go well. As we think about 2024 and the dynamics in 2024, there are a few things. Oftentimes, professional services revenues follow sales, if it makes sense.

I think that in general, as we look at the sales that occurred in 2023 going into 2024, and then projects that were ongoing in 2023 and 2024, as we've been mentioning all year, we had some downward pressure in the professional services revenues in 2024, both on the fact that we had a very large implementation in market tech in 2023 that drove up revenues that did not repeat in 2024 as we completed that deal. We had, I would say, a sales environment that had lower professional services revenues coming in, particularly for our AxiomSL solutions in 2024.

But as we've seen the sales environment in 2024 manifest itself and going into 2025, both in market tech with nine new commitments for existing clients and other new clients coming in, as well as for AxiomSL, really good sales year in AxiomSL, we actually see upward mobility or upward trajectory of professional services in 2025 that supports the outlook that Sarah gave you in terms of where the revenues will come out within the ranges that we mentioned. And actually, we did give some disclosure about Adenza when we acquired Adenza, saying that professional services fees were about 20% of the Adenza revenues and, I would say, just over 10% of overall fintech revenues, just so you know what the disclosures are.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Owen Lau (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning.Thank you for taking my question, so I have a question about your cap markets tech ARR. It came down from 12% last quarter to 9%. It also drove your fintech ARR down for the quarter. What was the driver of that decline? Is it the professional services fee we talked about? And then what does it take to reaccelerate that ARR in 2025? Thanks, Ellen.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Thanks, Owen, so with regards to ARR, there were some year-over-year comps on that just because Q4 of 2023 was a very strong sales quarter for Calypso, in particular. And so we had some, I would just say, year-over-year comp differential. And then the second thing is just that there's a lot of timing related to deal signings, deal closings that drive ARR.

Also, by the way, what we look at is ARR itself does not include any sort of ramps that we have in contracts. So that also would reflect just the ARR upon signing as opposed to the long-term ARR potential of a contract. And so it doesn't include ramps, and there are ramps in our contracts. So I think some of that is also kind of reflected in the fact we had different growth rates. But as Sarah mentioned, we do expect that the AxiomSL and Calypso combined ARR growth should be within the medium-term outlook range of the mid-teens, and that overall for fintech, that we should be within the range that we provided on ARR. So we do feel like we have a really strong opportunity for us to continue to direct growth across the franchise, but in this quarter, we had some downward pressure.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Cyprys from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Michael Cyprys (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about AI with the DeepSeek advancement. Just curious how you see that impacting your business in terms of potential for faster generative AI product innovation and development, potentially at a lower cost, and how you see that potentially impacting the competitive landscape over time. And more broadly, maybe you could just update us on some of the steps you're going to be taking here in 2025 to move Nasdaq forward with generative AI advancements. Thank you.

Sarah Youngwood (CFO)

No, I love that question. So first of all, I would just say we've essentially put a platform together within Nasdaq, leveraging our cloud providers that allow us to use multiple models. So we use both proprietary models and open-source models today.

What we do is when we think about a new capability we want to deliver through our products, we'll test out different models to see which ones provide us the best solutions at the most efficient cost structure, and so first and foremost, it has to be which one's best at delivering what we're looking for, and then the second thing is then a cost consideration, but I would say the cost curve has come, I mean, the cost of generative AI has already come down a lot. It's been quite dramatic, and so we already feel like there's a lot of efficiencies starting to come into the different models. The second thing is we are open to different models. We have a lot of governance around that, but we do approve models through our governance structure, and we have access to multiple models.

And the third thing is we are really embedding AI, GenAI capabilities into our product roadmaps, and we're reviewing those product roadmaps very frequently so that we know that we're bringing new capabilities to clients. So just a few to mention, we've got, as you mentioned, the GenAI Entity Research Copilot within the anti-financial crime business, but now we're implementing that in our surveillance business. We have actually the ability to do something similar in terms of auto-generation of regulatory reports in AxiomSL. We have our board portal summary, board book summaries within our board portal tool. We have other capabilities we're bringing to investment in terms of summarizing board minutes and other things from pension boards. So there's so many different ways that we're deploying the technology for the benefit of customers.

For the most part, we're basically doing it in a way that really improves the value of the product overall, improves the return on investment that clients are getting, so that as we talk through different renewal cycles, we can show them that incremental value in terms of part of our contract value, and it's driving up retention so that we are differentiating our solutions more successfully, which will drive up retention. So we see it as a general lift, and we are just getting started, I have to say. Now, within Nasdaq, as Sarah mentioned, we're also deploying the technology internally across our development teams, our client success teams, marketing, so that we can actually be more efficient and effective in product development and client success.

So that's where that kind of upgraded program that Sarah mentioned does include some AI efficiencies that we expect to generate this year.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jeff Schmitt from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Schmitt (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. On the proprietary index options business, revenues doubled during the year. Could you discuss what your plans are for that business and sort of whether you're looking to increase investments and focus there over time?

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

What's great about that business is it gets to leverage the broader exchange franchise that we have, obviously, so we can be very efficient in investing in that business and driving return. But we are very focused on it.

In fact, Tal and Kevin and Greg and team, we're meeting regularly to understand new ways that we can build new products, bring more capabilities to our clients, and grow the ecosystem because you've got both institutional investors that you really want to draw into those prop index products as well as retail. We have gotten our prop index products now on major retail investing platforms, including Robinhood, and then we also are driving institutional adoption of those products by integrating those products into different data tools that they use to make investment decisions, and then as our index business goes more into the institutional audience in terms of insurance and other institutional clients, that then drives demand for options trading and hedging capabilities that we can use our prop products for.

So I have to say it's kind of a virtuous cycle that's developing there, and we're really, really excited about how we can continue to drive the NDX franchise, but then also bring new products onto that business as well.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra from RBC. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sabadra (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. If I can ask just two clarifying modeling questions. One is on ARR versus revenue growth. We saw some differential there in 2024. Anything to be cognizant of as we get into 2025? And then just on the expense side with that expanded synergies, which gets actioned in 2025, how could we think about those benefiting 2025 on a quarterly cadence basis? Any color there will be helpful. Thanks.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Okay. I'll have Sarah answer the question on the expense side. And even on the ARR revenue versus ARR, why don't you just take that, Sarah?

Sarah Youngwood (CFO)

So on the ARR versus revenue, you have two things that are a factor: professional services fees as a theme throughout fintech, and that affects really all of the metrics, especially in the Q4. In terms of the second element, and that's specifically for the Q4, you've got Calypso, which has both. So this is on-prem revenue recognition for Calypso, where you have the combination of a tough comp in 4Q23, and then the timing during the year being different in 2024 versus in 2023. So those are the elements of the first question. In terms of the second question, what I have mentioned is that we have benefits that are really occurring very fast into the expenses.

So, 2.5% of growth in 2024 coming from this expanded efficiency program, and that number becomes 2%. That's contributing to lowering the growth rate 2025 versus 2024 for expense. And then there is a tail that's mostly in 2026.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

But we're not going to provide you a quarterly view into that. I think it's something that we're going to continue to drive throughout 2025. And I think you mentioned, though, that there's a tail in 2026, so it's largely a tail in 2026.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Alex Kramm from UBS. Please go ahead.

Alex Kramm (Equity Research Analyst)

Yes, hey, good morning, everyone. Just wanted to come back to fintech for a second here. I know a lot of focus on the regulatory direction.

I think the one other thing people are talking about a lot in financial services changing is maybe a pickup in bank M&A. So maybe you can just talk about that. Obviously, a primary customer base for you, and I understand that maybe those banks get bigger and they actually get more sophisticated. So it could be good longer term, but maybe add regulatory in this as well. But when you have a lot of these uncertainties, sometimes there's a little bit of paralysis. So just wondering if we should be expecting any sort of lengthening of sales cycles as it comes to selling to this end market just because these companies don't know what's going to happen next, both in regulatory and on the M&A side. Thanks.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

I think, first of all, bank M&A in the past, in prior, let's say, decades past, has been relatively, I've heard, at least on average, somewhere around 4% of banks kind of merge in the United States over a normalized period of time. But most of that M&A occurs at the very low, the small end of the spectrum of banks. And so as we think about M&A for banks going forward, if two smaller banks merge into, let's say, a mid-sized bank, we are well protected in terms of the way that we've constructed our anti-financial crime technology contracts because that's really the bank, that's the clientele that we serve with that particular solution.

The other solutions that we sell within fintech are geared more towards the tier one through three size banks. But within financial crime management, Verafin has built-in moderators for their contracts based on assets.

So if two banks merge and they become bigger, then they have more assets. If they have more assets, they get to a different pricing tier within the contracts. And so that's kind of baked into the contractual structure of Verafin. Let's say that also, let's say two banks merge and one's already a client and one's not. It gives us a huge opportunity to go in and make sure that they use our solution across the combined bank. And I do think that our solution's very differentiated, and so we feel very good about the ability to go and win that combined bank. Now, at the higher end, then you get two mid-sized banks who become a bigger bank. That's just an opportunity for us because a lot of times they may not have the same regulatory obligations, and then suddenly they do. They have new regulatory obligations.

That obviously gives us an opportunity to come in with our regulatory reporting capabilities, more sophisticated risk management, including treasury risk management and capital risk management. And so we see that as a sales opportunity. I think at the largest end of the spectrum, those will still be very unusual and not that frequent, and we'll manage those as we see them. But I think it's really the general view is going to be small to mid and mid to large, and we see those as net opportunities. In terms of analysis, though, we're, first of all, as we know, sales cycles are always kind of long in this space because it's banks. But I would say that we're seeing a very healthy dialogue. We have a lot of opportunities around the world.

And even if one or two sales get slowed down, we still have a lot of other opportunities to pursue. So we're not concerned so much about that, Alex.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Brian Bedell (Equity Research Analyst)

Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks for the morning, folks. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just wanted to go back to Slide 8, the sales metrics within fintech. They look very strong in the Q4 versus the 2024 quarterly trends and also versus the Q3. So just trying to get a sense of to what extent that might be seasonal or you actually do see improving momentum in 2025 on those metrics. And then could that portend even a stronger ARR growth rate into 2026?

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

So Q4 is always our seasonal high sales quarter. That is a consistent thing, both in anti-financial crime as well as in AxiomSL. I would say that Q4 is always going to be the biggest quarter. But we are also seeing strong trends. So the engagement with clients is excellent, and it obviously carries us into 2025. But I would say you should expect that Q4 will always be the high quarter.

Brian Bedell (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Adena Friedman, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Adena Friedman (Chair and CEO)

All right. Well, thank you. As you heard this morning, Nasdaq continues to make progress on our strategic priorities. And through our complementary and integrated solutions, Nasdaq is delivering consistent growth and accelerating our evolution as a trusted technology partner to the financial ecosystem.

We look forward to keeping you updated on our strategic progress, and thank you for joining, and have a great day. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Good day.