Virtu Financial - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Virtu Financial fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Elliot, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's event, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to hand over to Matt Sandberg at Virtu Financial. Please go ahead.

Matt Sandberg (Head of Corporate Planning and Business Analytics)

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Our fourth quarter 2025 results were released this morning and are available on our website. With us today on this morning's call, we have Aaron Simons, our Chief Executive Officer, Cindy Lee, our Chief Financial Officer, and Joe Molluso, our Co-president and Co-chief Operating Officer. We will begin with brief prepared remarks and then take your questions. First, a few reminders. Today's call may include forward-looking statements which represent Virtu's current beliefs regarding future events and are therefore subject to risks, assumptions, and uncertainties which may be outside the company's control. Please note that our actual results and financial conditions may differ materially from what is indicated in these forward-looking statements.

It is important to note that any forward-looking statements made on this call are based on information presently available to the company, and we do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements as new information becomes available. We refer you to disclaimers in our press release and encourage you to review the description of risk factors contained in our annual report, Form 10-K, and other public filings. During today's call, in addition to GAAP measures, we may refer to certain non-GAAP measures, including adjusted net trading income, adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin. These non-GAAP measures should be considered as supplemental to and not as superior to financial measures as reported in accordance with GAAP.

We direct listeners to consult the investor portion of our website, where you'll find additional supplemental information referred to on this call, as well as a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the equivalent GAAP term in the earnings materials, with an explanation of why we deem this information to be meaningful, as well as how management uses these measures. With that, I will turn the call over to Aaron.

Aaron Simons (CEO)

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. As a reminder, the prepared remarks for our earnings calls moving forward will focus predominantly on our financial results, allowing us to get to Q&A more quickly. Last call, we spoke about our plan to grow our trading by investing in our infrastructure, acquiring talent, and expanding our capital base. We also emphasized that this growth would be a broad effort across the firm, not limited to a handful of initiatives. The fourth quarter was a preview of the impact of this renewed focus on growth. Our results for the fourth quarter were impacted positively by a favorable operating environment, and while our capital accumulation efforts are just underway, the incremental capital we added and our ability to dynamically deploy it had a meaningful impact on our results. I'll hand it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Cindy Lee, who will review the financial results.

As always, you can find additional perspective on the quarter in our detailed supplement. After her statement, we will move on to Q&A.

Cindy Lee (CFO)

Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we generated adjusted net trading income, or NT, of $9.7 million per day, or a total of $613 million. This was the highest quarterly total since Q1 2021. For the full year 2025, we generated $8.6 million per day, or $2.1 billion in total. Turning to our segment performance, Market Making reported NT of $7.8 million per day for Q4 and $6.7 million per day for the full year 2025. Virtu Execution Services reached $2 million per day for the quarter and $1.9 million per day for the full year.

This is the seventh consecutive quarter of increased NT for VES and a high watermark since early 2022, an indication of substantial progress we have been noting within the VES business. This performance reflects the investment we have made in technology, our focus on client acquisition, and the expansion of our product offerings. Both of our operating segments benefited from generally favorable market conditions, elevated volumes, and strong execution by our teams. Our profitability this quarter was robust. We generated $442 million in adjusted EBITDA, representing a 72% margin. Adjusted EPS was $1.85. For the full year 2025, we recorded $1.4 billion in adjusted EBITDA, 65% margin, and $5.73 in adjusted EPS. These numbers all represent high, highs since 2021 and underscore the operating leverage inherent in our business.

On slide 6 of our supplemental materials, we provided a summary of our operating expenses. Our full year 2025 cash compensation ratio was at 19%, which was within the historical range. The increase in compensation expense reflects our continued focus on retaining and acquiring top talent across the organization, particularly in trading and technology. Turning to capital, we increased our invested capital by $625 million in 2025, $448 million of which came in the second half of the year, while generating an average return of 100% over the year. We will continue to expand our capital base, strengthen our infrastructure, and deploy capital where we see the greatest opportunities, all while maintaining our quarterly dividend of $0.24 per share. This completes our prepared remarks. We will now take your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. First question comes from Eli Abboud with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eli Abboud (Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The dollar value of your 605 quoted spreads looked like it declined sequentially. So is it fair for us to conclude that this quarter's strong performance came from areas outside of equities? And if so, can you provide some granularity on which asset classes were the largest contributors to your sequential growth?

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Good morning, Eli, it's Joe. I think when you look at our performance this quarter, you've got to begin with the favorable operating environment, realize the volatility was up, the VIX was up, equity share volumes were up. And there's a number of underlying drivers in the environment that, you know, should hopefully allow that to continue, you know, around, you know, asset rotation, around dollars, fixed income, currencies, commodities. You know, we're a scaled, globally connected firm, and we are more than just the retail flow business that, that shows up in the, in the 605 reports. So I think, you know, that's the takeaway that we would, want to leave with you. You know, I think the growth in the trading capital base had an impact.

You know, we had a 100% return on incremental capital in the quarter. I don't expect that to always be the case, but obviously, when you make that kind of return and you have incrementally more capital, then it has an impact. As Cindy mentioned, VES had a record quarter. You know, all of its businesses are performing well. There's accelerating client engagement. There's new clients doing business. They're onboarding a lot of clients. There's existing clients doing more business, and that performance has been across all products, brokerage, algos, venues, workflow analytics, and all geographies. So, you know, yes. That's the long answer. The short answer to your question is yes.

The customer market making, you know, business, even though the quoted spreads have been down in the beginning of the quarter, as you can see from the public information, it's still elevated, I think, over a long period of time. But the non-customer businesses, it did well. Very well.

Eli Abboud (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. And for our follow-up, ETF fund launches are expected to hit a record in 2026 with the recent ETF share class proposal out of the SEC. So I was wondering if you could refresh us on where Virtu has exposure to the ETF market and help us understand the materiality to Virtu, if that does in fact come to pass. And in particular, I was hoping maybe you could help us size up the contribution of your create/redeem business for the overall Virtu P&L.

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Again, Eli, I think it is, it's difficult right now to give you something that would quantify the impact. But, in general, we are, a very large player across all of our businesses, in ETFs. We're, we're an AP in, in I don't know how many, but, but a large number of ETFs. it's a growing share class. It's, it's continued to be a growing share class, but you may be referring, to some of the, electronification around, and tokenization, which again, more, more product, you know, more structure is generally a good thing for us. So I, I can't quantify for you, a specific ETF statistic. It's just, it touches just about every part of our business.

Operator (participant)

We now turn to Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Will Cops (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys, this is Will Cops on for Patrick this morning. How's it going? So again, as prediction markets, obviously, seems like they take an even larger role in the headlines every day. Can you give us your updated thoughts on participating in the asset class and whether sports or non-sports contracts would represent a more attractive entry point in the space? Thanks.

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Sure. So, you know, we're generally, you know, optimistic anytime there's a new market or a new asset class to trade. So we're definitely, you know, in the process of connecting, understanding how the venues work, establishing relationships. That being said, you know, in these markets, there's not like perfect regulatory or legal certainty, so we're definitely being very careful in evaluating how those things are going to shake out. With regards to the actual markets, I mean, obviously there are certain markets that are much more similar to our current trading than, for example, like outright sports bets. But even within that context, there are market-making like activities, cross-exchange arbitrage, and things of the like that we'll certainly investigate.

Will Cops (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

We now turn to Dan Fannon with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ritwik Roy (VP)

Yeah. Hi, good morning. This is actually Ritwik Roy on for Dan, and just my formal welcome to the new unit. And regardless of that, aside from that, are you able to quantify or perhaps describe how impactful the non-equity side of the business was in terms of the market-making metrics that you posted this quarter? And you know, perhaps even layering that on to VES and you know, things like cross-asset workflows. And specifically with regards to some of the volatility that we saw with digital assets, precious metals, and commodities, and I know you don't give sort of that thick breakout anymore, but any sort of incremental color around that would be helpful.

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Sure. Again, this is Joe. I think I would repeat a little bit the answer to the first question. And oftentimes, when we get a equities versus non-equities question, there's an underlying assumption there that equities represents the Rule 605 business, and everything else is, is non-equities, and that's not true. So the Rule 605, retail flow business, is what it is. It is, as I said, it was a very good quarter. It was elevated relative to the past, and it was just. The public metrics, anyway, indicated, as you—as someone pointed out, that it was down quarter-over-quarter. But in the non-customer market-making business, we have a very large equities presence. We have a fixed income, currencies, and commodities presence. We have an options presence. We have a crypto presence. And as I said, we're global.

So in a quarter where you have these kind of asset flows and these kind of movements in asset prices between fixed income and commodities and currencies and equities, and in Europe and in Asia and in the U.S., a firm like ours can thrive. So, you know, we don't break that out. We have no intention of breaking it out, but, it, it's important, I think, to understand that, outside of the retail flow business, we have a broad, market-making business that includes global equities, which did very well.

Ritwik Roy (VP)

Understood. And then maybe just a follow-up then on sort of the non-retail, more so client side of the business. Just wondering, where are you sort of seeing the greatest levels of incremental demand? Is it would it be incremental customer adds or greater utilization out of some of those services, whether on the market-making side or, you know, on the execution side?

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

That's more of a VES question, I think. And, as I said, VES is firing on all cylinders. You know, there's been a great deal of product improvement over the past year, two years, three years, in terms of the algos, in terms of venue, the venues, and in terms of workflow and analytics. There is retooling going on to accommodate non-equities asset classes in the workflow and analytics products, excuse me, and that's continuing. So, VES had a very good quarter, and we had stated a goal of $2 million a day through the cycle for VES. Obviously, this is a favorable environment, and they were just short of it, so I think we're well on our way to getting to that goal, you know, on a through-the-cycle basis.

Ritwik Roy (VP)

Understood. That's helpful, but I guess any commentary on maybe the forward pipeline of, you know, adding customers or product innovation on that side?

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Yes, all of the above.

Ritwik Roy (VP)

All right. Understood. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We now turn to Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hey, everyone. Good morning. This is actually Aditya filling in for Alex. Thank you for taking our question. Just zooming out and looking at the bigger picture, can you discuss your top three strategic priorities for 2026, in terms of either new initiatives, or, you know, existing markets? Thank you.

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Yeah. So I mean, as we sort of said in the last two statements, we're not focusing on a very small number of growth initiatives. We're really just focusing on growing everywhere in the firm and responding dynamically to the market opportunities that are available. But it's a, it's a very broad effort to, you know, increase the total firm's trading capital, which we move around relative to opportunity, investing in our infrastructure and acquiring excellent people.

Operator (participant)

As another reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We now turn to Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ken Worthington (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. You mentioned you deployed incremental capital during the quarter. Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of the incremental capital that you did deploy? And as we look to the coming quarters, if market conditions are accommodative, what is the magnitude of incremental capital that you could deploy if you so choose—you so chose?

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

Yes, Ken. Good morning. I think if you look at the 2024 year-end trading capital that we published, and then if you look at the 2025 year-end trading capital that we published. The total increase was over $600 million, $628 million. $450 million of that was in the second half. And as you know, as your firm helped us increase our total debt by $300 million. So the debt increase was a portion of that. It is. The answer in terms of how much we deployed is sort of easy, in that we've deployed pretty much all of it. And that doesn't mean that we don't maintain substantial buffers and substantial excess capital in our U.S. broker dealer and our other regulated entities.

It just means that we've reduced the cost of capital because we relied less on contingent liquidity, like revolvers, to fund our operations. But I think overall and long-term, when you have a quarter like this, you're going to have opportunities to deploy the capital. There will possibly be quarters when you're not deploying all of it, or your buffers, you know, are greater just because the opportunity isn't there. Again, I think the underlying drivers of the environment are in place, and hopefully, we're not in that position. You know, I think on the prior call last quarter, you know, we stated a long-term goal of being, you know, through the cycle, you know, $10 million a day.

If you look at historical returns on capital, I don't expect them to be 100%. But if they're in the, you know, 50%, 60%, 70% range, you, you can do the math and, and figure out that we would expect to be able to deploy more capital than we have today. And we will achieve that through organic growth, and we'll achieve it through, you know, incremental borrowings to the extent they make sense and, and they're prudent, right? So, it, it's, it's a nuanced answer because it's really going to depend quarter to quarter, but in order to achieve our long-term goals, we're, we're going to use the amount of capital we have today and, and even more.

Ken Worthington (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you. I'll take a shot on this question. I spotted its way into Polymarket, in part because of innovations around clearing, settlement, and collateral. Do you see the potential for these types of efficiencies to be big enough to make a difference to the Virtu P&L? And if so, do these sort of changes widen the advantage that the Virtu, Citadels, and Jumps have over the rest of the market, or do they level the playing field?

Aaron Simons (CEO)

So I can take that. I think it's, like, a little early to say what the exact economic impact is going to be. Like, I don't really view it as something that's going to be a step change in our, you know, sort of all-in profitability on these sorts of trades. But I do think in general, when there's added complexity in the market space of just, you know, different ways of trading the same thing, more connectivity, more different protocols, that's a relative competitive advantage for us. Because we're, you know, in everything, everywhere, and connecting to another venue and understanding another clearing settlement cycle is just something that we've done over and over again. So anytime there's sort of like, you know, multiple products with the same underlayer, that's a relative tailwind for us. So, you know, we're happy for the increased product space.

Ken Worthington (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes our question and answer session. I'll hand back to the management team for any final remarks.

Joe Molluso (Co-President and Co-COO)

I think that's it. Thanks, everyone, for joining.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.