Full Transcript: CME Group Q2 2026 Earnings Call

CME Group (NASDAQ: CME ) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday.

Read the complete transcript below.

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For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit The full earnings call is available at Summary CME Group reported strong Q2 2026 financial results with revenue exceeding $1.7 billion, marking a 1% increase from Q2 2025 and achieving a record for second-quarter revenue.

Average daily volume reached 29.8 million contracts, the second highest for Q2 in the company's history, with open interest growing by 8% year-over-year.

CME Group emphasized its commitment to institutional clients, stating that perpetual futures do not meet the needs of its core customer base and highlighting the inefficiencies and risks associated with these products.

The company introduced new products, including 24/7 trading of crypto futures and single stock futures, and plans to launch TreasuryLink to connect U.S.

Treasury futures with cash Treasury liquidity pools.

Market data revenue reached a record $238 million, marking 33 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth.

CME returned $1.2 billion to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and share repurchases.

Management expressed confidence in continued growth driven by innovation and expanding product offerings, despite regulatory challenges related to perpetual futures and 24/7 trading products.

Full Transcript OPERATOR Welcome to the CME Group second quarter 2026 earnings call.

At this time I would like to inform all participants that your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference.

I will now turn the call over to Adam Minick.

Please go ahead.

Adam Minick, Executive Director, Head of Investor Relations Good morning and I hope you're all doing well today.

Earlier this morning we released our earnings commentary which provides extensive details on the second quarter 2026 which we will be discussing on this call.

I'll start with the safe harbor language and then I'll turn it over to Terry.

Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance.

They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict.

Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in a statement.

Detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found in the filings with the SEC which are on our website.

Lastly, in the earnings release you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures following the financial statements.

With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy.

Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO Thank you, Adam, and thank you all for joining us this morning.

I'll make a few comments about our strong quarter and then, before I turn it over to Lynn to provide an overview of our financial results.

In addition to Lynn, we have other members of our management team present to answer questions after the prepared remarks.

The second quarter average daily volume of 29.8 million contracts represented the second highest Q2 in our history and was within 1% of our record second quarter a year ago, with May and June particularly strong.

Following the tough April comparison, open interest ended the quarter up 8% over the past year and up 16% since the beginning of this year.

Additionally, we delivered a record level of capital efficiencies, saving our customers an average of over $95 billion in margin per day.

Recently, this strong business performance has been overshadowed by discussions surrounding perpetual futures.

While this product may be dubbed futures, they function much more like leveraged spot products.

They may appeal to certain retail traders seeking high leverage, but they are not appropriate for the institutional risk managers who comprise the vast majority of our business.

Perpetual futures are highly engineered instruments that rely on frequent funding rate adjustments that revert the position back to the spot price.

They are known for high leverage and automated liquidations.