Virtu Financial (VIRT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: NTI erreicht 704 Millionen US-Dollar

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Virtu Financial erzielte im dritten Quartal 2026 bereinigte Nettohandelserträge (NTI) von 704 Millionen US-Dollar bzw. 11 Millionen US-Dollar pro Tag, trotz einer im Vergleich zum ersten Halbjahr 2026 geringeren Marktaktivität.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA belief sich auf 438 Millionen US-Dollar bei einer Marge von 62 %, während das bereinigte EPS 1,77 US-Dollar erreichte.
• Das Market Making steuerte 9 Millionen US-Dollar an bereinigten NTI pro Tag bei, gestützt durch Marktchancen außerhalb von US-Aktien, darunter Offshore-Aktien-Perpetuals, Krypto-bezogene Ereignisse sowie KI- und Halbleiteraktien über mehrere Märkte hinweg.
• Execution Services erwirtschaftete 2 Millionen US-Dollar an bereinigten NTI pro Tag. Das Management bezeichnete den Bereich als strategisch und verwies auf 1.400 Blue-Chip-Kunden sowie Margen, die sich gegenüber dem Niveau von ITG vor der Übernahme mehr als verdoppelt haben.
• Das investierte Kapital erreichte 3,4 Milliarden US-Dollar, nachdem Virtu 500 Millionen US-Dollar an Fremdkapital im Juli aufgenommen hatte. Das Trailing-Debt-to-EBITDA lag bei 1,4x.
• Die bereinigten NTI der vergangenen zwölf Monate von 11,3 Millionen US-Dollar pro Tag, das bereinigte EBITDA von 1,8 Milliarden US-Dollar und das bereinigte EPS von 7,69 US-Dollar stellten allesamt Unternehmensrekorde auf Zwölfmonatsbasis dar.

Wichtigste Finanzkennzahlen

Geschäftliche und operative Entwicklung

Die Marktvolumina und die Volatilität gingen gegenüber dem ersten Halbjahr 2026 zurück, blieben jedoch über den historischen Durchschnittswerten. Virtu gab an, dass die diversifizierten Handelsstrategien dazu beigetragen haben, das weniger aktive Marktumfeld auszugleichen.

Das Market Making profitierte von Aktivitäten außerhalb traditioneller US-Aktien. Das Management hob Offshore-Aktien-Perpetuals, Ereignisse an den Kryptomärkten sowie den Handel mit KI- und Halbleiteraktien in mehreren Ländern hervor. Das Unternehmen geht davon aus, dass seine Ergebnisse mit fortschreitender Diversifizierung künftig weniger stark mit den Volumina und der Volatilität von US-Aktien korreliert sein werden als in der Vergangenheit.

Execution Services bleibt nach Angaben des Managements ein strategisches Geschäftsfeld. Der Bereich betreut weltweit 1.400 Blue-Chip-Kunden, und Virtu betonte, dass die zugrunde liegende Technologie die eigenen Produkte differenziere. Zu Medienberichten über einen möglichen Verkauf lehnte das Management eine Stellungnahme ab.

Virtu setzte den Großteil der im Juli aufgenommenen 500 Millionen US-Dollar relativ zügig ein, behielt jedoch interne Handels-, Liquiditäts- und regulatorische Puffer bei. Das Unternehmen teilte mit, dass die zusätzlichen Mittel den Bedarf an der Inanspruchnahme von Eventual-Liquiditätsfazilitäten verringert hätten.

Die Technologieinvestitionen werden in den Bereichen Rechenkapazität, Energieversorgung, Speicher und physische Infrastruktur fortgesetzt. Das Management bezeichnete die Ausgaben als schrittweisen Anstieg im Einklang mit den zuvor kommunizierten Plänen und nicht als unerwartete Beschleunigung.

Ausblick des Managements

Virtu bekräftigte ein kurzfristiges Ziel für das Handelskapital von rund 4 Milliarden US-Dollar plus. Das Management betonte, dass es sich hierbei um ein kurzfristiges Ziel und nicht um eine dauerhafte Obergrenze handele, und erklärte, das Unternehmen könne sein mittelfristiges Kapitalziel ohne Verkäufe von Vermögenswerten erreichen.

Das Unternehmen plant, seine Kapitalbasis weiterhin organisch auszubauen, und könnte bei steigenden Nettohandelserträgen und zunehmender Rentabilität opportunistisch zusätzliches Fremdkapital aufnehmen.

Es wird erwartet, dass das Einstellungsniveau bis ins Jahr 2027 hinein hoch bleiben wird, insbesondere in den Bereichen Handel, Forschung und Entwicklung. Zum Zeitpunkt der Telefonkonferenz zählte Virtu knapp 1.100 Mitarbeiter und rechnete damit, diesen Stand in naher Zukunft zu übertreffen. Das Management erklärte, die aktuellen Kosten- und Vergütungstrends könnten als verlässliche Grundlage für die kurzfristigen Erwartungen dienen.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

• Die Marktaktivität schwächte sich im Quartalsvergleich ab, was im Allgemeinen die Kapitalnutzung verringert und die Handelschancen beeinträchtigen kann.
• Die tägliche Gewinn- und Verlustverteilung von Virtu fällt breiter aus als zum Zeitpunkt des Börsengangs, da das Geschäft nun auch das Wholesale-Geschäft für Privatanleger, den ETF-Blockhandel und weitere Strategien umfasst. Das Management erklärte, dass Verlusttage nach wie vor selten seien, aber nicht mehr völlig ausblieben.
• Neue Produkte weisen andere Abwicklungs- und Margin-Anforderungen auf, was sich auf die Kapitaleffizienz und -nutzung auswirken kann.
• Die Ausgaben für KI-Infrastruktur erfolgen vor dem Hintergrund von Engpässen in der Lieferkette und höheren Kosten; das Management betonte jedoch, dass die aktuellen Investitionspläne beherrschbar blieben.
• Virtu hat weiterhin offenen Einstellungsbedarf und legt hohe Qualitätsmaßstäbe an, was zu Unsicherheiten hinsichtlich des Zeitpunkts für das Erreichen der Einstellungsziele führt.

Highlights der Analysten-Fragerunde

Widerstandsfähigkeit im Market Making: Das Management führte die Performance des Segments auf eine breitere geografische und produktbezogene Diversifizierung zurück und nicht auf die alleinige Abhängigkeit von den US-Aktienmärkten.

Strategie bei Execution Services: Virtu lehnte eine Stellungnahme zu Verkaufsspekulationen ab, betonte jedoch den weltweiten Kundenstamm, die Technologie, die verbesserten Margen und den strategischen Wert des Bereichs.

Risikobereitschaft: Nach Angaben des Managements hat sich das Risikoprofil des Unternehmens im vergangenen Jahr nicht wesentlich verändert. Die größere Verschiebung erfolgte zwischen dem Börsengang von Virtu und der Expansion nach der KCG-Übernahme.

Haltedauern: Virtu erklärte, dass es keine einheitliche durchschnittliche Haltedauer gebe, da sich die Handelsstrategien erheblich voneinander unterscheiden. Die Bandbreite der Haltedauern habe sich im vergangenen Jahr nicht wesentlich verändert.

Kapitaleinsatz: Der Großteil der Erlöse aus der Fremdkapitalaufnahme im Juli wurde zügig eingesetzt; das Management betonte jedoch, dass weiterhin angemessene operative, liquiditätsbezogene und regulatorische Puffer vorhanden sind.

Technologieausgaben: Virtu betrachtet den technologischen Wettbewerb als dauerhaftes Merkmal des elektronischen Handels. Die aktuellen Investitionen steigen mit der Expansion des Unternehmens, das Management rechnet jedoch nicht mit Ausgaben, die über das zuvor kommunizierte Niveau hinausgehen.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz zu den Ergebnissen

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Virtu Financial Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Matthew Sandberg, Head of IR. Matthew, please go ahead.

Matthew Sandberg

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Our third quarter 2026 results were released this morning and are available on our website. With us today on this call, we have 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 belief 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'd like to turn the call over to Aaron.

Aaron Simons

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Volume and volatility in the quarter were somewhat lower than the first half of the year, although they remain elevated relative to historical averages. Despite the moderation in the operating environment, our diversified set of trading strategies allowed us to perform at a high level. We are continuing our plans to grow capital in all forms. At the beginning of the quarter, we raised $500 million in the form of new debt helping to bring our overall trading capital base to $3.4 billion. On the human capital side, hiring is continuing according to plan and turnover remains our focus is on adding to our research and development teams while maintaining a high bar for quality and preserving our open collaborative culture.

Lastly, we are continuing to invest in our physical infrastructure in order to stay at the forefront of technological competition. We have provided additional perspective on the quarter and our detailed financial supplement, and we'll be answering your questions shortly.

First, Cindy Lee, our Chief Financial Officer, will review the financial results for this quarter.

Cindy Lee

Thanks, Aaron. Good morning, everyone. For the third quarter of 2026, we generated adjusted net trading income or NTI of $11 million per day or a total of $704 million. Market Making recorded a fee of $9 million per day, while Execution Services reported an ANTI of $2 million per day. As Aaron mentioned earlier, despite a notable decrease in market activity quarter-over-quarter, volumes and volatilities remain above historical averages. And in both of our operating segments continue to execute and capitalize on their respective opportunities.

Our profitability this quarter was strong. We generated $438 million per day in adjusted EBITDA, representing a 62% margin. Adjusted EPS was $1.77. Over the last 12 months, we have reported the ANT per day of $11.3 million per day, adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 billion and adjusted EPS of $7.69, all of these numbers represent all-time highs for Virtu from a trailing 12 months perspective.

On Slide 5 of our supplemental materials, we provided a summary of our operating expenses. Our third quarter 2026 cash compensation ratio was at 23%, which is consistent with our expectations. Through September 30, our year-to-date cash compensation ratio is 23% and our total compensation ratio is 28%. Again, these are levels that we have stated would be appropriate in the near term.

Turning to capital. After raising $500 million through new debt in July, our invested capital stands at $3.4 billion as of September 30. Our trailing debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 1.4x. So we remain modestly leveraged. We will continue to grow our capital base organically and deploy capital where we see the greatest opportunities, all while maintaining our quarterly dividend at $0.24 per share.

We will now take your questions.

Operator

We will now be entering the question-and-answer portion of the event. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Patrick Molly with Piper Sandler.

Fragen und Antworten

Patrick Moley

Yes. So maybe start on marketing. You did about $9 million a day, down only about 4% sequentially, and it came in a quarter where USD volumes are down mid-teens realized vol was down more than 20%. So you clearly outperformed the backdrop. Could you maybe just help us understand what drove that? Any color there would be great.

Joseph Molluso

Patrick, thanks. Sure. So as you noted, U.S. equity volumes were down, but that's not the only place where we're trading, obviously. So there was definitely some heightened activity, other places like there's been a lot of the offshore equity perpetuals that have come online. There have been some interesting events in the crypto space. Obviously, there are episodic things going on with AI and chip stocks in multiple countries around the world, not just U.S. equities, so I think it's, again, just another kind of piece of evidence that we're really diversifying the firm and trying to grow trading, not just concentrated in U.S. equities and especially not just concentrated and wholesaling of U.S. equities. .

And so I think you can expect that going forward, that it's not going to be as correlated with those metrics as it used to be.

Patrick Moley

Sure. Great color. And then just as a follow-up, I also wanted to ask about execution services. There's been some media reports that you could be exploring a sale of that business. I understand that you might be limited in what you can say, but maybe just at a high level, do you feel like the market gives you credit for VS inside of Virtu? And maybe just how do you think about the strategic fit between that and the Market Making business going forward? .

Joseph Molluso

Well, I'll answer the question in the abstract, Patrick. This is Joe because we don't -- when that in response to the new story, we said we don't comment on rumors. And your question, do we get credit for ES inside of Virtu -- the public market may not give us credit for Virtu inside of Virtu. But I'll tell you that Virtu Execution Services is a strategic business for us. It's done exceptionally well. You can see the growth in net trading income on a quarterly basis. This is a business that has 1,400 blue-chip clients truly a global business. And we don't break it out, but if you went back and looked at ITG's margins prior to us buying them, we have more than double those margins. And so we think it's operated in a best-in-class way among its peers.

Clients will tell you that the technology is differentiating the technology that underlies the products that are spread across these 1,400 clients. So we like the business. There's a lot of questions we've gotten around this in terms of capital and incremental capital deployment. And I saw your math when the new story came out. And look, what I'd say in the past, we've articulated a near-term capital goal of around $4 billion plus, we called it. That's not a forever goal. It's a near-term goal.

But as Aaron mentioned, when you look at where we are today, we're well on our way to achieving that goal. We've accumulated, I think, $900 million-ish of trading capital this year, around half of it organically, half of it from supplementing our debt stack. So I think we feel very good about how we've grown the capital base and deployed it. And to get to our long-term goal -- medium-term goal, we don't need to do anything in terms of asset [indiscernible] And all that being said, we're always focused on shareholder value, as you know, Patrick. So that would be sort of how we answer that question.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ei Abboud with Bank of America.

Eli Abboud

When you IPO-ed in 2013, you said at the time that you only had 1 money-losing day in the past 4 years. We're often asked by investors whether Virtu's appetite for risk has changed since the CEO change. So to that end, when you look at the past year, how many months closing days has there been.

Aaron Simons

I'll take that question. So we don't break out in granularity like especially the level of a number of days of any certain level of P&L. But I will say that if you look at when we IPO-ed, the statistical distribution of our P&L was such that a losing day represents an operational error rather than any result of the trading strategies themselves.

But since we've grown a lot since then, the business has changed a lot, beginning with our acquisition of KCG, I would say that materially, the distribution of that P&L changed quite a lot. The retail wholesaling business, the ETF block trading businesses, those are just kind of different animals than the sort of very traditional on-screen market making that we were doing back in those days, which was a long time ago at this point.

So Definitely, the width of the distribution of our P&L has increased meaningfully from our IPO days. But fortunately, we've also increased the mean of the distribution quite a bit, such that bouncing off of 0 is still quite rare, although not 0. And so I think since I took over, I don't think the distribution has really changed meaningfully, like we are open to more trading opportunities than we perhaps were, but qualitatively, there's a bigger difference between our IPO in 2014 and even 2018, '19 than there is between 1.5 years ago and today.

Eli Abboud

Got it. That's very helpful. And then has there been any change in how long you are warehousing? I think in the past, you've described your average holding period is a few seconds. Is that something that has changed?

Aaron Simons

I haven't described it in that way. I don't know exactly where that statement came from. There's not like a 1 number that I could even point to, to be honest. There's very different segments of trading that have very different holding times. But I would say that the set of holding times of our various trading strategies has not changed meaningfully in the last year.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.

Kenneth Worthington

You raised $500 million of debt at the end of July, did the capital raise make it to the trading desks near instantly or did it migrate at a more measured pace over the quarter? And how would you judge the returns on the incremental capital relative to the market conditions versus the entire book of trading capital.

Joseph Molluso

What I would say to you, Ken, is we -- this is Joe. We don't measure kind of incremental returns because cash is fungible, capital is fungible and it's spread across our various businesses and our various legal entities in our various jurisdictions. So what I will tell you is we maintain buffers, internal buffers, as you would expect from a trading standpoint, a usage standpoint, a regulatory standpoint in those legal entities and trading desks.

And prior to that capital raise, we were seeing opportunity where we were using some of the buffer in a business as usual way. And also from time to time, using some of our contingent liquidity in terms of revolvers, et cetera. And that has largely come to an end. So we always want to operate with belt and suspenders, trading capital belt and suspenders, excess trading capital and the environment at the time allowed us to, I'd say, deploy most of it right away.

But when we say deployed, we mean deploy with adequate buffer. So I think the environment has slowed down a little bit as was noted at the beginning of the call, and that usually causes us to use less capital, all things equal, but all things are never equal, I think Aaron mentioned some of the highlights of kind of new products and these new products have various levels of efficiency around settlement and margin that drives capital usage as well.

I would say net-net, we were able to deploy the capital. We have adequate buffers and we're going to continue to organically grow the capital base. And then as we continue to reset the bar at higher level net trading income and higher levels of profitability. We'll always look to opportunistically supplement the -- our debt capitalization as well.

Kenneth Worthington

Great. And for the follow-up, how would you characterize the investment that the industry is making in new technologies like AI and other? Is it sort of business as usual? Or do you see this as sort of a being in the midst of a technology arms race. And if so, does Virtu have to change the level of investing that it's making from current levels. .

Aaron Simons

I mean, I guess it's tough to answer. I mean, again, trading is a pretty diversified business. And so there are different types of trading with different technological requirements. I mean, on the one hand, we've been in a technological arms race since the founding in 2008. I think it's just much more visible now and the dollar amounts are higher because of the AI spend that people are doing, and there's a bit of a price difference just because of supply chain constraints and other things. So we are continuing to spend a significant fraction of dollars on technology, but that it's not really new, are representing some great acceleration.

We are incrementally investing more as we are growing into our sort of like physical capital base and compute and power and storage and everything else. So I mean, yes, it is an uptick, which we've highlighted before that we were going to do. So I don't think it's anything surprising -- but I think we feel very comfortable where we're at and don't feel a need to do anything beyond what we've sort of telegraphed.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

Daniel Fannon

So I was curious about where you think you are in terms of your hiring goals. You talked about investing in the business and people. Is that something that has a time period to it? Or is this something we should be thinking about that's going to be ongoing as we go into next year and beyond? .

Aaron Simons

Well, I guess, I don't know how forward-looking you want to be certainly into the next year. I don't think you're going to see any change. We still have quite a few unmet hiring goals, and we're trying hard to fill them. I mean we don't -- this business changes quite quickly. And so we do have sort of near term and what we would call medium-term goals and medium term for us is probably at most a year. So I don't think I can predict beyond that. I mean we would love to be in a state where we just keep finding new trading strategies, keep making more money, keep hiring more people, but it's hard to really play in beyond sort of the next year at most.

Daniel Fannon

Understood. And then in the context of expenses, as we think about the -- what you mentioned in terms of investing in the business plus the people, any change in philosophy about or how we should think about expense growth sequentially as we think about the end of the year, but also again into next year given what appears to be a more consistent investment period of hiring and other investments. .

Aaron Simons

No, Dan. I mean, I think you could see the numbers, right? Expenses have gone up. We don't think they've gone up any more than we expected them to. On the people front, I think just to underline what Aaron said, we've already increased our hiring meaningfully. We're at the end of the -- as we speak here, we're just below 1,100 people, and we expect to be over 1,100 in the near term. So hiring has stepped up, and it's been driven in sort of the high-value areas in terms of trading and development. And you could see the comp ratio sort of as Cindy mentioned, is where we've guided it to. So I think you can look at the trends and extrapolate pretty accurately.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.