バーチュ・フィナンシャル (VIRT) 2026年第3四半期決算説明会：NTIは7億400万ドルに達する

主要ポイント

• バーチュ・ファイナンシャルの2026年第3四半期の調整後純取引収益（NTI）は、7億400万ドル（1日あたり1,100万ドル）に達し、2026年上半期に比べ市場活動が低調だったにもかかわらず好調な結果となりました。
• 調整後EBITDAは4億3,800万ドル（マージン62%）となり、調整後EPSは1.77ドルに達しました。
• マーケットメイキング部門は1日あたり900万ドルの調整後NTIをもたらし、オフショア株式パーペチュアル、暗号資産関連イベント、複数市場にまたがるAI・半導体関連株など、米国株以外の機会が寄与しました。
• 執行サービス部門は1日あたり200万ドルの調整後NTIを計上しました。経営陣は同部門を戦略的と位置づけており、その要因として1,400社の優良顧客の存在や、買収前のITGの水準から2倍以上に拡大したマージンを挙げました。
• 投下資本は34億ドルに達しました。バーチュが7月に5億ドルの負債調達を実施した後の水準です。直近12カ月のデット／EBITDA倍率は1.4倍となりました。
• 直近12カ月の調整後NTIである1日あたり1,130万ドル、調整後EBITDAである18億ドル、そして調整後EPSである7.69ドルはいずれも、直近12カ月ベースで同社の過去最高記録となりました。

主要財務データ

事業および営業実績

市場の出来高とボラティリティは2026年上半期から低下したものの、過去平均を上回る水準を維持しました。バーチュは、多角化した取引戦略が市場の沈静化による影響を補うのに寄与したと述べています。

マーケットメイキング部門は、従来の米国株にとどまらない取引活動の恩恵を受けました。経営陣は、オフショア株式パーペチュアル、暗号資産市場のイベント、複数国でのAIおよび半導体関連株の取引などを挙げました。同社は、多角化が進むにつれ、自社の業績と米国株の出来高およびボラティリティとの相関性は過去よりも低下すると見込んでいます。

経営陣によると、執行サービス部門は引き続き戦略的な事業です。同部門は世界中で1,400社の優良顧客にサービスを提供しており、バーチュは基盤となるテクノロジーが自社プロダクトの差別化につながっていると述べました。なお、経営陣は売却の可能性に関するメディア報道についてのコメントを控えました。

バーチュは、7月に調達した5億ドルの大半を比較的迅速に投下した一方で、社内の取引、流動性、および規制上のバッファーを維持しました。同社は、この追加資金調達により緊急流動性ファシリティを利用する必要性が低下したと述べています。

計算能力、電力、ストレージ、物理インフラにわたるテクノロジー投資が継続しています。経営陣は、支出について、予期せぬ加速ではなく、事前に示していた計画に沿った段階的な増加であると説明しました。

経営陣の見通し

バーチュは、当面のトレーディング資本目標として約40億ドル超を改めて提示しました。経営陣は、これが恒久的な上限ではなく当面の目標であることを強調し、資産売却を行うことなく中期的な資本目標を達成できると述べました。

同社は自己資本基盤のオーガニックな拡大を継続する方針であり、純取引収益と収益性の向上に伴い、機動的に負債を追加調達する可能性があります。

特にトレーディング、リサーチ、開発において採用活動は2027年にかけて活発な状態が続く見通しです。電話会議の時点でバーチュが擁していたのは1,100人の従業員をわずかに下回る規模でしたが、近いうちにその水準を上回ると見込まれています。経営陣は、現在の経費および報酬のトレンドが当面の見通しを想定する上での合理的な基準になり得ると述べました。

リスクと注視すべき点

• 市場の取引活動は前四半期比で鈍化しており、これは一般に資本の使用量を減らし、取引機会に影響を与える可能性があります。
• バーチュの日々の損益（P&L）の分布はIPO時点よりも広がっています。現在の事業には個人投資家向けのホールセール業務（リテール・ホールセール）やETFブロック取引、その他の戦略が含まれているためです。経営陣は、損失を計上する日は依然として稀であるものの、もはや皆無ではないと述べました。
• 新規プロダクトは決済や証拠金要件が異なっており、資本効率や資本使用状況に影響を与える可能性があります。
• サプライチェーンの制約やコスト上昇が続く中でAI関連のインフラ支出が行われていますが、経営陣は現在の投資計画は依然として管理可能な範囲内にあると述べました。
• バーチュには依然として未充足の採用ニーズがあり、高い採用基準を設けていることから、採用目標を達成する時期を巡る不確実性が生じています。

アナリスト質疑応答（Q&A）の要点

マーケットメイキング部門の底堅さ：経営陣は、同部門の好業績の要因として、米国株の商いのみに依存せず、地理的およびプロダクトの多角化を進めたことを挙げました。

執行サービス部門の戦略：バーチュは売却に関する憶測への言及は避けたものの、同部門のグローバルな顧客基盤、テクノロジー、改善したマージン、そして戦略的価値を強調しました。

リスクアペタイト：経営陣は、同社のリスクプロファイルは過去1年間で実質的に変化していないと述べました。より大きな変化が生じたのは、バーチュのIPO時期からKCG買収に伴う事業拡大にかけての期間でした。

保有期間：バーチュは、取引戦略によって大きく異なるため一律の平均保有期間は存在しないとし、保有期間のレンジについても過去1年間で実質的な変化はないと述べました。

資本投下：7月に調達した負債資金の大半は速やかに投下されたものの、経営陣は、業務運営上、流動性上、および規制上の適切なバッファーが引き続き維持されていることを強調しました。

テクノロジー支出：バーチュは、テクノロジー競争を電子取引において長期にわたる本質的な特徴と捉えています。事業拡大に伴い足元の投資は増加しているものの、経営陣は以前に示された水準を超えて支出が拡大するとは想定していません。

決算説明会トランスクリプト全文

決算説明会の完全なトランスクリプト

経営陣による説明

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.

質疑応答

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.