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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

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Speaker 2: Let's turn out to the latest earnings news. The NASDAQ

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Speaker 2: saw its best first half for listing since twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 2: despite the volatility around trade and policy. The exchange also

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Speaker 2: beating profit estimates in its second quarter. Let's get details

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Speaker 2: now with Adena Friedman, NASDAK chair and CEO, and Adena,

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Speaker 2: great having you here. I have been talking about this

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Speaker 2: all morning long because I think it's such an amazing

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Speaker 2: sign for markets. Tell us how you navigated this first half.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, we're really proud of the

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Speaker 3: overall performance of the business. So we had twelve percent

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Speaker 3: revenue growth, twenty four percent EPs growth, and it really

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Speaker 3: was growth across all of our divisions. So as you know,

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Speaker 3: we have our financial Technology division ten percent growth. They're

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Speaker 3: really great momentum with our clients and the strategic capabilities

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Speaker 3: we offer around risk management, antifin crime, CREDE, infrastructure. And

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Speaker 3: then we also had nine percent growth in capital access plums,

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Speaker 3: which includes our index business seventeen percent growth there as

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Speaker 3: well as our listings and data and analytics businesses, and

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Speaker 3: so the listing's business has definitely improved as we've gone

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Speaker 3: through the year. As you mentioned, we had eighty three

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Speaker 3: IPOs in the first half of the year and three

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Speaker 3: of the top five, so we're really unexpected.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we have been i think talking down to

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Speaker 2: some extent the potential for exits and IPOs in general,

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Speaker 2: and it's really beaten the street. Well.

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Speaker 3: I think that first of all, the companies that have

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Speaker 3: come out, and particularly a little large calf companies have

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Speaker 3: done well so far this year, which is of course

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Speaker 3: giving investors more confidence and underwriting that risk capital, giving

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Speaker 3: companies more confidence that now maybe the time to come out.

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Speaker 3: We're having a lot more conversations around putting dates on calendars,

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Speaker 3: really focusing on post Labor Day, but with some companies

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Speaker 3: coming out over the summer as well. But that post

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Speaker 3: labor day period, if the economy stays healthy as it is,

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Speaker 3: if the markets stay healthy as they are, and we

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Speaker 3: obviously see a lot of volumes in the second quarter

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Speaker 3: as well, that driver results. But we I think we

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Speaker 3: could see a very active second half of the year.

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Speaker 1: Also curious about the limitations because really strangely, you've seen

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Speaker 1: a lot of the companies that came out, like Circle

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Speaker 1: just Soar, a lot of crypto companies, a lot of

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Speaker 1: bitcoins backs that are making it to market now, So

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Speaker 1: what does this mean for the types of companies that

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Speaker 1: will do well in the future. A little earlier, I

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Speaker 1: was talking to John Gray about Medline, which was supposed

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Speaker 1: to be one of the year's biggest IPOs, yet we

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Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet. So what's still being impacted that

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Speaker 1: can't make it out yet.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think yeah, it is. You're right that it

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Speaker 3: is sector specific. So if you think about the companies

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Speaker 3: that have come out and done well, biotech is starting

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Speaker 3: to really come back. We're having more companies. We had

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Speaker 3: Caris life Cycle, life Science come out in the quarter.

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Speaker 3: Really excited about that, but also tech, you know, software, AI,

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Speaker 3: infrastructure like a core weave, as well as areas in

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Speaker 3: the crypto space. So those are all what I would

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Speaker 3: say more digital oriented companies. Companies that where tariffs may

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Speaker 3: still have an impact, are taking a little bit longer

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Speaker 3: to understand the nature of the mar markets and how

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Speaker 3: to allow investors to have predictability in their earnings. And

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Speaker 3: I think that those types of companies that have more

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Speaker 3: and more dependence on what I would call the physical economy,

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Speaker 3: they're taking a little bit longer to get out the door.

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Speaker 2: Meme stocks have come back in a fairly interesting way,

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Speaker 2: and I guess retail trading is just driving this higher.

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Speaker 2: Do you feel that as well?

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Speaker 3: I think retail has been very active in the markets. Definitely.

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Speaker 3: You saw a lot of.

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Speaker 2: Retail drove us back from the April second drop, right,

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Speaker 2: But is it even further accelerating with this new meme style?

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Speaker 1: Can it keep going?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I can only say retail has been

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Speaker 3: an active participant in the market now for five years. Ever,

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Speaker 3: you know, COVID really brought a new generation of retail

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Speaker 3: investors into the market. Those investors have been very sustainable.

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Speaker 3: You know, they've been very resilient. They're very active in

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Speaker 3: the markets as well, driving up index you know, interest

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Speaker 3: and indexes and index products as well as the fact

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Speaker 3: that they're very active in the markets. And we did

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Speaker 3: see an increase in retail volumes second quarter this year

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Speaker 3: versus last year, so we're definitely seeing a very active

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Speaker 3: retail engagement. We're also selling our data around the world,

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Speaker 3: so it's global retail. So our data business was up

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Speaker 3: seven percent in the quarter, and that is really driven

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Speaker 3: by international demand for our data to have their interest

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Speaker 3: in US stocks as continue to grow and we're going

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Speaker 3: all over the world without data today.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of data, the sister is AI, right, And so

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Speaker 1: when it comes to AI, I know you're rolling out

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Speaker 1: more products to banks and financial institutions later this year

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Speaker 1: AI agents that could help them with a lot of

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Speaker 1: the parts of your growing business in financial technology and

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Speaker 1: to financial crime. What does this do ultimately to save

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Speaker 1: costs for others at the end of the day, does

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Speaker 1: it mean that headcount can be reduced by any means.

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Speaker 2: Or for you?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So basically we do we evaluate our products and

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Speaker 3: look at how do we create new capabilities to make

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Speaker 3: our clients more efficient. AI is one of the biggest

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Speaker 3: unlocks we've seen in many years. I mean, so first,

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Speaker 3: we've moved our product base into cloud, We've modernized the

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Speaker 3: data management that underpins our product base, and particularly with Verifin,

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Speaker 3: which is our anti financial crime suite. We've leveraged ANAI

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Speaker 3: for many years to root out criminals and now with

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Speaker 3: a gentic AI to make the workflows a lot more efficient.

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Speaker 3: So the new thing we've launched for these digital workers,

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Speaker 3: they're agents really that come in and basically take it.

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Speaker 3: They do all the assessment of the alerts, they do

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Speaker 3: the write ups and they do this submissions so that

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Speaker 3: you're taking down the actual workload of the humans within

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Speaker 3: the group by eighty percent. So that is a huge

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Speaker 3: efficiency opportunity for the banks to be able to solve

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Speaker 3: this problem more successfully and more efficiently. And then we're

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Speaker 3: also doing in ANXMSL, we're starting to bring in work

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Speaker 3: basically augentic capabilities to make it so that we can

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Speaker 3: do the veritory reporting their surveillance. There's a lot of

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Speaker 3: places where efficiency can be gained here.

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Speaker 2: I wonder about the tokenization that we've seen at robin Hood.

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Speaker 2: You know, they're allowing Europeans to trade US security through tokenization.

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Speaker 1: Without having the underlying cash flow. I think that's an

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Speaker 1: important part of this too.

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Speaker 2: How do you view that and what can that do

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Speaker 2: for the industry?

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Speaker 3: Well, so, to me, tokenization is a technology, it's a

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Speaker 3: way to you know, so the technology itself can be

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Speaker 3: used to do a lot of new things. But when

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Speaker 3: we're looking at how it's being used right now in

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Speaker 3: public securities, I think that it's really kind of a

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Speaker 3: very similar construct to contracts for difference, which has existed

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Speaker 3: in Europe for many years, where you own a financial

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Speaker 3: interest in the company, but not the underlying shares themselves.

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Speaker 3: We also have things like fractionalized shares in the United

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Speaker 3: States and owning fractional shares. It's the same kind of idea.

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Speaker 3: So so far what we see in terms of toganization

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Speaker 3: is really just a new technology to deliver a similar

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Speaker 3: thing where you can have a financial interest without actually

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Speaker 3: owning the underlying equity. At the end of the day,

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Speaker 3: that underlying equity ultimately does need to block bill and

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Speaker 3: owned and that then of course slows into the market.

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Speaker 3: So to us, it's just another way to use that

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Speaker 3: technology to open up access.

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Speaker 2: So will you use it too?

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Speaker 3: So we are we provide the foundational infrastructure that allows

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Speaker 3: retail brokers to offer things like that, to allow the data.

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Speaker 3: The data is super important to that. We have obviously

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Speaker 3: our own index products where we'd love for them to

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Speaker 3: be able to offer those out through this new technology.

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Speaker 3: But we so we're very excited to work with the

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Speaker 3: industry on this as an enabler and as the core infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: Very interesting that is a nasakchre and CEO Adina Friedman