Bgc Group Inc (BGC) 2011 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2011 BGC Partners Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of today's conference. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.

I will now turn the presentation over to your host for today's conference, Mr. Jason McGruder, Head of Investor Relations. You may proceed, sir.

Good morning. Our first quarter 2011 financial results press lease was issued this morning. It can be found either at the news center or Investor Relations section of our website at WWW.BGCPARTNERS.COM. During today's call, we will also be referring to a presentation that summarizes our results and which includes other useful information. This can also be found in the Investor Relations section of our site.

Throughout today's call, we will be referring mainly to our quarterly results on a distributable earnings basis. Please see today's press release for GAAP results. Please also see the section of today's results release entitled Distributable Earnings, Distributable Earnings Results compared to the GAAP results and a reconciliation of GAAP income to distributable earnings for a definition of this term, how, when and why management uses it.

Unless otherwise stated, whenever we refer to income statement items, such as revenues, expenses, pretax earnings or post-tax earnings, we are doing so today only on a distributable earnings basis.

And I also remind you that the information on this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 as amended.

Such forward-looking statements include statements about the outlook and prospects for BGC and for its industry, as well as statements about our future financial and operating performance. Such statements are based upon current expectations that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results, performance, or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed or implied, because of the number risks and uncertainties that include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties identified in BGC's fillings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

We believe that all forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions when made. However, we caution that it is impossible to predict actual results or outcomes or the effects of risks, uncertainties or other factors on anticipated results or outcomes, and that accordingly, you should not should place undue reliance on these statements.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date when made, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements in light of subsequent events or developments. Please refer to the complete disclaimer with respect to forward-looking statements and risk factors set forth in our most recent public filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which we incorporate today in the reference.

I'm now happy to turn the call over to our host, Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of BGC Partners.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter conference call. With me today are BGC's President, Shaun Lynn, our Chief Operating Officer, Sean Windeatt, and our Chief Financial Officer, Graham Sadler.

BGC's strong performance in the first quarter was driven by our top line growth in foreign exchange rates and equities, as well as our continued success in fully electronic trading, which was up 24.9%. Our world-class technology, expanding international presence, and the benefits of our partnership structure have been key factors behind BGC's profit growth

Pretax earnings grew by 43.6% to $64.3 million or $0.26 per fully diluted share in the quarter, while post-tax earnings were up by 43.9% to $54.8 million or $0.22 per fully diluted share, an increase of 29%.

We are extremely excited about our planned acquisition of Newmark, one of the fastest-growing real estate services companies. Newmark operates as Newmark Knight Frank in the United States and this transaction includes Newmark's New York business, as well as a majority interest in over 25 other domestic offices and certain of its affiliates. This transaction does not involve any Knight Frank offices outside the United States. The total purchase consideration is expected to include cash, stock and the assumption of debt, much of which is subject to long-term performance targets. We expect this acquisition to close later this year and to be immediately accretive to BGC's earnings per share.

Although I had hoped to share financial terms of the transaction with you today, the Newmark principals have requested that we keep the details of the transaction private until after the closing. We therefore expect to provide more information regarding the transaction at that time. We believe Newmark's average revenue per broker is higher than its public peers. However, commercial real estate brokers in general have a low production per broker than BGC's average, with comparatively lower infrastructure costs. As we expand this business, we expect Newmark's profit margins to grow, to become as high, if not higher, than BGC's.

Newmark's CEO, Barry Gosin, will remain in charge of the day-to-day management of the business. We have known Barry for years, including his time on the [ESP] board, and along with Jimmy Kuhn, we have great confidence in their ability to build, together with us, an extraordinary commercial real estate brokerage franchise.

While we still have enormous room to grow in the financial services arena, the opportunity to recreate the success we have had at BGC seems custom-made for us. Since the formation of BGC in 2004, we have grown from 80 to well over 200 different businesses within the wholesale financial marketplace, while more than tripling our front-office staff. We have invested over $100 million a year in our world-class proprietary technology, attracted and retained over 1200 brokers with our partnership structure, tripled quarterly revenues and increased our profit margin hundreds of basis points.

Commercial real estate brokerage is similar to a cash market that has a growing derivatives market alongside, as was the case with so many asset classes before it. In our view, property derivatives are a when, not an if market.

Before I turn the call over to Shaun, I am pleased to announce that BGC's board has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.17 per share, an increase of 21.4% compared to last year. We expect to maintain this consistent dividend over the four quarters of 2011 and I'm happy now to turn the call over to Shaun.

Thanks, Howard, good (inaudible). Unless otherwise stated, the comparisons I will discuss are for the first quarter of 2011 versus a year earlier. The three key revenue drivers of BGC's growth continue to be our strength in fully electronic trading, our global (inaudible) headcount and market share growth and positive market dynamics across most of our product categories. The earnings presentation and press release tables on our website illustrate these key factors in greater detail.

BGC's overall rates revenue were up by 5.1%. We have particularly strong growth in our fully electronic rates business where revenues are up by more than 40%. We also continue to benefit from the sizeable levels of debt issuance by governments around the world. "The Economist Magazine" estimates that in the US alone, government debt would have grown by 120% in 2007 through to 2012. For China, it would nearly have doubled over the same timeframe. Similar increases are expected across most of the world's major economies (inaudible) issuance drives secondary volumes for our voice and electronic rates and sovereign CDS desks.

For example, March was the best ever month for BGC's fully electronic US treasury business in terms of both notional volume and number of transactions. In addition, US treasury e-broking revenues were up by almost 20% in the first quarter, reflecting increased volumes from both new and existing customers.

BGC's overall credit revenues were down 2.8%, which reflected continued muted overall industry cash and CDS volumes. However, we also generated double-digit [growth] (inaudible) increase in credit e-broking revenues with gains from both cash and derivatives.

BGC's foreign exchange revenues increased by 21.4% into stronger industry volumes and more than 60% increase in our fully electronic spot FX business. Our overall growth in FX once again surpassed that of the industry.

Our revenues from equities and other asset classes increased by 6.9%, driven mainly by the addition of Mint and growth from our energy commodity desks. BGC's growth in these businesses have (inaudible) surpassed comparable industry metrics in the quarter.

Our revenues related to fully electronic trading grew by 24.9% to $39.1 million or 10.7% of total revenues versus $31.3 million or 9% of total revenues. This outstanding performance was driven by the successful rollout of fully electronic trading for more than a dozen interest rate derivative products on BGC Trader. From August 2010 through the end of March 2011, BGC e-brokered approximately 4500 transactions with a notional volume of almost $575 billion in fully electronic interest rate derivatives, with the first quarter of 2011 average daily notional volumes almost 85% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2010.

For eight quarters in a row, we have grown fully electronic trading revenues year-over-year significantly faster than our overall business. This growth has come from existing products like US Treasuries and spot FX, and from a near quadrupling in the number of products for which we offer e-broking.

Taken together, our technology-driven revenues from fully electronic trading, market data and software are now 12.5% of total revenues. These businesses have much higher margins than our overall company and as we grow these businesses, we have the ability to increase our profit margins even further. Given our continued investment of approximately $120 million a year in technology and our proven track record of converting products to fully electronic trading across many different asset classes and geographies, we are confident that our success from technology-based businesses will continue to drive revenue and earnings growth, thus enhancing the value of BGC for our shareholders and employee partners.

Front-office headcount and productivity is the third key driver of our revenue growth. As of March 31, 2011, BGC's front-office headcount was up by 10.8% year-over-year and by .8% sequentially to 1,718 brokers and salespeople. Average quarterly revenue per broker salesperson was approximately $211,000 versus charging $20,000 a year earlier, but up from $180,000 in the fourth quarter of 2010.

With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Graham.

Thank you, Shaun, and good morning, everyone. Unless otherwise stated, all the comparisons I am making compare the first quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2010. BGC generated revenues of $365.5 million, up 4.8% compared with $348.9 million. Brokerage revenues were $342.8 million, up 5.4% versus $325.2 million.

Turning to our geographic revenues, Europe, Middle East and Africa increased by 2.9%. The Americas were up by 1.9% and Asia-Pacific revenues increased by 18.2%. Europe represented 54.5% of revenues; the Americas, 29.7%; and Asia, 15.8%. A year earlier, Europe represented 55.4% of revenues; the Americas, 30.6%; and Asia, 14%.

In terms of monthly revenues, January 2011 was up approximately 3% to $122 million. February was up approximately 3% to $112 million and March was up approximately 7% to $131 million.

For the first quarter of 2011, BGC's rates revenues increased to $152.8 million compared to $145.4 million. Foreign exchange rose to $54.2 million compared with $44.7 million. Equities and other asset classes increased to $48.6 million versus $45.5 million and credit was $87.2 million versus $89.7 million. Rates represented 41.8% of revenues compared to 41.7%. Credit represented 23.9% versus 25.7%. Foreign exchange represented 14.8%, increasing from 12.8% and equities and other represented 13.3%, increasing from 13%.

Turning to expenses, total expenses were $301.2 million down slightly versus $304.1 million last year (inaudible) by approximately 480 basis points as a percentage of revenue. Compensation and employee benefits were $197.7 million, representing 54.1% of revenues. This compares with $214.7 million or 61.5% of revenues, an improvement of approximately 750 basis points. This margin expansion was driven by our growing fully electronic revenues and ongoing partnership enhancement program.

Non-compensation expenses were $103.5 million or 28.3% of revenues. This compares with $89.4 million or 25.6% of revenues. The increase in non-comp expenses was driven by a number of line items associated with the opening of four additional offices and hiring 167 new brokers over the past year.

Beginning with the first quarter of 2011, our definition of distributable earnings has been updated to exclude certain GAAP gains and charges with respect to acquisitions, dispositions and resolutions of litigation. This change in the definition of distributable earnings is not reflected in the Company's presentation of, or does it affect, prior period results. We now exclude these [gains] in charges from distributable earnings in our dividend calculation because we think this best reflects the operating performance of the Company.

BGC's pretax distributable earnings were up 43.6% to $64.3 million or $0.26 per fully diluted share compared with $44.8 million or $0.20. Our pretax distributable earnings margin was 17.6% versus 12.8%, an improvement of about 480 basis points. BGC's post-tax distributable earnings grew by 43.9% to $54.8 million or $0.22 per fully diluted share compared with $38.1 million or $0.17.

Our effective tax rate for distributable earnings was 15% in the first quarter of 2011 compared with 14.9% a year earlier. We expect our tax rate to be approximately 15% for full year 2011 and the foreseeable future. Our post-tax distributable earnings margin was 15% compared with 10.9% or about 410 basis points better.

Our fully diluted weighted average share count was 258.9 million for the first quarter of 2011 compared to 222.6 million in the first quarter of 2010, which was prior to the issuance of the convertible senior notes. At the end of the first quarter, our fully diluted share count for distributable earnings was 263 million including the 21.9 million shares underlying the notes.

Regarding the balance sheet, as of March 31, 2011, the Company's cash position, which we defined as cash and cash equivalents and cash segregated under regulatory requirements, was $403.7 million. Notes payable and collateralized borrowings were $185.6 million. Book value per common share was $2.58 and total capital, which we define as redeemable partnership interest, Cantor's non-controlling interest in subsidiaries and total stockholders' equity was $444.3 million.

In comparison, as of December 31, 2010, the Company's cash position was $366.5 million. Notes payable and collateralized borrowings were $189.3 million and book value per common share was $2.47 and total capital was $425 million.

The increase in cash from year-end 2010 was due primarily to the securities clearance process, the option exercised by Howard for cash and proceeds from the issuance of Class A common stock as part of BGC's controlled equity offering. This was partially offset by cash used in the net settlement of receivables and payables of other redemption of units.

With respect to our dividend and taxes, when employees and partners exchange units for shares, this triggers non-cash, non-dilutive and non-economic GAAP compensation charges. Because employees and partners have to pay taxes on ordinary income rather than capital gains, these exchanges provide the public company with a tax deduction. Unlike other public companies with similar structures to ours, we use these deductions to lower our corporate tax rate and thus, increase this cash available for dividends to common shareholders.

In addition, the Company's net income for both GAAP and distributable earnings includes income earned by foreign affiliates, corporate subsidiaries and other entities not taxable under US federal tax principles.

Taken together, exchangeability in foreign earnings not only give us a corporate tax rate of only 15%, but help ensure that at least 50% of dividends paid in full year 2011 will be treated a as a non-taxable return of capital for common stockholders. This percentage will be up from 18% for 2010. The remainder will be treated as a qualified dividend.

Based upon an annualized dividend of $0.06 per share and yesterday's closing stock price of $9.16, BGC's pretax dividend yield is 7.4%. For a New York City resident in the 35% federal tax bracket, and the 12.85% state and local tax bracket, the taxable equivalent yield will be 11.6% when compared to a distribution, dividend or interest payment that is fully taxable at ordinary rates, and 8.6% when compared to a fully taxable qualified dividend.

These benefits of our structure only lower taxes owed by our common shareholders and do not impact the amount the amount of taxes owed by our employees and partners. We believe our structure is thus not only retentive, but makes our stock much more attractive to investors.

With that, I'm happy to turn the call back over to Howard.

Thank you, Graham. Our April 2011 revenues were down by approximately 6% to $106 million versus $113 million a year ago. Because April had one less trading day this year, revenues were actually down less than 1% per day. Our April 2011 revenue figures compare favorably to the revenue and volume figures as reported by others in our industry.

We expect to generate revenues of between 335 and $350 million in the second quarter of 2011 compared with $336.3 million in last year's second quarter. We expect post-tax distributable earnings to be between $44 and $49 million, an increase of 13 to 26% compared to $38.9 million last year.

Please remember when calculating our post-tax earnings per share, to add the $2.8 million in post-tax interest expense and include the shares associated with our convertible notes.

Operator, we are now available to answer questions, please.

(Operator Instructions). And your first question comes from the line of Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Good morning.

I wanted to push a little bit more on the acquisition and I guess basically does this reflect a strategic shift for the Company because historically, you've kind of operated with one set of clients, basically large investment banks, and obviously, moving into commercial real estate brokerage will be a dramatic move from that. So is this maybe the first of several steps or is it just a unique opportunity that you thought kind of dovetailed with your core business?

I think those steps were taken long ago in the shipping business, which all of the others in the wholesale financial markets are in, have a much different and broader client base; the energy business also, a much different and broader client base. So I think what has happened over time, and that's why we said we went from about 80 businesses to over 200 businesses, is we really sort of formulated a model that works for us in the brokerage business.

So we are staying focused in the brokerage business, but we think the opportunity to extend and expand our business to things that we feel are consistent, and we think our retention model of our partnership structure and our ability to know lots and lots of clients. I mean, there is substantial overlap amongst our clients and the clients that Newmark hopes to bring in.

The biggest clients in New York tend to be in the financial services where we have a great relationship. So I think there will be great overlap, great opportunity to hire and acquire brokers to scale their business and also to do property derivatives alongside them. We think property derivatives will be an important part of the real estate business and an important part of the wholesale brokerage business as well.

Got you. And can you talk about what opportunities there are to leverage your technology system for the corporate real estate business?

Well, much of the commercial real estate business really is focused on market data and information sorting and knowledge and that business model is really deep within our business with respect to BGC. So we think we can add tremendous value to them with respect to market data, market knowledge and market details, and just creating indices, creating information that the brokerage will use to better arm their clients to do a better job for them, as well as to better arm our brokers to assist them in doing property derivatives.

So market data, which is going to come from our technology, is going to be better information, as well as be the sort of fundamental foundation on which we're going to build a different type of property derivatives business and one that is more sort of custom-fit to the clients than the sort of general index model that I think most have tried to do and failed with. So I think we expect to be much more high-touch and much more on the ground with clients and be able to take property derivatives in a whole new direction and I think that is a key part of our acquisition strategy.

All right, great. Thank you. And then one more for Graham, if I might. Graham, if you cold provide some more detail on that $19.2 million charge for -- I'm sorry -- the 10 point or 11 -- the charge that you had this quarter for the M&A and legal that you're excluding from the distributable earnings calculation. I think it actually was $19.2 million. Can you give any more detail on what that was and why you feel it's appropriate to exclude that from distributable earnings?

Yes, but as you know, we've changed our definition of distributable earnings to exclude the gains and charges for acquisitions and dispositions and also resolutions (inaudible). Now, we think that's a better presentation in the sense that it gives a more consistent new (inaudible) our operating performance.

Great, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Niamh Alexander at KBW.

Thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on a solid quarter. If I could touch back on that expense, Graham or Howard, just help me understand, I mean, how much of it should be cash? Is this non-recurring? I get that if it is non-recurring, then you have to be one to kind of look at a true quarter-to-quarter, but because you pay out such a high proportion of your earnings in a dividend, are we looking at maybe quarters where you're not really earning that dividend on a cash basis?

Look, we -- so with respect to that bucket, we settled the litigation and we made an acquisition and so those are the two things. In the past, what we've had in the past, is we've had litigations where we've earned money and we just don't think that we should drive our dividend policy, so our dividend policy and distribution policy to our partners, which are very important to us. So dividends to our public shareholders and distributions to our partners are very important to us and the model that we drive those dividends and distributions is our distributable earnings, and we no more feel that we should raise that dividend and distribution policy because we have a disposition of a business where we make money or a resolution of a litigation where we are paid, anymore so than we think we should reduce it.

So we felt that that served to be disclosed to you, of course, in GAAP, but to be kept out of our distributable earnings calculation which drives our dividend and distribution policy and process.

That's fair enough, Howard. I guess the distributed earnings definition before today was more like a cash type earnings number, right, and the dividends was -- I was just trying to understand. I mean, is there a tolerance level, for example, if on a GAAP basis, or on a real cash basis, maybe you're not earning your dividend for two or three quarters in a row. I'm just trying to understand your tolerance level there.

Well, look, we -- our cash -- you can see from our cash flow this quarter or you'll see in the Q when we bring out our -- when we put out our cash flow that we had substantial cash flow well, well, well in excess of the dividend distributions we had this quarter. So I think that comes in the Q when we release our cash flow, but basically speaking, we watch very closely to make sure that our distribution policy makes sense over the long haul and can be consistent.

And we remain very comfortable with our model that we are distributing our performance based on our -- the cash that we have coming in. and we have no expectation whatsoever to distribute more than that and so over time, we feel that this will work its way out and you will see that if you look back over our numbers that that has been consistent, but we are very much on top of that -- on top of your question, it is something we examine all the time here. And we were very comfortable in raising our dividend $0.17 because we think that keeps us well inside of those numbers.

Okay, fair enough. Thanks, Howard. And then if I could ask of Howard or Shaun maybe, and on the interest rate swap business, that was pretty strong growth in the electronic context. Can you talk to me a little bit about the competitive environment because we're aware there's another big competitor in the rate space that has had commitments for streaming liquidity from some of the big dealer banks. Are you in a similar position? Do you have similar agreements right now? Help me understand the competitive landscape there.

This is Shaun. Yes, the way we look at it, there is really two of us, two (inaudible) at this current time. We've had incredible success. As you know, we went live in September with the first go live in September 2010 with electronic (inaudible) IRS and we've continued to grow over a huge expense globally, not just from Aussie dollars, new Zealand dollars, [or] right through to the US and we've had streaming prices consistently throughout that. We see that it's going to continue; it's going to be a continued [slog]; it's going to be a continued growth across all of our asset classes in the interest rate swap market and the take-up has been incredibly good.

Obviously, legislation changing is going to be the real driver of that, but whichever way it comes out, we feel that we are best placed to benefit from that and our customers have embraced that technology and continue to work with us to grow our footprint across many different asset classes.

Do you have commitment partnership or commitments from some of the big dealer banks similar to what another competitor had kind of announced?

I don't know what other competitors actually have. I don't think anybody really knows what either of us have, but what is fair to say, we have streaming prices which are given to us every day. We have (inaudible) process in; we have links to the central clearers (inaudible).

Okay, fair enough. Thanks, Shaun. I'll get back in line.

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Repetto of Sandler O'Neill.

Yes, good morning, guys.

Good morning, Rich.

So I guess just to clarify the last question, so there's -- your guidance is the lower EPS so the dividend is likely to go down in the next quarter or will you strive to keep it flat as long as you (inaudible)? We're just trying to see whether the dividend -- going down because it seemed like, I guess, we've been going up for the last year or so.

As I think Graham said, we plan to keep our dividend consistent for the year. We have -- you saw on the percentage of our dividend last year, it can vary as a percentage of distributable earnings, but we expect to keep the dividend at $0.17 for the whole year. We did say that we felt that the Newmark acquisition would be accretive and therefore when it closes, it will raise our distributable earnings as well.

You know that we only guide what we see and so you saw that while our April was down 6% really from a day-by-day basis, it was down less than 1%. So it seems prudent to have the low end of our guidance be consistent with April. We do expect our business to grow and to build. We have superb things on the horizon that we think will continue to grow our business, and you saw that happen all last year. We're going to continue to add, continue to grow and we kept our business growing and solid throughout the year, even through the seasonally slower third and fourth quarters and then ultimately, you saw the giant jump in the first quarter.

So I think March was great, April was a little slower, but so what? There's no real difference. The world hasn't changed any different from March or April. May could be -- May is great. Our numbers will be great. May is a little slower, then it will be towards the lower end of our guidance, but so what? Our business is strong; our earnings on those revenues are ever-growing.

Our electronics, the conversion of voice to electronics adds, as you know over time, 45 points to our bottom line and so I think we have enormous opportunity to grow our profitability, which will more than sustain our dividend and we look forward to not only our dividend being consistent this year, but it is our objective to raise our dividend in the first quarter in the future as well.

Okay. Thank you. And then I've just got follow-up actually. It would be on the whole Dodd-Frank and the SEF issue, are there any particular rules that -- there's been no rules going out really, but any of the proposed rules that are particularly -- you would take issue to in regards to the possibility that there could be multiple SEFs and all access and all the clearing houses connected to all of them. So how do you just see -- can you give more insight into how that's progressing from your perspective?

Well, the [WNBA], the association of the five IDBs, has written a detailed comment letter where our team has gone through the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages and sort of made comments and their thoughts and wrote letters on that effect. So I think I would not remotely do them justice to try to talk about the various comments and letters that have been written, but I would happily refer you to them.

But I think generally, our view is that we are both optimistic and we think we are well positioned to do well through the changes. There will be more SEFs and there will be more opportunity as they change the way the banks do business with their clients, and how that shakes out, I don't know, but there will be more opportunity and there probably will be more SEFs and more opportunity in our world has worked very well for us. And you know that the concept of central clearing, which is the hallmark of this and is, as in the law, we think is very beneficial to both the financial markets and to ourselves.

Okay. Thanks a lot, Howard.

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of Robert Rutschow of the CLSA.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

I guess the first question would be Newmark. Do you expect -- I think you said that that would maybe lower your pretax margin in terms of distributable earnings. Is that correct?

Right. No, we said it would be accretive, so our earnings per share will rise. Your average revenue per head will decline -- is lower, therefore, our average brokerage revenue per person will be lower if we just combine them all. That's just a math issue, but we expect the acquisition to be immediately accretive, so our earnings per share will rise and therefore, our distributable earnings will rise accordingly.

Okay. So I guess in the past, you've said the distributable pretax margin could reach 20. I think you're at 18% this quarter, so that guidance still stands over the long term.

Sure, and that's why I said, look, as we build scale in that business, we expect their profits to meet or exceed in their business the rest of our businesses. So our point -- the point I tried to make -- obviously, not clearly enough. The point I tried to make was that we think over time that business will fall in nicely with our business and should -- I still very much agree with your statement that we expect our margins to meet or exceed 20% and I would expect that over time to be consistent with that business as well.

Okay. I also wanted to ask about the share count and repurchases. Can you give us any guidance for what you're expecting in terms of growth in the diluted share count going forward? I think it's been sort of upper-single-digit growth year-over-year.

Yes, I don't think -- I mean, we don't see any -- I don't see -- well, I don't know them as I sit here right now of anything that comes to mind that would cause that to change.

Okay. And in the release, you said that you had 66 million left on your existing authorization and you were at 97.5 million last quarter. So that's like 31 million in share repurchases. I didn't see any mention of that and so I'm wondering if you can sort of reconcile that for us, especially with the growth in cash?

I don't think I can reconcile it right here at the moment, so I think we'll just take that offline and double-check both of those statistics for you.

Okay, thanks.

And you have no questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to the Chairman and CEO, Howard Lutnick, for closing remarks.

Yes, well, thank you all for joining me today on this call and joining our team. We are very excited about the opportunities in front of the Company and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter. I look forward to seeing you again. Bye-bye.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation and you may now disconnect.