CME Group Inc.: Broadening the Growth Playbook

Research evidence excerpt

CME Group Inc.: Broadening the Growth Playbook

Idea

Brokers & Exchanges: What I Learned at BocaMCME retains the technical capability to launch perpetual futures should market

'26 (16 Mar 2026)

structure evolve.

CME Group Inc.: Early Days in New Growth

Underpinning these growth initiatives is a durable futures and options franchise, Vectors, incl Prediction Mkts, Tokenization, and

with 79% of revenue generated from clearing and transaction fees, accelerating 24/7 Trading (5 Feb 2026)

market data revenues, and more than $95bn of average daily margin efficiencies. We

also see upside to our relatively conservative volume assumptions should persistent

uncertainty around inflation, interest rates, fiscal deficits, supply chains, and the

energy transition continue to support elevated demand for risk management. We

forecast ADV growth of 10.2% in 2026 and 5.7% in 2027, driving revenue growth of

8.3% and 5.8% and EPS growth of 10.6% and 6.6%, respectively. Overall, we

continue to view CME as a defensive, highly moated compounder with secular

growth tailwinds, supported by counter-cyclical revenue streams, deep liquidity,

cross-margining benefits, and a strong balance sheet, with multiple

underappreciated long-term growth catalysts that reinforce our OW rating.

What We Learned from 2Q26 Results and Conference Call:

1. Single stock futures broaden retail access and create a new entry point

into CME’s equity ecosystem. CME will launch single stock futures on

July 27 across more than 50 of the largest U.S. stocks, including 55 larger-

sized and 22 Micro-sized contracts. The new contracts will be financially

settled against the underlying stock’s closing price, simplifying integration

across domestic and international broker platforms while avoiding the