Share count
575Mpeak FY2016
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ICE, Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. is a leading global provider of technology and data to a broad range of customers including financial institutions, corporations and government entities.
Our products, which span major asset classes including futures, equities, fixed income and U.S. residential mortgages, provide our customers with access to mission critical tools that are designed to increase asset class transparency and workflow efficiency.
Although we report our results in three reportable business segments, we operate as one business, leveraging the collective expertise, particularly in data services and technology, that exists across our platforms to inform and enhance our operations.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$12.6B
+7.5% YoY · 9% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $13.1B 5-yr avg $10.6B
Net margin 30.1% 5-yr avg 26.6%
Revenue $3.7B +13.5% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 45.4% yr-ago 37.8%
Net income $1.4B yr-ago $812M
Net margin 39.1% yr-ago 25.1%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What it is
- Revenue is Exchanges (64%), Fixed Income and Data Services (19%) and Mortgage Technology (17%).
- What moves the needle
- Trading volume and the data franchise. What decides it: volumes across its markets, which spike when volatility does; the network economics of a deep liquidity pool rivals cannot easily replicate; and the recurring, high-margin market-data and listing fees layered on top. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has run at the high end of fee-business margins across the record (median 38%, above 25% in 10 of 10 years), the economics of a business that takes a cut without carrying the risk. It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 11%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the volumes and the data franchise hold their pricing is what the 10-K settles, not the multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →The biggest segment, Exchanges, is also where the profit is made: 64% of revenue and 81% of segment operating profit.
Revenue by reportable segment, FY2025
Operating profit same segments
- Exchanges64%$8.1B81% of profit
- Fixed Income and Data Services19%$2.4B19% of profit
- Mortgage Technology17%$2.1B0% of profit
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $6.0B | $5.8B | $6.3B | $6.5B | $8.2B | $9.2B | $9.6B | $9.9B | $11.8B | $12.6B | $13.1B | RevenueRevenue |
| 36.4% | 40.7% | 41.2% | 40.8% | 36.8% | 37.6% | 37.8% | 37.3% | 36.6% | 39.0% | 41.1% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 23.9% | 43.2% | 31.7% | 29.5% | 25.3% | 44.3% | 15.0% | 23.9% | 23.4% | 26.2% | 30.1% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $1.4B | $2.5B | $2.0B | $1.9B | $2.1B | $4.1B | $1.4B | $2.4B | $2.8B | $3.3B | $3.9B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 29% | -1% | 20% | 21% | 24% | 29% | 18% | 16% | 23% | 23% | 23% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $1.9B | $1.9B | $2.4B | $2.5B | $2.7B | $2.9B | $3.3B | $3.4B | $4.2B | $4.3B | $4.7B | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 9% | 15% | 12% | 11% | 11% | 18% | 6% | 9% | 10% | 11% | 13% | Return on equityROE |
| 6% | 12% | 8% | 8% | 7% | 15% | 3% | 5% | 6% | 8% | 10% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $82.0B | $78.3B | $92.8B | $94.5B | $126.2B | $193.5B | $194.3B | $136.1B | $139.4B | $136.9B | $179.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $1.4B | $1.6B | $64.6B | $65.1B | $83.6B | $148.0B | $1.8B | $899M | $844M | $837M | $879M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $15.7B | $17.0B | $17.2B | $17.3B | $19.5B | $22.7B | $22.7B | $25.7B | $27.6B | $28.9B | $29.5B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 599M | 594M | 579M | 565M | 555M | 565M | 561M | 565M | 576M | 575M | 570M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $9.97 | $9.84 | $10.84 | $11.59 | $14.85 | $16.23 | $17.18 | $17.53 | $20.42 | $21.98 | $22.94 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $2.39 | $4.25 | $3.43 | $3.42 | $3.76 | $7.18 | $2.58 | $4.19 | $4.78 | $5.77 | $6.90 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $3.17 | $3.14 | $4.14 | $4.44 | $4.82 | $5.21 | $5.93 | $5.93 | $7.30 | $7.46 | $8.19 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $0.68 | $0.80 | $0.96 | $1.10 | $1.21 | $1.32 | $1.52 | $1.69 | $1.80 | $1.92 | $1.97 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $26.24 | $28.55 | $29.71 | $30.54 | $35.13 | $40.19 | $40.47 | $45.52 | $48.00 | $50.29 | $51.72 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +9.2%/yr | +8.2%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +10.0%/yr | +9.1%/yr |
| EPS | +10.3%/yr | +8.9%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +12.2%/yr | +9.8%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +5.0%/yr | +11.7%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.5%/yr | +7.4%/yr |
The year, in the company's words
the filing →Verbatim from the 10-K's management discussion. Each sentence is shown only because its subject, direction, and stated figures check out against the filed numbers on this page. The words are the company's; the arithmetic is the record's.
- Fixed Income and Data Services+5.3%
“Fixed Income and Data Services Revenues Our Fixed Income and Data Services revenues increased 5% in 2025 from 2024 primarily due to strength in our fixed income data and analytics products and our data and network technology. •Fixed Income Execution: Fixed income execution includes revenues from ICE Bonds.”
✓ figure matches the filed record - Mortgage Technology+3.9%
“Mortgage technology revenues increased 4% in 2025 from 2024 primarily due to higher origination volumes, contractual price increases, new client implementations and higher default transactions. •Origination technology: Our origination technology revenues increased 4% in 2025 from 2024 driven by origination volumes impacting Encompass and Encompass Network revenues, partially offset by client attrition.”
✓ figure matches the filed record
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$12.6Blow FY2017
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 39.0%Wide fee margin (≥30%)Operating income $4.9B ÷ revenue $12.6BIndustry peers: median 24%
What this means
The heart of a exchange: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Revenue is a toll on trading volume plus the recurring market-data and listing fees the venue generates, protected by the network economics of a deep liquidity pool that rivals cannot easily replicate. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 26.2%WideNet income $3.3B ÷ revenue $12.6B
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Return on equity 11%SolidNet income $3.3B ÷ equity $28.9BIndustry peers: median 13%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
In its own filing Framed as a capability
The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.
“Data Services: Across all three of our segments and our various networks, our data services aim to address the rising demand for independent, real-time information, which is being driven by regulation, market fragmentation and competition, increasing technology and data demands, …”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
Current assets$127.1B
- Cash & short-term investments$879M
- Receivables$2.4B
- Other current assets$123.8B
Current liabilities$125.7B
- Debt due within a year$1.8B
- Accounts payable$1.3B
- Other current liabilities$122.6B
Current ratio1.01×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio1.01×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio0.01×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital$1.4Bthe cushion left after near-term bills
Debt due this year vs. cash$1.8B due · $879M cash
cash alone won't cover the maturities; it leans on refinancing or operating cash · both figures from the Mar 31, 2026 balance sheet
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+13.5%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters1.0× → 1.0×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value($16.3B)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Net current asset value($22.6B)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities
Debt incl. operating leases$21.0B$652M of it operating leases
Deferred revenue$726Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float
From the company's latest filing.
Debt maturity
the debt note, SEC EDGAR →Not how much it owes, but when it falls due, and against what. The ladder the company files, beside cash on hand and a year's owner earnings.
Bars scaled to the largest single year; “later” is everything due after 2030, shown apart since it dwarfs the years.
Due in the next 12 months$1.0Bthe first rung: what must be repaid or rolled over within the year
Within two years$3.0Bthe near wall, the part most exposed to today’s credit conditions
Biggest single year$2.2Bin 2028the lumpiest maturity, where a refinancing, if needed, is largest
Total scheduled principal$19.9Bevery year plus what lies beyond, as the footnote totals it
Against what the business has and earns
Cash & short-term investments, Mar 31, 2026$879M
One year of owner earnings (FY2025)$4.3B
Together, against $1.0B due next year5.0×
Cash on hand as of Mar 31, 2026 plus a year’s owner earnings comes to $5.2B against the $1.0B due in the twelve months after the Dec 31, 2025 schedule: 5.0 times it.
Maturity schedule extracted from the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled to the balance-sheet debt.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$46.0B34% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equityexceeds itgoodwill alone is larger than the company’s entire book equity; stripped of the acquisition premium, there is no net book worth
Cash spent acquiring$22.3Bover 10 years buying other businesses, against $2.3B of capital spent building
None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Sprecher | $14.8M | $27.3M | $2.9B |
| 2022 | Mr. Sprecher | $16.7M | −$721k | $3.3B |
| 2023 | Mr. Sprecher | $27.6M | $46.1M | $3.4B |
| 2024 | Mr. Sprecher | $19.5M | $37.6M | $4.2B |
| 2025 | Mr. Sprecher | $22.1M | $28.6M | $4.3B |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$238M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 5% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Income taxes, Acquisitions as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LPLALPL Financial Holdings Inc. | $17.0B | 11.0% | 8.3% | 36% |
| BXBlackstone Inc. | $14.5B | 46.3% | 20.7% | 27% |
| ICEIntercontinental Exchange Inc. | $12.6B | 37.7% | 25.8% | 11% |
| JEFJefferies Financial Group | $10.8B | 30.1% | 6.1% | 6% |
| NDAQNasdaq Inc. | $8.3B | 24.4% | 17.8% | 13% |
| CMECME Group Inc. | $6.5B | 60.9% | 54.9% | 10% |
| CBOECboe Global Markets Inc. | $4.7B | 22.4% | 16.7% | 14% |
| BGCBGC Group Inc. | $2.4B | 10.3% | 5.3% | 11% |
| Group median | — | 27.3% | 17.2% | 12% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Intercontinental Exchange Inc. has delivered.
$
Through the cycle, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. earns about $4.3B on its 33.9% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 33.9% margin runs in line with that. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
Base
—
The assumptions
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Implied by the price—
Owner-earnings growth · ’21→’25+8%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+9%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+9%/yr
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—
P/B—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner-earnings yield—
High-grade bond yield—
Margin over the bond—
Owner earnings $4.7B on 566M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-27; net debt $19.5B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ICE, data as of 2026-07-09.
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