CME Group reported $1.2 billion revenue in Q2 as expenses lowered

CME Group Inc, the world's largest futures exchange operator, announced stronger second-quarter earnings due to decreased expenditures on Wednesday.

For the second quarter of 2021, the firm recorded revenue of $1.2 billion and operating profits of $675 million. Net income was $510 million, with profits per share diluted to $1.42.

Trading volume for the exchange operator's interest rate futures and agriculture futures, which are used for price hedging, were both up almost 25% from a year ago when the COVID-19 impacted demand.

The overall average daily volume increased by 5%.

"As economies continued to recover during the first half of the year, trading increased across a majority of our asset classes," said CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy, in a statement. "Average daily volume grew by 5% during Q2, led by double-digit, year-over-year increases in our Interest Rates, Agricultural and Options markets

In addition, many innovative new products were released, including a new suite of micro-sized contracts that allow market participants to personalize their trading and hedging, as well as new ESG-focused futures contracts that aid in the management of climate-related risk, the company said.

CME said that 6,200 unique individuals exchanged 450,000 micro WTI contracts in the first 11 trading days, with over 2,600 of those participants having never traded a petroleum product with CME before, Reuters reported. 

The company had stated that within six days of the contract's introduction, more than 100,000 micro-bitcoin futures contracts were traded.

“We have built $100 million a year business so far that didn’t exist just a couple of years ago with our micro product,” Chief Financial Officer John William Pietrowicz said of the micro contracts, Reuters reported.

The average daily volume for the second quarter of 2021 was 18.4 million contracts, including 5.2 million contracts from outside the United States.

During the second quarter, the firm paid $322 million in dividends. Since the adoption of the variable dividend policy in early 2012, the business has returned more than $15.9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends.