Tradeweb’s net revenues were up by more than a quarter (26.7%) in Q2 hitting a reported US$513 million. MarketAxess continues to roll out new solutions as fights market share decline.
Tradeweb’s 26.7% year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth represented just a 0.6% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) increase.
Rates contributed US$274 million, up 26.2% YoY. This was driven by strong organic growth in swaps, global government bonds and mortgages, the firm said.
On the firm’s performance, CEO Billy Hult said, “We continue to exceed 50% market share in institutional US Treasuries versus our main electronic competitor in rates for the fifth consecutive quarter.”
Tradeweb saw average daily volume (ADV) across instruments of US$1.4 trillion, up 15% YoY.
At rival MarketAxess, overall revenues increased by 5% QoQ and 11% YoY to US$219 million.
Rates trading delivered record commissions revenue at the firm, up 40% YoY and 16% QoQ to US$8.1 million.
During the firm’s earnings call, CEO Chris Concannon commented, “We saw a benefit from the spike in volatility around tariffs, but we are also seeing strength driven by our new hedging services, new customers driving incremental revenue and institutional client adoption of our rates algo, which now represents over 10% of our trading volume.”
He continued, “We are in the process of expanding our request for quote (RFQ) business, and we are looking to continue to enhance our rates algo solution as large asset managers continue to request enhancements.”
Total rates ADV was up 58% YoY, driven by strong market volumes and partially offset by a 9% decline in fees per million .
In credit, Tradeweb reported US$124 million, up 11.7% YoY. Total credit ADV was US$38 billion, up 27% YoY. Growth in the segment was driven by global corporate bonds, munis and credit derivatives, it said.
Hult noted, “Automation continues to resonate, with global credit Automated Intelligent Execution (AiEX) average daily trades increasing over 15% YoY.
“We achieved a record block share in fully electronic US investment grade and US high-yield at 9% and 5%, respectively. This growth was driven by continued adoption of our portfolio trading, RFQ and sessions protocols.”
The company took 26% of total US IG TRACE volumes and 17.9% of the fully electronic volumes, down 100 bps and 108 bps YoY respectively. In HY, Tradeweb represented 10.7% of total TRACE volumes (up 79 bps YoY) and 8.2% of fully electronic volumes, up 60 bps YoY.
“Our efforts to expand into RFQ are seeing early signs of success, with our RFQ share of overall trace achieving a new quarterly record. Portfolio trading average daily volume also increased 15% year-over-year, with record volumes across high-yield and our second highest across IG.”
Portfolio trading has also increased in popularity at MarketAxess, with Concannon noting a 64% growth in volumes for the mechanism in July. However, he added, “we remind everyone the market opportunity in PT is quite small relative to the bigger part of the market. We think it’s in the zone of $50 million in US IG in terms of revenue.”
Overall, MarketAxess saw commission revenues rise by 10% YoY in credit, reaching US$176.6 million, and up 4% QoQ. This increase was the result of 7% growth in US credit, the company said, alongside 16% growth in emerging markets and 22% growth in eurobonds.
Total credit ADV was up 22%, growth MarketAxess says was partially offset by a 7% drop in total credit variable transaction fees per million (FPM).
The firm’s market share in US HY dropped by 0.4 percentage points to 12.6% (including single dealer portfolio trading) in July, something addressed by Concannon during the earnings call.
“We are disappointed with the headline share,” he said. “Significant swings in block volume moving between phone and electronic over the last several quarters have both helped and hurt us. Block trades equal to or larger than US$5 million in size increased dramatically and represented 47% of the entire market in July, up from 42% in June.
“Our share of this market dropped to 10%, down from 12% in June,” he continued “The bad news is that those large blocks move to the phone and to chat. The good news is that this is the very market that we’re attacking with the recent launch of our high-touch strategy in US credit on X-Pro. It’s still early days, but it’s the part of the market that we’ve been talking about targeting for some time, and we believe we will be successful in electronifying this segment of the market.”
Broader revenue streams
Elsewhere at Tradeweb, equities revenues were US$34 million, up 49.8% YoY, with ADV of US$28 billion – a 29.6% YoY increase.
In money markets, revenues were a reported US$30 million, representing a 130.7% yearly hike. ADV was up 67.5% to US$1 billion.
On the quarter, Hult noted, “While bid-ask spreads widened, the liquidity crunch we experienced this quarter was only a fraction of what we witnessed in March 2020. Encouragingly, unlike previous volatility periods, our clients leaned into newer innovations like AiEX and portfolio trading.”
At MarketAxess, ‘other’ commission revenues were up 39% YoY to US$7.2 million as a result of May’s RFQ-Hub acquisition. This contributed approximately US$1.8 million to the figure, MarketAxess said.
READ MORE: MarketAxess acquires RFQ-hub
RFQ-Hub also pushed up technology services revenues, which grew by 16% to US$3.5 million over the quarter. Concannon commented, “As we move through the back-half of 2025, we are focused on growing our targeted block trading solution in the client-initiated channel, continuing to enhance our portfolio trading solution for clients, and launching our new Mid-X solution in the dealer-initiated channel.”
READ MORE: MarketAxess brings mid-point matching protocol to US credit
During the results call, he added, “We do think that will have an impact on our dealer-to-dealer growth rates.”
Post-trade services revenues were up 7% YoY at the company, reaching US$11.1 million in the second quarter. This was driven by foreign currency fluctuations, which contributed US$600 million of the US$700 million growth.
A similar pattern was seen in information services, the revenues of which were up US$500 million (4%) to US$13.1 million – US$400 million of which resulted from foreign currency fluctuations.
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