Cboe’s Q2 2026 net revenue rose 25% to a record $731.6M as index-options volume jumped 32%, lifting diluted EPS 50% to $3.35; management raised its 2026 organic net revenue growth target to mid-to-high teens.
Revenue
$1.4B
+22.9% YoY
Net income
$353M
+50.2% YoY
Diluted EPS
$3.35
+50.2% YoY
Operating margin
65.1%
Overview: a record quarter led by S&P 500 index options
Cboe Global Markets runs stock, options, futures and currency exchanges, most importantly the only venue for S&P 500 index options (SPX) and VIX volatility products. In the quarter ended June 30, 2026 it earned $353.1 million, up 50%, or $3.35 per diluted share versus $2.23. The main driver was trading volume: index-options contracts traded per day rose 32% and multi-listed options (options on individual stocks and ETFs, which can trade on any exchange) rose 24%, while operating expenses grew only 3%.
Total revenue rose 23% to $1,442.8 million. For an exchange, that headline figure is the less useful one, as the next section explains.
Why "net revenue" is the number that matters
A large share of what Cboe bills its customers is passed straight back out:
Liquidity payments ($453.7 million this quarter): rebates paid to trading firms that post buy and sell quotes on Cboe's markets. Exchanges pay these to attract order flow.
Regulatory fees ($153.9 million): mainly the SEC's "Section 31" fee. Cboe charges it to customers and pays it to the government, so the amount shows up in revenue and again, in the same size, in cost of revenues. The 10-Q notes it has no effect on operating income.
Royalty fees and other ($82.8 million): licence fees paid to index owners such as S&P for each index-option contract traded.
Routing and clearing ($20.8 million).
Take those away and what's left is net revenue (the company's term; the filing calls it "revenues less cost of revenues"): $731.6 million, up 25%, which Cboe calls a record. This is the revenue Cboe actually keeps to pay its own staff and costs and to earn a profit.
The difference matters this quarter. The SEC set the Section 31 fee rate to $0 from May 2025 until April 2026, then raised it to $20.60 per million dollars of covered sales. The average rate went from $13.24 in Q2 2025 to $19.95 in Q2 2026. That pass-through lifted regulatory fees in cost of revenues by $68.6 million (+80%), and the matching fee revenue inflated total revenue by the same amount without adding a dollar of profit. Over the first half the effect ran the other way: regulatory fees fell 35% because the fee rate was zero through Q1, so half-year total revenue grew only 15% while net revenue grew 27%.
Key metrics
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Index options ADV (SPX, VIX and other index options)
6.2M
4.7M
+32%
Total options revenue per contract
$0.317
$0.300
+6%
Data Vantage net revenue (recurring data and access fees)
$177.8M
$155.1M
+14.6%
Operating margin is operating income divided by net revenue, which is how Cboe reports it. On total revenue it was 33.0% (vs. 28.9%). ADV means average daily volume. "Touched" contracts include those Cboe routed to another exchange for execution.
Year to date (six months): total revenues $2,715.6M (+14.7%), net revenue $1,460.5M (+26.7%), operating income $981.6M (+41.6%), operating margin on net revenue 67.2% (vs. 60.1%), net income $738.8M (+52.1%), diluted EPS $7.01 (vs. $4.60, +52.4%).
Net revenue by segment
Segment
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY
H1 2026
H1 2025
YoY
Options
$473.9M
$364.8M
+29.9%
$941.5M
$717.2M
+31.3%
North American Equities
$114.7M
$98.4M
+16.6%
$225.9M
$193.0M
+17.0%
Europe and Asia Pacific
$84.8M
$70.4M
+20.5%
$169.7M
$134.5M
+26.2%
Futures
$30.6M
$30.1M
+1.7%
$66.4M
$62.9M
+5.6%
Global FX
$27.6M
$23.6M
+16.9%
$57.0M
$44.9M
+26.9%
Total
$731.6M
$587.3M
+24.6%
$1,460.5M
$1,152.5M
+26.7%
Cboe now reports five segments. "Data and Access Solutions" is no longer a separate segment: it has been renamed Cboe Data Vantage and is reported as a revenue category that cuts across all five segments.
Options: 65% of net revenue. Segment net revenue rose $109.1 million, and segment operating income rose from $259.9 million to $341.0 million. Two things drove it:
Volume. Index options ADV was 6.2 million contracts (+32%) and multi-listed options ADV was 15.7 million (+24%). Industry-wide options ADV rose 27%, to 72.8 million.
Mix. Revenue per contract rose 6% to $0.317 even though multi-listed options revenue per contract fell 6% to $0.064. The earnings release says the increase came from "a product mix shift": proprietary index options earn about $0.95 a contract, roughly 15 times as much as a multi-listed option, and they made up a larger share of volume. Index options revenue per contract also rose 3% to $0.953.
One cost grows with this success: royalty fees paid to index owners rose 33% to $82.8 million "primarily due to an increase in trading volumes of index products." Neither the 10-Q nor the earnings release breaks index volume into SPX, VIX or 0DTE (same-day-expiry) contracts, so this report does not either.
Market share is the soft spot. Cboe's share of all US options trading slipped to 30.0% from 30.2%, and its share of multi-listed options fell to 23.5% from 24.0%. The growth comes from the products only Cboe can list, not from winning share in the contested market.
North American Equities: big volumes, thin margin. The segment took in $520.0 million of revenue but kept only $114.7 million after $405.3 million of cost of revenues. That 22% keep rate is typical of stock trading, where most fees go back out as rebates. Net revenue still rose 17%. The main reason was pricing: net capture on Cboe's US stock exchanges (fees kept per 100 shares traded, after rebates and routing) rose 50%, which the 10-Q attributes to "pricing changes implemented from late second quarter through the third quarter of 2025." That came at a cost in share. Cboe's US on-exchange market share fell to 9.4% from 10.5%, and matched shares were flat at 1.9 billion a day while the market grew 10%. Off-exchange (BIDS block trading) volume nearly doubled, up 89%, but net capture there fell 30%. US ETP listings reached 1,468 (+49%), with 288 launches in the quarter against 66 a year earlier.
Europe and Asia Pacific: +20.5%, with some currency help. On a constant-currency basis (stripping out exchange-rate moves), the earnings release puts net revenue at $83.0 million, up 18%, so about $1.8 million of the gain came from a stronger euro and Australian dollar. The drivers were a 13% rise in European equities notional traded, net capture up 11%, and a 21% rise in Cboe Clear Europe settlement volume. Segment operating income jumped from $4.8 million to $41.6 million, but that comparison is flattered: Q2 2025 included a $17.1 million impairment of Cboe Japan intangible assets (a write-down after it lost market share), and that business has since been wound down.
Futures (VIX futures, crypto futures): flat. ADV rose 1% to 222,700 contracts and revenue per contract slipped 2%. Net revenue grew 2%, and only because of market data fees.
Global FX: +16.9%, on 8% higher notional traded ($60.6 billion a day) and 6% higher net capture.
Recurring revenue: Data Vantage
Data Vantage is Cboe's subscription-like business: fees for connecting to its markets (ports and capacity) and for its proprietary market data. It earned $177.8 million of net revenue (+14.6%), about 24% of the total. These fees don't depend on how much trading happens in a given day. The 10-Q attributes the growth to higher logical and physical port fees "driven by increased customer demand" and to proprietary data growth from "increased new unit sales and a strong contribution from new product sales." Year to date it is up 16.8%, to $355.6 million.
Expenses, restructuring and one-offs
Operating expenses rose just $7.4 million (+3%), to $255.6 million. Most of what moved was one-off:
Severance: compensation rose $26.8 million (+21%), including a $19.2 million increase in severance tied to the strategic realignment Cboe expanded on May 1, 2026. Total realignment costs were $23.7 million this quarter, and the company estimates another $13.0 million still to come.
Prior-year impairment: the $17.1 million Cboe Japan write-down did not recur.
Marketing: travel and promotional expenses rose 61%, to $13.2 million, on higher advertising.
Excluding realignment costs, amortization of acquired intangibles and a small CEO-award item, adjusted operating expenses were $216.7 million, up only 1.6% (per the earnings release). That flat cost base against 25% net revenue growth is the operating leverage behind the 7.4-point margin expansion.
Below operating income, net income got a boost that won't repeat:
a $9.5 million gain in the value of Cboe's minority stake in Eris Innovations after a funding round it didn't take part in;
higher interest income on its cash ($18.2M vs. $11.3M).
The Eris gain is why adjusted EPS grew less (+45%) than GAAP EPS (+50%). The effective tax rate fell to 28.6% from 29.7% after uncertain state and local tax positions were resolved. For the half year, a separate $11.4 million release of tax reserves (booked in Q1) also helped.
Portfolio pruning continues. Cboe decommissioned its European derivatives exchange (CEDX) on February 23, 2026. On April 22 it agreed to sell Cboe Australia and Cboe Canada to TMX for about $300 million, and it expects the Australian sale to close in Q3 2026. Both businesses are now classified as held for sale. The company says their fair value exceeds their carrying value, so no loss has been booked. In June it launched Cboe Predicts, binary (yes/no) option contracts on the Mini-S&P 500 index, its first prediction-market product.
Capital returns and balance sheet
Dividend: $0.72 per share (up from $0.63, +14%), $75.7 million in total.
Buybacks: $32.6 million for about 127,000 shares at an average of $256.61. Another $30.4 million followed from July 1 to July 29 at $264.50. $506.4 million of authorization remained as of July 29.
Balance sheet: adjusted cash (a non-GAAP measure) was $2,346.8 million against $1,443.8 million of senior notes, so Cboe holds more cash than debt. It also renewed its $400 million revolving credit facility on July 24.
Q2 dividends plus buybacks came to about $108 million, roughly 31% of the quarter's net income. That payout is modest given the cash on hand.
Takeaway: Cboe's profit growth this quarter came almost entirely from its proprietary index options. Index volume up 32%, at roughly 15 times the per-contract revenue of multi-listed options, lifted Options net revenue 30% while adjusted costs rose under 2%. Market share in the contested products (multi-listed options, US stocks) actually slipped, so results depend heavily on continued strong demand for SPX-style index trading.
Guidance and outlook
According to the Q2 earnings release (8-K Exhibit 99.1, July 31, 2026), management:
raised its 2026 organic net revenue growth target to "mid to high teens" (from "low double-digit to mid teens");
raised its Data Vantage organic growth target to "low teens" (from "low double-digit");
reaffirmed adjusted operating expenses of $838–853 million;
raised capital-expenditure guidance to $98–108 million (from $73–83 million);
trimmed depreciation and amortization (excluding acquired intangibles) to $54–58 million.
Our read: first-half net revenue grew 26.7%, well above even the raised "mid to high teens" target. That implies management expects growth to slow sharply in the second half, as comparisons get tougher and trading activity may cool, or that the guidance is conservative. The expense guidance looks achievable: first-half adjusted operating expenses were $417.6 million, so reaching the $838–853 million range implies a modest second-half step-up. That fits the higher advertising and capex spending on new initiatives such as prediction markets and Cboe Clear U.S. The main risk is volume: Cboe's margin expansion depends on index-options activity staying near record levels. Two items will also shrink the revenue base modestly once they close or end: the Australia/Canada sales, and the Section 31 pass-through, which is neutral to profit anyway.