MarketAxess Holdings Inc. MKTX

The business

MarketAxess runs the leading electronic request-for-quote marketplace for corporate bonds, connecting roughly 2,000 institutional investor and dealer firms so they can trade credit that historically traded over the phone. Revenue is almost entirely commission-based and is already close to a net basis, so unlike a transaction-fee exchange there is no large pass-through to strip out; the reported $849M for FY25 is the figure consensus tracks. The engine is commission revenue, which carried roughly $735M of the $849M total in FY25, about 86% of revenue, with the rest split across Information Services (market data, around $53M), Post-Trade Services (around $44M), and a small Technology Services line. Within commissions, US credit (high-grade and high-yield corporate bonds) is the historical heart of the franchise and the exact place the competitive pressure is concentrated.

The qualitative fact the financials do not show is the market-share fight. MarketAxess built its moat on the all-to-all Open Trading protocol, but rivals, principally Tradeweb and the bank-backed venues, have taken share in electronic US high-grade, and portfolio trading and dealer-led streaming protocols have shifted where liquidity forms. Estimated US high-grade share has been under pressure, dented in part by a duplicate-reporting quirk in TRACE that inflated reported industry volumes and by heavy new-issue calendars that pull activity off secondary platforms. What changed in the last two quarters is the offsetting growth: Q1 2026 delivered record total revenue of $233M, up 12%, driven by 20% growth outside US credit, a 35% jump in block-trading average daily volume, and US credit portfolio-trading share rising to 19.8% from 18.8%. The franchise is leaking share in its oldest product while growing in newer protocols and geographies, and the stock price is betting the leak wins.