Gross revenue, minus transaction-based expenses, increased 3% from a year ago to $2.41 billion. Operating income climbed 6% to $1.17 billion, with an operating margin of 49%.
ICE Mortgage Technology posted $528 million in revenue, up 4% from a year earlier, including $137 million in transaction revenue, up 12%. ICE said during the earnings call that growth was driven by its Encompass loan origination platform and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) and servicing software, with modest increases in data and analytics revenue.
The mortgage technology segment’s operating income for the third quarter was $22 million and the operating margin was 4%. On an adjusted basis, operating income was $224 million and the adjusted operating margin was 42%.
The company also signed two new clients to its MSP servicing platform in the quarter, both existing Encompass users, and 16 new Encompass clients overall.
ICE President Benjamin Jackson said that AI is transforming ICE’s mortgage business “from systems of record to systems of intelligence.”
ICE is using machine learning to automate underwriting, compliance and customer service processes across the loan life cycle, he said. Customers using ICE’s MSP system save an estimated 20% to 30% on servicing costs, a figure the company expects will rise as it deploys new AI-powered capabilities such as predictive call summarization and borrower self-service tools.
Jackson also said ICE is ahead of schedule in repurposing MSP from a mainframe to its modern tech stack, aided by AI-assisted code generation. “We’ve reduced the projected timeline from seven years to roughly half that,” he said.
Beyond mortgage technology, ICE’s exchanges segment generated $1.27 billion in net revenue, supported by growth in data and listings revenue. Fixed income and data services revenue rose 5% to a record $618 million, boosted by gains in pricing and reference data and ICE’s data network technology business, which grew 10%.
Chair and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said ICE’s strategic investment in Polymarket expands its reach into decentralized prediction markets and complements its data distribution capabilities. “We believe Polymarket’s event-driven data can become an important layer of insight for investors and institutions,” he said.
Chief financial officer Warren Gardiner said ICE returned $674 million to shareholders in the quarter and reduced its debt load, bringing leverage to about 2.9 times EBITDA.
Gardiner also said ICE is on track for record annual revenue and operating income in 2025. “We expect fourth quarter adjusted operating expenses to be in the range of $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion,” he told investors on Thursday.