NYSE President Lynn Martin on the wide-open IPO window and what makes NYSE different

Do we have our next guest available? Perfect. Thank you. We will bring them here. Here she comes. Is the market still open? I don't know. Three another 40 minutes or so. Okay. I'm usually on on uh West Coast time. Hi, welcome. Nice to meet you. Welcome. You are live on the air. So uh so great to be here.

The day we picked the right one. I haven't been to the New York. My mom knew that I was coming to the New York Stock Exchange and sent me a uh picture of me here uh when I was 10 years old and I got a uh and I got a booklet, a pamphlet and then I came in college once for kind of a entrepreneur networking event.

Haven't been back since, but I picked the right day. It's been fantastic. It's been a great day here. Uh can you introduce yourself really quickly? Introduce yourself and then there's so much we want to talk about. I'm Lin Martin. I'm president of the New York Stock Exchange. There you go.

It's a great honor, privilege and I'm thrilled to be on this podcast. I listen to you guys. Thank you. Thank you. This is a big moment for us. I mean, we just started a couple months ago. It's been This has definitely been on like the vision board of like one day and now we're here. So, thank you so much for hosting us.

Totally surreal. Uh, first question I have to ask because it's uh it feels like Figma pushed the limits in terms of making this space like feel like the Figma brand. Did they give you any trouble in around the around the details of of design? No.

I love a good takeover and you know this space is really to celebrate capital markets and to celebrate our issuers and today with the full brand takeover by Figma. It's been amazing. That's fantastic. Walk us through what else has gone this year.

Uh we've been we've been talking about this dynamic that people were kind of like is the IPO window open and then all of a sudden we'd looked around and it was like oh it's wide open. There's been a ton of exciting news. Uh but what have been the standout moments this year in your world?

Yeah, I mean the market very much is now open. I don't think anyone is debating that after today. I agree. Um, you know, we've had a lot of great companies come to market on the tech side. We've had just in the last couple of weeks, we had Accelerant. We had Ambic Micro go yesterday.

Um, obviously Figma today we had Circle couple months ago. That was another great one. Neielson IQ last week. McGra Hill, Hinge Health, Hinge Health. Um, Mountain. So there's been quite a a effect of effect deals and they've done well. They've done well. They've helped broadly have done very well this year. Yeah.

And when I'm with institutional investors, the thing that I keep hearing from them, these are, you know, the big long only funds is we want more issues to come to market. We want to add to our portfolio. When's the market going to open? When's the market going to open?

So there's a lot of excitement, euphoria to actually get these companies out and a lot of demand which I think is great. Yeah. What what are the key goals, the key value props, the key like action items that you bring to bear uh in your day-to-day in your in your role?

You know, one of my big focuses, probably my primary focus is to scoot. All right. All right. We're getting we're co we're cozy in this in this studio. um is really to ensure that our capital markets remain the envy of the world. For me, it's about price certainty. Okay. And efficiency of risk management.

How do you increase those? Uh have to have good technology. Now, I'm a technologist by trade, which I was going to ask how how what the path is to becoming the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Of course, in this day and age, you start as a coder. That's where I started. No way. That's amazing.

What where did you write code first? I was at IBM part of their global services consulting practice and my clients were financial institutions. That makes sense. Incredible. What uh what programming language did you write in back then? You know, you're asking me to date myself. We don't need to do that.

I'm going to, you know, I I'll say C. Okay. C was the main one that I used. C++ a little bit. Yeah. But, you know, I'm not going to go further back with the other stuff. I can Can you walk us through like a day in the life of a CEO going public?

I didn't want to uh get pul it out of Dylan, but it's like ringing and then the just how calm and collected Dylan wasn't just so focused on product team culture. Totally vision. But isn't that Dylan through and through he doesn't have to like put on He doesn't have to play a character on a day like today.

It's just another day. Totally. Um but yes, what walk me through the day in uh a day in the life of a CEO taking a company public at the New York Stock Exchange. Well, you probably have gone through about a 10day period where you've been on the road and you're probably a little tired.

Does that mean literally on the When people say road show, does that just mean like one big conference room where every where everyone comes to you or are you literally flying around to different long mix some of the big longies? You will go see them in person.

Um you know Boston based um like a state street or something or something the Welling Fidelity probably go see Tro you know you're going to see some of the the big names the ones that are generally the top holders of equities.

You're going to probably also go see Vanguard and Black Rockck and all those folks and some of those are in Manhattan so it might be a stop here but you're going around and you really are on the road. You're moving around on the road. You are on the road. So 10 days of that. Yeah. Then the big day comes.

This is calendar days. I'm going not not business days. So it's more like five or six. Yeah. Week and a half. Um and then by the way, you've already done testing the water. So you've already met these people in the past. Um and then the night before you price. Yep. Your deal gets priced. Uh and then the morning of you.

And how does that how does that happen? Is that just everyone uh like putting in different bids, testing the water? Is there an automated system or is this is this piece happening more over conference calls and and discussions like walk me through that piece?

It's probably a better question for the banking syndicate that's doing it. It kind of depends on I think it's probably a bit of everything at the moment. A bit of technology also some phone calls. Sure. Sure. Um they set the price where they think the supply that is coming to the market should price. Yep.

And then you go to sleep. Yep. Then the next morning you wake up and of course you ring the bell. You ring the bell uh at the New York Stock Exchange and um then you have a couple hour period where you're doing media interviews. Yes, of course.

Uh talking about your company while your stabilization agents trying to figure out where the stocks will actually trade. Yeah. Where where should it open? Okay. Um there's obviously, you know, a lot of supply on some of these or not not a lot, but a lot of demand.

A lot of demand on on this one in particular because we've been hearing maybe, you know, we were hearing like rounds of cheers around noon and then one and then it seemed like this particular stock opened at two kind of around there and that was all just based on matching the buyers and selling.

What What have you done as president of the exchange to attract the circles and the hinge healths and the uh and the figs? Right. These are the blockbuster IPOs of the year. There's obviously other players had it last year.

Yeah, there's obviously other there's other plenty you know other companies I won't name that would like to uh have those opportunities. But what what is what is you know what makes uh NY so appealing at this moment? Well, I think there's probably a couple of different reasons. Number one, our market model.

this fact that there are guys and girls down on the floor who are putting capital to work taking the other side to stabilize a stock once it is open in the market. So our market model is very much differentiator. Uh we're the only exchange in the world that has that that market model. Two are the services that we offer.

Um we partner with the best-in-class firms to provide the best-in-class services. And three is the general community that we have of issuers at NYSC. That's great. Yeah. Um, talk to me about the Bitcoin ETF. That was kind of an interesting one. Was anything different about that? How did that kind of play out? Yeah.

So, we were the exchange to bring the first Bitcoin ETF to market in partnership with Gayscale. We actually started working on that in 2016. What? Yeah. I thought you were going to say in 2023 because I remember seeing some ads on CNBC and stuff for like, oh, Beret scale's happening.

And then there was the approval and that took some time. Whenever you first got the pitch, was it did did it did it immediately make sense? Did you think they were crazy at the time? I'm a big believer in the fact that ETFs are one of the great innovations of in financial markets.

Uh it's a vehicle that allows for liquidity and transparency of assets that have less liquidity. Sure. And transparency.

So bringing Bitcoin and ETH and some of the other ones that are being talked about into the ETF structure, it really focuses on trans price transparency, liquidity, and trade certainty and the whole investor protection. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

So it made a ton of sense to us that someone was thinking, yeah, well, if you wrap this in an ETF structure, Yeah. you'll actually be able to get institutional investment and people to get exposure to the asset class. So, eight eight years of work. I imagine a lot of that's with the SEC and regulatory.

Um, but was there also a piece of uh talking to the the buy side and the investing group to see if there was demand? Was that is that a piece of it or was it mostly just chopping wood? It was it was chopping a lot of regulatory wood. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. It was a lot of that.

Um, Grayscale did a great job as did uh the other another overnight success just like Figma. Very easy overnight success. What seven or eight years in the making? I think Figma was over a decade, but that's how these things happen. What's been your uh kind of framework around market volatility this year?

How have you talked with clients and issu issuers around just kind of navigating that broadly? Yeah. Um, as a technologist, the big thing that I've been focused on is capacity in the systems to ensure that certainty and efficiency of trading was continuing to persist on those really volatile days.

Um, I always like to say you're investing for the long term though, like don't watch the market on any one given day. The markets go up and the markets go down. Yep. And we've had such a long period of time where the markets just went up. Yeah.

that I think people had forgotten that at times markets do go down and it's it's okay. Yeah. Um but if you are patient and thoughtful and disciplined about your investing and you invest for the long term, you'll see the rewards of that investment. Makes sense. Anything else, Jordy?

What's uh what what what are you keeping track of for the rest of the year, the next quarter? What what's on your mind? Excited to bring some more IPOs to market. Yeah, we got some big names that we're working with that we're really excited to to come to market.

Um, yeah, and continuing to just watch the market market moves, ensure that our systems are the How big is the organization right now? Um, well, we're part of a bigger organization. The bigger organization is about 13,000 people. We've got about within our area, we've got about a thousand uh thousand folks.

um AI that still feel that still feels that feels pretty lean given given uh given the size of some of the some of the companies that we cover that are maybe a couple years old. Um impressive. Yeah. I mean AI is a big area we're also watching as well. We've been using AI for more than a decade here.

Um so we're very focused on the application of it for specific use cases but ensuring that and you're talking about internally not on the issuer side. Yeah. Yeah. Internally, uh, but our area of focus is ensuring data privacy. Yeah. Is held. Um, that's the most importance to us. Yeah. Yeah.

It seems like we're still in the early innings of actually getting a lot of those products into like enterprise ready states. Absolutely.

And when when you're entrusted with the safety and security and liquidity of the the most dominant American capital market, uh you can't always be on the most risk uh frontier in terms of technological adoption. Yes, but we've been using AI for example to help surveil the market.

You can pay you can point AI at a secure anomaly detected data set and get amazing efficiencies. That makes sense. Yeah. Right. And that then feeds back to the human who's like, "Okay, I just got a bunch of information based on this data set, this huge data set that I just pointed my AI at. " Yep.

Um it makes the human much more efficient. That makes a ton of sense. Well, thank you so much for student for this era for hosting us given your uh engineering background and uh yeah, thank you for having us. Hope to be here many more times this year. Come back.

Ideally, ideally the windows the windows open enough that we're just here every day. Yeah, just fully relocated. Is there an apartment up there? I'll I'll hang out. Thank you so much for finally meet you. Nice to meet you guys. Thank you. Cheers. Um well, thank you for watching our stream today. Do we have anyone else?

Ben, are we ready to wrap? I think we're good, right? That's a wrap, folks. From the New York Stock Exchange. Thank you so much for watching. Many hopefully we will see you tomorrow. One more congratulations to the thousands of fig mates. Yes. That made this a thing. Yeah. Uh, it's true.