BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:BGCP), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, today reported its financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2021

BGC generated total revenue of $461.6 million during the fourth quarter of 2021, which included $19.9 million of Insurance revenue prior to the sale closing on November 1, 2021. Excluding Insurance, total revenue was $441.7 million, an improvement of 2.7 percent versus the fourth quarter a year ago.

Stronger volumes seen in the first half of the quarter softened, particularly across the Voice / Hybrid business in December. Overall, industry-wide secondary trading volumes were mixed during the fourth quarter, with solid activity across rates and energy products, while credit and European equity derivative volumes were challenged.

Revenue from BGC’s technology driven, higher margin Fenics business continued to outpace both the overall Company and industry. Fenics net revenue improved by 20.2 percent compared to the prior year, which represented a record 23 percent of total revenue, excluding Insurance.

Fenics revenue was a key factor in driving front office productivity 10.4 percent higher, improving post-tax Adjusted Earnings by 19.5 percent, and expanding margins by 370 basis points.

Fenics FX, an ultra-low latency electronic FX trading platform, generated strong double-digit volume and revenue growth during the quarter, outpacing FX ECN peers and the overall market.

Fenics MIDFX, the leading wholesale FX hedging platform, continued to generate strong volumes across spot FX and Asian NDFs, driving revenue 20 percent higher versus last year. Fenics MID technology provides a highly efficient, fully electronic platform for large global banks to hedge risk in a neutral environment.

BGC continued to expand its cryptocurrency offerings during the quarter. Lucera onboarded new clients to its cryptocurrency connectivity and trade aggregation software. kACE, leveraging its Analytics, Pricing and Distribution software, onboarded new clients to its new cryptocurrency options offering.

Furthermore, BGC will be launching additional cryptocurrency and digital asset trading products throughout 2022, which will be underpinned by Fenics’ state-of-the-art technology. BGC’s futures exchange was among the first exchanges to be permitted to list cryptocurrency derivative contracts. The company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the significant and growing cryptocurrency opportunity.

BGC Partners continues to explore a possible conversion into a simpler corporate structure. BGC’s board and committees have hired advisors and are reviewing the potential structure and details of such conversion.

Howard W. Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of BGC Partners, commented:

“BGC improved profitability across all metrics in 2021. Additionally, we executed numerous value unlocking initiatives, including selling our Insurance Brokerage business for $535 million, reducing our share count by over 10 percent and expanding Fenics UST’s market share by nearly 600 basis points to over 20 percent.

Fenics revenue grew by 26 percent to over $400 million and represented 22 percent of BGC’s total revenue, excluding Insurance. We expect Fenics to exceed a quarter of BGC’s total revenue in 2022.

We recently launched a number of crypto products and expect to have a comprehensive offering by the end of 2022. Our crypto platform is powered by our multi-billion dollar global infrastructure and state-of-the-art Fenics trading technology. Our futures exchange was among the first exchanges permitted to list crypto derivatives, an advantage we plan to leverage as we scale our cryptocurrency offerings.