Speaker 1:

From The New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here, at the NYSE and ICE's Exchanges around the world. Now, let's go Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glinn.

Lance Glinn:

Each month on the Inside the ICE House Podcast, we engage in insightful conversations with business leaders, CEOs of NYSE listed companies, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. We explore their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and their aspirations to shape the future. You can tune in every Monday on all major podcast platforms to catch these discussions and watch full video episodes on tv.nyse.com and on the NYSE YouTube channel.

Inside the ICE House in August, we aired five new episodes, four of our traditional Inside the ICE House episodes and one episode that kicked off a new monthly series, Markets in Focus with Opening Bell Daily's Phil Rosen. We kicked off the month with episode 480 and Jeff Simmons, CEO of Elanco, that's NYSE ticker symbol E-L-A-N. In a conversation that included quite a few references to my cat, Ollie, Jeff detailed how Elanco is transforming pet health with powerful medicines that protect, prevent, and heal.

Jeff Simmons:

Like our industry, so when you think animal health, think of over 20 species of animals we're farm animal, we're pet, I'm just talking about the industry, Elanco is very similar. So cattle, and pigs, and chickens, and sheep, these are all things that are driving to a protein industry that has great trends as well, which we can talk about. And we're in over a hundred countries and 20 species of animals. So man, you touch a lot of space and a lot of lives every day with pets and protein.

So the industry's really evolved from a very heavy livestock to the evolution of the pet industry to it becoming more global. So the whole protein movement of more protein in the diet and the pet movement and the humanization of pets have been the two tailwinds of the industry. And so what I would say is we all kind of grew up animal health companies as divisions of human pharma, taking compounds that were maybe used in other forms and reworking them, doing research with the FDA, very regulated, very science-based industry to make sure that hey, Ollie the cat gets a product that works and does exactly what it says and your veterinarian feels very confident in prescribing it to you and to Ollie. So that to me is the evolution of the industry.

Elanco's story is in our name, Elanco, it stands for Eli Lilly and Company, biggest pharmaceutical company today. In 2018, we spent 63 years inside that company and we grew and we were a division, one of the divisions of Lilly, and we grew and we helped them through a time of when they were building their pipeline, we grew. And then in 2018, we spun out, we became a New York Stock Exchange company and we spun out and became an independent company. We acquired Bayer Animal Health before that, Novartis Animal Health and Johnson & Johnson Animal Health. We acquired those companies to build a global independent company.

And here over the last few years as we'll get into, we have built a pipeline of innovation that we plan to bring to the industry, pet and farm animal. We're going to have seven blockbusters we're launching right now that touch everything from itching dogs, to parasiticides, tick, flea, heartworm in dogs, to a parvo virus that kills 700 puppies a day that we have the top treatment for, to how we can actually create less to no footprint on a cattle operation. So these are really relevant problems in big spaces, as an independent company, we're one of the only few companies that can reach the world's animals with solutions with over 10,000 people.

Lance Glinn:

Episode 41, featured Bernard Zovighian, CEO of Edwards Lifesciences. That's NYC ticker symbol, E-W. Structural heart innovation is rewriting the future of cardiovascular care, delivering faster recoveries, better outcomes, and a new standard of precision through less invasive procedures. Breakthroughs in imaging, smarter device design, and real time data are empowering doctors to tackle even the most complex heart conditions with unmatched accuracy. Bernard joined us Inside the ICE House to discuss how under his leadership, the company is breaking boundaries and saving lives one innovation at a time.

Bernard Zovighian:

What is key to our success long-term as a company, I call that our foundation. And for me, it was all about making sure that I was keeping our foundation the same, culture, patient at the center, innovation strategy. And then I went into how to make sure that Edwards is going to remain this very special company, this very successful company. Therefore, the decision to expand beyond the businesses we had and going into the full structural heart disease spectrum. And we made some investment last year internally and externally to be able to help more patients.

Lance Glinn:

So while Edwards Lifesciences listed here 25 years ago, its roots go back even further than that, to 1958 when engineer Miles Edwards and Dr. Albert Starr developed the groundbreaking Starr-Edwards mitral heart valve. So can you just take us back to that origin story and share how that innovation helped shape the company's mission and its culture from the very beginning?

Bernard Zovighian:

Yeah, and this is where everything started 65 years ago. In 1958, an engineer and a cardiac surgeon partnered to basically develop the first ever artificial heart valve. At the time it was seen as impossible and this is truly who we are as a company today. We like to go first, we like to take risk, we like to innovate where nothing exists. When you do these kinds of things, you learn a lot and we see that learning as you go is part of the innovation process.

When we failed on the project, we look at the learning, we apply the learning, we see that as a way to accelerate our innovation process, our engineer are used to do that and we apply this process across the company. We apply this process 20 years ago when we came up with the first TAVR technologies, and today more than 1 million patients have benefited from our TAVR platform, SAPIEN, which is the most adopted, the most learned, and the most studied platform.

So this is truly how we do things. We start with basically a very large met patient need, we put our best mind behind it and we start the learning process, the innovation process. And again, it is truly remarkable that for a company like ourselves, a very mature company, since 65 years leading in the space, we are still able to innovate the way we are doing today.

Lance Glinn:

As I mentioned in my introduction, we kicked off a new series this month, Markets in Focus in partnership with Opening Bell Daily. Each month, Phil Rosen will join me here at The New York Stock Exchange to dissect the latest news and headlines moving Wall Street. In August, we unpacked the growing buzz around the potential fed rate cuts and how AI spending could define the next chapter of market growth.

Phil Rosen:

I think the real nail in the coffin, so to speak for the Fed being late, was the most recent jobs report. And that caused a whole wave of headlines and essentially it showed a quarter million jobs were erased from the two months prior. And when you see something like that, it pretty much confirms the weakness that people have been talking about and speculating about in the labor market. But two days before that job report came out, the Fed maintained the labor market is still fairly robust and strong.

So I think the narrative really flipped in a 48-hour stretch and the Fed's, to their view, maybe they didn't see the jobs report ahead of time, maybe they got it at the same time as everyone else, I don't really know. However, I think the data at this point do point to a pretty deteriorated labor market and the case for cuts is quite strong.

However, we have also people in Wall Street, I think it was Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, they are in the camp that there should be still no rate cuts at all in 2025. That's not my view and I disagree with that, but their case is pretty much that the unemployment rate is still historically low and I think that aligns a bit more with the Fed's point of view up to before the last jobs report. And in their view, they see the risk of inflation rebounding as still a very potential threat. So the last thing I'll say about this, the Fed has not cut rates all year, and the last time interest rates were this high inflation was at 6.5% and now we're converging on 2%. So to me, the data is telling the story, but obviously the Fed disagrees.

Lance Glinn:

The M&A landscape has rebounded in 2025, driven by improved market conditions and rising CEO confidence. Strategic buyers are fueling the surge, targeting details that boost growth, expand capabilities, and enhance competitive positioning. Houlihan Lokey, that's NYC ticker symbol H-L-I has emerged as the global leader in M&A volume. On episode 482, CEO Scott Adelson joins us Inside the ICE House to detail how under his guidance the firm is expanding globally, strengthening industry verticals and sharpening its focus on long-term value creation.

Scott Adelson:

It's really nice feedback here, I thought about that driving up today thinking, wow, it has been 10 years since I've been in this building and it's amazing how much we've changed as an organization. And I can clearly say that being listed on The New York Stock Exchange has been the single best branding exercise we've ever had. Really even outside the US more than inside the US what it has meant when you begin a discussion explaining that we are listed on the stock exchange and be able to articulate our market cap, it just begins the dialogue in a very different manner than having to explain who we are to people that are maybe less familiar with us, so it's been a fantastic journey.

Speaker 7:

Yeah. Over the course of a decade, markets have experienced a lot of change, which I know that you're privy to. From geopolitical uncertainty, and economic volatility, to the rise certainly of new technologies. How has Houlihan Lokey responded to unexpected shifts since its listing? Allowing the firm not just to maintain success, but really to grow at a substantial rate.

Scott Adelson:

We're incredibly fortunate, since long before we went public we were really built for virtually any market environment. And obviously over the course of a decade, you see many different market environments. But as long as capital is moving in one direction or another, and there's only been probably two periods of time in very short windows where capital has froze up during that tenure period where we saw a dislocation for a period of time. But other than that, we've been very fortunate to either see success in our restructuring business, success in our M&A and capital solutions business either way. And meanwhile, our valuation, our FBA business continues to do well regardless of market so we've been very fortunate on that.

Lance Glinn:

We ended the month featuring Tracy Krohn, Founder, Chairman, CEO, and President of W&T Offshore, that's NYC ticker symbol W-T-I. Tracy has seen W&T's journey since inception and has navigated regulatory changes, presidential administrations, and other obstacles along the way to build a lasting brand. He goes Inside the ICE House to dissect the future of offshore drilling and how the outlook is bright for the coming year and beyond.

Tracy Krohn:

The assets of the company are very strong, the net asset value of the company has always been greater than our debt and other liabilities. We haven't always traded that way, but the quality of the assets has been very good. We get good cash flow, long life, that allows us to survive some of these commodity cycles and there's always commodity cycles. Volatility in oil and natural gas is as high as any commodity on the planet, maybe the most volatile. So you can never figure out what the price is going to be the next day, but you can control costs. So we focus on controlling the cost, hence controlling the margins.

People ask me all the time, what is your breakeven oil price? Well, that's composed of a bunch of different things at any given moment, and it's a function of inflation, deflation, it's a function of manufacturing lines and such as we experienced in the pandemic and getting supplies and materials. So you have to be able to adapt, so humans are notorious for being able to adapt that's why we're the apex species, right? So companies have to adapt as well. So hopefully, not hopefully, but I think we've been able to attract the kind of talent that understands that you have to adapt.

Lance Glinn:

You can listen to these along with all past and future Inside the ICE House episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Remember that we also have ETF Central Podcasts that release every two weeks on Wednesdays and Market Storylines that release every Friday. Full video episodes of all our podcasts are also available on tv.nyc.com and on the NYC YouTube channel. Be sure to join us every week for conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From The New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House.

Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.