CME Group (CME) AI Stock Analysis

• Market Cap: $115.04B
• Dividend Yield: 3.92%
• Average Volume (3M): 2.09M
• Price to Earnings (P/E): 28.6
• Beta (1Y): 0.04
• Revenue Growth: 5.84%
• EPS Growth: 8.51%
• Country: US
• Employees: 3,760
• Sector: Financial
• Sector Strength: 70
• Industry: Financial - Data & Stock Exchanges
• EPS (TTM): 2.77
• Shares Outstanding: 360,596,650
• 10 Day Avg. Volume: 2,104,856
• 30 Day Avg. Volume: 2,087,798
• PEG Ratio: 1.58
• Price to Book (P/B): 3.42
• Price to Sales (P/S): 15.06
• P/FCF Ratio: 22.96
• Enterprise Value/Market Cap: 0.95
• Enterprise Value/Revenue: 16.79
• Enterprise Value/Gross Profit: 19.51
• Enterprise Value/Ebitda: 19.14
• 1Y Price Target: $300.38
• Price Target Upside: -2.27% Downside
• Rating Consensus: Hold
• Number of Analyst Covering: 8
• EPS Forecast (FY): 11.87
• Revenue Forecast (FY): $6.93B

• Rating: 85 Outperform
• Price Target: $372.00 ▲(21.03% Upside)
• Action: Reiterated Date: 02/27/26
• Date: Action: Reiterated 02/27/26

CME scores highly on financial performance driven by exceptional margins, strong cash generation, and low leverage. Technicals are supportive with a clear uptrend and positive momentum, while valuation is the main constraint due to a higher P/E despite a solid dividend yield. The latest earnings call reinforces the outlook with record activity and continued growth, tempered by higher planned spending and regulatory execution risks.

Positive Factors

Strong cash generation

Sustained, high free cash flow conversion provides durable internal funding for dividends, buybacks and strategic reinvestment. That cash engine underpins balance-sheet flexibility, funds product launches and securites-clearing rollout, and reduces reliance on external financing over the next 2–6 months.

High and improving margins

Exceptionally high and rising margins reflect scalable exchange and clearing economics plus strong market-data revenue. Durable operating leverage means incremental volume drives outsized profit and cash, supporting capital returns and reinvestment even if top-line growth moderates.

Market leadership and product expansion

Regulatory greenlight for securities clearing and expansion into 24/7 crypto and new futures broaden addressable markets and deepen competitive moats. These structural product initiatives leverage core clearing/data capabilities to diversify revenue and capture long-term market share gains.

Negative Factors

Regulatory & legal uncertainty

Legal ambiguity around event/prediction markets and differing state-level rules could constrain product rollout, limit monetization, or trigger compliance costs. This structural regulatory risk can delay scale and reduce expected revenue diversification over the medium term.

Rising planned operating spend

Management is deliberately increasing spend to support 24/7 crypto, securities clearing and event contracts. If these investments take longer to monetize or volumes soften, elevated structural opex could compress margins and slow cash-flow growth versus current trends.

Cloud migration cost opacity

Substantial, ongoing cloud migration costs and reduced transparency complicate forecasting incremental tech expense and margin impact. Persistent uncertainty on cloud spend makes structural cost control and ROI assessment harder while tech-driven initiatives scale.

CME Group Business Overview & Revenue Model

Company Description

CME Group Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates contract markets for the trading of futures and options on futures contracts worldwide. It offers futures and options products based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, agricultural commodities, energy, and metals, as well as fixed income products. The company also provides clearing house services, including clearing, settling, and guaranteeing futures and options contracts, and cleared swaps products traded through its exchanges; and trade processing and risk mitigation services. In addition, the company offers a range of market data services, including real-time and historical data services. It serves professional traders, financial institutions, institutional and individual investors, corporations, manufacturers, producers, governments, and central banks. The company was formerly known as Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. and changed its name to CME Group Inc. in July 2007. CME Group Inc. was founded in 1898 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

How the Company Makes Money

CME Group generates revenue through several key streams, primarily focusing on transaction fees and market data services. The company charges fees for trades executed on its platforms, which are driven by trading volumes across its diverse product offerings. Additionally, CME earns revenue from clearing services, where it processes and settles trades on behalf of its clients, providing essential risk management functions. The firm also offers market data products, which provide real-time and historical information to clients for a fee. Significant partnerships with financial institutions and technology providers enhance CME's trading capabilities and expand its market reach, contributing to its overall earnings. Furthermore, CME Group benefits from the increasing demand for risk management solutions and the global trend towards electronic trading, which supports its revenue growth.

CME Group Financial Statement Overview

Summary

High-quality financial profile with strong multi-year revenue growth to $6.5B (2025), exceptional and improving profitability (net margin rising to ~62%), conservative leverage (debt-to-equity ~0.12–0.13), and robust operating/free cash flow growth to ~$4.3B. Main offsets are uneven year-to-year growth and variability in total assets.

Income Statement

Revenue has grown steadily from $4.9B (2020) to $6.5B (2025), with an especially sharp acceleration in 2025. Profitability is exceptional and improving: gross margin stays ~85–86% and net margin rises to ~62% in 2025 (from ~43% in 2020), showing strong operating leverage. The main weakness is that revenue growth has not been consistently high every year (notably a decline in 2021), making the top-line trajectory somewhat uneven despite strong long-term progress.

Balance Sheet

Leverage is conservative and stable, with debt-to-equity consistently around ~0.12–0.13, indicating ample balance-sheet flexibility. Shareholders’ equity trends upward overall, supporting stability, and returns on equity improve to ~14% in 2025 from ~8% in 2020. The key watch-out is that total assets swing meaningfully year to year (e.g., higher in 2021/2022/2025 versus 2023/2024), which can signal balance-sheet volatility even though leverage remains low.

Cash Flow

Cash generation is strong and rising: operating cash flow increases from $2.7B (2020) to $4.3B (2025), and free cash flow closely tracks operating cash flow, reaching $4.3B in 2025. Free cash flow conversion is consistently high, running at ~93–100% of net income across the period, supporting capital returns and reinvestment capacity. Weaknesses include a dip in free cash flow growth in 2021 and uneven growth rates thereafter, plus the provided cash-flow coverage ratio remains very low throughout (though it improves in 2024–2025 versus 2021–2022).

Breakdown	Dec 2025	Dec 2024	Dec 2023	Dec 2022	Dec 2021
Income Statement
Total Revenue	6.52B	6.13B	5.58B	5.02B	4.69B
Gross Profit	5.61B	5.28B	4.75B	4.27B	3.85B
EBITDA	5.72B	5.04B	4.67B	4.02B	3.93B
Net Income	4.04B	3.53B	3.23B	2.69B	2.64B
Balance Sheet
Total Assets	198.42B	137.45B	129.71B	174.18B	196.78B
Cash, Cash Equivalents and Short-Term Investments	4.55B	3.01B	3.02B	2.82B	2.95B
Total Debt	3.42B	3.43B	3.43B	3.44B	3.45B
Total Liabilities	169.70B	110.96B	102.97B	147.30B	169.38B
Stockholders Equity	28.73B	26.49B	26.74B	26.88B	27.40B
Cash Flow
Free Cash Flow	4.28B	3.60B	3.38B	2.97B	2.28B
Operating Cash Flow	4.28B	3.69B	3.45B	3.06B	2.40B
Investing Cash Flow	1.50B	-82.60M	20.90M	-489.80M	58.40M
Financing Cash Flow	0.00	5.08B	-48.34B	-25.38B	69.91B

CME Group Technical Analysis

• Technical Analysis Sentiment: Positive
• Last Price: 307.36
• 50DMA: Positive
• 100DMA: Positive
• 200DMA: Positive
• MACD: Negative
• RSI: Neutral
• STOCH: Negative

Evaluating momentum and price trends is crucial in stock analysis to make informed investment decisions. For CME, the sentiment is Positive. The current price of 307.36 is above the 20-day moving average (MA) of 301.12, above the 50-day MA of 284.83, and above the 200-day MA of 274.12, indicating a bullish trend. The MACD of 7.87 indicates Negative momentum. The RSI at 61.20 is Neutral, neither overbought nor oversold. The STOCH value of 80.80 is Negative, not indicating any strong overbought or oversold conditions. Overall, these indicators collectively point to a Positive sentiment for CME.

CME Group Peers Comparison

Name	Overall Rating	Market Cap	P/E Ratio	ROE	Dividend Yield	Revenue Growth	EPS Growth
CME	85 Outperform	$115.04B	28.59	14.63%	3.92%	5.84%	8.51%
TW	78 Outperform	$28.53B	32.04	13.20%	0.45%	22.17%	40.13%
CBOE	75 Outperform	$30.66B	28.12	23.25%	1.06%	16.74%	26.74%
ICE	72 Outperform	$88.23B	26.95	11.72%	1.19%	8.96%	30.16%
Sector *	68 Neutral	$18.00B	11.42	9.92%	3.81%	9.73%	1.22%
NDAQ	65 Neutral	$46.11B	26.25	15.28%	1.07%	16.41%	68.03%
COIN	61 Neutral	$42.79B	41.90	10.05%	―	47.86%	96.46%

CME Group Corporate Events

CME Group Announces Updated Client Pricing and Disclosure

On February 2, 2026, CME Group Inc. notified its clients of pricing changes via Special Executive Report 9676 and made the notice available on its website, signaling an adjustment to the cost structure associated with its services. The company also clarified that this information, furnished under Item 7.01 of a current report, is not deemed filed for purposes of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and will not be incorporated into securities law filings unless explicitly referenced, limiting its legal and regulatory implications for investors and other stakeholders.

The most recent analyst rating on (CME) stock is a Buy with a $305.00 price target. To see the full list of analyst forecasts on CME Group stock, see the CME Stock Forecast page.