Moat
90.0/10
Exchange licenses, clearing infrastructure, NYSE network effects, market-data rights, fixed-income evaluations, and regulatory workflow integration create a very strong market-infrastructure moat.
ICEQueued from the May 25, 2026 S&P 500 market-cap snapshot ranks 126-150; market data refreshed on 2026-05-29.
Intercontinental Exchange
Intercontinental Exchange operates exchanges, clearing houses, mortgage technology platforms, fixed-income data services, and the New York Stock Exchange.
Metadata
Where this company sits
- Ticker
- ICE
- Rank snapshot
- ≈ 140
- Sector
- Financials
- Industry
- Financial Exchanges & Data
- Region
- United States
- Index
- S&P 500 · Top 150 by market cap
Metrics
Scoring view
Every metric is paired with a short rationale. The numbers are deliberate, not divine.
Decentralizability
32.0/10
Open tools can pressure data, analytics, and some marketplace functions, but regulated securities exchange, clearing, and official listing infrastructure remain highly centralized and compliance-dependent.
Profitability
88.0/10
StockAnalysis reported trailing twelve-month net income of $3.93 billion on revenue of $10.44 billion, with a 37.67% profit margin and 52.10% operating margin.
Price / Earnings
21.6x
StockAnalysis reported ICE's trailing P/E ratio at 21.60 at the May 28, 2026 close; this market valuation changes daily.
Market cap
$83.9B
CompaniesMarketCap reported Intercontinental Exchange's market capitalization at approximately $83.86 billion as of May 2026.
Freed-up capital potential
$0.0
Derived from market cap, moat resistance, decentralizability, and profitability. It is a directional estimate of value capture that could come under pressure if open alternatives compound.
Narrative
Why the company matters
A short editorial overview plus the current thesis on moat strength and decentralization pressure.
Business mix
Intercontinental Exchange organizes its business around Exchanges, Fixed Income and Data Services, and Mortgage Technology.
For full-year 2025, ICE reported $9.9 billion of consolidated net revenues, including $5.4 billion from exchanges, $2.4 billion from fixed income and data services, and $2.1 billion from mortgage technology.
Market infrastructure role
ICE owns major exchange, clearing, data, and workflow assets, including the New York Stock Exchange and ICE Data Services.
Its pricing, reference-data, index, and analytics products sit inside regulated capital-market workflows where trust, uptime, compliance, and historical data depth matter as much as software features.
Moat reading
ICE has a strong moat because exchange licenses, clearing networks, liquidity, listed-company relationships, benchmark and data rights, and regulatory-grade infrastructure reinforce one another.
The NYSE brand and ICE's fixed-income pricing and reference-data services are especially durable because they are embedded in issuer access, trading workflows, portfolio valuation, compliance, and institutional risk systems.
Decentralization reading
The company is not easy to decentralize at the core: securities exchanges and clearing houses depend on regulation, market surveillance, settlement integration, capital rules, and trusted central operation.
Decentralization pressure is more plausible in adjacent layers. Open symbology, open research tools, peer-to-peer digital-asset markets, and federated market-data cooperatives can reduce dependence on proprietary terminals and data packages, but they do not immediately replace regulated public-equity listing or clearing infrastructure.
Products
Where the moat actually touches users
These pages zoom into the products and services that matter most to each company, the alternatives already nibbling at them, and 3 structured disruption concepts across the current product set.
3 disruption concepts tracked0 documented exceptions
NYSE
Public securities exchange and listings venue
2 conceptsNYSE is ICE's flagship public-equity listing and trading venue for issuers, investors, and market participants.
ICE Data Services
Market data, pricing, indices, and analytics
1 conceptICE Data Services provides evaluated pricing, reference data, market data feeds, indices, analytics, and regulatory data products for financial institutions.
Technology waves
Strategic lenses
These are the repo's explicit bias terms: the technologies expected to keep making incumbents less inevitable over time.
Bitcoin and Lightning as coordination rails
Proof-of-work economics, programmable payment flows, and anti-spam pricing make more digital systems capable of rewarding signal while resisting abuse.
- • Platforms that monetize gatekeeping could face pressure from protocol-native payment and reputation layers.
- • Micropayments can replace some ad-funded or subscription-heavy distribution models.
- • Open systems with credible anti-spam economics deserve a higher decentralizability score than legacy software assumptions suggest.
Paper trail
Visible evidence trail
These sources shaped the scoring and writing. The site is opinionated, but it should not behave like it is improvising facts in a dark room.
Intercontinental Exchange Reports Strong Full Year 2025 Results
Intercontinental Exchange · investor relations
Primary company source for 2025 segment revenue, business mix, and financial performance.
Reviewed 2026-05-29
Pricing Data & Analytics
Intercontinental Exchange · product page
Primary product source for ICE Data Services pricing, analytics, reference data, indices, and market-data capabilities.
Reviewed 2026-05-29
The New York Stock Exchange
NYSE · product page
Primary product source for NYSE listing, trading, market-data, and capital-market positioning.
Reviewed 2026-05-29
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Market Capitalization
CompaniesMarketCap · market data
Market-cap snapshot used for the company valuation metric.
Reviewed 2026-05-29
Intercontinental Exchange Statistics & Valuation
StockAnalysis · market data
Market-data source for P/E ratio, trailing revenue, net income, and margin metrics.
Reviewed 2026-05-29