In the 12 months ending September 30, 2003, the securities industry experienced its third successive year of difficult market conditions. After a very strong first four months, trading volume began to erode, and we took some immediate steps to reduce and strictly control our costs. This course of action enabled us – at a time when many in our industry struggled – to show a modest pre-tax operating profit while maintaining the strength of our competitive position as one of the lowest cost providers of trading and execution services. Our optimism about the future arises from the significant progress we made in a program aimed at diversifying our revenue base, and the most important of these undertakings bore fruit after the close of the fiscal year. In January – after over two years of intensive groundbreaking work – we and our partners were given the green light by the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the Boston Options Exchange (BOX), a truly revolutionary open access electronic options exchange. BOX offers substantial promise for the future. It represents an entirely new approach to the electronic trading of options – and, if it is as successful as we believe it can be, it will become an important component in the BSE's future revenue stream. BOX trading began in early 2004, and the level of initial interest in trading among major players in the options market was very encouraging. Prior to launch, over 100 firms, including most of the key players in the industry, had applied to participate in BOX as either market makers or order flow providers. As this report goes to press, BOX trading is scheduled to be phased in over approximately nine weeks with new classes of securities being introduced each week. When BOX is fully up and running, there will be 250 option classes involving over 2,400 market-making assignments. BOX is an open access, fully automated electronic options market we developed in partnership with the Montréal Exchange, Interactive Brokers Group, LLC and four major global securities firms – Credit Suisse First Boston, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and UBS. Using highly advanced technology, BOX offers options traders a more efficient, lower cost alternative to existing markets. It is the only options market that is completely anonymous, and trading isn't based on whom you know or who you are. What counts is the moment your order arrives at BOX's electronic book. Equally important, BOX has removed typical barriers to entry by eliminating seats and specialists – creating a market that is open, inexpensive and easy to access. The pre-launch interest in BOX ran high because it is a new model for the industry. Technology-driven, it is a simpler, faster, fairer, more open and a less expensive trading system than other traditional options exchanges. Simply put, there is nothing out there quite like it, which is the principal reason why our model attracted the attention and passionate opposition of established options exchanges during its approval process before the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition to being the lowest cost provider, BOX offers a very powerful market model: open access with no seat purchase required; orders executed on a strict price/time priority in the context of a transparent order book with no specialist setting the price; fully automated trading; and a unique electronic anonymous mini-auction that attracts – and subjects to price competition and mandatory price improvement – orders that would otherwise simply be printed at the National Best Bid or Offer on other exchanges. In addition, in December, we relaunched our platform for market-making in Nasdaq securities, another measure aimed at broadening the Exchange's revenue base. The BSE is once again able to participate in the trading of over-the-counter securities. Using technology developed by Millennium IT and a team of BSE technology experts, BSE floor brokers participating in the program are able to display quotes, receive OTC orders, enter them into the Nasdaq trading system, and execute trades. The system offers a full range of capabilities – quote, execution and position management, trade reports, complete market data access and auto-quote functionality. The BRUT ECN is the first client for the BSE's market-making services. BRUT is owned and operated by BRUT, LLC, an operating unit of SunGard. Despite the very strong market volume during the first four months of FY 2003, our aggregate trading volume from year-to-year was essentially flat. Average daily share volume grew about 1% from 44,910,000 shares per day to 45,434,000. Average daily trades declined about 10% from 76,041 to 68,139, but average trade size increased from 591 shares to 667. Continue to the next page of the Chairman's letter.