London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) - Company Research

Last Updated: 9 August 2026

London Stock Exchange Group is no longer primarily a stock exchange. Following the 2021 acquisition of Refinitiv, roughly three-quarters of its income is recurring subscription and licence revenue from financial data, indices and risk screening, and the exchange and clearing businesses now sit inside a single Markets division alongside a 50.9% economic interest in the separately listed Tradeweb. FY2025 total income including recoveries was £9,346m, adjusted earnings per share rose 15.7% to 420.6p, and the half-year results published on 30 July 2026 were strong enough for management to raise full-year guidance. Yet the shares closed at 8,920p on 7 August 2026, roughly 12% below their 52-week high and well below the levels of a year ago, after a period in which an activist investor built a stake and the market debated whether artificial intelligence will disintermediate financial data vendors. This report sets out what the filings actually say.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	LSEG (London Stock Exchange main market), FTSE 100 constituent, ISIN GB00B0SWJX34
Sector	Financials — financial market infrastructure, data and analytics
CEO / Leadership	David Schwimmer, Chief Executive since 2018; Michel-Alain Proch, Chief Financial Officer since February 2024; Don Robert CBE, Chair
Employees	26,976 as at 31 December 2025, across 65 countries
Revenue — total income including recoveries (FY2025)	£9,346m, up 5.5% year on year
Total income excluding recoveries (FY2025)	£8,986m, up 5.8% reported and 7.1% on an organic constant-currency basis
Adjusted EBITDA (FY2025)	£4,523m, a 50.3% margin, up from 48.8% in FY2024
Profit attributable to shareholders (FY2025)	£1,249m statutory; £2,204m on an adjusted basis
Market cap	~£43.4bn, based on 486.3m shares and the 8,920p close on 7 August 2026
Dividend	150.0p for FY2025, up 15.4%; a 55.0p interim for 2026 has been declared, up 17.0%
Reporting currency / year end	Sterling; 31 December. Note that 58% of FY2025 income was denominated in US dollars
Capital return	£2.1bn of buybacks executed in FY2025 and a record £2.1bn in the first half of 2026, within a £3bn programme targeted for completion by February 2027

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Recurring revenue with rising retention: 73% of total income is recurring subscription and licence revenue, rising to 98% within Data & Analytics and 100% within FTSE Russell. The revenue retention rate improved to 92.8% at June 2026 and annualised subscription value growth accelerated to 6.1%.
• Margin expansion is being delivered, not just promised: the adjusted EBITDA margin reached 50.3% for FY2025 and 52.7% in the first half of 2026, up 320 basis points year on year, and management raised FY2026 guidance at the half-year to roughly 100 basis points of constant-currency margin improvement.
• Infrastructure positions that are difficult to replicate: LCH clears more than 90% of interest-rate swap notional outstanding, FTSE Russell underpins around $20 trillion of benchmarked assets, and LSEG connects to more than 575 exchanges and trading venues, roughly twice its nearest competitor.
• Aggressive and sustained capital return: £2.1bn returned in FY2025 and a record £2.1bn in the first half of 2026, a £700m tranche running to November 2026, a 15.4% FY2025 dividend increase and a court-approved capital reduction completed in June 2026 specifically to enlarge distributable reserves.
• Contract duration is lengthening: the share of Data & Analytics subscription revenue under multi-year LSEG Data Access agreements of up to seven years rose from 9% at December 2024 to 16% at December 2025, with £1.9bn of new long-term contracts signed in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone.

Bear Case

• Activist pressure has not gone away: Elliott Management built an undisclosed sub-3% stake reported in February 2026 and pressed for a full portfolio review and a £5bn buyback. After LSEG responded with £3bn, Elliott said on 27 February 2026 that there remained an opportunity for further value-enhancing actions, leaving a live overhang around structure and the Tradeweb stake.
• The AI disintermediation narrative is unresolved: the concern that generative AI commoditises financial data vendors was cited as context for the share price underperformance into early 2026. Management's rebuttal rests on a disclosure that roughly 98% of revenue derives from proprietary data and infrastructure, which is an assertion the market can only test through subscription growth over time.
• Euro clearing migration is a slow-burn structural threat: the EU's EMIR 3.0 Active Account Requirement has applied since June 2025, with technical standards effective from 26 February 2026 and first mandatory reporting due by the end of July 2026, deliberately pushing EU counterparties to build clearing capacity at EU-based central counterparties as an alternative to LCH.
• Competition is intense in every division: Bloomberg remains the larger desktop incumbent, FTSE Russell is the number three index provider behind S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI in a market with persistent fee pressure, and LSEG's own competitive disclosure puts Risk Intelligence at only 4% to 6% of its addressable market despite leading in screening.

3. Revenue Segments

From 1 January 2025 LSEG reorganised its reporting, merging the former Capital Markets and Post Trade segments into a single Markets division, so the group now reports four operating segments rather than five. Percentages below are of FY2025 total income excluding recoveries of £8,986m.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Data & Analytics (£3,978m)	44.3%	Financial markets data, workflows and analytics — Workflows £1,925m, principally the Workspace terminal; Data & Feeds £1,822m of real-time, pricing and reference data; Analytics £231m. Adjusted EBITDA margin 40.7%.
Markets (£3,467m)	38.6%	Trading venues, clearing and post-trade — equities £412m, fixed income and derivatives £1,539m (mainly Tradeweb), FX £272m, OTC derivatives clearing £641m, securities and reporting £229m, non-cash collateral £117m and net treasury income £257m. Adjusted EBITDA margin 55.6%.
FTSE Russell (£954m)	10.6%	Index and benchmark solutions — subscriptions £630m and asset-based fees £324m linked to ETF and passive vehicle assets. Adjusted EBITDA margin 66.6%, the highest in the group.
Risk Intelligence (£579m)	6.4%	Customer and third-party risk — World-Check screening at roughly 80% of divisional revenue, digital identity and fraud at about 15%, due diligence at about 5%. Adjusted EBITDA margin 57.5%.
Other (£8m)	0.1%	Residual central and non-divisional income.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Three of the four divisions sell subscriptions and licences. Data & Analytics charges per user and per feed for terminal access and data delivery. FTSE Russell charges a fixed subscription for index data plus an asset-based fee that scales with the money benchmarked to its indices. Risk Intelligence sells screening as a service. Only Markets is materially transactional, at 41% recurring and 59% transactional, and even there net treasury income and clearing membership fees provide a floor. Group-wide the split is 73% recurring, 24% transactional and 3% net treasury income.

Where the moat is. It differs by division and that matters. In data, the barrier is the accumulated asset itself: 33 petabytes of curated data spanning roughly 30 years of continuous history across 100 million instruments, connectivity to more than 575 venues, and more than nine million price updates a second. In indices, the moat is incumbency — once a fund is benchmarked to an index, changing it requires a prospectus change and a conversation with every investor. In clearing, the moat is netting: LCH's more than 90% share of cleared interest-rate swap notional means members get better margin offsets there than anywhere else, which in turn attracts the next member.

How switching costs are being deepened. LSEG has deliberately moved customers onto longer agreements, with the run rate of Data & Analytics subscription revenue under LSEG Data Access contracts of up to seven years rising from 6% at December 2022 to 16% at December 2025. Management also discloses that around 98% of group revenue derives from proprietary data, intellectual property and market infrastructure rather than freely available information — the specific number cited by the chief executive in response to questions about AI disintermediation.

Charts for LSEG and its listed peers can be compared on ChartsView Live Charts.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from LSEG's own preliminary results announcements, with the FY2025 balance sheet, cash flow and earnings-per-share figures independently re-derived from the full financial statements in the preliminary results RNS of 26 February 2026, and the FY2021 and FY2022 figures from the RNS of 2 March 2023.

Fiscal Year	Revenue — total income incl. recoveries (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	6,535	n/a†	85.8p	272.4p	95.0p	£7,654m
FY2022	7,743	+18.5%	141.8p	317.8p	107.0p	£8,151m
FY2023	8,379	+8.2%	138.9p	323.9p	115.0p	£9,699m
FY2024	8,858	+5.7%	128.8p	363.5p	130.0p	£9,965m
FY2025	9,346	+5.5%	238.4p	420.6p	150.0p	£11,718m

† FY2020 is outside the five-year window and is not comparable in any case, because Refinitiv was consolidated from 29 January 2021. The GAAP EPS column is statutory IFRS basic earnings per share; LSEG does not report under US GAAP. The Long-term debt column is gross borrowings including lease liabilities at each year end; the FY2025 figure splits as £3,325m current and £8,393m non-current, of which £627m is lease liabilities. Net debt at 31 December 2025 was £7,598m after £3,949m of cash and £171m of net derivative financial assets, and operating net debt was £8,175m, a leverage ratio of 1.8 times against a target range of 1.5 to 2.5 times. Reported growth is materially affected by currency: FY2025 income excluding recoveries grew 5.8% as reported against 7.6% at constant currency.

LSEG reports full results half-yearly, with revenue-only trading statements at the first and third quarters, so the table below is presented on a half-year basis.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H1 2026	£4,985m	244.9p	163.8p
H2 2025‡	£4,674m	211.7p	115.7p
H1 2025	£4,672m	208.9p	122.7p
FY2025 total	£9,346m	420.6p	238.4p

‡ LSEG does not publish standalone second-half figures, so the H2 2025 row is derived by subtracting the first half from the full year. The income derivation is confirmed against the quarterly income table in the FY2025 preliminary results, where the third and fourth quarters of 2025 totalled £4,497m excluding recoveries against a first-half £4,489m. Revenue in this table is total income including recoveries, consistent with the annual table above.

Cash generation is the strongest part of the accounts. FY2025 net cash flow from operating activities was £3,622m against £3,396m in FY2024, while capital expenditure was £985m, being £861m of payments for intangible assets and £124m for property, plant and equipment. Statutory depreciation, amortisation and impairment was £2,238m, of which £1,221m was non-underlying and mostly amortisation of Refinitiv acquisition intangibles; adjusted depreciation and amortisation was £1,017m. Equity free cash flow in the first half of 2026 was £1.2bn, up 37%. Separately, LSEG paid £921m in 2025 with a further £250m due in 2026 to acquire an increased share of the SwapClear revenue surplus, extending that agreement to 2045; this sits outside routine capital expenditure.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	~£43.4bn (486.3m shares outstanding at the 8,920p close on 7 August 2026)
Enterprise value	~£51.1bn (market cap ~£43.4bn + total borrowings and lease liabilities £11,718m − cash and cash equivalents £3,949m per the FY2025 balance sheet)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~37.4x on FY2025 statutory basic EPS of 238.4p, or ~31.9x on trailing-twelve-month statutory EPS of 279.5p (H1 2026 163.8p plus derived H2 2025 115.7p). On FY2025 adjusted EPS of 420.6p the multiple is ~21.2x
P/E (forward)	~18.7x (8,920p / consensus FY2026 adjusted EPS of 478.0p). This is a consensus estimate compiled from 12 analysts and published on LSEG's own investor-relations consensus page dated 13 July 2026, not company guidance
P/S (TTM)	~4.5x (market cap ~£43.4bn / trailing-twelve-month total income including recoveries of £9,659m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~11.7x (enterprise value ~£51.1bn / FY2025 reported EBITDA of £4,365m, being statutory operating profit £2,127m plus statutory depreciation, amortisation and impairment of £2,238m, which ties to LSEG's own reported EBITDA figure). On adjusted EBITDA of £4,523m the multiple is ~11.3x
P/FCF	~16.5x (market cap ~£43.4bn / free cash flow £2,637m; FCF = operating cash flow £3,622m − capital expenditure £985m per the FY2025 cash flow statement, being £861m for intangible assets and £124m for property, plant and equipment)
52-week high	10,140p
52-week low	6,684p
Short interest (% of float)	Not published for this period — the FCA replaced individual net short position disclosure with anonymised aggregate reporting on 13 July 2026, and no individual position is now published for LSEG. Aggregate data can be checked on the FCA short-selling disclosure pages
Days to cover	Not meaningful — follows directly from the absence of a published individual short position under the new UK regime

7. What Are They Building

Distribution through AI platforms. LSEG's answer to the disintermediation question is to be inside the AI tools rather than displaced by them. Its Model Context Protocol server launched in December 2025 and had over 200 customers engaged by the half-year results in July 2026, up from 90 connected plus 64 onboarding at the first-quarter update. Distribution partnerships announced through late 2025 and 2026 include Snowflake Cortex, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon Quick and Google Gemini. Inside Workspace, AI Search reached 17,000 active users by the half year and AI Deep Research is scaling from a base of around 1,600 users.

The Microsoft partnership. The ten-year agreement signed in December 2022, under which Microsoft holds roughly 4% of LSEG, has produced Workspace inside Microsoft Teams, Copilot integration, Microsoft 365 add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint, the Open Directory product with more than 50 institutional customers live or onboarding by May 2026, and the replatforming of the Autex trade-routing product onto Azure for around 1,600 brokers and asset managers.

Digital market infrastructure. LCH DigitalAssetClear went live in May 2025 clearing Bitcoin index derivatives traded on GFO-X. The Azure-powered Digital Markets Infrastructure platform for tokenised assets launched in September 2025 and executed its first private-funds transaction. The London Stock Exchange became the first approved operator of a Private Securities Market under the FCA's PISCES regime, with the first trade in the first quarter of 2026. The Digital Settlement House, announced on 15 January 2026, went live in the second quarter.

Trading and index expansion. LSE 24, announced on 21 July 2026, is a near-24-hour overnight venue trading from 5pm to 7:50am London time, initially covering around 2,600 exchange-traded products, with client testing planned by the end of 2026 and formal launch in the first half of 2027 subject to regulatory approval. FTSE Russell is extending its US methodology worldwide with the Russell 9000 Global Index and moving into private markets through the FTSE StepStone indices. In post trade, eleven global banks bought a 20% stake in Post Trade Solutions for £170m in October 2025, TradeAgent launched in March 2026 and RepoAgent in November 2025.

8. Competitive Position

Market capitalisations below were taken at the close on 7 August 2026.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
S&P Global (SPGI)	$120.3bn	FY2025 revenue $15,336m, competing in data and analytics through Market Intelligence and in indices through S&P Dow Jones Indices
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)	$84.4bn	FY2025 revenue $9,931m across exchanges, fixed income and data services and mortgage technology
Nasdaq (NDAQ)	$52.9bn	FY2025 net revenue above $5.2bn, of which $4.0bn was solutions revenue
Deutsche Börse (DB1)	€49.4bn	FY2025 net revenue of approximately €5.2bn, a record year, and owner of the Eurex clearing house that stands to benefit from EU active account rules
MSCI	$40.9bn	FY2025 revenue $3.13bn, the direct index competitor to FTSE Russell
FactSet (FDS)	$10.2bn	Trailing-twelve-month revenue of approximately $2.44bn in workstation and data feeds
Bloomberg (private)	Not listed — privately held	Third-party estimates put 2025 revenue at roughly $15bn; Bloomberg publishes no official financials and remains the terminal-market incumbent

LSEG's own competitive disclosure is more precise than share-of-revenue comparisons. It claims the number one position in real-time data at roughly twice the size of the second player, number two in financial desktops, number three in benchmarks and indices with a 17% to 19% share of a £4bn to £6bn market, number one in KYC and AML screening but with only a 4% to 6% share of a £9bn to £10bn market, and a 20% to 22% share of a £12bn to £17bn markets-infrastructure pool. Tradeweb, in which LSEG holds a 50.9% economic interest and 90% of voting power, carries a market capitalisation of about $22.4bn in its own right.

9. Insider Activity

Chief executive David Schwimmer has led LSEG since 2018 and remains in post; there has been no chief executive change, and he presented the half-year results on 30 July 2026. Michel-Alain Proch has been chief financial officer since February 2024 and Don Robert CBE remains Chair, although press reporting has speculated about eventual succession following the appointment of Dame Elizabeth Corley as a non-executive director in May 2025. Dominic Blakemore and Martin Brand both stepped down from the board after the April 2026 annual general meeting. Disclosed director and PDMR dealings over the trailing twelve months are limited to four transactions, three of which are mechanical sales to settle tax on vested awards rather than discretionary disposals.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
David Schwimmer (CEO)	18 Mar 2026	Sell	4,600	£87.78	£403,782	Tax settlement following award vesting
David Schwimmer (CEO)	17 Mar 2026	Sell	8,863	£87.33	£773,961	Tax settlement following award vesting
Michel-Alain Proch (CFO)	12 Mar 2026	Sell	5,304	£85.57	£453,852	Tax settlement after 11,277 shares vested under the Restricted Share Award Plan 2018
Michel-Alain Proch (CFO)	19 Sep 2025	Buy	4,676	£82.74	£386,913	Regular plan purchase

Sourced from LSEG regulatory announcements as aggregated on the Hargreaves Lansdown director-deals page, which covers a rolling twelve-month window. No open-market discretionary buying or selling by the chief executive or Chair was disclosed in the period.

10. Key Risks

• Activist overhang and structural uncertainty: Elliott Management built a stake below the 3% disclosure threshold reported on 11 February 2026 and pushed for a portfolio review covering the data business, the exchange and the Tradeweb stake, plus a £5bn buyback. LSEG responded with £3bn; Elliott said on 27 February 2026 that further value-enhancing actions remained available, so the pressure for divestment or simplification has not been resolved.
• AI disintermediation of the data franchise: the risk that generative AI tools substitute for parts of the data and workflow value chain was named as context for the share price underperformance into early 2026. Management's counter is that around 98% of revenue rests on proprietary data and infrastructure, but any deceleration in annualised subscription value growth would revive the debate quickly.
• EU regulatory pressure on euro clearing: the EMIR 3.0 Active Account Requirement has applied since 24 June 2025, with regulatory technical standards effective 26 February 2026, an ESMA supervisory briefing published on 20 February 2026 and first mandatory reporting due by the end of July 2026. It is designed to shift euro-denominated interest-rate derivative clearing toward EU central counterparties, directly targeting LCH's more than 90% share.
• Foreign exchange translation: 58% of FY2025 total income was denominated in US dollars against only 16% in sterling. LSEG discloses that a ten-cent devaluation in the dollar against sterling reduces total income excluding recoveries by roughly 4.0% and EBITDA by roughly 4.5%. Currency reduced reported FY2025 income growth by 1.8 percentage points.
• Competitive intensity and index fee pressure: Bloomberg remains the larger terminal incumbent, FTSE Russell is the third-placed index provider in a market where passive-manager consolidation squeezes licensing fees, and Risk Intelligence competes with RELX, Dow Jones and Moody's from a low share base.
• Leverage rising alongside capital return: operating net debt to adjusted EBITDA rose to 1.8 times at 31 December 2025 from 1.7 times a year earlier, while the group simultaneously committed to a £3bn buyback through February 2027 and £1.2bn of cash for the SwapClear revenue surplus. Continued repurchases without matching EBITDA growth would push leverage toward the upper end of the 1.5 to 2.5 times target range.
• Concentration in the Tradeweb stake: LSEG's 50.9% economic interest in a separately listed business worth around $22.4bn is both a material component of group value and a source of minority-interest drag on group earnings, with adjusted non-controlling interest of £334m in FY2025. Its market value moved several billion dollars within weeks during mid-2026.
• Execution risk across a crowded product pipeline: the Model Context Protocol rollout, Workspace AI Search and Deep Research, LSE 24, the Digital Settlement House and continued Post Trade Solutions build-out are all in flight simultaneously, against expectations raised by two consecutive quarters of beat-and-raise results.

11. Recent Developments

• 11 Feb 2026 — Elliott Management stake reported. Press reporting confirmed that Elliott had built a position in LSEG below the UK's 3% mandatory disclosure threshold, amid concerns about AI disruption and a slowdown in listings. The size of the stake was not disclosed.
• 18 Feb 2026 — Elliott presses for a portfolio review and a larger buyback. Reporting indicated Elliott wanted a full review covering the data business, exchange operations and the Tradeweb stake, together with a £5bn buyback over twelve months.
• 25 Feb 2026 — Elliott rules out a break-up or a New York listing move. Following talks with UK government officials, Elliott confirmed it would not push for a break-up of the London Stock Exchange business or a shift of the listing to New York. The shares closed up 1.5% at 7,794p.
• 26 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results and a new £3bn buyback. Total income excluding recoveries rose 7.1% organically to £8,986m, adjusted EPS rose 15.7% to 420.6p and the full-year dividend rose 15.4% to 150.0p. A £3bn buyback targeted for completion by February 2027 was announced alongside a new 2027 to 2029 medium-term framework.
• 27 Feb 2026 — Elliott says more can be done. Despite the £3bn response, Elliott stated publicly that there remained an opportunity for further value-enhancing actions, keeping the structural question open.
• 23 Apr 2026 — first-quarter trading update and AGM. Record quarterly total income excluding recoveries of £2,415m, up 9.8% organically, with management guiding to the upper half of the 6.5% to 7.5% growth range. £1.1bn of buybacks were completed in the quarter at an average price of £84.59.
• 02 Jun 2026 — capital reduction completed. Following High Court approval and shareholder authorisation at the April AGM, LSEG cancelled £977.8m of share premium to increase distributable reserves supporting future dividends and buybacks. Share count and ordinary share capital were unaffected.
• 21 Jul 2026 — LSE 24 overnight venue announced. A near-24-hour trading platform running from 5pm to 7:50am London time, initially for around 2,600 exchange-traded products, with client testing from late 2026 and launch in the first half of 2027 subject to regulatory approval.
• 30 Jul 2026 — half-year results and a guidance raise. Total income excluding recoveries rose 8.4% organically to £4,799m, adjusted EPS rose 17.2% to 244.9p, the adjusted EBITDA margin improved 320 basis points to 52.7% and the interim dividend rose 17.0% to 55.0p. FY2026 guidance was raised to 7.0% to 7.5% organic income growth and roughly 100 basis points of margin improvement. A record £2.1bn was returned via buybacks in the half.
• 30 Jul 2026 — new £700m buyback tranche launched. Commencing immediately after the half-year results and running to no later than 6 November 2026, as part of the wider programme targeted for completion by February 2027.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 13 Aug 2026 — ex-dividend date for the 55.0p 2026 interim dividend
• 14 Aug 2026 — record date for the 2026 interim dividend
• 16 Sep 2026 — payment date for the 55.0p 2026 interim dividend
• 23 Sep 2026 — LSEG Funding and Growth Forum 2026, held at the London Stock Exchange
• 22 Oct 2026 — third-quarter 2026 trading statement, confirmed on LSEG's published financial calendar
• 06 Nov 2026 — latest date by which the current £700m buyback tranche must complete
• 30 Nov 2026 — phase two of the FCA's revised UK short-selling regime commences, introducing bulk reporting functionality
• 31 Dec 2026 — financial year end
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 preliminary results, and the target date for completing the £3bn buyback programme. The FY2025 equivalent was published on 26 February 2026
• Expected H1 2027 — formal launch of the LSE 24 overnight trading venue, subject to regulatory approval, following client testing from late 2026

LSEG has not yet published a confirmed date for its FY2026 preliminary results or the 2027 annual general meeting; the 2026 AGM was held on 23 April 2026. Macro releases that move the whole sector are listed on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and discussion of individual names continues in the ChartsView Forum.

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