London Stock Exchange Group plc: Interim results

London Stock Exchange Group PLC

30 July 2026

 

London Stock Exchange Group plc

Interim results for six months ended 30 June 2026

Record first half financial performance, guidance raised, £2.1 billion share buybacks completed; AI monetisation to sustain long-term growth

David Schwimmer, CEO said:

"We have delivered a record first half performance, once again demonstrating our ability to grow and create value in any market environment. We have driven growth across all of our businesses through continued product innovation and a strong focus on customer partnership.

"Growth in our subscription businesses is accelerating. Our LSEG Everywhere data strategy is making great progress in a dynamic market environment. AI in financial services will drive enormous value, but comes with significant challenges for customers. We are the partner to help them address those challenges: we have the infrastructure, the proprietary data, the trust, the regulatory expertise and the institutional history. This is already evident in the complex and multi-layered data and AI solutions we are engaged on. Thousands of Workspace customers are now using AI Search, with very positive feedback.

"Our Markets businesses had an exceptional first half, achieving double-digit growth through sustained investment. With our plans for LSE 24 and growing momentum of transactions on the Private Securities Market, we are opening up significant new market opportunities.

"We are combining all of this innovation with a material improvement to margins and exceptional cash flow growth - enabling us to return a record £2.1 billion to shareholders via share buybacks in the first half with a further £1.4 billion to come, starting today. With an exciting product pipeline and deep customer engagement on AI, the business has never been better positioned for future growth."

Six months ending 30 June, reported	2026 £m	2025 £m	Variance %		Organic constant currency variance %
Total income (excl. recoveries)	4,799	4,489	6.9%		8.4%
Recoveries1	186	183	1.6%		3.6%
Total income (incl. recoveries)	4,985	4,672	6.7%		8.3%
Reported
EBITDA	2,515	2,155	16.7%
Operating profit	1,428	1,061	34.6%
Profit before tax	1,278	991	29.0%
Basic earnings per share (p)	163.8	122.7	33.5%
Dividends per share (p)	55.0	47.0	17.0%
Adjusted2
Operating expenses before depreciation, amortisation and impairment	(1,882)	(1,847)	1.9%		4.6%
EBITDA	2,527	2,223	13.7%		14.1%
EBITDA margin	52.7%	49.5%
Operating profit	2,008	1,726	16.3%		16.6%
Earnings per share (p)	244.9	208.9	17.2%

Financial highlights
(all growth rates relate to H1 and are expressed on an organic, constant currency basis, unless otherwise stated)
·	Total income (excl. recoveries) +8.4%; +6.9% on a reported basis
·	Broad-based growth: Data & Analytics +5.1%; FTSE Russell +9.1%; Risk Intelligence +9.7%; Markets +11.9%
·	All subscription business KPIs improving: ASV3 growth at June 2026 +6.1%; revenue retention rate at 92.8%; rolling 12-months gross sales of £482 million; NPVI4 at 25.0%
·	Significant margin improvement: Adjusted EBITDA +14.1%, margin +320bps, constant currency margin +260bps, of which 120bps is underlying and 140bps relates to the change in the SwapClear revenue share agreement in H2 2025. EBITDA +16.7% on a reported basis
·	Strong adjusted earnings growth: Adjusted EPS +17.2% at actual rates to 244.9p, driven by revenue growth and increased efficiency. Reported EPS +33.5%
·	Record cash generation: Equity free cash flow £1.2 billion and equity free cash flow per share of 242p, up 37.0% on a reported basis

Strategic progress
·	LSEG Everywhere: significant progress in providing customers access to AI-ready data via MCP5, multi-cloud environments or directly integrated into customer AI stacks, with over 200 customers engaged. New partnerships with Amazon Quick and Google Gemini
·	Major enhancements to Workspace: roll-out of AI Search with 17,000 active users, deeper integration with Microsoft Copilot, over 20 customers now onboarded on Open Directory
·	Unprecedented rate of innovation in Markets: first Private Securities Markets transactions, LSE 24 launch planned, Digital Securities Depository collaboration with HSBC on DIGIT
·	Significant shareholder returns: a record £2.1 billion returned via buybacks in H1, with a further £1.35 billion planned to be completed by Feb 2027; interim dividend +17.0% to 55.0p per share6, to be paid on 16 September 2026 to all shareholders on the share register at the record date of 14 August 2026. The ex-dividend date is 13 August 2026

2026 guidance - EBITDA margin guidance raised
·	Organic constant currency growth in total income (excl. recoveries) raised to 7.0-7.5% (initially 6.5%-7.5%), including an acceleration in our subscription businesses' organic growth
·	Constant currency EBITDA margin: guidance raised from +80-100 bps to around 100 bps
·	Capex intensity c. 9.5%
·	Equity free cash flow at least £2.7 billion
·	Underlying effective tax rate 24-25%

This release contains revenues, costs, earnings and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the six months ended 30 June 2026. Constant currency variances are calculated on the basis of consistent FX rates applied across the current and prior year period (GBP:USD 1.318 GBP:EUR 1.168). Organic growth is calculated on a constant currency basis, adjusting the results to remove disposals from the entirety of the current and prior year periods, and by including acquisitions from the date of acquisition with a comparable adjustment to the prior year.  Within the financial information and tables presented, certain columns and rows may not add due to the use of rounded numbers for disclosure purposes.

¹ Recoveries mainly relate to fees for third-party content, such as exchange data, that is distributed directly to customers.

² The Group reports adjusted operating expenses before depreciation, amortisation and impairment, adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and impairment (EBITDA), adjusted depreciation, amortisation and impairment, adjusted operating profit, adjusted basic earnings per share (EPS) and free cash flow. These measures are not measures of performance under IFRS and should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, IFRS measures of financial performance and liquidity. Adjusted performance measures provide supplemental data relevant to an understanding of the Group's financial performance and exclude non-underlying items of income and expense that are material by their size and/or nature. Non-underlying items include: amortisation and impairment of goodwill and other purchased intangible assets, incremental amortisation and impairment of the fair value adjustments of intangible assets recognised as a result of acquisitions, tax on non-underlying items and other income or expenses not considered to drive the operating results of the Group (including transaction, integration and separation costs related to acquisitions and disposals of businesses), as well as restructuring costs.

³ Annual Subscription Value ('ASV') metric is based on subscription revenues in Data & Analytics, FTSE Russell, Risk Intelligence and data solutions within Markets. Organic, constant currency variance.

⁶ New Product Vitality Index provides the proportion of revenue derived from products launched or enhanced in the last five years.

⁵ Model Context Protocol.

⁶ ISIN: GB00B0SWJX34; TIDM: LSEG.

Interim results investor and analyst presentation, webcast and conference call:

David Schwimmer (Chief Executive Officer) and Michel-Alain Proch (Chief Financial Officer) will host a webcast presentation on LSEG's 2026 interim results for analysts and institutional shareholders today at 10:00am (UK time). This will be followed by the opportunity to ask questions via the conference call line.

To access the webcast or telephone conference call please register in advance using the following link: https://www.lsegissuerservices.com/spark-insights/LondonStockExchangeGroup/events/5eabe15a-81e0-4928-bc7f-548eee012438/lseg-h1-2026-interim-results

To ask a question live you will need to register for the telephone conference call here:

https://registrations.events/direct/LON35022284

Presentation slides can be viewed at http://www.lseg.com/en/investor-relations

The interim results for the six months ended June 2026 have been submitted in full unedited text to the Financial Conduct Authority's National Storage Mechanism and will be available shortly for inspection at https://data.fca.org.uk/#/nsm/nationalstoragemechanism.

The results are also available in full on the corporate website at https://www.lseg.com/en/investor-relations/financial-results/.

Contacts: London Stock Exchange Group plc

Investors
Peregrine Riviere / Chris Turner Neha Kasabia / Sharon Muzikarova	[e-mail]
Media	[phone]
Lucie Holloway / Rhiannon Davies	[e-mail]

Additional information can be found at www.lseg.com.

 

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