London Stock Exchange Group H1 2025 Earnings Report

London Stock Exchange Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 208.90
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

London Stock Exchange Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

London Stock Exchange Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 7/31/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, July 31, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00AM ET

LSEG is a leading global financial markets infrastructure and data provider that operates connected businesses to serve customers across the entire financial markets value chain. With capabilities in data, indices and analytics, capital formation, trade execution, clearing and risk management, we operate at the heart of the world’s financial ecosystem and enable the sustainable growth and stability of our customers and their communities. Together, our five business divisions – Data and Analytics, FTSE Russell, Risk Intelligence, Capital Markets and Post Trade – offer customers seamless access to global financial markets, across the trading lifecycle. LSEG is headquartered in London and has a major presence throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and emerging markets.

London Stock Exchange Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Revenues grew 8.7% in H1 with all businesses contributing, delivering 150 basis points of margin expansion to 49.5% EBITDA and driving 20%+ adjusted EPS growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Returned £1 billion in buybacks and dividends in H1 and announced an additional £1 billion buyback alongside a 15% interim dividend increase, while maintaining M&A optionality.
• Positive Sentiment: Organic constant currency income grew 7.8%, exceeding guidance, with double-digit growth in risk intelligence and markets and solid contributions across Data & Analytics and FTSE Russell.
• Positive Sentiment: Disciplined cost control reduced resource costs by 90 basis points, lowered capital intensity to 9.5% of income, and raised full-year EBITDA margin guidance by 75–100 basis points.
• Neutral Sentiment: H1 growth faced a 1.9% FX headwind and ASV slowed to 5.8% due to desktop migration and UBS partnership effects, although rising usage-based revenues are not captured by ASV.

Presentation

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Good morning, and welcome to our first half twenty twenty five results. I'm joined by Michel Alain Proche, MAP, our CFO and by Peregrine Riviere, Head of Investor Relations. We've had a very good start to the year, continuing our strong and consistent track record of growth. Revenues grew 8.7% with all businesses contributing positively. Our focus on efficient and scalable growth is paying off with 150 basis points of margin expansion, taking EBITDA margins to 49.5%.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

That operational leverage continued down the P and L with adjusted EPS growing a little over 20%. Cash conversion remains strong. We returned GBP 1,000,000,000 in buybacks and dividends to shareholders in the first half, while still investing in future growth and maintaining optionality around bolt on M and A. And today, we've announced a further £1,000,000,000 buyback in the second half and a 15% increase in our interim dividend, and we are raising our margin guidance. This performance is a direct consequence of our strategy and execution.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The investments we're making are driving growth today and are also building the capabilities and platforms for future growth. We're accelerating our high level of product innovation, consistently rolling out new products. We are deepening our customer relationships, building strategic partnerships that have our data, insights and solutions at their core. And we continue to drive greater efficiency and operational leverage through the ongoing transformation of our business and application of new tools, including AI. I'll say more about the strong commercial and strategic progress we're making in a moment.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But first, I'll hand over to Matt to discuss our financial performance in more detail.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with the group growth for the quarter and semester. Our organic constant currency income growth for H1 was 7.8%. This growth was consistent across Q1 and Q2. On a reported basis, our income growth is 6.8%, including the impact of FX and M and A.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Overall, FX was a 1.9 headwind in H1. As you can see, growth across all prior six quarters has been consistently strong. Looking now by division, you can see growth across all four businesses in H1. Data and Analytics and FTSE Russell maintained a solid performance throughout the first half, and our risk intelligence and market businesses grew at double digit rates. The weakness in the dollar has been a headwind to reported growth in all divisions.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Markets reported growth includes the benefit of the acquisition of ICD by Tradeweb in August 2024. There is one last point to call out on our reporting. Effective from H1 twenty twenty five, certain revenue items have been reallocated, a total of GBP 83,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty five and GBP 79,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty four. This is to better reflect how these businesses are managed operationally and has no impact on group level revenues. Details of this are set out in the appendix of this presentation and in our earnings release.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Now let's look at DNA in more detail. There was a good performance from Workflows with organic growth of 3.3%. We sunset ICON as planned at the end of H1, and it has been delivered on time and on budget. We continue to make significant investment in our workspace platform that David will later detail with innovation driving around 250 enhancement in h one. Data and feeds maintain its good momentum with organic growth of 6.6%.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We continue to broaden our data sets. And in h one, we added company fundamentals data onto our data as a service platform. Analytics has had a very strong first half with 8.2% organic growth accelerating in q two. There has been a clear upward trajectory of this business over recent quarters. Sales of our new AI enhanced analytics API has helped drive the growth here.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Turning to the next slide. In FTSE Russell, we have continued to see strong demand for our flagship equity indices and benchmarks, which have supported good growth in our subscription business even against a very strong comparable period. We also announced our partnership with Stepstone to jointly develop private asset indices and data analytics product, and we launched 25 ETF across our equity franchise, which is a record. As I mentioned previously, this half, we have seen the impact of a mandate loss from the 2024. Excluding this, Asset Based growth would have been mid single digit rather than the flat performance we reported in Q2.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Price increase in this business occur upon renewal, which are spread over the year. Looking into h two, we see fewer renewals than usual. This is a function of contract timing, but it mean that there will be a little less contribution from pricing to subscription growth. Risk Intelligence had another excellent half of double digit growth, which continues to be driven by WorldCheck. Growth in digital identity and fraud has also been strong, where our new product launches have helped drive good volumes momentum.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Looking now at our ASV metric on the next slide. ASV growth was 5.8% as we exited Q2 compared to 6.4 percent three months earlier. The ICON to workspace migration is one of the largest ever desktop migrations. And inevitably, this quarter was a period of adjustment as migrating customers clean up their subscription. We have also seen the expected competitive reaction to our improved product and commercial performance.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Across our subscription businesses, our gross sales remained strong, but they have been partly offset by higher cancellation for these two reasons. Going into Q3, ASV growth will slightly impacted by the strategic partnership that we signed with UBS and announced last week. This is a very valuable long term arrangement, and it also draws the line once and for all under the Credit Suisse headwind, bringing the last effects to a close in Q3. We expect to see ASV move up around the turn of the year. But as we have said before, we would not rely too heavily on ASV as a measure of progress.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Indeed, we expect usage based revenue models to increase as it is already happening in our analytics and risk intelligence businesses. And these revenues are not captured by ASV, so it may become less and less relevant as a metric in the future. Markets had a strong half with double digit growth in Tradeweb, FX and OTC derivative. Growth was driven by elevated volumes across our markets businesses. Within equities, we have seen good volume driven growth in secondary markets, while the global primary market environment remains relatively subdued.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Fixed income had another exceptional performance with 17.9% growth in H1. Tradeweb is continuing to successfully execute on their strategy while benefiting from favorable market conditions across all their asset classes. The integration of ICD is doing well. Turning to FX. We delivered growth of 13%, continuing the positive trend.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Market volatility pushed volume up 14%, and we saw particular strengths in our matching spot and forward businesses. In OTC derivative, we drove broad based growth across asset classes. SwapClear saw strong growth with interest rate swap notional volumes up 15%, and ForexClear notional volumes were up 33%. The development of our post trade solution business is picking up pace, and we have seen demand from both new and existing customer for this service. We onboarded over 30 new customers across the product suite, and we have seen double digit growth in h one.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The minus 9.8 growth in securities and reporting does not reflect the underlying performance, Given the impact of the Euronext exit, which we previously confirmed would see a circa €30,000,000 drag in the 2025. Stripping out this impact, H1 growth is 10%, which includes strong growth in RepoClear. Moving now from revenue to the rest of the p and l on the next slide. I will go into OpEx and margin in a bit more detail on the following slide. I have spoken before about operating leverage.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And the overall message here is that you can now really see us continuing to deliver it. The strong top line growth of 7.8% translate into higher levels of adjusted EBITDA growth at 11.2%, AOP growth of 13.4% and APS growth of 21.8, all on an organic constant currency basis. This is operating leverage in action. Looking at the cost base in more detail on the next slide. This looks at both cost of sales and operating expenses.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Cost of sales grew by 4.9%, a slower pace than the 7.8% income growth we reported. This is largely due to the revenue mix in our divisions. And also in FTSE also, last year's mandate loss that I already mentioned has reduced revenue share payments. Turning now to operating expenses. Staff costs, in conjunction with third party services, reflects the total people resources we employ across our organization.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The resource equation, which look at resource cost as a percentage of total income excluding recoveries, has improved by 90 basis points. This has been driven by disciplined cost control and our workforce in sourcing program, which is going well. Our total headcount is slightly decreasing, and we have increased the percentage of our internal workforce to 72%, reducing our external headcount by approximately 1,500 and adding over 600 permanent employees compared to h one twenty twenty four, mostly in engineering. And as we are doing this, we are raising the bar on talent. The reduction in our other cost line is mainly driven by ongoing optimization of our property portfolio and travel expenses.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

This is another example of us delivering operating leverage with total operating expenses increasing by 4.2% compared to income growth of 7.8%. Let's now turn to the next slide, where we bridge the effects of cost drivers on our EBITDA margin rate. Starting from the left, the 48.5% is the reported margin for H1 twenty twenty four. Then there are last year's adjusting FX factors, namely embedded derivative and a translational impact. All in, it gets you to a comparable baseline of 48.1% for H1 twenty twenty four.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Next, you can see the contribution to margin from each cost line on a constant currency basis. So net benefit to margin from people resource cost leverage is a 100 basis point improvement and from IT cost, another 10 basis point benefit. The 40 basis point from other included 20 basis point improvement in cost of sales due to the reduced revenue share payments in FTSE also and 20 basis point benefit from the optimization of our property and travel expense, as I just mentioned. Taking these controllable movements together shows our very strong underlying margin improvement of 150 basis points for H1. So that brings us to an underlying margin for H1 of forty nine point six percent.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

There is a net impact of 10 basis points from M and D derivative and translational FX, and that gets you to our reported 49.5%. So in H1, we have delivered a very strong margin progression, which make us confident of reaching our improved guidance for the year of 75 to 100 basis point improvement. One more point that I would like to make is that we are not only raising the floor of our guidance, but we will be executing it while absorbing in H2 the 60 basis point negative impact of the GBP €27,000,000 clear dividend that we received last year, but that obviously, we won't be receiving this year anymore as we sold our stake in Euroclear, an important point while looking at the H2 margin improvement. Turning now to net finance expense. You can see that adjusted net finance expense was $66,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty five compared to $112,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty four.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

This represents a $46,000,000 year on year reduction. This decrease includes three elements: first, a $23,000,000 credit from the bond tender offer we completed in March 2, a gain of 12,000,000 coming from the discontinuance of a U. S. Dollar net investment hedge. And finally, the balance come from a better management of the group debt structure, aka €11,000,000 improvement versus last year.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

There will be a small headwind in H2 from additional interest cost from the share buyback this year. Taking this into account, for the full year 2025, I expect the total adjusted net finance expense to be slightly above €200,000,000 On tax, on the next slide, the effective tax rate decreased from 24.8% to 24%. This 80 basis point improvement puts us in a good position to meet our guidance of 24% to 25% for the full year. APS was 208.9p in H1 twenty twenty five. It represents a 20.1% year on year increase.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

On APS, it's helpful to take a multiyear view given the year to year noise from FX. This slide shows our strong continuing earnings accretion with 11% compound growth since the 2021. And in the last year, we have seen a significant acceleration at 20%, well ahead of revenue growth, which clearly demonstrates the strong improvement in underlying profitability. And we have achieved this double digit earnings growth while continuing to invest in our business. Now looking at non underlying items.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The main point to note here is that we have massively reduced our integration cost by more than 50% compared to last year as we previously committed. The Refinitiv integration is completed and the only cost posted in non underlying going forward relate to our engineering contractor internalization program that I already mentioned and the deployment of a single ERP throughout LSAG. These two programs will be completed by 2027. Let's turn now to cash flow. We have continued to increase our operating cash flow, generating $281,000,000 more compared to the 2024.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And we were able to materialize all of this increase in operating cash flow into equity free cash flow. CapEx was $424,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty five. This represents 9.5% of total income and a 30,000,000 year on year reduction due to lower costs related to the Refinitiv transaction and an improved investment control process. We are fully in line with our guidance to reduce our capital intensity to approximately 10% in 2025. We have a good line of sight to it declining further as per our medium term guidance.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

As a result of this discipline, equity free cash flow shows really strong growth of $284,000,000 which is a 43.6% year on year improvement. As you can see, L SEG is highly cash generative. And with higher margins and lower capital intensity, it will become even more so. We continue to be very active in our allocation of cash, as you can see from this slide. First, the dividend.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The interim dividend is increasing 15% to $0.47 in line with our dividend policy, and it's representing approximately $250,000,000 Second, buybacks. We returned $500,000,000 via buybacks in H1, and we plan to execute up to a further $1,000,000,000 share buyback in the second half of the year. We ended the period with a leverage of 1.6x net debt to EBITDA, which is almost at the bottom of our guided range. This give us significant financial flexibility to return surplus capital to our shareholders as well as invest in M and A opportunities across our business that makes sense both strategically and financially as we have always done. The next slide summarize our H1 performance versus our 2025 guidance.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Starting with revenue. H1 organic growth of 7.8% exceeds the upper end of our 6.5% to 7.5% guidance for 2025. On the basis of this performance, we are very confident that we can deliver on our revenue guidance for the full year. If our transactional businesses continue to perform well, our position related to the range can obviously improve further. Next to margin.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

I have spoken already about the h one performance, which exceed our guidance for 2025. We are now raising our EBITDA margin guidance for 2025 to a 75 to 100 basis point improvement, all this while absorbing a 30 basis point impact on the year following the end of the Euroclear dividend that I mentioned. This demonstrates the progress we have made and our conviction in our capacity of execution. Thirdly, we are bringing down our capital intensity as planned, and we are on track to meet our full year guidance of around 10% of income in 2025. And finally, we are deploying our strong equity free cash flow for growth and shareholder returns.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And as I have mentioned, this includes a new $1,000,000,000 buyback. So in conclusion, we are very confident that we will deliver on all our promises for 2025 and in the medium term. We have a clear plan, and we are very focused on executing it. Now let me hand back to David to talk about our strategic and operational progress.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you, Matt. This chart puts our recent performance in context. Despite big swings in capital markets and the global economy, we have delivered strong and consistent growth. We're not immune to economic conditions, but the natural offsets in our activities give our business model an all weather nature. You can also see how disciplined delivery of our strategy over the last few years has accelerated growth from mid single digits to high single digit growth.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Almost three quarters of our revenues are recurring in nature. Subscriptions in Data and Analytics, FTSE Russell and Risk Intelligence and member fees and data sales in our markets businesses. These businesses have very high retention rates, reflecting the quality of our offering and the importance of the services to our customers. Around a quarter of our revenues are transactional in nature, arising largely from the execution and clearing solutions we provide to customers when they are investing capital and managing risk. The double digit growth in these revenues over the last five years speaks to the structural nature of this growth and the innovation we have driven across markets, whether it is supporting electronification in fixed income trading, introducing new FX trading protocols like forward first fixing or working with the industry to provide greater capital efficiency in post trade.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We are driving structural growth across our transactional businesses. It speaks to the quality of our sales execution that our pipeline of new business continues to grow, and we have not seen any material change in key metrics such as average deal size or length of sales cycle. Matt highlighted the short term impact of competitor activity just now, but looking out, our continued investment and high pace of product innovation position us well to strongly compete and continue taking share. An example, in Workflows, we displaced almost 100 users at a major commodities trading firm. That was driven by our superior market data, news and commodity specific research.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In data and feeds, we won a highly competitive process to provide a global hedge fund with data and insights powering new AI driven trading models. Central to this success was our leadership in news, both the breadth of our offering and the investment we've made in making it machine readable and AI ready. We also agreed a new multiyear data access agreement with UBS. That's a really strong partnership based on the adoption of our solutions across the full range of UBS' activities globally. We expect to see good multiyear growth from the relationship.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

This slide highlights four of the structural growth drivers for our business and how they have evolved over the last few years. It's a good way to think about the opportunities we have in front of us. We've seen generative AI move into mass adoption and the rise of agentic applications. While cloud distribution is not new, customers increasingly want to manage their data on cloud based platforms too. Regulation has become more uncertain.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And in some of our customer segments, the pace of new regulations has slowed, creating opportunities for clients to think more strategically about their businesses. The volatile geopolitical backdrop and the increasing sophistication of financial fraud have brought risk management to the fore. And we've seen the emergence of new digital asset classes, attracting new participants and building new pools of liquidity that as they mature, require more robust, regulated infrastructure. As we execute and take advantage of these tailwinds, we are very intentionally creating a portfolio of growth opportunities that will realize near, medium and long term. As you've seen from today's results, the transformation of our business is driving growth today.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Through the investment we are making in our content and capabilities, we are also securing new growth over the medium term. I'll talk through a few examples of that shortly. And we are also building infrastructure and partnerships to establish the platforms for future growth that will position us to win in the medium to longer term. Workflows is a good example of these overlapping growth drivers in action. I'll start with what is driving growth today.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In June, we finished one of the largest financial services workflow migrations in history, moving more than 350,000 users onto Workspace and establishing a common platform for innovation and growth. Delivering that took a great deal of focus and effort from our workflows, sales and customer support teams, particularly in Q2. Completion of the migration frees up capacity we can now reallocate to growth. Workspace itself continues to evolve at pace with hundreds of updates in the first half. We increased our private markets data by two thirds and are on track to almost double coverage by the end of the year.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We furthered Workspace's leadership in news, expanded bilateral trading capabilities into metals and bonds and added new AI driven commodities content. Our clients recognize the continuous improvement with the average user spending 15% more time on Workspace in q two. Customers tell us they want more seamless workflows with interoperable datasets and less switching between applications. This is exactly what we are building in partnership with Microsoft. The first iteration of our Workspace for Teams application is now live with target customers, and we will be adding new functionalities and expanding the customer rollout over time.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Integrating Workspace data into Teams enhances the discoverability of our data and insights by making them accessible in customers' existing Office three sixty five workflow. Using simple prompts in Teams chat, users can call up 20 different datasets with insights on bonds, equities, news, m and a league tables, and so on, and share this information with ease. In the same way we're constantly enhancing our workspace platform, we will continue to expand the capabilities of the Teams application, adding interoperability with Microsoft Copilot, functionality from meeting prep and other enhancements later this year. We also launched the first iteration of our Workspace add ins for Excel and PowerPoint. Focusing on the data and workflow needs of bankers, this uses novel Office three sixty five functionality to offer natural language formula building and automatic chart annotation.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We'll be expanding these capabilities to cover more of the investment management workflow in H2. These are powerful initiatives, but they do not exist in isolation. There's a natural sequence to our product delivery with each step unlocking the next evolution of our workflows offering. Without migrating users to the more modern and agile Workspace platform, there would be no Teams app. And without the Teams app, there would be no gateway to our Open Directory messaging function in Teams.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Following the really good progress made in h one, we are rolling out Open Directory to communities of users, giving them the ability to find, share, and discuss insights through Microsoft's Teams chat function. And we are not stopping there. The rest of this year and 2026, we'll see further enhancements to our Teams app, wider rollout of Open Directory, as well as the first agentic AI tools for Workspace and a natural language search experience. You've heard me speak many times before about our best in class data and analytics and the investment we are making to expand and deepen this further. Here's what the cumulative effect of that looks like in our fixed income data.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We've added more than 5,000,000 new instruments, taking our full dataset to over 21,000,000 instruments. It's qualitatively better too, with quicker security creation and more precise data on instrument pricing. We've launched new regulatory solutions such as FRTB and enhanced key data sets such as debt corporate actions. The integration between trading venues like Tradeweb and FTSE Russell's fixed income indices is much deeper. And we have significantly expanded the access to our fixed income data via Workspace or cloud environments like Snowflake.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

I've used fixed income in this example, but I could just have easily used equities, commodities or FX. This investment in our data is driving growth today and is increasingly recognized by our customers as a differentiator. We're also making it easier for customers to find, access and consume our data by continuing to partner with more cloud platforms. For example, following the success of putting our flagship pricing and reference data, DataScope Warehouse, into AWS last year, we expanded distribution to include Google BigQuery in the first half. Traditionally, customers would download our data via feed or file transfer, then use it on their own systems and platforms.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In recent years, they've been accessing data via the cloud before using it on their own system. Increasingly, we hear from customers that they want to use and manage data directly in the cloud, and they are looking to Lseg to provide the connectivity and tools to support that. One of the ways we're meeting this need is through the data as a service capabilities we're building with Microsoft. We added our company fundamental datasets to this platform in the first half. This is a massive and critical dataset, including financial statements, KPIs and other operating metrics for more than 100,000 companies.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

As well as further enhancements to our ESG and company fundamental data, we will start adding private company data from the second half. We will also begin rolling out data matching tools as part of our managed data services, establishing a strong platform for future growth. Our analytics business is a clear future example of our transformation and the value of the Microsoft partnership. Eighteen months ago, we had market leading models and analytics, but these were hard to use and delivered through a range of different platforms. Growth was okay, but the rich IP was under monetized.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In March 24, we consolidated hundreds of analytics into a single API, making it easy for customers to access and integrate with their workflows as well as discover analytics they probably didn't know we offer. Growth in 2024 was around 5%, with new sales strengthening towards the end of the year. Then in March, we made it easier for customers to adopt LSAG's analytics where they are working. For example, within Visual Studio Code. We'll be adding a number of new channels over the coming months.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In H2, we'll be introducing Lseg's proprietary analytics AI assistant. This will allow clients to drive their analysis with a simple written prompt and within seconds have this translated into action. This takes routine analytics tasks down from hours to seconds. And this all links to the release of modeling as a service, where we are enabling our customers to distribute their own models through our API, reaching new end customers and enhancing the power of our platform. So far in 2025, growth has accelerated to over 8%, and we are confident of continued good momentum.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Through our focus on innovation, openness and partnership, we have driven sustained growth in our centrally cleared OTC solutions, as shown in the five year growth rates on this slide. We see a similar opportunity for solutions in the uncleared space, and we're making good progress in delivering on this vision. The first half saw record growth in the use of our risk optimization tools, saving customers 1.7 times more capital than in the same period last year or around $7,000,000,000 per bank on an annualized basis. Volumes across our end to end service for uncleared swaps rose 73%, and we continue to expand our network, adding 3,500 new bilateral counterparty relationships in H1. The first half also saw good progress in building the platforms for future growth with the launch of U.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

S. Treasury futures clearing in partnership with FMX and the first trades cleared using our regulated clearing infrastructure for digital assets. Global fragmentation and geopolitical complexity continue to provide a tailwind to our risk intelligence business, which continues to deliver double digit growth. In the first half, we began pilots of a new, more flexible WorldCheck platform for our sanctions and anti money laundering data. We'll extend that to a larger number of customers in the second half.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But our strategic vision goes far beyond screening. Unlike competitors that tend to provide individual solutions, we operate along the compliance life cycle, combining digital identity and fraud solutions with screening and due diligence capabilities. There's more that we can do to stitch these capabilities together into integrated solutions. There are also new market segments we can open up over time, providing a platform for future growth. The growth of new asset classes in recent years has brought with it new market participants and new trading technologies.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

By leveraging our expertise in financial market data and infrastructure, we are supporting growth in these liquidity pools. FTSE Russell offers a number of digital asset and crypto indices in partnership with Digital Asset Research and Grayscale and continues to expand its offering. In H1, FTSE Russell also announced a partnership with StepStone to introduce investable private markets indices, with the first products expected in the second half. Later this year, we expect to formally launch our regulated private securities market business, offering private companies a new way to access liquidity that builds on the public market infrastructure of the London Stock Exchange. Continuing the innovation, we expect to start onboarding the first customers to our digital market infrastructure, which in the first instance will focus on capital raising by private market funds.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Of course, there continues to be a lot of focus on AI. I just want to spend a moment on how we see our place in the market and why I like our positioning as the technology continues to evolve. First, you have to think about what financial markets participants want from their workflow. Natural language search and the ability to automate a lot of time consuming activities with agents is very attractive. All headed in that direction.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But they want that and all the things they get today from an advanced desktop, curated news and alerts, portfolio tracking, live charts, trading capabilities. So the future is AI integrated into a desktop, not AI replacing a desktop. And that desktop should combine financial markets content, insight, and workflow with enterprise workflow. A couple of other really important aspects to this. Customers also need absolute certainty around data trust, accuracy, and compliance, including the outputs from AI models.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And of course, they want simplicity and value for money. LSEG lines up against these needs very well. In Workspace, we have built a modern modular and customizable interface that has rich functionality and allows customers to manage entire financial markets workflows, not just research. With Microsoft, we're consolidating enterprise and financial workflows, enhancing productivity by empowering customers to do everything in one place. On data, our position is very strong.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Our starting point is leadership in real time, unrivaled depth and breadth of data and significant trust in that data given the rigor of our processes. And then our approach to applying AI to this data is differentiated as well. The truth is that even for relatively simple prompts, accuracy levels across the industry for AI model outputs in financial services remain below 50%. I'm confident this will improve rapidly, but that's the situation today. As a result, we're taking a rigorous approach to testing and evaluation to improve and refine AI outputs.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And our overall commercial strategy is an important tool. Through access agreements, we offer lower cost of data ownership for major customers. On top of that, we are more liberal in our contracts and allowing customers to train their own models on our data. Others do not take this approach. As you can see, our position is clearly differentiated from others in the market, and we like and have a lot of confidence in our position.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We're also confident that as the world continues to change rapidly, and in particular, as AgenTik AI functionality improves, we will remain at the forefront of that change with our data at the core. So the previous slide focused on AI and the desktop. But let's zoom out a bit and look at how we are incorporating AI into our products, our processes, and how our people work. We have over 20 live use cases in our business today with a further 100 in development. On products, you've already heard how we're putting AI to work from advanced dealing and the analytics API to the new Workspace Teams app and soon in Workspace AI and in various agentic AI tools.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

For our processes, the addition of AI tools is also making us more efficient and agile. I'll give you a few statistics, but please keep in mind that while we are moving quickly down the path of widespread AI adoption, it is still relatively early days. More than 80 of customer queries are now resolved using AI customer support tools. That's already helped us significantly improve resolution times and there's further to go. We're also deploying AI tools to ingest data more quickly and accurately.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The sourcing failure rate on our automated data retrieval has decreased by 95, significantly reducing the need for human intervention. And then on our people, we believe it's important that we in source more of our engineering talent and train all staff to operate in a modern AI tooling environment. Not only does that ensure we keep winning in the war for talent, but it will maintain our agility and reduce our time to market. And there is a direct line from this transformation to what you are seeing in our margin improvement. We are becoming a modern, more efficient, more skilled and scalable business.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

As you saw in H1, we have built a business which is strategically aligned to a number of powerful growth drivers. We are investing and innovating to deliver on those opportunities, powering near, medium and longer term growth. You've heard from Matt how we're doing that in a more efficient way, ensuring our top line growth is reflected in earnings. And we continue to generate a lot of cash, supporting returns to shareholders and investment in growth, while giving us optionality to continue to consider bolt on M and A that meets our strategic and financial hurdles. One last point.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We announced this morning that we'll be giving our shareholders a more in-depth look at the new products across our business at our Innovation Forum for Investors on November 10. I feel more confident about the strength of our offering, particularly our innovation and new product delivery than at any time over the last seven years. And I look forward to sharing some of that with you at November's event. And with that, I'll hand to Peregrine for Q and A.

[Peregrine Riviere, Group Head of Investor Relations at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you, David.

[Operator]

As Herrigan mentioned, we kindly ask that you please limit yourself to questions and then rejoin the queue if you would like to ask further questions. And your first question comes from the line of Russell Quell from Rothschild. Please go ahead.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Morning, gents. Thank you for having me on the call.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

A couple of questions. Firstly, in regards to AI. David, can you elaborate a bit more on your thinking about the data side of the business, how you expect to increase the distribution and the timing of monetization on the data respect to AI. Will you be willing to work with other LLMs, including OpenAI, and will you be working with other external AI workflow solutions, allowing them to use your data both inside and outside of your own desktop application? That's my first question.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

The second question, we've recently seen a number of your peers, including Deutsche Borse, S and P, Altuskleer, DPI Cap. They've all taken strategic decisions to spin off part of their businesses to release value. I was wondering if that's something you would consider exploring strategic options to release value within your group.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Russell, and good morning. So to your first question on, data distribution, we do that. So a couple things. We we work with a number of different models. We're not tied to any one particular model.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We work with open source models. We work with the pay models. And then the the second aspect of that is that we also already provide our data to many users for their consumption in their models. And in fact, we have, I think, a more, liberal approach. We're comfortable with it from a legal perspective and from an economic perspective, but we provide our data in, a more liberal way to our customers for their usage in their models.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

A part and parcel of this is making sure that our data is packaged and AI ready, and we have that in very good shape in a number of our datasets, and we are improving it in some of our other datasets so that that is a a core part of, the value proposition within, our data and feeds capability. On your second question, look. We we're always looking at our portfolio, and we're always looking to make sure that we are adding the most value and getting the most returns across the portfolio. If you look back over the last few years, we have done some divestitures. We've done some some very small ones that I would put in the category of cleanup.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

A few years ago, we divested the beta plus business for about a billion dollars. And so, you should assume that we will always continue to evaluate our portfolio in the right way. But I feel very good about the, I'll call it, the strategic coherence of our business, and how the different parts of the business fit into driving our strategy of serving our customers across asset classes, across the trade life cycle, and on a global basis.

[Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Great. Thank you very much.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Kyle Voigt of KBW. Please go ahead.

[Kyle Voigt, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Maybe just a question on the competitive environment in the second quarter and the higher cancellations.

[Kyle Voigt, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Just wondering if you can clarify if that was simply discounting by one of your competitors on the workspace business specifically? And then maybe you could speak about the trend that you saw throughout the quarter on the aggressiveness of that competitor or competitors. Has it gotten more intense or less intense? And have you responded competitively there on your own pricing in order to rate holding business?

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Kyle. So first point I should just make on this is that we can have literally a cancel a a cancellation or two in each of DNA, FTSE, and risk intelligence, and that can have this kind of impact on ASV. You know, we've always shared with you all to be careful on reading too much in ASV because of this kind of sensitivity. So you should not look at these numbers as a big shift or a big wave. You know, it it can can really be those kinds of numbers that I'm talking about here in terms of one or two in each of these areas.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The second point I'd make is that we have seen this before. You know? And just an an example, a couple years ago, one of our competitors was basically giving their real time product away for free for two years or so. And we did see a couple cancels associated with that, and that had a short term impact on the data and feeds growth rate. And then those customers came back, and you you see the data and feeds growth has been very strong over the last few years.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So the next point I would just make on this, it is not surprising to us to see a response from our competitors in this way. And you go back over the last few to several quarters, and we have been taking share from them. And this goes back over the last couple years. And you've seen I don't wanna get into any specific competitors, but you have seen for some of them, their growth rates come down pretty significantly, and their ASPs come down pretty significantly. And a lot of that is because of what we are doing to them competitively.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

To your specific question, we we do not see their pricing in these areas as sustainable. And, you know, as I said, we've seen it before. It wasn't sustainable before. We we see the same kind of behavior now, and we don't think it's sustainable now. So from our perspective, we we are not matching irrationally discounted pricing.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We will continue to invest in our products. We are continuing to do that. And, and this is really important, we are continuing to see a build in our sales pipeline. So we look I'll just I'll close on this topic just by saying we look forward to continuing to invest in our product, making better and better product. We've seen our customers willing to pay for greater product, greater return on what they're seeing in our product, and we look forward to continuing to take share from our competitors.

[Kyle Voigt, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Alright. Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yep. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Michael Warner of UBS. Your line is open.

[Michael Werner, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group]

Thanks for the presentation, guys. Just one question for me. As we look out to 2026, I believe there was an intention to accelerate pricing in the desktop space. And, you know, I know we're getting to that point where you start these, you know, conversations in the next couple of months with clients about pricing for '26. I'm just wondering, you know, is that still the intention?

[Michael Werner, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group]

How are you feeling about it? You know, how does the environment, looking for you guys to to be successful here? Thanks.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. Thanks, Michael. So we we are having that conversation as, really over the course of these next few weeks. That's a that's a summertime conversation for us. We do it every year.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We look at the value that we are adding in our product. We look at the new investment we've made, the the changes that we have rolled out. We always evaluate and over the last few years, we've always evaluated the inflation environment. We evaluate the competitive environment. But, you know, I think we feel very good about the positioning of the product.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We feel good about the changes that are being introduced and the new functionality. So we'll be making that decision over the next several weeks, and then we'll be communicating with our customers in the fall.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Anuj Blatt from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.

[Arnaud Giblat, MD & Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Can I ask about the ASC growth, which has been slowing? Should we expect this to lead to constant currency growth in data remaining a bit more static at around 5% for the next twelve months? In essence, what I'm asking for is how much of the revenue base is represented in the ASP growth and what are the other moving parts considered? I think you talked about usage based contract increasing as they share and you talked also about 15% increase usage. So could that offset and could that lead to an acceleration in 2026?

[Arnaud Giblat, MD & Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

My second question is on data as a service. Could you maybe spell out some of the key milestones should be looking out for for this to be really a a material part of your of of your panel? Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Arnaud. Map will take the first question, and I'm happy to talk about, data as a service.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. Sure. Hey, Ronald. So on the on ASV, on the on the on that quarter, before going into the detail, just two point. I think David mentioned the volatility of ASV from one quarter to another.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

I'm not going to go back on this. But the second point I I want to make because you you mentioned it, and I think it's a very good point, is that, yes, it's true. ASV is not capturing the use use based revenue, and we actually see an increase of our usage based revenue both in analytics and risk intelligence. So both of these revenue line are not captured by ASV by by itself. Just mentioning it.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So maybe, you know, in the long run, it's a it's it's a metric as usage page revenue is increasing, which is going to be become less and less relevant. I'm not saying tomorrow, but I'm saying more in the long run. On on the on the decrease of of the SV q two and q one, I think David already mentioned the the the expected competitive response. I just want to remind you the what I've said in q one, which is we see a continued normalization in FTSE Russell and in risk intelligence trajectory following a period of very elevated goals. And finally, which is, you know, kind of a a one off, but it's it's really important to mention the the sunset of of icon that had has led to some cancellation.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We we mentioned it. The kind of a cleanup if you want at some client. But there were two effects. This one that I've mentioned in the remarks and another one, which is our sales team, have been extremely focused at at making this shift from icon to workspace a success, and it was, as I said, delivered on time and on budget. But, obviously, while they were doing this and particularly our customer excellence team, they were not selling all the things.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

You you see. So so I I I see this as as really as a as a as a one off for for this quarter. I think we we we have indicated if I carry on your reasoning. We have indicated that in in q three, you will see the low point of of ASV with the impact of the the UBS LDA deal that we've we've signed. It's about 30 to 40 bps.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And I want to mention too that it was anyhow what we were expecting coming from the the Credit Suisse termination. So it's now it's gonna be behind us, and we're not going to repeat this every year, every year, every quarter. And looking at at you what you're mentioning to 5% and, you know, 2026, when we look at the pipe that David and I are reviewing every month, the sales pipe the sales pipe is increasing both in term of of of of value and in term of duration. We have a great road map of product. So you put this all together and the the pricing that we're going to, you know, work on in the weeks to come.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

It make us confident in the the the capability of DNA to to accelerate growth in 2026.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And, Arnaud, on your second question on data as a service. So putting the the fundamentals dataset into that capability this year is significant in terms of moving down that path. We also have talked about how we're adding more data in terms of our private dataset, and then we have more datasets coming next year. And I would expect, and we've talked about this a little bit in the past, that we get to critical mass in terms of the datasets that are available in that in that mode near the the back half of next year. What does it what does that mean in practice?

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

It's just it becomes much easier for our customers to access our data and use it in the way that they want in, I'll say, sort of an integrated, capability and an integrated architecture. And maybe just by way of analogy, you know, we we in our presentation that we just went through, we talked about the impact that we have seen in analytics, which is a much smaller business. But what we've seen in analytics over the last year, year and a half in terms of improving that architecture, creating an integrated distribution capability, and allowing our our customers to use that and discover our analytics in a very different way. I think that's an interesting analogy. I think that it's a it's a different business, and data and feeds and and data as a services is a a larger business.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So I wouldn't say expect the the almost doubling of that you've seen in the growth rate from analytics in terms of that 4% to 8%, but it gives you a sense of, the kind of benefits that we are looking to drive from serving the customers better in this kind of integrated architecture.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Hubert Lam, Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Hubert Lam, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two of them. Firstly, on your organic growth guidance for this year of 6.5 to 7.5%, you've left that unchanged even after delivering 7.8% in H1.

[Hubert Lam, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

So why aren't you narrowing the range at this stage? What are the risks you see into the second half? First question. The second question is a follow-up on pricing. You know, with the new enhancements you're making across, you know, Workspace, including Open Directory and other functionality, isn't that a good reason to increase your your raised pricing to, you know, above the average that you had over the last couple years, or is competition just making it much harder to do this and maybe more price increases in in '27 run than '26? Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Hubert. Map will take your first question. I'm happy to take your second.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. Sure. So on the way on the way we look at the at the guidance, you know, we we've we've looked at the mix of our business between our subscription business and and markets. On the subscription business taken together, we believe that in h two, we are going to have roughly the same organic growth than we have as we had in in h one. So and we have a very strong line of sight on on this because these are recurring revenue.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And on the market, obviously, there is a certain volatility. Now we we have studied three possible scenario. The first one is that market carry on at the elevated goals than the as the one we had in in h one around 10%. If if this is the case, we're reaching the upper part of the guidance. So that's justify and explains the seven dot 5%.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Then there is our central case, which is that we see a a normalized growth for for markets. So it mean normalized for trade web within markets at at at low double digit growth and the rest of market. And altogether, let's say, you know, a market division at around 7%. And that takes you to the midpoint of our guidance. And, it's our central case.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And, obviously, we are in a situation of very, you know, uncertain macroeconomic environment. There is the possibility of a of a strong slowdown that would be, like, you know, three or 4% of of growth for market. Again, it's not something that we see, but, you know, that that's the environment we are we are at. And that's that that make us the six the six and a half percent, which is the the low part of of of our guidance. So, you know, with with this current environment, it's it's difficult to be more precise today, but we will be better informed in in q three, and and we'll update the guidance at that time.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And, Hubert, on your second question around pricing, you know, similar to what I touched on earlier, You know, this is something that we're actively looking at now and over the next few weeks. And there's there's a lot that we are rolling out. There's a lot of new capability, new functionality, new product. There will be more next year. So, you know, I I could I could make the argument both ways in terms of what how you asked your question.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

In other words, we we got plenty of good reason to do things on pricing this year. We've got we're gonna have plenty of good reasons to do pricing to to do some good things on pricing next year. We'll keep an eye on the competitive environment, and we'll make the decisions that we just haven't made those made those calls yet. But I think the the broader perspective or answer I can give on this is I really like our positioning in terms of, how we are delivering on new innovation, product, new capabilities. You know, as you all know, and as we've been talking with you about over the last few years, we have been investing a lot in our business, and we're really seeing the benefits of that.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And, you know, there's a lot of focus on what we're doing in data and analytics, but there's also lots of new capability coming out in FTSE Russell. We've had a record number of, new products in FTSE Russell. We've got new capabilities in risk intelligence. We got new capabilities in FX. We got new capabilities in LCH and post trade solutions.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So, as I look across the business, we'll we'll make the decision that we make about pricing, for this year and going into next year. But and, you know, we'll have that same conversation next summer going into 2027. If you just take a step back for a moment and think about the trajectory of this business and the strength of the relationships that we have with our customers, we're in a very good position. You know, we provide critical services to these customers, and we are I would say, in the industry, we're we're the one providing the strong pipeline of new product and new capability.

[Hubert Lam, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

Yeah. I recognize the innovation behind it, but, you know, it hopefully can be translated on on on the in terms of monetization, or maybe that's just a bit short term focus.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

No. I think look. We I agree with you. It's certainly the goal. But by the same token, we also you know?

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And the the way I've answered an aspect of this question over the years, people ask us about the the discount of, for example, our our desktop product or Workspace relative to one of the big competitors and that being at sort of a 30% or so discount. And we've always been clear we're never gonna take the price up, you know, 29%, in the New Year. Now, obviously, I I say that as a a as an exaggeration, but the reason I mentioned that is that part of how we are rolling out our price increases over the years is in a way that works for our customers. They understand the amount of innovation, the amount of capital that we're putting into our new product. They appreciate it, and they respect the fact that we need to get an appropriate return on that investment.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So that's, that's part of the discussion as well, just in terms of making sure we're maintaining the the good, healthy, long term relationships that we have, with, really, the industry.

[Hubert Lam, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

Great. Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your question is from the line of Benjamin Goy of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[Benjamin Goy, Head - European Financials Research at Deutsche Bank]

Yes. Hi, good morning. First on the share buyback of GBP 1,000,000,000, which is, I guess, the largest one for half year for you. Maybe you can put it in context of thinking how much is driven by being close to your leverage or the low end of your leverage range? How much is the or the current suppressed performance and also as compared to M and A opportunities currently in the market?

[Benjamin Goy, Head - European Financials Research at Deutsche Bank]

And then a follow-up on the usage based price. Is there any chance to quantify that? How how much of your revenues are already usage based and how this compares to the level one or three years ago? Thank you.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So I take the the the first question on the on the buyback and the capital allocation. So we we we have always taken a very a very active and disciplined approach to to capital allocation. The group is is is very highly cash generative. You've seen the performance in cash, the plus 40% compared to the first semester we had. So you you look at this performance in cash, it's driving our leverage ratio to 1.6 at the June, which is almost the the the the low part, the bottom part of our range, one one and a half to two and a half.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And that's the reason why we've decided for a a buyback of of a billion, and this buyback is funded by our cash flow. Because if I if I give you a bit the capital allocation for this year, so we said at least 2,400,000,000.0, okay, of free cash. And, obviously, with the performance we had on the first semester, it make us more comfortable on the at least. So you look at the first semester, it was 500,000,000 in dividend, 500,000,000 of buyback. In h two, it will be 250,000,000 of dividend because the the the interim dividend and the billion of buyback.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So by doing all this, we are distributing 2,250,000,000.00 of of the 2,400,000,000.0. And so it mean that we we we we we would still be with the leverage that, you know, give or take one one point six, which give us the opportunity as a space to have, you know, m and a, you know, bolt on that David mentioned several time, but, obviously, always with our discipline both strategically and financially.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

David? And on the usage based pricing question, so as Matt mentioned, we have it today in analytics. We have it today in risk intelligence. And just just to be clear on this, when we have more and more usage based pricing, that doesn't mean that we're getting away from the subscription model. We like having the subscription, the contractual relationships with with our customers, and the usage based pricing can is embedded within those subscriptions.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So within the context of analytics and risk intelligence, those are are two attractively growing businesses. They're relatively on the smaller side, of our business today compared to, workflows, con compared to data and feeds. So on the smaller end, but an attractive element of the incremental growth is the way I would think about it.

[Benjamin Goy, Head - European Financials Research at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

[Enrico Bolzoni, ED - Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So one, I just wanted to go back on a comment you made. You say that in data, all things considered, you are confident that you'll be able to accelerate growth for data analytics next year. Perhaps perhaps, would you be able to extend that comment to the group level or at least, let's say, to the group excluding market, which is a bit more volume dependent?

[Enrico Bolzoni, ED - Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

So that that's my first question. And my second question is a very generic one, but I was hoping you can provide some color. You clearly say that some of the competitors have been very aggressive on pricing, and artificial intelligence is is an important part of of the story for the sector. What is the risk of seeing a race to the bottom for data consumption? And perhaps if you can spin it specifically to your case, what gives you confidence that your data are unique and what you offer is so unique that we will not see a continuous pricing pressure going going forward over the next two to three years? Thanks.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Henrico. Map, we'll take your first question on how we're thinking about next year, and then I'm happy to talk about the the data question.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. So, obviously, we are we are only in in in July. So we are not set yet for the the budget of 2026. So I'm not going to give you, you know, a a guidance for 2026. But I I can I see it's a it's a fair question, and I can give you some some color?

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So we said, you know, acceleration of of DNA, it's not going to be a step change, but it's going to be progressive. And when you look at you you zoom out a bit and you look at the the subscription business, DNA of FTSE Russell and risk intelligence, we are we we we are confident into this progressive acceleration in in 2026. Yes.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And then on on the question around, you know, the risk of the race to the bottom for the data. So we don't see it that way really at all. I think if you and there are a couple different ways. We could talk about this for the the fest of the hour or two. So but just a thought on this.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

First of all, with respect to the AI ecosystem, there are three legs to that stool. There is the the computing power, and that includes the data centers and the chips. And we're seeing enormous capital and investment go into that, and you're seeing some potential commoditization over time there. Then you're seeing the models themselves, and you're seeing enormous investment go into that and lots of competition and some open source models and some cheap models coming out of or cheaper or smaller models coming out of China and our other jurisdictions. So competition and potential commoditization there.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And then you have the data as the third leg of the stool. And it is, you know, it is hard to commoditize the data. The data quality is incredibly important in terms of informing, training, feeding the development of the AI functionality in these models. You can have synthetic data, but synthetic data in is of the same quality. If synthetic data is built off of, I'll say, commoditized cheap low value data, then it is relatively cheap and low value.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

If synthetic data is built off of high value data, it has higher value itself. So it's it's challenging to get to a race to the bottom or a commoditization of high quality data, and that is what we have. And we've actually you know, we've been getting this question really since ChatGPT first entered the public consciousness in December 22. No. I guess November 22.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

You know, questions about or concerns about whether people would just go to a sophisticated chatbot and get all the information that they need. That's clearly not the case. Those kinds of tools and models can be you know, they can be pretty cool. They can be fun. You can get a lot of information from them.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But especially when you don't know exactly where they are sourcing that information and especially when you get into financial analysis and market analysis, you know, it's well documented that the they're not even close to capable of providing the kind of certainty and quality and accuracy that our industry demands. So, I think that if anything, that is the that's sort of the the the fortress, of, quality, credibility, accuracy that has to exist within our industry while we're going down this path of using more and more AI functionality. And it's something that we take very seriously. We we are investing in AI capabilities. We're doing it on our own.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We're doing it with Microsoft. We're doing it with other partners. But we're very focused on making sure that we have that kind of, I'll say, quality control. Thank Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Andrew Coombs of Citi. Please go ahead.

[Andrew Coombs, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Good morning. I just wanted to come back to the point on revenue growth in in the ASC. You talk about data analytics revenue growth accelerating into next year. At the same time, obviously, the ASC has gone backwards, and you have the CFCBS hit to come in q three before it might rebound a bit in q four. I get all of your points about not to rely on the ASP metric.

[Andrew Coombs, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

It's a point in time measure to be distorted by one or two cancellations. But given that your revenue growth from data analytics, FITC, Russell, risk intelligence, you're currently running slightly above the ASP metric year on year. Is there a risk there? Is there a risk to revenue growth going into next year, or is the case of your admin, didn't read into the ASP, more usage based models, Therefore, you are confident on revenues still improving next year.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

I mean, as so thanks, Andrew. As Map said, we're in the process of of planning our 2026 budget. So I'd love to give you a a rock solid answer and say, this is the answer one way or another. You know, we do see all all the things that Matt was talking about. We see the pipeline growing well.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We see the product functionality rolling out well. We see really good receptivity amongst each of those three businesses. So we feel very good about 2026. I don't know, Matt, if there's anything you wanna add.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

No. I mean, it's it's it's basically I mean, basically, our is our risk. There is always a risk, obviously, but, I mean, the the the our central scenario is an acceleration altogether of our subscription businesses. Now it's it's not it's not a step change. It is what we told you.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

You're not going to see a a change of, you know, like, 2% from one quarter to another, but it's a it's a progressive it's a progressive acceleration. And the reason why we we believe that's our central scenario and we can see them today. Right? It's because we have in our hands a better product driving good a a good pricing. We have a sales pipeline, which is which is increasing.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So we have a deal flow coming in. And as you mentioned, Amo, we had, you know, some one off negative one off during twenty twenty twenty five. And, again, I don't want to to stress too much this, but, again, we we have a large workforce who have been concentrated on making sure that the largest migration of desktop in history actually went well. And it went well. And it's great, and that's exactly what we we we were supposed to do.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But during the time they were doing this, well, they were not selling something else. What else? So voila. So that's basically what I can tell you. I mean, I know it's not a number, and apologies for that, but it's a that's a color I can give you for '26.

[Andrew Coombs, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

No. It's very helpful color. I mean, just one final thing is you you mentioned that ASP doesn't capture the usage based models and that you're rolling out more of those. Can you give us any indication on what portion of revenue base is usage based now? I know you said in risk intelligence, you have a fair bit, but any any guidance you can give around that would be helpful just so we can understand the disparity.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. As as I mentioned earlier to another question, I think it was Ben's question, we haven't put that specific percentage out there. We're seeing more and more of it in analytics and in risk intelligence, but, I would say the the the interest, the curiosity is noted. But at this point, we haven't put that put that out.

[Andrew Coombs, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Ben Bathurst of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Ben Bathurst, Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Good morning. My question's on equity free cash flow, so it's five seventeen. I know this metric is typically being much stronger in the second half than the first. Is it fair to assume that the sort of method of non cash and changes in working capital will unwind in in the second half this year as it has been in previous years. I'm really just hoping to get an idea of the bridge from the 935 in h 1 to 2,400,000,000.0 guided for the full year.

[Ben Bathurst, Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

And and in the same line, are there any one off that you'd highlight from the first half that helped really drive that 45% growth perhaps in the the noncash or nonoperating lines? Thank you.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So thanks, Ben. Hello. Two two points. The first one is that this seasonality of our free cash flow h one to h two, it it's it's it's it's it's very normal. It's very normal.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We we always have, you know, a a much a much a much larger cash flow in h two than in h one. So that that is is not a a problem at all. Then in term of change in working cap, same thing, and it's one of the reason for this seasonality, obviously. You've seen the minus five or more in in in h one, which is equivalent to the one of of last year. And this will this will reverse during during h two, which is a major reason for the for this seasonality.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Then after, you see that we managed to to materialize the the totality of our operating free cash flow into equity free cash flow. And and why? Because we we have a good control on our on our net interest on on debt and and and net tax. We are going to pay a bit more cash tax in the second semester because we are running out of nonoperating losses, but it's included into the into the the the guidance. And you see the the reduction of the capital intensity in h one will will will carry on in h two.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So, no, I I feel I feel very confident on on on delivering the the at least 2,400,000,000.0. And and, actually, well, I'm even more confident than at the beginning of the year.

[Ben Bathurst, Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

On to the part one off in in in operating item, 127 is that something that might be fair enough.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Andrew. I didn't I I did not I I did not address this. So in this line, we have two things.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Have the the the the reversal of of the IFRS 16 charge for for the for the shares, you know, the the performance shares of of the executive. And and that's it's it's it's relatively stable from one year to another, but with the increase of of the price of the share, it's more in '25 than in '24. And the second thing and the reason why it's a it's a it's a it's you have such an increase is because last year in h one twenty twenty four, we had a positive impact of embedded derivative so that we reverse in cash flow. So it was a a a a big a big plus if you want. And and then we have the reverse in h one twenty twenty five. That's that's the reason for it.

[Ben Bathurst, Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Bruce Hamilton of Morgan Stanley.

[Bruce Hamilton, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Most of my questions have been asked. But maybe just on this sort of AI topic. I mean, clearly, there's been some worry in the market about that a sort of disruption risk in workplace for the industry as whole from sort of, you know, new fintech AI platforms. But it sounds like you see more of a sort of revenue opportunity. So just to check I've understood, it's just sort of combative that the underlying data is the key combined with a very effective desktop.

[Bruce Hamilton, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

That's why that's what you think is the kind of best offering in the market. And then maybe this is a threat, but in terms of the scale and timing of potential revenues linked to that sort of AI opportunity, any way to think about that? Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. Thanks, Bruce. And let me let me dig in on that a little bit because we have we have heard some noise about concern, you know, potential fintech competitors, etcetera. And and let me just touch on that. So I'm gonna start where where you started, which is with the data, and the data is the key to this topic.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

You can have a really cool user interface, but the quality of the product depends on the quality of the data. And we have the broadest, the deepest, the highest quality datasets. The the second point I would make is that users don't want just a sophisticated I I used this phrase before, sophisticated chatbot. They want that great AI functionality, and they want that AI functionality embedded in all of the other workflows. And that can be news curation, charting, order and execution management, analytics, risk systems.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

We provide all of that in our user interface, in Workspace, and we are building AI into all of that. And so I think that's that's a really important aspect of this in terms of you know, you again, you can have a, as I said, sort of a full user interface, But, that on its own doesn't get you there in terms of what our industry is looking for and what our industry expects. Users also our our users also want that workflow and that AI capability to be interoperable with their enterprise workflow, which is what we are doing in terms of integrating with Excel and Teams and the the Microsoft Office three sixty five, tools. And then, the last point, I touched on this earlier, but the last point I think you cannot emphasize enough is that users want data that they can trust and they can rely on. And so with respect to some of the the new offerings that are out there and, you know, we've seen and we've played with some of the flashy demos and other things.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But in in one of those in particular that has gotten a lot of attention, if you go into their own press release, there's that press release points to their there's a link in there that points to what they're relying on, and their accuracy in finance is at 51%. And their accuracy in market analysis they don't define what market analysis is, but I think we do a lot of market analysis. Their accuracy in market analysis is 14%. So I think, you know, coming back to your question in terms of some of the fintech offerings, they may be cool and they may be fun to try out, but they they cannot meet the demands of this sector, the man the demands of our customers today. And I think that's that's really important to keep in mind.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

And so, yes, we have the high quality data. We have the right workflow in our desktop. We're making both of those better and better. We are embedding AI functionality in our offerings, and, you know, we're certainly not sitting still. So I think and and there's there's more to come.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So I as I said before, I like our positioning. We welcome the tech innovation. We welcome the tech change, and I think we're in a very good position to keep driving the change in in this industry and driving the change for our customers.

[Bruce Hamilton, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Oliver Carruthers, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs]

Hi there. Morning. Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two final ones for me.

[Oliver Carruthers, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs]

David, I thought your comments around the requirement of absolute certainty on data quality from your customers be really interesting, you know, particularly given the risk orientated and regulated nature of financial services. At high level and maybe taking kind of your answer to Bruce's question a step further, do you think this means that data procurement and data delivery can't really be decoupled in the value chain here because your customers wanna verify and query the data that they're ingesting. That's the first one. And the second question, in the q and a, you've made the point several times that the Salesforce has been distracted through the ICON migration. Interested how short versus long term this comment is.

[Oliver Carruthers, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs]

Do you mean since the last quarter, or do you mean since the migration period 2021? And if it's the latter, what are the implications now that your sales pipeline is building and we're now through this migration process?

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thanks, Oliver. I'll take your first question, and Map can answer the one on the the Salesforce focus. So I think there is an element of what you said in terms of data procurement and data delivery, you know, having to be coupled. And we see this we we see this already. In other words, you could say that this has been an issue.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

People can look up a lot of stuff. Long before ChatGPT, people could look up a lot of stuff on the Internet. And that doesn't mean that, you know, vast amounts of our data business were disintermediated by the Internet. In in many ways, large language models that are trained on information off the Internet Internet and can come up with answers to a lot of questions, you know, it's it's a much more souped up or high powered version of that. That's not good enough for our industry.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So are there products? Is there certain functionality where it is good enough and it's okay and kind of, you know, an an individual is looking up something in the same way that they would do a Google search, sure. That's fine, and it's helpful, and it it actually, you know, can be really useful. But that's not what we're talking about for our industry. So I I think the notion of data procurement being really focused on what we refer to as data trust, which is a concept that basically means you can validate the data itself.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

You can validate where it came from. You have the ability to audit it if you need to. We think that notion of data trust is really critical in our industry. I think there's a separate question as to whether the regulators require it, which is is conceivable down the road given the importance of this issue in our industry. But at this point, it's just something that our customers expect and require when they're when they're going through this process of of data acquisition.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Let me turn it over to Matt in terms of the the second question.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Yeah. Sure. I mean, my my comments was really relating to to to q two because it was the the crux of of of of of of the shift. I mean, we we committed ourselves to a sunset at the at the June. So, obviously, we are extremely, extremely focused on this.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

But, I mean, obviously, we did not the Salesforce did not begin to work on this on q two. It was the case in q one and in q four last year. But the real, real big push was the last quarter.

[Oliver Carruthers, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs]

Thanks very much.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Ian White of Autonomous Research. Your line is open.

[Ian White, Equity Research Analyst - Banks and Diversified Financials at Autonomous Research]

Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. The two from my side, please. Firstly, on meeting prep, what progress has been made there, please, over the last few months? Has the development work that you mentioned previously now being complete and that product's ready for for broader rollout, or is there still some iteration going on there?

[Ian White, Equity Research Analyst - Banks and Diversified Financials at Autonomous Research]

That's question one. And probably to revisit this this topic that I know it's got a few other questions, but across the three data segments, organic constant currency growth, it's it's about 6% in 01/08, and consensus has it going above seven and then on to 8% in 2027. Are you comfortable with the consensus trajectory there, and what needs to happen for that to be delivered? Is that mostly about pricing, client product usage, growth in clients, new products with specific charging? What what are the main building blocks to get us from from six to eight over the next couple of years, please? Thank you.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So I'll take thanks, Ian. I'll take your first question on meeting prep, and then Matt can touch on the second one. So meeting prep is going through an iteration from basically version one, which we released, I believe, at the very end of last year coming into this year. And version two, I would think, should be ready over the next few months. The big change, and I can get into a lot of specifics on what we're changing at.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

The big change is that meeting prep, version one is a Microsoft product. And it is a Microsoft product that includes our data. Meeting prep version two is an LSAG product, and I wouldn't even call it a distinct product. I would call it a feature that is going to be embedded into Workspace and the Workspace Teams app. And so similar concept, similar functionality, but we've taken the feedback from the users on version one, and we're making it, more flexible and addressing a lot of the feedback.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

So for example, and some of these are going to sound incredibly mundane, but that's that's what our customers are looking for, and that's what will make it a better product. People wanna be able to access it in different areas. They wanna be able to access it. Just I think there was one button in one in one screen where you could access it before. Now it's going to be embedded and easily accessible.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

People want to be able to take the document and put it into a PDF and send it out or share it with their teams. That wasn't available before. So as I said, it's a different language capability, being able to adjust the the dates that it includes news on a particular company or a particular person, all those kinds of of things, which you can see how that would make the product you know, more flexible, easier to use, etcetera. Those kinds of things we are building into that. And as I said, it it will be a feature, and I would expect we'll see it over the over the next few months in the second half.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

On on on on 2026, maybe I I, you know, I I I give I I give you maybe a a more global answer if it's if it's okay because if you we we we we committed ourselves to medium term, you know, guidance at at the at the Capital Market Day in November 2023 for twenty four to twenty six. We are well on track on all these guidance being the acceleration of revenue or being the posting 250 basis points of improved EBITDA EBITDA margin on the on this on this period of time. And, actually, on on on the on the latter, you see that with the performance we had this year plus the performance we are I had last year, we are very well placed to reach this 250 bps. So altogether, I think on a on a on a on a very good task on on our trajectory for 2026. And on the on the top line, I'm I'm not going to comment versus the the consensus, but I can reiterate what I told you, which is that we we we we we are confident into an acceleration of our subscription business, but a progressive a progressive one.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

No step change, but a progressive acceleration, and we're very confident into our margin progression.

[Ian White, Equity Research Analyst - Banks and Diversified Financials at Autonomous Research]

Alright. Thanks a lot, Don.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you, Ian.

[Operator]

And there are no further questions on the conference line. I will now hand the presentation back to David Schwinger, CEO of Elsid, to close the call.

[David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Well, thank you all for your time and attention, this morning, and, we certainly appreciate it. If you have any further questions, you know where Peregrine and the team are, and, I'm sure we will, be in touch with you soon. Thanks again.

[Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director at London Stock Exchange Group]

Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• David Schwimmer, CEO & Board of Director
• Michel-Alain Proch, CFO & Director
• Peregrine Riviere, Group Head of Investor Relations

Analysts

• Russell Quelch, Managing Director at Rothschild & Co Redburn
• Kyle Voigt, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)
• Michael Werner, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group
• Arnaud Giblat, MD & Research Analyst at BNP Paribas
• Hubert Lam, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch
• Benjamin Goy, Head - European Financials Research at Deutsche Bank
• Enrico Bolzoni, ED - Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan
• Andrew Coombs, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup
• Ben Bathurst, Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Bruce Hamilton, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley
• Oliver Carruthers, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs
• Ian White, Equity Research Analyst - Banks and Diversified Financials at Autonomous Research