LSEG shares slip despite dividend rise
Shares in LSEG slipped by more than two per cent in early morning trade despite the FTSE 100 giant upgrading its earnings forecasts and upping its dividend.
The data and analytics business, which also operates the London Stock Exchange, said it had been the beneficiary of an intensifying market appetite for more and more data both for use in AI tools as well as in the digitisation of financial markets.
Total income for the first six months of the year rose 6.8 per cent to £4.5bn, while pre-tax profits rocketed 43 per cent to just shy of £1bn.
The firm upped its pre-tax earnings margin from 50-100 basis points to 75-100 basis points. Its dividend was increased by 14.6 per cent, from 41p to 47p.
LSEG CEO David Schwimmer said the first half of the year was “marked by a consistent cadence of new product launches”, which included enhancements to its Workspace platform as well as new add-ins for Microsoft apps Word, Excel and Teams.
However, the period was also tarnished by a serious drought in listings on the London Stock Exchange, as well as growing fears that one of its largest constituents, Astrazeneca, is planning to leave in favour of a US listing.
Just £160m was raised from five listings on the London markets in the first six months of the year, the lowest-first half since 1995.
But hopes have been lifted of a sunnier second half for listings, which could include a 19bn euro IPO of Norwegian software giant Visma and a £2bn IPO of London-based bank Shawbrook.
It’s also expected that LSEG will launch a new PISCES-compliant market in the second half of the year, for private businesses seeking a venue for secondary share sales. In recent weeks the firm has been courting top tech startups to join the market.
Schwimmer said the firm “had a lot of interest” in participating in PISCES, adding that he had to “turn people away” from an event to showcase the market because “we were at max capacity.”
LSEG shares remain down by more than 10 per cent since the start of the year.