London, March 13, 2026, 13:48 GMT
London Stock Exchange Group plc shares climbed 1.6% to 8,722 pence Friday, following Thursday’s annual report and a pre-market update on buybacks. The latest RNS shows LSEG scooped up 350,220 shares on March 12, with cancellation planned.
LSEG’s confidence game isn’t over yet. After activist Elliott Management’s entry and renewed questions swirling about generative AI’s impact on its data operations, the firm is still trying to recover. The shares climbed Friday, but even so, they remain about 27% off that 52-week peak of 11,895 pence.
Investors are eyeing the 3 billion pound buyback announced Feb. 26, but they’re hoping it delivers more than just a lift for the shares. The bar is higher: they want improved margins and real growth from a company stacked up against exchange and market-data giants like S&P Global and Deutsche Boerse. Another capital return alone won’t cut it.
The latest filing on Friday added a fresh data point for the market. According to LSEG, Morgan Stanley snapped up shares at a volume-weighted average price of 8,563.54 pence—so that’s the mean across every trade that day, with purchases scattered between the London Stock Exchange and Turquoise.
The annual report landed Thursday, highlighting the operating backdrop. Total income excluding recoveries came in at 9.0 billion pounds, with organic growth at constant currency of 7.1%—that’s before factoring in currency moves. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 50.3%, and the full-year dividend climbed to 150 pence per share.
“Another strong year for the Group,” was how Chair Don Robert described 2025. LSEG’s Chief Executive David Schwimmer, for his part, pointed to the company’s “strong, competitive positions” across its businesses—data, index, trading and clearing—which management argues are tough to shake. LSEG
The issue hasn’t resolved investor uncertainty. Last month, Reuters flagged that Blue Whale’s Stephen Yiu was looking for growth, rather than a narrative focused on buybacks and dividends. At the same time, Frederick Kerr-Smiley at Ninety One saw the expanded buyback as a plus, as Elliott kept up pressure for higher margins and a more convincing AI strategy from management.
There’s a risk the latest bounce gets tripped up by the same macro pressures dogging UK shares. On Friday, Reuters flagged that London’s main indexes were staring down a second straight weekly drop. Oil staying above $100 a barrel and the Middle East conflict have soured the outlook for near-term Bank of England rate cuts. Berenberg’s Jonathan Stubbs called out a drawn-out Hormuz closure and stubbornly high energy costs as the key threats.
But one thread of support for LSEG popped back up this week. In a Reuters piece on how software companies are handling the AI shift, James St. Aubin at Ocean Park Asset Management called proprietary data “the deepest moat by far.” That’s still the core of the LSEG story for investors. Reuters
