LONDON, June 24, 2026, 10:05 BST
London Stock Exchange Group shares dropped 2.2% to 8,188 pence by 09:47 BST on Wednesday, wiping out Tuesday’s 1.1% rise. The FTSE 100 was flat, and LSEG underperformed the wider London market. The delayed quote showed trades at 09:47 BST.
LSEG traded at a price 3.2% below the 8,459p average it spent for 12.8 million shares in the first quarter. The company bought back £1.1 billion of stock in that time and is targeting £3 billion in buybacks by February 2027. Its latest outlook sees 2026 revenue growth landing in the upper half of its 6.5%-7.5% range. CEO David Schwimmer said AI efforts this year are about “roll-out and adoption of these services.” LSEG
LSEG is trading below the price where it ran its own buyback, even after it raised its growth outlook in April. That buyback sets a firm benchmark for investors to eye.
LSEG’s May consensus from the company showed a 12,131p target and had no hold or sell calls. That target is about 48% above where shares traded on Wednesday, up from a 32% gap on May 7 when the stock closed at 9,186p. The difference has grown by around 16 percentage points. The table is from May 8, so this mostly tracks the drop in the share price, not fresh changes from analysts.
Shares of RELX slipped 0.5% in London trading. Deutsche Börse fell 0.8% in Frankfurt. There’s no clear cause called out for the move, but compared to RELX and Deutsche Börse, LSEG lagged both the data group and a big exchange peer.
AI revenue is still the big valuation hurdle. In Q1, more than 150 customers connected or were onboarding to LSEG’s Model Context Protocol server. MCP links AI apps with outside data sets. “It’s one thing to have usage, it’s another to start charging people,” UBS analyst Michael Werner said. BofA’s Hubert Lam said LSEG was “becoming part of the AI ecosystem rather than competing against it.” Reuters
FTSE Russell’s semiannual Russell U.S. index reconstitution hits after the close on Friday. It’s a big index event, with about $12.2 trillion tied to Russell U.S. indexes. In the June 2025 reconstitution, $217.2 billion traded at the close. That trading doesn’t go straight to LSEG as revenue, but gives a sense of the index business’s scale.
The discount could get bigger. If AI users don’t lead to more paid upgrades, investors might keep lowering what they think Data & Analytics is worth. The Financial Conduct Authority is set to decide on details for a single UK equities tape in July, which would combine trades and prices from across venues. One idea is to include pre-trade data, something LSEG now sells. London Stock Exchange CEO Julia Hoggett called a post-trade-only option “more prudent and pragmatic.” Reuters
LSEG will report half-year earnings on July 30. This is the next set date for management to show if AI is starting to add to revenue and if they keep the second-half growth outlook.
