LSEG Reports Growth in FX, Tradeweb & OTC Derivatives

• Data & Analytics was up 5.1%, accelerating from the prior year period. The drivers were broad-based with continued strong retention, good sales and a contribution from pricing consistent with the previous year.
  • Workflows was up 3.4%, with continued product enhancements driving good sales activity and retention. Commodities was an area of particular strength during the quarter. The business remains on track to sunset Eikon by June 2025.
  • Data & Feeds was up 6.6%. We continue to drive innovation and expansion of our leading Real Time offering, adding new low latency feeds and cloud solutions. In our Pricing and Reference business we saw good demand for newer capabilities such as fixed income corporate actions data and our expanded evaluated pricing offering.
  • Analytics was up 7.4%, with good growth in Yield Book fixed income analytics and Lipper fund data. We continue to see strong demand for our Analytics API and launched new Visual Studio code capabilities in the quarter, both developed in partnership with Microsoft, making it easier for customers to create and deploy their insights using our models.
• FTSE Russell was up 9.6%. Strong demand for flagship equity products continued to support good growth in underlying subscription revenues. Asset-based revenues grew strongly driven by both inflows and higher average market levels.
• Risk Intelligence was up 10.7% driven by strong business momentum and customer demand in our screening business, World-Check, and expansion in our digital identity and fraud businesses.
• Annual Subscription Value (ASV): Period-end organic ASV growth was 6.4%, reflecting continued good sales, strong retention and a contribution from pricing consistent with the previous year.
• Markets was up 10.7%, and up 13.5% including the benefit of the ICD acquisition, as our capital markets venues and post trade businesses saw elevated activity in response to the heightened political and economic uncertainty in the quarter.
  • Equities was up 3.1%. We saw strong, volume-driven growth in secondary markets, although this was partly offset by subdued primary revenue growth.
  • Fixed Income, Derivatives & Other was up 17.3% organically with another record quarter for Tradeweb. Average Daily Volume (ADV) of $2.55 trillion in Q1 (up 19.1% organically, or +33.7% including ICD) reflected continued share gains across Tradeweb’s rates and credit asset classes. This was complemented by strong market activity across Tradeweb’s global asset classes as a result of heightened political and economic uncertainty.
  • FX was up 12.3%, led by market-driven strength in dealer-to-client activity on our FXall platform. This was accompanied by good growth in interbank volumes on our Matching platform.
  • OTC Derivatives was up 16.8%. Growth was broad-based across asset classes and in both cleared and uncleared instruments, reflecting elevated financial market volatility in the period and greater uncertainty over the global outlook for interest rates.
  • Securities & Reporting was down (9.8)%, with strong volume growth in fixed income clearing more than offset by last year’s loss of business from Euronext.
  • Non-Cash Collateral was broadly unchanged at (0.4)%, with mix effects limiting the benefit from higher collateral balances.
  • Net Treasury Income was down (6.3)% reflecting the reduction in cash balances following last year’s loss of business from Euronext.
• Group cost of sales was up 7.2%, slightly below the growth rate in revenue reflecting business mix and the partially fixed nature of the costs.
• Gross profit was up 7.5%, very slightly behind growth in Total Income (excl. recoveries) as a result of the more modest growth in recoveries revenues.

In February we announced our intention to return £500 million to shareholders via a share buyback. At the end of April 2025, shares worth £245 million had been acquired under this programme.

In March we repurchased $250 million of the group’s US dollar bond maturing in 2031, an NPV-positive transaction that takes advantage of the current interest rate environment.

We are confident of further growth and improvement to our EBITDA margin in 2025, leading to strong growth in equity free cash flow. We confirm our guidance for 2025 as follows:

• Organic constant currency growth in total income excluding recoveries of 6.5-7.5% including an acceleration in Data & Analytics organic growth and more normalised growth at Tradeweb
• An improvement in constant currency EBITDA margin of 50-100 basis points
• Capex intensity of c 10% of total income excluding recoveries
• Equity free cash flow of at least £2.4 billion, based on foreign exchange rates of £1 = $1.28 and €1.18
• Underlying effective tax rate of 24-25%

The full results can be read here

Source: LSEG