The London Stock Exchange Group reported a significant rise in pretax profit for the first half of 2022 and said it is launching a share buyback programme with an aggregate value of up to £750 million.
The stock exchange group posted a pretax profit of £803 million compared with £463 million for the same period a year earlier.
Gross profit was £of 3.23billion , slightly above an analysts’ consensus of £3.22 billion.
Adjusted basic earnings per share were 167.4 pence, above the 149.6 pence expected by analysts.
However, there was a sharp drop in its listings in the first half, due to economic uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, but it said that there as a a “healthy pipeline” of initial public offerings waiting for markets to calm down.
David Schwimmer, CEO said the group was managing costs well and continues to make progress on the achievement of synergies.
“We provide solutions solving critical issues for our customers, with a high proportion of recurring subscription revenues and structurally growing transactional revenues that benefit from volatility, he said.
He added, “Our cash generation is allowing us to actively deploy capital across organic and inorganic investments, grow our dividend and commence a share buy-back programme, driving further value for our shareholders.
We are successfully executing on our strategy, have good momentum going into the second half and our targets remain unchanged.”
He said that it is on track with the the integration of the data group Refinitiv, which LSEG bought for $27 billion in 2021,
The acquisition has come under scrutiny after outages and concerns among some market participants over the amount of money being spent to mesh two different cultures and systems.
The integration has also involved internal personnel changes, including LSEG’s head of data, Andrea Remyn Stone, stepping down in June after only a year in the job, with her role temporarily taken over by Schwimmer.
