London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSE:LSEG) has raised its income and margin guidance after reporting record first-half results, supported by double-digit growth from its markets business.
Total income excluding recoveries increased 6.9% to £4.8 billion in the first six months of 2026, or 8.4% on an organic constant-currency basis. Reported pre-tax profit rose 29% to £1.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA climbed 14% to £2.5 billion, with the margin widening by 3.2 percentage points to 52.7%.
For the full year, the FTSE 100 group raised its income growth forecast to between 7% and 7.5%, narrowing the previous range of 6.5-7.5%.
The board now expects constant-currency margins to improve by around one percentage point, against previous guidance of between 0.8 and one percentage point.
Markets income grew 12%, while FTSE Russell and Risk Intelligence increased 9.1% and 9.7% respectively, and Data & Analytics lagged with 5.1%.
Chief executive David Schwimmer said: "Growth in our subscription businesses is accelerating."
LSEG said more than 17,000 customers were actively using AI Search within its Workspace platform, while it was working with more than 200 customers to provide AI-ready data.
Schwimmer said artificial intelligence in financial services would create "enormous value, but comes with significant challenges for customers.
"We are the partner to help them address those challenges: we have the infrastructure, the proprietary data, the trust, the regulatory expertise and the institutional history. This is already evident in the complex and multi-layered data and AI solutions we are engaged on."
The group returned £2.1 billion through share buybacks during the half and plans a further £1.35 billion by February 2027. The interim dividend was raised 17% to 55p a share.
