London Stock Exchange Group PLC (LSE:LSEG) confirmed it will carry a £1 billion share buyback for 2024 as it said it was seeing signs of an uptick in listings in London.
Money for the buyback will come from Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI) and Blackstone as part of the deal that saw LSEG acquire the Refintiv data business three years ago.
Refinitiv helped LSEG’s data arm lift sales by 7.3% in 2023 with revenues overall up by 8.2% at £8.3 billion including recoveries.
Capital markets sales were up by 6.1% despite a dearth of new issues in London while post-trade revenues rose by more than 17%.
Underlying profits rose by 6% to £ 3.7 billion though the pre-tax number eased 3.7% lower to £1.9 billion due to a faster rate of depreciation, according to the statement.
David Schwimmer, chief executive, commented that its data and analytics arm would shortly be using the first products from its partnership with Microsoft.
Capital markets, meanwhile, is "seeing an encouraging IPO pipeline for the London Stock Exchange”, he added, without giving any details on what these might be.
A final dividend of 79.3p is planned to take the total for the year to 115p, up 7.5%.