London Stock Exchange Group plc (LON:LSEG) is having a busy start to December. On 4 December 2025, the owner of the London Stock Exchange and FTSE Russell is in the headlines for fresh board changes, new sustainability research, and ongoing AI partnerships – all against the backdrop of a share price that sits not far above its 52‑week low.
Below is a complete, news‑style rundown of where LSEG stock stands today, what has just been announced, and how analysts see the shares into 2026.
LSEG share price on 4 December 2025
As of mid‑morning on 4 December 2025, London Stock Exchange Group shares trade around 8,744 pence on the London Stock Exchange, down about 1.4% on the day. That gives the group a market capitalisation of roughly £45.2 billion and puts the stock about 8% above its 52‑week low of 8,094p, set in September, and well below its 52‑week high of 12,185p from February. [1]
Over the last 12 months, LSEG shares are down roughly 23–24%, even as global equity indices have pushed to new highs. [2] Real‑time data from other providers shows the stock fluctuating in the mid‑8,700s, with intraday ranges broadly between about 8,700p and 8,900p. [3]
Key snapshot (FT data, 4 December 2025, ~10:00 GMT): [4]
- Price: 8,744p
- Day move: ‑124p (‑1.40%)
- 1‑year change: ‑23.5%
- 52‑week range: 8,094p – 12,185p
- Market cap: £45.2bn
- Trailing P/E (TTM): ≈47x
- Dividend (annualised): 136p, yield ≈1.6%
That combination – flat‑to‑negative share performance, high trailing P/E and modest yield – is exactly what has pushed LSEG into “value vs growth” debates among analysts.
Fresh LSEG news on 4 December 2025
Board changes: two non‑executive directors to step down in 2026
Early on 4 December, LSEG announced that two non‑executive directors will leave the board following the April 2026 AGM. [5]
- Dominic Blakemore, on the board since January 2020 and chair of the Audit Committee since April 2020, has confirmed his intention to step down after the 2026 AGM.
- Lloyd Pitchford, who joined the board in April 2025, will succeed Blakemore as Audit Committee chair.
- Martin Brand, a non‑executive director since February 2021, will also depart in 2026. [6]
Chair Don Robert thanked the departing directors for their role in what he called a period of “rapid transformation” for the group, while emphasising continuity via Pitchford’s promotion from within the existing board committees. [7]
Governance‑wise, these are signalled, slow‑burn changes rather than a sudden shake‑up: the transition is flagged more than a year in advance and aligned with the AGM calendar.
FTSE Russell climate survey: ESG demand still rising
Also published today: FTSE Russell’s eighth annual sustainable investment asset owner survey, released under the LSEG banner. [8]
Key takeaways from the survey: [9]
- Asset owners say financial performance and risk management are the primary drivers of sustainable investment (SI).
- Thematic investing and ESG integration remain the most widely used SI approaches.
- Roughly one in four asset owners are still considering new SI strategies, but concerns about greenwashing, ESG data quality and regulation remain barriers.
For LSEG, which owns FTSE Russell, this matters because ESG indices, climate benchmarks and fixed‑income analytics are a core part of its Data & Analytics franchise.
Private markets push: Apex Group supports LSEG’s Pisces platform
In private markets, Apex Group has recently announced it will act as a Registered Auction Agent for LSEG’s new Pisces platform, which facilitates secondary trading in shares of late‑stage private companies. [10]
Pisces sits within LSEG’s broader Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI) strategy, aiming to digitise the private funds and private company lifecycle – from issuance and tokenisation through to trading and post‑trade services, often using distributed ledger technology (DLT). [11]
For investors in LSEG stock, Pisces is part of the long‑term story: turning LSEG into a platform for both public and private capital markets, with fee streams that are less tied to daily cash‑equity volumes.
The OpenAI deal: bringing LSEG data into ChatGPT
What LSEG and OpenAI just announced
On 3 December 2025, LSEG unveiled a new collaboration with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. [12]
The tie‑up has two main elements:
- Client‑facing integration
- Using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), institutional users will be able to access licensed LSEG financial data – including content from Workspace and Financial Analytics – directly inside ChatGPT, authenticated with their LSEG credentials. [13]
- The idea is a “ChatGPT front‑end, LSEG data back‑end” model: clients ask questions in natural language, while the AI sits on top of LSEG’s datasets rather than scraping the open web.
- Internal productivity tools
- LSEG is rolling out ChatGPT Enterprise to roughly 4,000 staff, integrating it into internal research, coding and content workflows, again fed by licensed data. [14]
OpenAI’s Ashley Kramer pointed to the combination of LSEG’s data with ChatGPT’s reasoning as a way to give market participants faster, context‑rich insight without having to manually navigate multiple terminals. [15]
Market reaction
Reuters reported that LSEG shares rose about 1.4% following the announcement, even as the broader FTSE 100 ended lower, under pressure from financials. [16]
The move comes on top of LSEG’s long‑running strategic partnership with Microsoft, which already includes equity participation and multi‑year commitments to Azure, Fabric and AI‑based tools. [17]
Microsoft partnership and the “LSEG Everywhere” AI strategy
LSEG’s AI push isn’t a one‑off headline – it’s the centre of what management calls the “LSEG Everywhere” strategy. [18]
What the Microsoft deal actually does
Under the 10‑year strategic partnership announced in 2022, Microsoft took a roughly 4% stake in LSEG, while LSEG committed to migrating key data and analytics workloads to Azure and co‑developing new products. [19]
Recent Microsoft and LSEG case studies highlight several concrete pieces: [20]
- Unifying over 30 legacy data systems into a single AI‑ready architecture using Microsoft Fabric and OneLake.
- Enhancing LSEG Workspace with tighter integration into Microsoft 365, including an add‑in for Excel and PowerPoint to bring real‑time data and analytics directly into Office workflows.
- Launching “modelling solutions” on Azure that allow banks and asset managers to run complex financial models – including machine learning – in a governed environment.
The goal is simple but ambitious: turn LSEG’s 33 petabytes of financial content into a high‑margin, cloud‑based, AI‑consumable utility for the global financial system. [21]
How analysts are reading the AI story
A recent Finimize summary of BofA Global Research notes that LSEG’s Data & Analytics segment is guiding to 5%+ annual revenue growth into 2026, with management targeting around 10% annual EPS growth as AI‑enabled products and new usage‑based pricing kick in. [22]
Key points from that analysis: [23]
- Workspace and data feeds are seeing strong demand from AI‑heavy clients.
- Large multi‑year data deals have increased the share of subscription value in those contracts from roughly 9% to 17% this year, improving revenue visibility.
- BofA argues that fears of “AI killing the data vendors” are overdone, given LSEG’s proprietary data and role as a primary source rather than a downstream aggregator.
- On BofA’s numbers, LSEG trades at roughly 20× projected 2026 earnings, a significant discount to its trailing P/E in the high‑40s.
Q3 2025 trading update: growth, margins and a £2bn buyback
LSEG’s Q3 2025 trading update, released on 23 October, underpins much of the current analyst enthusiasm. [24]
Operational performance
From the company’s own materials and subsequent commentary: [25]
- Total income grew about 6.4% year‑on‑year at constant currency, ahead of internal and external expectations.
- Growth was broad‑based across Data & Analytics, Post Trade and Capital Markets.
- Management raised 2025 EBITDA margin guidance to the top of the prior range, citing operating leverage and cost control.
- CEO David Schwimmer reiterated the goal of “LSEG Everywhere” – embedding licensed data into AI workflows via partners like Microsoft, Anthropic, Databricks and now OpenAI.
Post Trade Solutions stake sale and SwapClear economics
The most structurally important move in the quarter was a two‑part post‑trade transaction: [26]
- 20% stake in Post Trade Solutions (PTS) sold to 11 global banks
- A consortium of major clearing banks – including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Société Générale and UBS – agreed to buy 20% of PTS for £170m, valuing the business at £850m. [27]
- PTS generated £96m of revenue and £16m of normalised EBITDA in 2024, making the valuation a meaningful multiple of current earnings but reflecting its growth potential in uncleared derivatives and non‑cash collateral services. [28]
- SwapClear revenue‑share overhaul
- In parallel, LSEG will pay £1.15bn to acquire a larger share of the revenue surplus from SwapClear, its interest rate derivatives clearing business. [29]
- The partner banks’ share of surplus drops from roughly 30% to 15% in 2025, then to 10% from 2026, leaving LSEG with about 90% of the surplus from 2026 onward. [30]
- The agreement is extended out to 2045, locking in long‑term economics.
- LSEG estimates the deal is immediately margin‑accretive (around 250 bps to Markets and 100 bps to the group) and adds 2–3% to adjusted EPS in 2025. [31]
Together, the deals tighten strategic alignment with key clients (banks as PTS shareholders) while shifting more of the long‑term profit pool to LSEG itself.
The buyback: £2 billion of share repurchases
Buybacks are a big part of the LSEG equity story right now.
From the Q3 update and subsequent RNS announcements: [32]
- LSEG completed a £500m buyback in H1 2025.
- A £1bn buyback announced at the half‑year results was largely completed early, with about £938m spent by 22 October 2025 at an average price of roughly £88.95 per share (8,895p).
- On 23 October, management announced a further £1bn buyback, to be completed by the full‑year 2025 results in February 2026.
- A 4 November RNS confirmed the commencement of this new £1bn programme, executed via Citigroup Global Markets under an irrevocable agreement and scheduled to end no later than 25 February 2026. [33]
In total, LSEG is deploying around £2bn of buybacks across 2025–early 2026, a significant capital return relative to a £45bn market cap – and a clear signal that management believes the shares are undervalued.
Business mix: from “stock exchange” to data and analytics giant
Despite the name, LSEG is now primarily a data and analytics company with market‑infrastructure attached, not the other way around.
MarketScreener’s profile breaks down the business roughly as follows: [34]
- c.68% of revenue from publication and distribution of market information and data analytics (LSEG Data & Analytics and FTSE Russell).
- c.21% from trading services, including cash equities and derivatives trading.
- c.11% from post‑trade services, such as clearing and settlement.
Geographically, LSEG’s revenue is well diversified: roughly one‑third from the UK, over a third from the US, and the rest from Europe, Asia and other regions. [35]
Independent analysts like Intelligent Investor have framed this as a long, multi‑year transformation “from exchange to recurring financial data giant” – a shift that tends to justify higher valuation multiples and more resilient earnings than a traditional transaction‑driven exchange operator. [36]
Valuation and analyst forecasts
Current valuation
On a trailing basis, LSEG does not look cheap:
- Trailing P/E (TTM): about 47×, based on trailing EPS of roughly 186p. [37]
- Dividend yield: around 1.6%, on a 136p annual dividend. [38]
But forward‑looking metrics tell a different story. With consensus expecting mid‑single‑digit revenue growth and high‑single‑digit to low‑double‑digit EPS growth, several analysts argue that the forward P/E falls into the high‑teens or low‑20s, especially once buybacks are factored in. [39]
Analyst consensus and price targets
Multiple independent sources paint a remarkably consistent picture: broadly bullish sentiment with substantial upside from current levels.
- MarketScreener lists a mean analyst recommendation of “Buy”, with 15 covering analysts and an average target price of about £123.49 (12,349p) – roughly 39% above a last close around £88.68 (8,868p). [40]
- Investing.com reports 15 analysts with an overall “Strong Buy” rating and an average 12‑month price target of about £123.49, with a range from £110 to £137.90. That implies around 41% upside from current levels. [41]
- MarketBeat summarises seven brokerages covering LSEG with a consensus “Buy” and an average target around £126.17, with individual houses like JPMorgan, Jefferies, RBC, Deutsche Bank and Citi clustering in the £119–£135 band. [42]
- A recent DirectorsTalk / broker roundup notes 15 “Buy” ratings and no “Hold” or “Sell” recommendations, with a target range of 11,000–13,790p and an average around 12,296p, implying almost 43% upside. [43]
Taken together, these imply that consensus fair value for LSEG sits somewhere around 12,300–12,600p, versus a current share price near 8,700–8,800p – i.e., roughly 40–45% upside if the forecasts are correct.
LSEG’s own analyst consensus tables, published on its investor relations site, point to: [44]
- Total income ex‑recoveries rising from about £8.97bn (2024E) to £9.55bn (2025E) and £10.22bn (2026E).
- Organic constant‑currency growth of roughly 6.7–6.9% over that period.
Those expectations underpin the forward‑looking valuations used in the broker targets.
Why the stock is still down: concerns and risks
So why is a company with high‑teens forward growth, entrenched data franchises and enthusiastic analyst coverage trading near its 52‑week lows?
Recent commentary from Morningstar, Intelligent Investor and others highlights several concerns investors are wrestling with: [45]
- UK equity malaise and “London discount”
- London’s IPO market has been sluggish, with more companies choosing to list in New York or continental Europe, feeding a narrative that the LSE has “lost its mojo”. [46]
- Even though only a minority of LSEG’s revenue now comes from UK cash‑equity trading, the stock is still seen by many as a proxy for London’s capital‑markets ecosystem.
- High headline multiples and complex story
- A trailing P/E near 50× looks demanding at first glance.
- The business is complex, spanning data feeds, indices, clearing, FX and trading platforms – which can make it harder for generalist investors to model.
- AI and disintermediation risk
- Some investors worry that AI models could commoditise data and reduce the pricing power of vendors like LSEG.
- BofA and others push back, arguing that trusted, licensed data is becoming more valuable, not less, as AI proliferates – but the debate is ongoing. [47]
- Execution and regulatory risk
- The SwapClear and PTS deals lock in long‑dated economics but also concentrate more risk on LSEG’s balance sheet, including regulatory capital, operational and technology‑migration risk. [48]
Those risks help explain why the stock can have bullish fundamentals and bearish price action at the same time.
Upcoming catalysts to watch
Looking ahead from 4 December 2025, several events are likely to be key for LSEG’s share price: [49]
- Execution of the £1bn buyback programme running through to 25 February 2026 – the actual volume and average price of repurchases will influence per‑share metrics.
- Roll‑out of the OpenAI integration, including when and how major clients adopt ChatGPT‑powered access to LSEG data.
- Further product launches under the Microsoft partnership, especially new Workspace and modelling tools that could boost Data & Analytics growth.
- Q4 2025 / full‑year 2025 results, currently pencilled in by calendars around late February 2026, where investors will look for confirmation of:
- Mid‑single‑digit revenue growth;
- Margin guidance at the upper end of the range;
- Early EPS uplift from the SwapClear deal.
- Any policy changes in the UK aimed at reviving the London listings market, which could change the narrative around LSEG as a national champion.
Bottom line
As of 4 December 2025, London Stock Exchange Group plc sits at the intersection of three big themes:
- The “London discount” and structural questions over the UK equity market;
- The AI revolution in financial data and workflows, where LSEG is pushing hard with Microsoft and now OpenAI;
- A capital‑return and derating story, with billions of pounds of buybacks chasing a share price that has lagged global peers.
Analysts, on balance, see substantial upside if the company can keep delivering mid‑single‑digit revenue growth, expand margins, and prove that AI is a tailwind rather than a threat. But the market is clearly still demanding proof in the numbers – which is exactly what the next few quarters of earnings and product launches will be about.
References
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