London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Stock: ChatGPT Deal, £1bn Buyback and 2026 Price Targets

London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSEG.L) has moved firmly into the spotlight this December. The stock is trading in the mid‑8,000p range as investors digest an aggressive share buyback programme, a high‑profile collaboration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, expanding AI partnerships, and a series of bullish analyst forecasts for 2026 and beyond.

As of early December 2025, LSEG shares sit well below their 52‑week highs around 12,185p, with a range over the past year of roughly 8,096p–12,185p. ^[1] That puts the current price in the lower half of the range, even as the company reports solid growth and ramps up capital returns.

At the same time, most analyst houses now cluster around 40–50% upside over the next 12 months, while several valuation models flag the shares as expensive on traditional metrics. The result: one of the more interesting “quality vs valuation” debates in the FTSE 100 right now.

LSEG share price and valuation in December 2025

Recent data from several platforms show LSEG changing hands at around 8,600–8,700p per share, with MarketBeat quoting 8,643.91p as of 5 December 2025. ^[2] That leaves the stock:

Near the lower half of its 52‑week range of c. 8,096–12,185p ^[3]
Well below the levels seen shortly after the Q3 trading update in October, when the share price briefly pushed above 9,700p on the back of strong results and analyst upgrades. ^[4]

On valuation, the picture is more polarised:

Wisesheets/Yahoo Finance data put LSEG’s trailing price‑to‑earnings (P/E) ratio at around 46x earnings. ^[5]
Simply Wall St estimates a current P/E of 44.8x versus a “fair” P/E of 22.2x, concluding that LSEG looks expensive on this metric. ^[6]
ValueInvesting.io’s discounted cash flow and relative valuation work suggests “fair value” closer to 4,000–5,100p per share – implying 40–50% downside from current levels on those models. ^[7]

In other words: the market is still paying a premium multiple for LSEG’s earnings, reflecting its data and infrastructure profile, but some fundamental screens say that premium may be too rich.

Buybacks and capital returns: £2.5bn on the table

Today’s transaction in own shares

On 8 December 2025, LSEG published a fresh “Transaction in Own Shares” notice. As part of its ongoing buyback programme, the group bought 194,084 ordinary shares on 5 December from Citigroup Global Markets Limited at prices between 8,628p and 8,728p, with an average purchase price of 8,675.32p per share. ^[8]

These shares will be cancelled, reducing the number of shares in issue and leaving total voting rights at 512,726,937. ^[9] Mechanically, that boosts earnings per share over time and signals continued management confidence in the equity story.

The £1bn buyback launched in August

This latest transaction sits within a much larger capital‑return plan. On 4 August 2025, LSEG announced a £1 billion share buyback programme, executed via Goldman Sachs International, to run no later than 19 December 2025. The stated purpose is straightforward: reduce the company’s share capital. ^[10]

Under the mandate approved at the May 2025 AGM, LSEG had authority to repurchase up to 53,060,997 shares; more than 50 million were still available when the programme began, following completion of an earlier buyback with Morgan Stanley in June. ^[11]

A further £1bn on top – and £2.5bn over 12 months

The Q3 2025 trading update went further. LSEG announced an additional £1 billion buyback to be completed by February 2026, bringing total repurchases to £2.5 billion over the 12‑month period from March 2025 to February 2026. ^[12]

For a group with a market capitalisation in the mid‑£40 billion range, this is meaningful. It supports earnings per share, offsets share awards and, in theory, adds some technical support to the share price, even if macro sentiment toward UK equities remains fragile.

Boardroom changes and governance signals

Governance‑wise, December has brought a couple of notable developments.

On 5 December 2025, an RNS “Director Declaration” confirmed that William Vereker, a non‑executive director at LSEG, will join the board of Macquarie Group Limited as a non‑executive director from 1 February 2026. ^[13] The notice is mainly procedural (fulfilling UK Listing Rule 6.4.9) but underlines the increasingly global network around LSEG’s board.

More structurally, Financial News reported that Martin Brand, the Blackstone executive who helped engineer the $27bn Refinitiv sale to LSEG, will step down from the board after the April 2026 AGM, alongside Dominic Blakemore, CEO of Compass Group and current audit committee chair. Board member Lloyd Pitchford will take over as audit chair. ^[14]

That article also highlights how far the group has evolved since the Refinitiv acquisition: LSEG now employs over 26,000 people in around 65 countries, with only about 5% of revenue coming from equities, and roughly half from data and analytics. ^[15]

Taken together, the board moves hint at a gradual reshaping from a transaction‑driven, private‑equity dominated board to one focused on running a global data and infrastructure business at scale.

AI and data strategy: ChatGPT, Claude and “LSEG Everywhere”

The biggest narrative driver for LSEG stock in early December is its AI strategy.

OpenAI / ChatGPT collaboration

On 3 December 2025, Reuters reported that LSEG will integrate its financial data and analytics into ChatGPT and roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to its own employees. ^[16]

Key points from that announcement:

ChatGPT users with LSEG credentials will be able to pull in market data and news from products like Workspace and Financial Analytics directly inside ChatGPT. ^[17]
The integration is powered by a Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector – a standard that lets AI models talk securely to external systems and data sources. ^[18]
A phased rollout begins in the week of 8 December 2025, initially for selected institutional clients and roughly 4,000 LSEG employees. ^[19]

Financial News frames this collaboration as part of “LSEG Everywhere”, the group’s broader AI strategy to make its licensed historical and real‑time data easy to plug into advanced AI tools across the financial industry. That article also reminds readers of LSEG’s 10‑year strategic partnership with Microsoft, under which Microsoft took a 4% equity stake in LSEG back in 2022. ^[20]

Anthropic / Claude for Financial Services

LSEG is not betting on a single AI partner. On 27 October 2025, the group announced a strategic collaboration with Anthropic. According to Reuters and subsequent industry coverage, LSEG’s Workspace and Financial Analytics datasets will be available inside Claude for Financial Services, Anthropic’s vertical offering for finance professionals. ^[21]

The partnership is designed to let Claude:

Summarise earnings calls and transcripts
Scan due‑diligence and KYC documentation
Trigger “agentic” workflows (for example, kicking off analysis or monitoring tasks when certain conditions are met)
Surface instant market signals using LSEG’s licensed data

LSEG’s own commentary frames this as a key pillar of “LSEG Everywhere”: distributing trusted, permissioned data into whichever AI tools banks, asset managers and corporates choose to deploy. ^[22]

BlackRock / Preqin private markets partnership

Staying with the data theme, LSEG also expanded its relationship with BlackRock in late October. Reuters reports that the group will give clients access to Preqin private‑markets data via LSEG’s platforms, after BlackRock acquired Preqin in 2024. ^[23]

In the same piece, LSEG CEO David Schwimmer played down AI as an existential threat, arguing instead that AI tools increase demand for high‑quality, well‑permissioned data – precisely the kind of content LSEG specialises in. ^[24]

Collectively, these deals position LSEG not just as an exchange operator, but as a core data feed into the AI stacks of banks, hedge funds and corporates – a central plank of the bullish long‑term case for the shares.

Q3 2025 results: growth, margins and clearing economics

The fundamental backdrop to all this AI and partnership news is a steady, broad‑based growth profile.

In its Q3 2025 trading update on 23 October, LSEG reported: ^[25]

Total income (excluding recoveries) up 6.4% year‑on‑year in Q3, and 7.3% year‑to‑date
Risk Intelligence revenue up 13.9%
FTSE Russell up 9.3%
Data & Analytics up 4.9%
Markets (including trading venues and FX) up 6.3%

Management also raised EBITDA margin guidance, now expecting around 100 basis points of margin expansion for FY 2025 at constant currency – the top end of previous guidance – before an additional c.100 bps benefit from changes to clearing economics. ^[26]

Clearing deal and Post Trade Solutions sale

Those clearing changes are material. On the same day as the Q3 update, Reuters reported that LSEG will: ^[27]

Sell a 20% stake in its Post Trade Solutions (PTS) business to a consortium of 11 banks for £170m, valuing PTS at £850m
Cut the banks’ revenue surplus share from the SwapClear interest‑rate swap clearing business from 30% to 15% in 2025, and then to 10% in 2026, in exchange for paying £1.15bn to the banks in two instalments

LSEG says this mirrors the successful structure used for SwapClear and will be accretive to EBITDA margin and adjusted earnings per share, while tightening strategic alignment with key bank clients. ^[28]

Hargreaves Lansdown’s research note on the update described the quarter as a “beat” versus expectations, with growth broad‑based and total buybacks expected to reach £2.5bn between March 2025 and February 2026. ^[29] The shares initially jumped around 7% on the news before giving back some gains in subsequent weeks. ^[30]

Analyst forecasts and price targets: strong upside consensus

Across sell‑side and data platforms, analyst sentiment on LSEG remains distinctly positive.

LSEG’s own consensus (as of 12 November 2025)

On its investor‑relations site, LSEG publishes a compiled analyst consensus (based on 10 third‑party models) dated 12 November 2025. Key points: ^[31]

Ratings: 17 Buy, 1 Hold, 0 Sell
Consensus target share price:12,244p, versus a closing price of 9,186p on 11 November – implying ~33% upside at that time
Revenue (Total income excl. recoveries):
- 2025: £8,972m
- 2026: £9,549m
- 2027: £10,215m
  with organic constant‑currency growth of 6.9% in 2025 and 6.7% in 2026
Adjusted EBITDA margin (ex recoveries): around 50–52% over 2025–27
Adjusted basic EPS:
- 2025: 415.8p
- 2026: 462.8p
- 2027: 517.2p
Dividend per share: rising from 144.2p (2025) to 179.1p (2027)

It’s worth stressing this is consensus, not company guidance, and will change as new research comes out.

External platforms: Investing.com, ValueInvesting.io, MarketBeat

Different aggregators paint a similar picture, with some methodological variation:

Investing.com (based on 15 analysts over the past three months):
- Overall consensus: Strong Buy
- Ratings split: 15 Buy, 0 Hold, 0 Sell
- Average 12‑month price target:12,349p, with a high of 13,790p and a low of 11,000p
- Implied upside of around 43% from a spot price of c. 8,612p, and a 52‑week range of 8,096–12,185p. ^[32]
ValueInvesting.io (23 analysts):
- Consensus recommendation: BUY
- Average 12‑month target:12,701.55p, implying about 47% upside from a spot price of 8,652p
- Target range: 11,110–14,479p
- Forecasts revenue rising from £8.86bn to £9.07bn in 2025 and £9.66bn in 2026, with EPS expected to jump from 1.33 to 4.21 this year and 4.66 next year (reflecting post‑Refinitiv normalisation and margin gains). ^[33]
MarketBeat (7 Wall Street analysts):
- Consensus rating: Buy (7 Buy, 0 Hold, 0 Sell)
- Average price target:£126.17, with a high of £135 and a low of £105
- Implied upside of ~46% from a quoted spot price of 8,643.91p. ^[34]

Taken together, most professional coverage is pointing in the same direction: double‑digit revenue growth, expanding margins and significant upside potential from current levels – at least on a 12‑month view.

Valuation debate: quality compounder or over‑priced data giant?

The tension in the LSEG story today is not about whether the business is “good” – the Q3 update and multi‑year consensus numbers suggest it is – but how much investors should pay for that quality.

On the bullish side:

LSEG has transformed itself into a global data and market‑infrastructure platform, with a majority of revenue from high‑margin, recurring data and analytics. ^[35]
AI‑era partnerships with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic deepen its integration into clients’ workflows and could open up new distribution‑based revenue streams. ^[36]
Clearing, index and risk‑intelligence businesses benefit from regulatory complexity and high switching costs. ^[37]
The £2.5bn buyback and progressive dividend policy provide tangible capital return. ^[38]

On the cautious side:

Valuation screens are flashing red. Simply Wall St’s framework sees LSEG’s current P/E of 44.8x as roughly double its “fair” P/E of 22.2x, while ValueInvesting.io’s fair‑value models put intrinsic value in the 4,000–5,100p range – well below the current price. ^[39]
TipRanks’ AI “Spark” model rates the stock Outperform fundamentally but notes “bearish” technical momentum and a high P/E ratio that suggests potential overvaluation, even as buybacks and partnerships support the long‑term story. ^[40]
The integration of Refinitiv and the shift toward data has already consumed significant capital; further margin expansion may be harder to deliver from here if growth slows. ^[41]
Competition from other data providers (Bloomberg, ICE, S&P, MSCI) and from in‑house bank data platforms could cap pricing power over time – especially if regulators scrutinise data costs more aggressively. ^[42]

The upshot: the equity market is being asked to pay a “data‑and‑AI platform” multiple for a business whose underlying growth profile looks mid‑single‑digit on revenue and low double‑digit on EPS. Whether that is justified will depend heavily on how monetisable the new AI integrations prove to be and how well LSEG continues to execute on its clearing and index strategies.

Key things for investors to watch next

Anyone following LSEG stock over the coming quarters is likely to keep an eye on a few themes:

AI revenue and usage metrics
Evidence that the ChatGPT and Claude integrations are driving incremental usage, upsell or new customer segments would strengthen the long‑term bull case. So far, the deals are strategically impressive; the revenue impact is still to be quantified. ^[43]
Progress of the clearing deal and PTS stake sale
Investors will want to see that the new revenue‑sharing structure for SwapClear and the 20% PTS sale deliver the promised uplift to margins and earnings without straining bank relationships. ^[44]
Execution on buybacks and balance‑sheet strength
The group is on track to return £2.5bn to shareholders over 12 months. How this interacts with leverage, investment in growth projects and future M&A will be closely watched. ^[45]
Board refresh and governance
The departure of Blackstone’s Martin Brand and audit‑chair Dominic Blakemore next year, combined with new external appointments like William Vereker’s additional role at Macquarie, will gradually reshape LSEG’s boardroom dynamics at a time when regulatory scrutiny of data and clearing markets is increasing. ^[46]
Valuation vs delivery
With consensus targets implying 40–50% upside and valuation models flashing “expensive”, the margin for error is not huge. Any disappointment on growth, AI monetisation or regulatory developments could trigger a de‑rating from current multiples.

Bottom line

As of 8 December 2025, London Stock Exchange Group sits at the crossroads of several powerful trends: the migration of finance onto data platforms, the rise of generative AI in professional workflows, and the ongoing global competition among exchanges and index providers.

The latest buyback activity, increasingly ambitious AI partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, and solid Q3 fundamentals give bulls plenty to work with. At the same time, premium valuations and model‑based fair‑value estimates well below the current share price provide ammunition for more cautious investors.