London Stock Exchange Group plc

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to LSEG's third quarter update. I'm here with David and Anna. Anna will make some brief opening remarks on our Q3 performance, and then we'll open up to questions on the conference call line. And with that, let me hand over to Anna.

Thanks, Peregrine. Good morning. It's been another good quarter. We're delivering strong, broad-based growth, and we're transforming the business. As I go through the numbers, I'll focus as usual on constant currency growth. Total income grew 8%, continuing the trend that we've seen in the first half, with good contribution from all three divisions. This puts us in good position to deliver growth towards the upper end of the 6% to 8% guidance range, and we remain confident of delivering on all of our other 2023 guidance as well. Datron Analytics was up 7.2% as stronger sales, better retention and this year's higher price increase all continue to drive growth. All of our Datron Analytics businesses made a positive contribution to this growth. Trading and banking revenues were up 2.2% with a similar level of organic growth to the first half. We continue to improve the functionality of our trading and banking products, with over 200 updates to Workspace so far this year. Enterprise data grew 9%, supported by continuing strong growth for real-time data, particularly TIC history and cloud-based services. The breadth and quality of our data remains a key differentiator for PRS, which also grew strongly. Headline growth appears slightly slower, but this is all due to the one-off benefit from the beta contract in Q2 and the annualisation of the Maystreet acquisition. Underlying growth remains strong and consistent. Investment solutions grew 10%. Growth accelerated as our asset-based revenues benefited from inflows and more favourable market levels, while strong demand for our flagship equity products helped to drive double-digit growth in subscription revenues. Our wealth business grew 3%, where we're seeing good demand for our data feeds, slightly offset by a slower period for our workflow business. And we're continuing to drive excellent momentum in our customer and third-party risk business, where revenues grew 16%, with our cloud-based offering making it easier for customers to access our services and integrate them into their workflow. Turning to ASV growth, which we've increased over 400 basis points since the Refinitiv acquisition. The third quarter saw a reversal of the timing differences I spoke about at the half year, with ASV growth ending the quarter at 7.1%. You remember at the half year we talked about ASV growth increasingly being driven by new sales as opposed to higher retention, which, as I said at the time, is a good thing. But as we track the impact of this month on month, we see that the metric is now fluctuating more than it's done historically. So while it remains indicative of future growth, it won't perfectly align from quarter to quarter. In the short term, we expect ASV to soften again around the turn of the year, mainly reflecting the impact of Credit Suisse that we called out at the first half. That said, consensus expectations for data and analytics next year reflect this already. Meanwhile, we're continuing to make great progress with Microsoft, though we don't expect to see a benefit to revenue or ASV until 2025. Our joint global teams are building product as we speak, and we're gaining insight from some of our largest customers as we work closely with them through our design partner programme. Growth in capital markets division accelerated to 6.2%, a nice step up from the half year, and this was largely driven by TradeWeb. Revenues in our equity business were down 9%, reflecting continued weakness in both primary and secondary markets. In FX, the buy-side activity that was weaker, as we saw in the first half, persisted into Q3, weighing on the performance of FX All. Overall FX revenues were down a little over 3%. Growth at TradeWeb accelerated in the quarter, with strong performance across rates, credit and money markets. Activity improved in Q3 as expectations around interest rates began to settle. And TradeWeb continues to take market share, supported by the healthy adoption of new products and services. Share in investment grade and high yield credit hit record highs in the third quarter. Post-trade revenues grew 17% or 9% on an organic basis. Headline growth in OTC derivatives was just over 30%, as we benefit from the recent acquisitions of Quantile and Acadia. These businesses form part of the post-trade solutions offering that we're building, and we're excited to share more with you on that at our upcoming investor event. On an organic basis, OTC derivatives grew 7%, where elevated swap clear volumes are continuing to drive good growth. This activity also supported net treasury income, which was up 9%. As market volatility has begun to normalize, we've seen cash collateral fall from the recent high levels. Cash balances currently stand around 110 billion euros, 25% down from the end of last year. Let's turn briefly to capital allocation and financing. In September, we completed the directed purchase of 9.5 million shares from the Blackstone-led consortium, taking total buybacks since August last year to £1.5 billion. Assuming full conversion of the options written, the consortium's shareholding now stands at around 11%, down from around 34% at the start of the year. In September, we made a successful return to the bond markets, raising €1.4 billion to repay the remaining term loan from the Refinitiv acquisition in 2021. We'll be continuing with refinancing activity in the months ahead. So to sum up, we've delivered another quarter of 8% growth. In fact, organic growth has actually picked up a bit from the 6.5% in H1 to 7% in Q3. We're on course to achieve total income growth towards the upper end of our 6% to 8% guidance. And we're confident in delivering on all of our other targets. As we invest in the long-term growth of the business, we're excited about the opportunities ahead, and we're looking forward to discussing these with you in more detail at our upcoming investor event in November. And with that, I'll pass back to Peregrine for questions.

Thanks, Anna. Judith, please, would you open the line to questions? Thank you.