1st Aug 2024 10:47
(Alliance News) - London Stock Exchange Group PLC on Thursday announced a smartly higher interim dividend as profit rose and as its joint product development with Microsoft Corp remained on track.
The London-based financial markets manager said pretax profit rose 4.7% to GBP693 million in the first half of 2024 from GBP662 million a year prior.
Total income climbed 5.4% to GBP4.20 billion from GBP3.99 billion.
Chief Executive Officer David Schwimmer said: "Our high pace of innovation continues. We have made significant enhancements to Workspace, leading to several competitor displacements. We are building on our leadership in data, expanding our pricing and reference content substantially and adding over 70 new feeds to our low-latency data coverage. The recent strategic partnership with Dow Jones also brings leading breadth in news coverage. In FTSE Russell [indices], we are seeing strong demand for our differentiated climate transition and multi-asset solutions."
LSEG hiked its interim dividend by 15% to 41.0 pence per share from 35.7p a year prior.
Looking ahead, the company reiterated its medium-term outlook of mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth which it anticipates to speed up after 2024.
It added that the joint product development with Microsoft was on track with first products in general availability expected in the second half of 2024.
Back at the end of 2022, LSEG and Microsoft signed a 10-year cooperation agreement under which Microsoft bought a 4.2% stake in LSEG, which committed to buying Microsoft products in return. The pair also aim to jointly develop market data and financial markets infrastructure products.
LSEG shares were up 3.9% to 9,842.00 pence each on Thursday morning in London.
By Tom Budszus, Alliance News slot editor
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