London Stock Exchange reports 'good' first quarter

London Stock Exchange said it had a good first quarter as it reported a 4% increase in its favoured profit measure driven by growth in data and analytics and capital markets transactions.

Gross profit excluding currency fluctuations and a deferred revenue adjustment rose 4% to £1.54bn in the three months to the end of March from a year earlier as total income excluding recoveries rose 3.9% to £1.68bn.

Reported gross profit fell 0.5% and reported income fell 1.2%, held back partly by the dollar's decline against sterling. All the figures exclude the acquisition of Refinitiv in January.

LSE said it had achieved about £40m of cost savings from the Refinitiv deal and was on track to deliver promised strategic and financial benefits. The FTSE 100 company's shares have dropped 14% since the transaction completed as investors have doubted its ability to reap the rewards from buying the financial data business.

The company said it would hold a series of investor education events to give "deeper insight" into its reshaped business , which is now heavily weighted towards data and information following the Refinitiv acquisition.

David Schwimmer, LSE's chief executive, said: "LSEG has delivered good results in the first quarter, with strong underlying performance across all divisions. Following the completion of the acquisition of Refinitiv, we are executing on our integration plans to deliver the long-term strategic and financial benefits of the transaction."

Data and analytics underlying income rose 4.7% to £1.13bn in the first quarter. Capital markets income rose 6.4% to £319m, powered by a 12.8% jump in revenue from fixed income and derivatives to £201m.