(Alliance News) - London Stock Exchange Group PLC on Thursday said it had made a good start to the year with broad-based growth driving an increase in first quarter income.

Shares in LSEG rose 0.9% to 8,884.00 pence in London on Thursday.

The London-based exchange operator and data provider said total income in the first three months of 2024 rose 3.9% to GBP2.18 billion from GBP2.10 billion a year prior. On a like-for-like basis at constant currency income rose by 6.3%.

Gross profit climbed 4.5% to GBP1.89 billion from GBP1.81 billion, or by 6.9% on a comparable basis.

Chief Executive David Schwimmer said: "We have started the year well, delivering another quarter of solid growth consistent with our plans. We drove the strongest performances in FTSE Russell, Risk Intelligence and Tradeweb, and our Equities business returned to growth. The rapid pace of innovation continues, with new product launches across LSEG throughout 2024."

"We continue to make strong progress in our Microsoft partnership, with a number of products expected to be in external pilot or general release this half. We are now picking up the pace of migrating our datasets onto the Microsoft platform, which will transform access to our data for customers. We look forward to further progress in the rest of the year."

On a comparable basis, income in Data & Analytics rose by 4.3% reflecting continued strong retention, good sales and a contribution from pricing consistent with the previous year.

At FTSE Russell income increased by 9.5%, with inflows and more favourable year-on-year market trends driving a stronger contribution from asset-based revenues, which increased by 16.4%.

Risk Intelligence income rose 12.5% driven by strong business momentum and customer demand in its screening business, World-Check.

Capital Markets was up 14.4%, driven by growth at Tradeweb. Equities returned to growth, up 1.6%, with gains in secondary trading partly offset by lower market activity.

Fixed Income, Derivatives & Other income soared 21.3% with a record quarter for Tradeweb.

By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter

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