London Stock Exchange Group PLC

LSE:LSEG

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this London Stock Exchange Group Third Quarter Results Call. On the call today are David Schwimmer, the Group CEO; and Anna Manz, the Group CFO. Anna will start with an overview of the third quarter revenue performance that we released this morning. And then after that, we'll open up to Q&A. You can send us a written question in 1 or 2 ways. If you're listening via the webcast, you can use the ask a question button. Alternatively, you can simply e-mail the Investor Relations team at the address provided. We'll also be taking live questions over the telephone lines using the numbers provided in the release this morning. So with that, let me hand you over to Anna.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Thank you, Paul, and good morning. We delivered a strong third quarter with good performance across all divisions, and we continue to make excellent progress on the integration of Refinitiv. Our focus on the pro forma results at constant currency as this gives you the best view of our underlying performance. For the quarter, total income, excluding recoveries, was up 7.6% to GBP 1.7 billion. Gross profit was up 7.3% to GBP 1.6 billion. Each of our 3 divisions made a good contribution to this growth. Data & Analytics continues to perform well with growth of 6%. Industry trends are supportive, and we remain focused on rigorous performance management. This performance also reflects the continued improvement in the customer experience highlighted at our recent investor events. The large majority of these revenues are recurring. Capital Markets grew by 17%, with strength across equities, FX and fixed income and derivatives. Our Post Trade business grew revenues 11%, with increased clearing activity from both new and existing customers. However, Post Trade total income grew 2.3% as net treasury income declined from last year's heightened levels. I'm now going to take a closer look at each of these divisions, starting with Data & Analytics. The annual subscription value, or ASV, of our Data & Analytics business accelerated slightly with growth at the end of September of 4%. As a reminder, this KPI covers 87% of the revenues of our Data & Analytics business. Trading and banking was broadly flat in the quarter. Banking services performed well and the decline in Eikon Premium desktops moderated. Enterprise Data Solutions grew 4.1%. This was an acceleration from the first half. Pricing and Reference Services were up 8.1%, substantially ahead of the market and supported by the targeted investment we're making in data content. Growth in real-time data also accelerated as the business -- as a division won back business. Investment Solutions grew 11% with strong subscription revenues and a solid contribution from data and workflow products. Asset-based revenues grew 16% reflecting strong growth in the value of assets referenced against our benchmarks and indices. Wealth Solutions saw a small decline in revenues overall. We saw a good increase in the transaction volumes on our beta platform, although mix effects meant that revenues declined slightly in our Operations Management business. Our adviser and investor services business was broadly flat as customer wins were offset by losses. Customer and third-party risk solutions grew 41%. Although there was some benefit from acquisitions, World-Check, GIACT and our due diligence products all delivered double-digit growth. Taken together, we're really pleased with the 6% growth in Data & Analytics. We laid out a strategy to accelerate the growth of this business at our recent investor events, and we're executing well against that plan, rolling out new products and improving the services that we provide to our customers. Moving on to Capital Markets. There were 45 new issues on our equity venues in the third quarter, almost 4x as many as the same period last year. As a reminder, accounting rules spread recognition of these revenues over several years. Secondary markets equity trading activity was also solid in the quarter and contributed to the 15% growth in our equity revenues. We also saw strong growth in our dealer-to-client revenues at FXall, driving growth of 7.1% in our FX business. This reflects the investment we've been making in new product capabilities, relationship management and better customer service. Finally, our fixed income derivatives and other revenues grew 21%. Tradeweb continues to perform strongly, reflecting continued expansion of electronic trading across the credit markets. Overall, this was a strong performance by our capital markets business. Moving on to Post Trade. We saw a strong increase in the client activity level at SwapClear, with a 41% increase in the number of trades. The client average 10-year national equivalent was also up 19% to $3.8 trillion. This strength at SwapClear was the primary driver of the good growth in OTC derivatives revenue, which were up 11%. The continued appetite for our cleared repo solution drove 8.8% growth in securities and reporting revenues. Strong demand for our clearing solutions also provided a tailwind to the revenues we generate from managing our customers' noncash collateral. I've already touched on net treasury income, which has normalized against the heightened level seen last year. Our current expectation is for NTI to remain at the current level for the rest of this year and also during 2022, absent any market changes. Let me now touch on a few other areas. The integration of the Refinitiv business continues to proceed well. We're making good progress on delivering the financial and operational targets relating to the transaction. We're comfortably on track to achieve our increased run rate cost synergy target for the full year of GBP 125 million. Our delivery of revenue synergies is also on track. There's no change to our revenue or margin guidance, nor is there any change to the detailed expense and CapEx guidance provided at the half year results. I would add that supply chain pressures may impact the timing on some technology spend this year. Our guidance for 2021 income is unchanged. We expect growth in total income, excluding recoveries of 4% to 5%. This reflects last year's strong fourth quarter, which is boosted by elevated market volatility and onetime revenues in our Data & Analytics business. So in summary, our business performed strongly in the third quarter, with growth across all 3 of our divisions. Our recent investor events outlined our plan to create a faster growing, more scalable business and we're executing strongly against that plan. This puts us in a good position to achieve our ambitions for the full year and beyond. With that, I'll pass back to Paul.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

Great. Thank you very much, Anna. We now move to the Q&A part of the call. So we've got a couple of written questions that have come in already. So we'll start off with those, and then we'll open it up to the phone lines. So the first question that's come in is around ASV. It says, ASV measure grew by 4% in Q3. The revenues at track ASV grew 3.5%. So can you explain what's happening here, please?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Yes, sure. I'm really pleased with our ASV performance in the quarter. Just to remind you, ASV is the value of the book of contracts, subscription contracts that we're building in Data & Analytics versus the same period a year ago, and it covers just under 90% of Data & Analytics revenues. So that we've seen ASV growth increase from 3.9% at the half year to 4% at the quarter talks to an acceleration in that book of business and improving momentum. If you compare it with the 3.5% revenue growth that we've seen year-to-date, what that's telling you is our current book of business has greater growth than the revenue growth that we've seen so far. So there is good momentum in our business.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

Great. Thank you. So we've got another question. So can you provide some color on what you said around the Q4 guidance? And then secondly, can you also explain the comment that you made around the supply chain issues?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Sure. So we've had really good momentum in Q3. And I'm really pleased with the business performance. As I just called out in the ASV metric, we've got some very good underlying momentum. We've reiterated our guidance today for the full year to be between 4% and 5% growth. That was guidance we gave at the half year and it's unchanged. Year-on-year growth in quarter 4 will be lower than the 7.6% income growth we've seen in quarter 3. And really, that's because we've got stronger comps in the fourth quarter. If you remember a year ago, we benefited from the volatility associated with the possible vaccine at the time and the U.S. election. And we also had some higher levels of onetime revenue in Data & Analytics. So in short, no change to guidance. And I'm really pleased with the progress we are making against our medium-term targets. And on the supply chain, again, today, we're reconfirming cost and CapEx guidance. What we are flagging is that in a couple of areas, we've seen a few weeks delay in the delivery of some particularly tech hardware type items. Now we recognize cost, both the CapEx and expense when we receive -- when we actually get delivery of hardware. So if that occurs over the year-end period, it could move the timing of cost recognition about. It's really just a short delay. I mean the important thing here and the important thing to take away from this is, we're talking about a matter of a few weeks delay in a few things. It's not impacting any of our transformation or integration project timing or any of our overarching delivery. So all in all, on track. Seeing some of the same issues that others are seeing in the world at the moment.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

Okay. Great. Thank you. We've had another question come in, so we'll take this one and then we'll open up to the phone lines. So the next question we've had in, it says, can you explain more detail the key drivers for the fall in NTI this quarter? And what are the metrics to track about how the investment returns will perform on the collateral that you hold? I mean the second part to the question is what sort of changes in the market would you need to see, to see the investment returns come back against the higher levels?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Okay. So NTI is really a factor of a couple of things. The quantum of cash collateral that we hold and the returns we earn on it. So -- if you just look at -- quantum of cash collateral aside, and we're very clear on that and we report on that, so you can track it. And by the way, I think we're at broadly the right level of quantum of cash if you're thinking about modeling going forward. So if you talk about the returns on that cash collateral, 2/3 of the return that we see on that cash collateral is a fixed fee. So it doesn't move with movements in interest rates. So that's the first piece. And the balance is impacted by movements in interest rates. And what we've seen in this quarter is, frankly, a fairly flat yield curve and benign interest rate environment. And that's why you're seeing that the NTI levels are at the level that they are at and absent change in the interest rate environment, that would be a good guide to what you should expect going forward. In terms of what will change our NTI growth going forward, obviously, movements in interest rates and the steepening of the yield curve. The one thing I'd just caution you to is there's a bit of a delay between that movement coming through and it flowing through to our NTI.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

Okay. Thanks, Anna. Right. No more written questions at the moment. So I'm going to open up the line to the operator. I know you've got at least a couple of calls for people wanting to put questions. So, operator, over to you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our first question from Arnaud Giblat from Exane BNPP.

[Arnaud Maurice Andre Giblat, MD & Research Analyst]

I've got 3 quick questions, please. If you could just come back to the NTI. I mean, previously, I think the guidance is always not around short-term rates going up, but more around expectations of volatility at the short end of the curve. So can you confirm that, especially in the context of, I mean, a lot of uncertainty around inflation, et cetera, one could you assume that they would be a bit more volatility at the short end of the curve. So would that drive up NTI? My second question is on pricing cycle at SwapClear. Could you give us a bit of an indication as to when the next pricing cycle could happen? And finally, my last question is on the inorganic growth in risk. Could you quantify the contribution from acquisitions for the quarter?

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks, Arnaud. So your question around impact of short-term volatility. You are correct there in that we do see an impact on volume in SwapClear when there is movement on the short end of the curve. And what we've talked about in the past is that we see activity from, in some cases, hedge funds and others positioning when there are movements on the short term. And at the same time, we see activity in terms of what I'll call real money corporates, others engaging in hedging of their financing instruments on the longer end. So that's another dynamic here that can have an impact on the overall volumes in SwapClear. And when you have an impact on the overall volumes in SwapClear, that can, of course, have a follow-on impact on the amount of NTI. So that's the distinction that it's worth making there. Your second question around pricing cycle in SwapClear, nothing to update on there. We have, over the years, there have been a couple of renegotiations of the pricing arrangement with some of our partner member banks, but nothing to update on there at this point. And then on your third question...

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

So this is the inorganic growth in the risk business. So we've said that the risk business has grown at 40%-ish in the quarter. The way I think about that is the underlying businesses that -- there's 3 of them, on a sort of organic basis, if you just look at their momentum, it's probably about half of that.

[Operator]

The next question is coming from Kyle Voigt from KBW.

[Kyle Kenneth Voigt, Managing Director]

So the index subscription growth rate accelerated a bit in the quarter. I just wanted to know if you could kind of speak to that and whether or not you expect that strength to kind of continue as we head into 2022, just kind of what drove that in the quarter? And then I guess on the AUM base side of things, I guess we're just seeing some stronger growth rates elsewhere in the industry, I think, it ticked down a little bit sequentially from EUR 64 million to EUR 62 million. Just wondering if you can kind of comment on what you're seeing on the AUM-driven index revenues as well?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

So sure. So on the index subs growth rate, we've reported a growth rate of about 12%. Look, we've seen really good momentum in those businesses. We've got some new products in the period. And fundamentally, we're performing nicely. I wouldn't sort of extrapolate exactly the same growth rate. We will see some lumpiness quarter-on-quarter. But fundamentally, I'd say the growth in the business is very pleasing. And in terms of asset under management, yes, so our assets under management growth follows the assets under management that we track. And it tends to follow with a bit of a delay because we invoice in arrears. We do have some caps and colors around that. So you don't get a direct read through, but fundamentally, we benefited from the increase in assets under management in the period.

[Kyle Kenneth Voigt, Managing Director]

Okay. Maybe I can just ask another follow-up on NTI too, if possible. So just given that we have a rate hike in expectations and the Fed futures for midyear 2022. Can you just remind us how far out the curve on the piece of that line that actually is a bit sensitive to read. How far out on the curve do you typically invest, but forget it if it's 30 or 60 days? And then what are you paying out to your clients? Can you just walk through that math in a little bit more detail, that would be helpful.

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Yes, Kyle, I don't think we're going to be able to go through it in a lot of detail. The key point here is that our investments, a vast majority of our investments tend to be very short term. So when you're thinking about the curve. We're talking about the difference between overnight and relatively short term. So maybe, I think, over the next 30 days or so. And that's not the entire portfolio, but that's a good way of thinking about it.

[Operator]

The next question is coming from the line of Gurjit Kambo from JPMorgan.

[Gurjit Singh Kambo, Head of Diversified Financials Research]

Just a couple of questions. In terms of the mix of customers in beta, can you just maybe just explain the dynamics there and what's causing that sort of negative mix effect in the beta business? And then secondly, on the synergies, I think you mentioned that you're comfortably on target to hit the EUR 125 million. I guess that's an exit rate for 2021. Could you perhaps just help us maybe understand what the in-year benefit of that EUR 125 million could be in 2021?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

So let me just do customers in beta. So we've seen an increase in the U.S. equities volumes in the period. But as you say, that hasn't translated perfectly through to a revenue benefit. Look, it's 1 quarter, and we see lumpiness quarter-on-quarter. The fee structures for every customer are not the same. And it depends on which customers with which fee structures we see the activity in. And the way that's playing out in this quarter, we haven't seen all of that activity benefit feed through because it was tending to play out in the lower fee structure customers. And on the synergies, yes, the $125 million is an exit rate number. And I can't remember, Paul, whether we've given the in-year benefit of that or not at the half year.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

At the half year, we did. I think we said EUR 77 million was the rate at that point.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

It is EUR 77 million, I just didn't know that we've given it.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

Yes. But we haven't given an update at the Q3 point.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

No.

[Gurjit Singh Kambo, Head of Diversified Financials Research]

And can I just -- on beta, just a follow-up. I think in Q2, on a constant currency basis, the beta revenue is also around sort of EUR 46 million. Is that the same dynamic then you saw in Q2 and you're seeing in Q3 on beta?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Sorry, can you say that again? I didn't quite catch the question.

[Gurjit Singh Kambo, Head of Diversified Financials Research]

Yes. If I look at your appendix, I think the beta revenues in Q2 were also around EUR 46 million and the EUR 46 million in this quarter. Is that the same dynamic, because I think in Q1, you had EUR 53 million. I'm just trying to understand, is there like something that's changing within that business in the last couple of quarters?

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

So the way to think about this is revenue in beta tends to track the level of volatility in the U.S. equities. So what we're highlighting this quarter is we've seen an increase in the volatility in U.S. equities, but we haven't seen the revenue increase that you might have expected with that. So we do disclose that as a KPI. There is -- as I've already said to you, there is an element of customer mix, not all of our customer relationships are the same. And so quarter-on-quarter, you do get some muddying of that general progression.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is coming from the line of Andrew Coombs from Citi.

[Andrew Philip Coombs, Research Analyst]

Two questions, one related to results and one not. On the results, I'm just going back to Wealth Solutions, you just did a detailed description of the beta revenues. On the advice of investor services revenues, you talk about them being flat as cancellations offsetting client wins. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that, please. In part because it looks like your momentum there was improving. I know it's known and you've had issues because with the Thomson one in the past. If I remember at the investor update you said the first half, I think it was up 6% year-on-year. So for it then to be backwards and be flat year-on-year. I'm intrigued exactly what's driving that. So that would be my first question. The second question unrelated to results is if you could just touch upon the IT outage this morning that caused market data not to be presented at the open. I don't think anything you can add on what caused that? It seems to be resolved pretty quickly, but any color would be useful.

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

So Anna will touch on your wealth question, not aware of the outage you were referring to. So not in a position to answer that question. But Anna, over to you.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Yes. So on adviser investor services, we've seen both customer wins, and we've seen some customer losses and the 2 together mean that in the quarter, our performance is largely flat. It's a 1-quarter number. Now there will be some flow -- we will see some impact of that customer loss in the next quarter. But fundamentally, nothing is different from what you heard from Sabrina at the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago, where she walked through where we are with this business and the huge potential we see, but some of the challenges that we need to work through around investment and making sure that we're better meeting our customer needs. And she's making really good progress on that. And we'll see that benefit come through over the coming quarters as we move forward from here.

[Operator]

Next question is coming from the line of Michael Werner from UBS.

[Michael Joseph Werner, Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst]

Anna, just 2 quick questions, hopefully. One on the onetime items, I think you mentioned in Q4 from a comparative perspective in Data & Analytics. I was just wondering if you could provide a quantum on that? And where we -- and which segments they were being -- where we saw that? And then second, going back to the subscription revenues, the benchmark rates, indices and analytics very strong 13% year-on-year growth of 12.8%. I was just wondering if you could provide a little color if there's any particular areas of strength, whether it's fixed income, ESG, for example, and just wanted to confirm that this is kind of there are no one-offs in there, and this is on a sustainable basis.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

Sure. So on your first question, which was why is the comp slightly larger in Data & Analytics for Q4 a year ago. That really was around some significant onetime purchases we saw in our World-Check business as everybody came back from sort of pandemic slowdown, we saw a real sort of pickup in our business in Q4 a year ago. And so that's really where you're seeing it. In terms of what's driving the growth in subs and bench -- in the subscriptions around the benchmark and indices. It's quite broad-based, actually. We're seeing growth in -- across the board, and the business is doing well. And you heard a lot of color from Lee, what? Just a few weeks ago now as to what he's doing to drive the business. In terms of one-offs in the numbers, we're always -- we're also renegotiating contracts. I wouldn't say there's sort of any material one-off in the number. The underlying growth rate is over 10%. And we do work through contract renegotiations from time to time, and they do have some slight impact at the edge, but that's normal course of business for us. So fundamentally, good performance across the board, and we're pleased with the progress. And I'll point you back to Lee's presentation for some more of the context.

[Operator]

The next question is coming from Johannes Thormann from HSBC.

[Johannes Thormann, Global Head of Exchanges and Analyst]

Two questions from market fees. I know you stopped the disclosure of the primary market revenues. But if you could at least give a trend also post the change in accounting rules sometime last year. If this has been rather flattish or still with the increase in IPO activity increasing quarter-on-quarter in the last quarter so we get a better feeling for modeling this. And then secondly, on FX trading, if I understood correctly, the volumes have been down quarter-on-quarter. What drove the improved margin or the improved revenues from this business?

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks, Johannes. So the activity level in primary markets has been very strong. We have seen almost 4x as many listings this quarter as the quarter a year ago. So a healthy pipeline and that business is doing very well. Anna can touch on the accounting because it doesn't have a dramatic impact in quarter despite the fairly substantial numbers of listings there. But over to you, Anna.

[Anna Olive Magdelene Manz, CFO & Director]

So on the accounting, and this hasn't changed recently. This has been consistent for 2, 3 years now. We recognize the value of the listing over a 7-year window. So we -- listings that are made in the quarter. We take just a piece of the value of that and we recognize the rest of the value over the following 7 years. So what you see is a real smoothing. So even though we've been through a period of really high activity recently, it gets smooth. And FX -- the FX performance while I left it. So yes. We've had some really good performance, particularly in our FXall business. Again, you heard from Neil about that at our Capital Markets Day recently and all of the activity that is going on there. But fundamentally, I would say what's driving that strong performance in FXall is the investment that we're making in new product capabilities and the way that we're working with our customers and improvements in our customer service.

[Operator]

The next question is coming from Philip Middleton of Bank of America.

[Philip David Middleton, Analyst]

I wonder, could you talk a little bit about the enterprise data business because this is somewhere where you've had some challenges in the immediate past. The Q3 looks better. This is something you talked positively about even at the H1 stage. Could you tell us what are you seeing there? And how do you see the prospects for this over the next few quarters?

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks, Philip, and good morning. So very consistent message with the message you heard from us over the past few events, whether the investor education event or the half year, where we're seeing very strong performance in the PRS business, and that's benefiting from increased investment in the business as well as we're starting to see the benefits of the synergies there with the -- I'll call it, the cross-sell of PRS and the associated index products. And then as we have talked about over the course of this year, there were some competitive pressures that we were seeing in the real-time data business. And those appear to be, as I mentioned in prior discussions, appear to be tailing off because of our strong customer service, customer relationship management in responding to some of those competitive pressures. So we continue to feel good about this business. We continue to invest in both PRS and the real-time data and expect to see ongoing strong growth on the PRS side and continued improvement in the real-time side.

[Operator]

Last question is coming from Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley.

[Bruce Allan Hamilton, Equity Analyst]

Just a quick one, if I could maybe get an update on the latest on the equivalent discussions and time lines for that, that would be great.

[David A. Schwimmer, Group CEO & Executive Director]

Yes, I didn't think we were going to get through a call without a question on that. So no dramatic changes from our perspective. We continue to engage with the various authorities here. I would point you to the public statement made by Commissioner McGuinness that was in the FT recently. They're confirming that there will be no cliff edge around this. And that's consistent with how we have thought about this and our expectations. It has become, I think, increasingly clear how important LCH Limited is to our EU domiciled members and clients. And there is an ongoing, I'll say, recognition by customers, members, various other stakeholders of the importance of our service. So we'll continue to engage with the authorities, ECB, European Commission, ESMA and others, and we'll see where they come out. But as I've said in the past, I am both hopeful and optimistic that we will get to a point where we can continue to serve our EU members and our EU clients and have that service ongoing.

[Paul Froud, Head of Investor Relations]

I think that's -- we've got no more written questions have come through. And I think that's last question on the phone line. So that will bring us to the end of this call. So thank you to everyone who joined. Thank you for your questions. If there's anything further, then obviously reach out to the IR team, and we're trying to help you out. Otherwise, we'll end the call now. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you, everyone. That does conclude your call for today. You may now disconnect. Thanks again for joining and enjoy the rest of the day.