Stocks of the London Stock Exchange Group rose above the 2% mark on Wednesday after reports circulated that Elliott Investment Management had built a stake in the company and was discussing ways to enhance value. The move provided some relief to investors who have driven the exchange operator's valuation down amid heightened concern about the potential effects of artificial intelligence on data and analytics income.
Barclays, which has tracked relative performance across exchange operators, identifies LSEG as the weakest performer among major European exchanges since mid-2025. In its most recent sector review the bank described the degree of de-rating as "overdone," arguing that market reaction has outpaced the concrete exposure LSEG has disclosed.
The bank's analysis highlights that headline focus has fallen on LSEG's data and analytics disclosures, but that the company's own subsegment breakdown points to limited actual revenue at risk. Barclays models the potential AI-related disruption at roughly 5% of group revenue. That figure is derived from LSEG's assessment that approximately 10% of revenue in each of its two largest Data & Analytics components - Workflows and Data & Feeds - might be vulnerable to AI-driven substitution.
Despite that relatively modest exposure, Barclays notes LSEG has experienced "the most aggressive" valuation compression compared with peers. The selling intensified after Anthropic released its Cowork plug-ins and launched Claude Opus 4.6, developments the bank says renewed investor questions about long-term growth and even terminal value for LSEG's data-led businesses. The subsequent selloff took LSEG shares to three-year lows and pushed its valuation, excluding the Tradeweb stake, toward levels commonly seen among traditional asset managers - a sub-sector the bank describes as previously unloved.
Barclays contrasts the market's treatment of LSEG with other European exchange operators. The bank estimates a mid-to-high single-digit percentage of group revenue at Deutsche Börse could be exposed to AI, concentrated primarily in ESG and index services. For Euronext, Barclays places the threat in the low single digits, reasoning that most of Euronext's data revenue is proprietary and therefore less reachable by general AI tools.
The prominence of data and analytics in LSEG's revenue mix is central to why the company has been singled out by investors. LSEG derives about 55% of group revenue from data and analytics, compared with roughly 16% at Euronext and 12% at Deutsche Börse, according to Barclays' figures. That higher share has made LSEG a focal point for concerns that AI could erode data licensing and analytics margins.
Barclays emphasizes that, while exchanges have generally suffered a sector-wide reassessment tied to AI fears, consensus earnings forecasts for LSEG through fiscal 2027 have moved by less than 5%. The brokerage frames the share price decline as sentiment driven rather than the result of material fundamental deterioration.
Supporting its view that fundamentals remain intact, Barclays points to LSEG's multiple data-licensing contracts with large AI and cloud players including Microsoft, Rogo, Databricks, Anthropic and OpenAI. Those agreements, the bank notes, grant AI-tool users access to information only via licensed LSEG data feeds rather than unfettered raw access, a contractual structure Barclays sees as limiting the direct displacement risk.
Third-party evaluation and product advertising in the source material
One promotional element in the original material describes a third-party AI-driven stock-picking product called ProPicks AI. That product is presented as evaluating companies, including LSEG, against more than 100 financial metrics to surface investment ideas based on fundamentals, momentum and valuation. The promotion cites past winners and offers readers the ability to see whether LSEG appears in any of the product's strategies.
Readers should note this paragraph is a restatement of the promotional content included in the provided material and not an endorsement.