London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSE:LSEG) shares advanced more than 2% on Wednesday following reports that Elliott Investment Management L.P. had taken a stake in the business. The move buoyed a stock that, according to analysts at Barclays plc, has been the weakest performer among Europe’s exchange operators amid rising debate about artificial intelligence and its potential effect on data and analytics revenues.
Barclays’ sector research indicates LSEG has lagged major European peers since mid-2025, with the bank describing the recent de-rating as “overdone” in its latest review.
The report suggests investors have concentrated heavily on headline disclosures around LSEG’s data and analytics exposure. However, Barclays points to the company’s own segmental breakdown, which implies that only around 5% of total group revenue may be susceptible to AI-driven disruption.
That calculation stems from LSEG’s assessment that roughly 10% of revenue within each of its two largest Data & Analytics units — Workflows and Data & Feeds — could be at risk.
Even so, Barclays notes that the shares have experienced “the most aggressive” valuation compression across the peer group, despite the relatively modest revenue exposure implied by these disclosures.
Pressure intensified after Anthropic PBC introduced its Cowork plug-ins and rolled out Claude Opus 4.6, developments that, in Barclays’ view, revived concerns about “terminal growth and even terminal value” for LSEG’s data-centric operations.
The decline drove LSEG to three-year lows, with its valuation — excluding its stake in Tradeweb Markets Inc. — moving closer to levels more commonly associated with traditional asset managers, a segment Barclays characterises as “previously unloved.”
By comparison, Barclays estimates potential AI-related revenue exposure at mid- to high-single-digit percentages for Deutsche Börse AG, primarily within ESG and index services, and in the low-single-digit range for Euronext N.V., where a larger proportion of data revenues is proprietary.
Barclays argues that LSEG’s comparatively high reliance on data and analytics — accounting for 55% of group revenue, versus 16% at Euronext and 12% at Deutsche Börse — has placed it at the centre of investor anxiety.
The bank adds that exchange operators more broadly have absorbed much of the sector’s AI-related de-rating, even though consensus earnings expectations for LSEG through FY27 have shifted by less than 5%.
In Barclays’ view, the recent selloff appears sentiment-driven rather than reflective of weakening fundamentals. The broker reiterates its stance that concerns are “overdone,” highlighting LSEG’s existing data-licensing partnerships with Microsoft Corporation, Rogo AI Ltd, Databricks Inc., Anthropic and OpenAI, Inc.. Under these agreements, access to LSEG’s information by AI-tool users is restricted to licensed data feeds.
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