Well, good morning everyone, and welcome to our 2022 financial results. It is great to be giving this presentation in person. Great to see so many of you here in our offices, and also great to have those of you joining us online or on the call. 2022 was a year of strong, broad-based growth for LSEG. Our strategy is working, and it's driving better performance and higher growth. Our Data & Analytics division grew by more than 5%. Trading and banking grew in each quarter of the year, the first time that's happened in roughly a decade. We also delivered great results in our capital markets and post-trade businesses. With the success of the Refinitiv integration, we are bringing forward delivery of our cost synergy program by around 2 years, and we're significantly increasing our revenue synergy target.
We continue to invest to improve our customer offering. In particular, our partnership with Microsoft will revolutionize workflow for financial market participants, introducing new products and making it easier for users to gain insights and interact with our data. We generate a lot of cash. We're deploying it to the benefit of all stakeholders. Targeting over GBP 1 billion of share buybacks over the next 12 months or so. We started the year in a strong position. We are not stopping here. As we transition from integration to transformation, we are building an even stronger platform for long-term growth. We're investing in our market leading infrastructure and venues, the benefits of which will become more visible over the course of this year and beyond. I'll give more detail on this a little bit later. Though, I will hand over to Anna to take you through our 2022 financial performance.
Thanks, David. It's just great to be here together in person today. I'm going to talk through our 2022 performance. We continue to make good progress towards our targets, delivering strong broad-based growth and margin expansion. Cash generation is also strong, funding investment in our business and shareholder returns. 2023 has started well, and we expect growth in income of between 6% and 8% this year. We continue to deliver on all of our key targets in what's been a challenging external environment. This reflects the strength of our business model, the value to our customers of the services that we provide, and good execution against our plan. Growth and income was at the upper end of our range and a slight acceleration on the 6.1% we reported in 2021.
Underlying margins continue to expand, and we're over-delivering on the revenue the Refinitiv acquisition synergies. Today, we're significantly raising our target for revenue synergies to between GBP 350 million and GBP 400 million. David, I'll give you a bit more on this in a minute. We're also delivering the bulk of our cost synergies two years earlier than targeted. On a reported basis, we benefited from an FX tailwind and an extra month's ownership of Refinitiv. On this basis, total income of GBP 7.4 billion was up 20%. Adjusted operating profit was up 20%, and also EPS grew 17%. For the rest of this presentation, I'm going to focus on pro forma constant currency growth as it gives the best insight into the performance of our business. All of our divisions are performing well, which I'm gonna run through over the next few slides.
Data & Analytics was up 5.3%, excluding the impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. That's the second year of growth over 5%. Capital Markets and Post Trade also grew strongly, up 10% and 8% respectively. These are structurally growing businesses which also benefited from some market volatility last year. In Data & Analytics, Trading & Banking, Enterprise Data and Investment Solutions all grew well, and I'm gonna come back to this in a minute. Growth in Wealth Solutions accelerated, driven by the demand for data feeds and other digital solutions needed by wealth managers. The primary driver of the 10% growth in Customer & Third-Party Risk is World-Check. World-Check is the industry-leading solution in a fast-growing market. Returning to our three biggest Data & Analytics businesses, these make up over half of the group.
For the first time in many years, Trading & Banking delivered four consecutive quarters of positive underlying growth. A more focused and structured sales approach means we're better understanding our customers and acting on their feedback, driving up retention. We're also continuing to invest. The acquisition of TORA enhances our offering by adding important order execution and management capability. Enterprise Data has accelerated its growth, gaining share in both real-time and non-real-time data.
Investment in content and capabilities over the last two years has improved what was already a strong offering, and we're driving increasing benefits from the linkage with FTSE Russell. The acquisition of MayStreet has also added to growth, meeting the customer demand for low latency real-time data. In our Investment Solutions business, we've increased the pace of product development. Launching 33% more products last year in an environment of substantial customer demand.
That drove high single-digit growth in recurring subscriptions. Our asset-based revenues were broadly flat, with inflows into passive funds using our indices offset by the market decline in asset prices. The quality of growth in Data & Analytics continues to improve. We've made more progress on subscription revenues in the fourth quarter, ending the year with ASV growth of 6.2%, up more than 3 percentage points from acquisition. This acceleration has been driven by all the improvements that I've just talked about. Capital markets grew 10%. Our equities business delivered growth against a backdrop of limited new issuance and relatively flat volumes. We continue to drive change in our FX trading venues. New functionality is supporting growth in FXall, strengthening its position as the leading dealer-to-client venue globally.
Our dealer-to-dealer matching venue returned to growth in the second half, the first time this business has grown in many years. The largest driver of growth in capital markets was Tradeweb, which continues to innovate as markets electronify, growing its share of credit and ETF trading and expanding into new geographies. Turning to Post Trade. 2022 was a record year for trading activity on SwapClear, and that was the primary driver of the 10% growth in OTC derivative revenues and the 19% increase in net treasury income. As banks and other financial institutions look for more efficient ways to manage their balance sheet, demand for uncleared derivative solutions is increasing. The acquisition of Quantile and soon Acadia round out what's already a compelling offering. We see a long runway for growth here, and David will come back to this as well in a few minutes.
We saw a small decline in our securities and reporting revenues. Price competition and cash equity clearing is the key driver, and it was offset by good growth in RepoClear. Let's shift now to margin and cost over the next few slides. Starting with EBITDA margins. You can see that FX and the impact of the Ukraine-Russian conflict were a drag on margin. We also acquired 4 early-stage growth companies, which in the short term, lower our margin slightly. On an underlying basis, margin expansion was 110 basis points, and this reflects the strong top-line growth and great progress on costs as you can see on the next slide. Organic cost grew by 3.4%, with cost growth slowing in the second half. This is a good result in a period of double-digit inflation.
We continue to invest in transforming the business and driving further growth. You can see from the chart that those investments are being offset by the actions that we're taking to increase efficiency, including the GBP 133 million of cost synergies. A year ago, I told you we'd identified an additional GBP 50 million of cost synergies, taking our total to at least GBP 400 million. We continue to execute strongly. You can see this through the metrics on the slide. Following this progress, we expect to deliver the significant majority of these cost synergies roughly 2 years ahead of the original target. By the end of 2023 rather than 2025. I think it's important to highlight the reconciling items between adjusted and reported operating profit. These are all as expected and largely relate to the Refinitiv acquisition.
The key message here is that the cost to achieve our synergy targets continue to be in line with our plans. You can also see the gain on a property disposal that I spoke about a year ago and various costs related to acquisition activity. Our business is highly cash generative with GBP 3.3 billion of operating cash flow last year. The CapEx figure here is the cash cost of both business-as-usual CapEx and integration CapEx. If you remember, the equivalent figure in 2021 was GBP 662 million. Taking the 2 years together, we're on track both with our business-as-usual capital investment and the cost required to achieve our synergies. More importantly, our pace of execution on our major programs is increasing as we get better at execution, and they too are all on track.
Equity free cash flow was also substantial at GBP 1.7 billion before dividends. Over the next 2 slides, I'll look at how we're deploying this capital. Last year, we allocated roughly equal amounts of our cash flow to organic investment, inorganic investment, and shareholder returns. CapEx reflects the transformation we're driving in our business, investing in platforms for future growth and extracting acquisition synergies. In M&A, we've acquired 4 high-growth businesses last year.
In each case, we've added an important capability and will accelerate their growth with our customer relationships and our technology platform. We also continue to return capital to shareholders consistent with our capital allocation framework. This slide highlights our shareholder returns. Our total dividend is up 13%, consistent with our progressive dividend policy and strong earnings growth. We expect to return over GBP 1 billion via share buybacks over the next 12 months or so.
Let me talk you through that. We returned GBP 300 million of the current GBP 700 million share buyback program last year. We expect to return the balance of this program, GBP 450 million, by July. Today, we also announced our intention to return a further GBP 750 million via a directed buyback starting in the second half. The lockup covering the first tranche of shares owned by the former Refinitiv shareholders recently ended. It makes sense to target our excess capital directly at the overhang to help support an orderly sell-down. That benefits all of our shareholders. This slide summarizes everything you've heard. We're confident in the growth of the business. We expect total income to grow between 6% and 8% in constant currency terms in 2023, underpinned by strong growth in recurring revenues in our Data & Analytics business.
We expect another good year in capital markets and post-trade. The growth range reflects the degree of market volatility that we can't predict. We expect to deliver this growth at margins consistent with the current market expectations. That's an EBITDA margin of around 48% on a reported basis. This reflects continued expansion of underlying margins, offset by the impact of the investment in the Microsoft partnership and M&A. The 50% exit rate 2023 margin guidance still stands. To wrap up, the change we're driving in our business puts us in a strong position for further growth this year. A further step up in our revenue synergy target and an additional share buyback. I'll now hand back to David to get into how we're transforming the business.
Thank you, Anna. It's two years since we closed the Refinitiv acquisition. The strong financial performance that Anna just outlined speaks to the effective way we're driving that integration and the positive impact of the changes that we're making. I'll come back to our actions in 2022 shortly, but 2023 is the year that we shift from integration to transformation. Moving to capitalize on the opportunities for growth in all of our businesses and the significant potential in building on the linkages between them. Microsoft is an important partner in this transformation, supporting our initiatives across the data platform, Workspace, and analytics, as well as our broader tech infrastructure. Our relationship with Microsoft is strong, and it is getting stronger. In a few minutes, I will give you a glimpse of what that partnership will mean for the future of Workspace.
You can see the success of the Refinitiv integration on this slide. Our Data & Analytics business grew by 5.3% last year, a significant acceleration on its historical growth rate. When we acquired it, Refinitiv was a business with solid positions in growing markets, providing services which solve business-critical issues for a broad range of customers. It had delivered low single-digit growth for the best part of a decade. We knew from our due diligence that we needed to address a history of underinvestment, improve our engagement with customers, and build better products. That is what we have done. We started by restructuring our sales approach, aligning more closely with our customers and acting on their feedback. To give one example, we've made our conversations with customers more strategic by focusing on nine core solutions instead of 240 individual products.
I've talked in the past about how Refinitiv was a single P&L when we acquired it. Now we have much better insight into the business and make data-driven decisions. As a result, we can manage the business more effectively, and we are setting targets that are more ambitious. We're investing in our content and capabilities. To give two examples, we've doubled the footprint of our fixed income ESG data, and we provide ESG data for 15,000 companies. That's 50% higher than at the time of the acquisition. This is driving tangible benefits with better sales and retention. Underpinning all of this is our delivery of a more modern, agile, and resilient technology infrastructure, increasing the flexibility and efficiency of our business and significantly improving the customer experience. Our Trading & Banking business is a good example of this strategy in action.
This was a business that had been in decline for many years, losing both market share and revenues. We stabilized the top line in year one and delivered positive underlying growth in all four quarters of last year. We drove this with better execution in sales, customer management, and product. This is materially improving our retention, and we continue to enhance our offering. The acquisition of TORA, as Anna mentioned, adds order execution and management capabilities and creating a more seamless workflow and adding functionality that customers were asking for. The rollout of Workspace, our next-generation human interface, continues, ending last year with versions for all customer segments, either live or in beta testing. We expect the rollout to be significantly complete by the end of 2024. At the same time, Workspace is not a static product.
It continues to evolve with 200 updates last year, including the addition of sentiment data for transcripts, sustainable investing analytics and a custom index sandbox. Workspace will also change and improve significantly as part of our partnership with Microsoft. More on that shortly. We are transitioning from the heavy lifting phase of our integration into a period of transformational growth in our business. We are outperforming on our revenue synergies. As Anna has said, we are announcing a step change in our targets with GBP 350 million-GBP 400 million in revenue synergies expected by 2025. That's up from the GBP 225 million that we had originally announced. This is due to the great response that we are getting from customers as we cross-sell existing products and launch new services with 100 product launches and counting.
Our customers need financial data and analytics to support their decision-making, risk management and regulatory compliance. Increasingly, they want straight-through workflow connecting financial market infrastructure with the data and analytics that support them, and that is the very essence of what we are providing. Revenue synergies are just one example of our broader transformation as we build on the strengths of our businesses and explore the connections among them.
LSEG has a great set of businesses with multiple trophy assets and growth engines. Our data and analytics business is deeply embedded with almost all major banks and asset managers globally. Our real-time offering is the global leader, and we are one of the top three global providers in the index space. In capital markets, FXall is the world's leading dealer-to-client platform for FX, and Tradeweb has a leading position in electronic trading of government bond credit and interest rate products.
Our post-trade business provides systemically important infrastructure for financial markets, accounting for roughly one quarter of the global segment in which it operates. Its share of global interest rate swap clearing is more than 90%. The group is highly diversified across product and geography, with more than 40,000 customers who value our open approach and see it as a key differentiator. These businesses have strong positions in growing segments with great potential to increase share and to build on the links between them to create additional value for our customers.
We have no intention of stopping here. Let me talk you through three examples of how we are building on this position of strength and driving further growth in our business. Starting on slide 28. First, Enterprise Data. In 2022, performance improved significantly compared to 2021 as we re-accelerated growth in one of our leading businesses.
Customer demand in this space is stronger than ever as institutions increasingly rely on multiple data sources for decision-making. In the past, some products have been too cumbersome and difficult to access. Our investment is changing this. You can see this in the customer experience measures on the left-hand side of this slide, showing strong year-on-year improvements in resilience and workflow integration. Our Real-Time – Optimized product has attracted 350 customers in the last two years. Tick History has 126 new customers since migrating to the cloud, and MayStreet, acquired just a few months ago, has eight new customers and is driving retention with others. We've also invested in distribution, strengthening our sales effort, winning more head-to-head pitches, and continuing to benefit from strong partnerships like Aladdin.
We're seeing benefits from our synergy program with the sale of fixed in-fixed income data to FTSE Russell customers, our single biggest area of synergy delivery last year. Looking ahead, two of our biggest tech programs, Elektron co-location and software-defined network, will make material progress in 2023. We have a pipeline of cloud migrations and new venues and feeds, making us more flexible and user-friendly for our customers. We are just scratching the surface of the opportunity here. Turning to post-trade. 2022 was a strong year for our interest rate swap business, SwapClear, clearing over $1.1 quadrillion in notional value. Now, that business has had a decade of good growth, fueled by the strength of its open partnership approach and by regulation that required financial institutions to clear most of their interest rate swaps.
That franchise continues to grow, adding new customers and with more activity from existing customers. The regulatory landscape, excuse me, continues to evolve, and our post-trade offering is evolving with it. Regulations such as the uncleared margin rules and SA-CCR means that banks are more focused than ever on optimizing their capital and managing their balance sheets efficiently. We are well-positioned to help our customers with this.
Activity in our FX clearing solution, ForexClear, continues to build, as it does at SwapAgent, which provides workflow efficiencies in the uncleared interest rate swap space. Both of these illustrate the growth and importance of capital optimization and balance sheet efficiency. Adding Quantile and Acadia will considerably enhance these capabilities as we extend our solutions into uncleared products across asset classes and along our customers' post-trade workflow.
We are well-positioned for further structural growth in post-trade this year and beyond.Turning to capital markets. $6.6 trillion a day is traded. That's in dollars. $6.6 trillion a day is traded on foreign exchange markets. It's the largest traded asset class and touches all aspects of global finance and global trade. We have two of the leading global FX trade venues, FXall and our matching business. By investing in these platforms and connecting them to other parts of the financial markets ecosystem, we are building a compelling end-to-end solution and driving further growth. Through Workspace, an FX trader, excuse me, can access the deepest and broadest FX data and news, and then will be able to access liquidity on FXall to make a trade.
Later this year, we will launch connectivity between Tradeweb and FXall, offering customers the ability to trade emerging market securities and currencies on a single screen. This brings significant workflow benefits and reduces customers' execution risk. Imagine the potential if we scale this to all cross-border trading. We also offer foreign exchange customers seamless access to our post-trade services through the link between FXall and ForexClear. The first transaction through this link took place last year. Whether customers come to us through Workspace, through Tradeweb, through our FX venues, or through post-trade, they're entering a compelling ecosystem that can serve their end-to-end needs in an increasingly integrated way. We have two significant developments in our FX business coming this year. We will launch a new FX trading venue in Singapore, trading non-deliverable forwards.
We will also introduce our new state-of-the-art matching platform built on LSEG technology, and that is 10 times faster than the current platform. All the improvements to our business and the resulting higher growth benefit from the transformation that we are driving within our core technology backbone and the engineering culture that we are building. The partnership with Microsoft is contributing to this transformation. It has 3 main work streams. First, with Microsoft's cloud technology, we are consolidating our datasets onto 1 flexible infrastructure. Our customers will be able to access data faster and more easily with greater resilience and adaptability. Second, we are combining Microsoft's expertise in machine learning and cloud infrastructure with our advanced analytics and modeling capabilities to develop a new suite of solutions for the financial industry.
This will revolutionize how businesses that rely on analytics and models, like all of the firms that you all work for, build, access, and scale these capabilities. Third, we're working with Microsoft to transform the workflow for financial market participants. I don't use that word transform lightly. We are integrating our next generation human interface, Workspace, with Microsoft's productivity and communication tools, creating an all-in-one data analytics workflow and collaboration solution. Let me bring this to life by showing a short video that captures a few different aspects of the seamless functionality, workflow, and intelligence that we are building together.
Investment bank. It's the start of another busy week. She receives a Workspace notification in Microsoft Teams about Fabrikam, one of her largest customers. Last year, she pitched Van Arsdale, an M&A opportunity, to Ethan, the Fabrikam CFO. With the EPS accretion predicted to take at least 36 months, he said it was a no-go. They agreed to meet again when it was achievable within 18 months. They simply set up an alert in the Workspace analytics engine to monitor when the deal becomes accretive. 1 year later, it's possible. The combination of Van Arsdale recent earnings guidance and movements in the FX market means 18 months is now realistic. Before she loops in the team, she wants to provide crucial context about recent deals in Fabrikam's sector. As she's searching, the Workspace bot instantly filters the deals analysis and shares an overview of all recent deals.
She loves how easily she's able to pull together such a variety of important data for her team. With the preliminary analysis ready, Monica pulls in Sarah, the VP on her team, to the Fabrikam channel. Sarah will be taking the lead on the project. As Sarah receives a message from Monica to check in on key themes coming out of research reports, a Workspace bot powered by the Signal Search app intervenes and presents a card detailing a time series summary of all the key themes discussed by equity analysts. Through its intelligent NLP engine, it has identified an increasing emphasis on dry powder and M&A opportunities. The insights will be helpful in guiding the focus of the pitch book. With all the information she needs in hand, Sarah is up to speed faster than ever. Next, she turns her attention to creating the project team.
The Workspace bot asks some simple questions that help her set up the new team as quickly as possible. The new team is immediately presented with their retail group's critical pre-populated content on both Fabrikam and Van Arsdale, making it much easier to get started on the pitch book. What's more, the Workspace bot has pulled together the previous versions of the pitch book and supporting files across Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel and updated them with the latest data using the native Workspace and Office integration. All the data has flowed into Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel automatically using the Workspace One and Office integration. After a bit of wordsmithing to reflect the new data, it's ready for review. Monica messages Ethan on the Contoso Fabrikam external channel and is excited when he agrees to meet. Ethan suggests adding their new treasurer, Holly, but this will be her first time contacting her.
She initiates a search in app Workspace, followed by the treasurer's name, then messages, "Holly, looking forward to meeting you. Keep an eye out for an invite to the Contoso Fabrikam shared channel and a meeting invite." Integration of Microsoft Teams directory, Workspace, and Messenger makes reaching out to someone new a lot easier in fewer clicks. At the beginning of the meeting, Teams automatically creates an internal group channel where the Contoso team can chat, ready to handle any tough questions or objections from the client. Holly is running late because of a fire drill. Fortunately, the automatic transcript ensures she can quickly catch up within seconds. The meeting is going well when suddenly Ethan raises a question about his FX exposure with the transaction. Sarah quickly catches on to the concern, jumps into Workspace, and examines the FX rate and estimates.
She shares the analysis from Workspace in the internal group chat with Monica. Monica confidently shares the information and suggests that she set up a follow-up meeting between Holly, Fabrikam's treasurer, and an FX specialist to discuss how to manage the risk with a deal-contingent FX forward. The Workspace bot automatically adds this as a to-do list item to the project task board, ensuring nothing is missed. Both the CFO and treasurer are feeling confident and give Monica the thumbs up to dig further into the opportunity.
That is an investment banking example for you, but there will be many different use cases across sectors. What's more important than the specific example is the interoperability, the collaboration, and the intelligence that we will bring to Workspace with Microsoft. Just think of your own day-to-day work with this functionality. The five bullets we have here can't really capture the revolutionary nature of the change to workflows that will result from our partnership with Microsoft. Whether it's multi-firm collaboration on Teams or the power of AI to filter information and support decision-making, it is clear this will drive huge productivity and insight improvements for our customers. The response we have already had from customers has been very encouraging, with a number keen to partner with us. What is the growth potential here?
A number of you have asked us that, and we will provide more guidance as we get closer to product launch. As we said in December, we do expect the partnership to increase revenue growth meaningfully over time. We think of the opportunity in three ways. In value terms, we are developing a much more powerful platform with leading functionality. We all know there's a price gap in the market, and we're confident we can begin to close it. On the volume side, this is the heart of the information services investment case. When data is liberated by technology, usage grows. Customers find more useful ways to manipulate data and to integrate it with their own and other sources, driving insight and decision-making.
We are already seeing this effect where we have used technology to reduce friction in Enterprise Data, and we see it as a significant future driver across all of Data & Analytics. We also see an opportunity to increase our market share. Third, the opportunity in new markets. We're creating a new market in modeling and analytics as a service, where, as I mentioned, we expect institutional demand to be strong. There's also a long tail of customers. With an installed Teams base of over 250 million customers, the opportunity to sell light versions of Workspace into corporates or the retail market has real potential as well. To summarize, on slide 34. 2022 was a year of strong, broad-based growth for LSEG, with all divisions performing well. We are accelerating delivery of our cost synergies and increasing our revenue synergy target.
We continue to generate a lot of cash and are actively deploying it to improve our customer offering. We expect the Acadia acquisition to close in the next few weeks, a transaction that is roughly twice the size of the types of deals that we completed last year. We're also returning surplus capital to shareholders. The share buyback we started last year is continuing. As Anna mentioned at our AGM next month, we will seek authorization for a directed buyback that will support an orderly sell-down and reduce our share count to the benefit of all of our shareholders.
Our partnership with Microsoft will revolutionize workflow for financial market participants, supporting further growth and transformation of our business. The changes across our business are improving our offering and accelerating growth. We have a lot of confidence as we forge ahead in 2023. With that, Anna and I will now be very happy to take your questions. Peregrine, I will turn it over to you, and I can see the hands rising.
Thank you, David. Morning, everyone. We'll take the questions in the room first, and then we'll move on to the conference call. Philip, you're the first person I spotted.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you very much for the presentation. You've talked very eloquently about the qualitative benefits of the Microsoft partnership, you've talked slightly more prosaically about the quantitative costs of them. When will we see the quantitative benefits, what will those look like? What should we be looking for to say, "yes, this is working like they said it would"?
As we mentioned when we announced the partnership in December, our customers will start to see the benefits from the partnership in terms of the product, 18 to 24 months out. In terms of when we will see that in our revenues, we expect that in 2025 and beyond. As I mentioned, in the presentation, we expect to see benefits in terms of value, in terms of volume, in terms of new markets, and we're very pleased with that, looking forward to that. Given we're still two years off from seeing that revenue impact in 2025, we're not gonna put out more specific guidance at this point.
Thank you. Haley.
Thank you. It's Haley Tam from Credit Suisse. Could I ask a couple of simple questions, please? Firstly, thank you for the increased revenue synergy guidance. That's very welcome. Could you just clarify for me, that is on a sort of Refinitiv deal basis, doesn't include TORA or any other acquisitions? Okay. Thank you. The second question, just in terms of the directed buyback of GBP 750 million, I think I'm right in thinking there's a $2 billion debt repayment associated with Refinitiv transaction due at the end of this year. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but presumably that means in 2024, you could ask for much bigger capacity for a directed buyback. That was the question. Thank you.
You wanna take this?
Yeah, sure. Firstly, the increase in revenue synergies is entirely associated with the Refinitiv transaction and doesn't have any benefit of the other acquisitions in. In terms of how we might think about directed buybacks going forward, I mean, you're right. We're highly cash generative. I, you know, it's one of the real strengths of our business. However, the way we think about capital allocation is we firstly look at organic investment, and we look at the M&A opportunities that we can see, and then we return what we can't see a ready use for to shareholders. We're not going to guide specifically, but you're right, we're highly cash generative, and we'll continue to be active in how we use our capital.
Enrico.
Thank you. Enrico with JP Morgan. Sorry, just one clarification. Going back to when we're gonna see the economic benefit of that, clearly you say the clients will start to see a benefit between 18 and 24 months, but then the monetary benefit to you is gonna be a bit further delayed. Can you give some color why is that? Is it because you like kind of a hook, so you first give the new product, and then once it's rolled out, you can start charging them? I'd be just curious to get some color on how the actually is gonna be monetized. A second question, I just wanted to ask, clearly the integration, some of the acquisition you've done, like MayStreet, for example, looks like is going very well.
I think when you announced it, you said that in 2021, MayStreet had about GBP 15 million revenues. I was just curious to know what kind of synergies, for example, from a revenue point of view, you expect from that specific acquisition? Or more in general, if I think about the bolt-on deals that you can do you have internal guidelines in terms of what kind of, I don't know, return on invested capital you usually aim to achieve, or synergies or EPS accretion to make them work, basically?
Sure. Maybe I'll touch on each of these, and you should feel free to add in as well because it touch on both of our areas, if I can put it that way. First of all, in terms of how the Microsoft partnership's going to be monetized, I wouldn't read too much into the difference between the 18-24-month timeframe and 2025 revenue. Will we be rolling out some product capability on that 18-month timeframe, which will basically be the second half of 2024? Yes. And our customers will start to see that then. Again, given that timeframe, 18-24 months basically takes us into 2025. That's how you should think about that. Anything you wanna add on that?
Only that as we build this product, we're gonna be working with a number of our customers in the build phase to make sure it's really meeting their needs. Some customers will be, you know, interacting with it earlier.
With respect to MayStreet, which, for those of you who don't know, is a great capability, great business we acquired last year. Very small, but it's a great example of our M&A strategy in terms of acquiring relatively small businesses that give us a great functionality or, a new technological capability. We can plug that into our global network, both in terms of distribution, and also in terms of our customer relationships. It provides ultra-low latency real-time data. So very fast real-time data, and is very high quality. The SEC uses it as an example. As it has become part of our larger business, this is a critical function.
Real-time data is a critical function for a number of our customers, and they feel more comfortable using it with us because we are established, longtime partners of them, as opposed to a very small entity, that's not very well known. That is the kind of benefit and the kind of synergy that we are seeing there. It has improved. We already have the number one in the world real-time data franchise. This is just adding to that capability and strengthening that. If you wanna touch on any internal thinking or internal guidelines, as to how we think about our M&A, please.
Well, I won't share that much, you know, firstly, we've been quite clear that we get a benefit next year of 1 point associated with the acquisitions that we've done. They're all early-stage businesses, they're all businesses that we should be seeing a rapid acceleration in top-line growth as we scale them across our platform. The way we think about our financial criteria depends a little bit on the business life cycle, you know, where it is in its life cycle. You know, we're prepared to take a longer investment period in these very scalable small businesses, 'cause we're going to drive performance through those revenue synergies. I'm not going to go into specific return criteria.
Bruce?
Thanks. Yeah, Bruce Hamilton, Morgan Stanley. Apologies, I was a bit late, so if I ask a question you've already answered, my apologies. Firstly, just on the Microsoft thing, I know we're gonna learn more, if I think about what you're saying about sort of user experience functionality, should we assume that when that starts to have an impact, it will be most strongly felt in the Trading & Banking solutions piece? Obviously the rest of the business is growing already mid-high single digits. Is that where you'll see perhaps the biggest delta in terms of kind of growth rate? Secondly, just on the incremental revenue synergies, obviously the cost to achieve has stepped up fairly meaningfully. I mean, I guess clearly you go for the easier win revenue synergies first, and then they'll cost more as you go along. Can you just add any color around that, please?
Sure. Anna, do you wanna touch on cost to achieve first, and then I'll answer Bruce's question on the Microsoft impact?
Sure. Just to frame it for you, the first GBP 225 million of revenue synergies that we announced had an ROI, I think of 125%. A stunning return. Now we've really got into selling these products, and we see an opportunity to scale them much more broadly across a broader customer base. That's what gives us the confidence to increase our revenue synergies. We're now talking about a revenue synergy that's delivering a 65% ROI. You know, still a very, very strong return. You know, to your point, why is it a little bit lower? Because what we're doing is taking a very strong performance and scaling it more broadly across our customer base.
To your question on where you might see the benefits financially, in terms of the Microsoft partnership, I think it's worth breaking down a little bit each of the different aspects of the Microsoft partnership, because for example, we showed the video of Workspace embedded in the Microsoft products. I think in that particular product area, yes, you will see the benefits in the Trading & Banking line. I would just point out, and we touched on this in the presentation. We've taken Trading & Banking from, as I described it, a declining business over many, many years.
We indicated at our investor presentation, the Investor Day was now a year and a half ago or so, that we would take that business into a low double digit growth area, and we've gotten there. Frankly, we've gotten there a little bit earlier than we expected. The partnership with Microsoft and the integration of that functionality with Microsoft Teams and the other Microsoft collaboration tools, we think, there's a real opportunity to turn that into more of a growth engine going forward. We're not giving any change in guidance at this point, but we are very excited about that opportunity. If you look at other parts of the partnership with Microsoft, you know, the analytics as a service offering, that's a product that doesn't exist today.
Analytics currently appears in Trading & Banking, but we'll have to think about how we make that clear for people in terms of what we're seeing there. The movement of our data platform into Microsoft's cloud, that will have an impact, I think, across our business. I think that will be very attractive for our customers. It will make our products much easier to use. Customers will be able to access it themselves, pick and choose what they want to access, create their own new products, and that'll have an impact, I think, as I said, across many different parts of our business. Anything you would add to that?
Tom, you've been waiting ages.
Thanks very much. It's Tom Mills at Jefferies. I just had a question about, I think Nasdaq recently noted that it's seen some slippage in its anti-financial crime business from a subscription renewal perspective, I guess, as decisions are having to be seniorized, if I can put it that way. Are you seeing any signs of that in your risk business or other subscription businesses?
In our Customer & Third-Party Risk business, we have our World-Check business, which has had a very strong year, and we talked about this last year when a lot of the focus was on what was going on with Russia, Ukraine. World-Check proved itself during that time period as being really essential as a product for many of our customers. We saw big spikes in usage there. Strong year for World-Check. In terms of some of the other parts of the business, within our Customer & Third-Party Risk solutions business, for example, our enhanced due diligence, part of that business, that tends to be very active when there's a active IPO market. That has been a slower year.
In terms of some of the, payment verification and fraudulent ID parts of the business, some of that also has had exposure to both the crypto markets, from a customer perspective, not in terms of any crypto trading that it's doing, but serving customers in that market. And so there's been a little bit of a slowdown in that area. Any-anything you would add there?
Yeah. Maybe just coming back to, you know, subscription revenue strength as a whole and what we're seeing with our customers. We're seeing good demand across the group. I think, you know, that 6.2% ASV figure at the end of the year is all driven by increasing sales and better retention. It's not accelerated due to price. We've gone into 2023 again with strong demand, so we're not seeing any slowdown in our customer base.
Yeah, just actually, it's a great point. Just to clarify, some of the points I was touching on in Customer & Third-Party Risk, those are not subscription revenues. So for example, some of the enhanced due diligence, those are more transactional type revenues.
Andrew. Is it? Sorry, I couldn't. Go. Sorry. I couldn't see you.
No, it's Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas Exane. Can I just ask, with the 6.8% revenue growth, did you say 1 percentage point of that was from M&A that's been announced and then therefore if you look at the organic guidance, I guess at 5%-7%, that's quite similar to, you know, what was the previous target and isn't there more of a pricing impact this year? Just trying to square that point. The second one would be on costs. Once you get to the 50% exit EBITDA margin, is that like a level that is sustainable for this kind of business?
Do you think there is still inherent scalability in terms of operating leverage, you know, when you look into 2025, 2026 and so on? Thank you.
Do you wanna take this?
Sure. I say it's 2%-8% revenue guidance. Maybe just talking through the things that make me confident looking at our forward revenues. Firstly, ASV. December ASV gives you a measure at a point in time of our contracts versus the same contracts billing a year ago. That gives you a sense of the acceleration that we're seeing in our underlying subscription revenue book of business, which is 70% of our revenue. There's healthy acceleration there, which will flow through our revenue as we move through the year. Secondly, yes, we've taken more price in 2023 than we did in 2022.
What I've said to you before is that we tended to take low single-digit price historically on, particularly on our subscription revenue book of business, and that we would be taking slightly more this year. You will see that flow through as of January 1st. Thirdly, yes, we get the benefit of M&A, and it's about 1 point year-on-year. Your second question about the 50% exit rate margin and do we see more scalability? Yes, we see more scalability for this business. You know, we'll continue to invest in opportunities like Microsoft that we think will accelerate the top line and so it won't always be a perfectly straight line. You know, yes, this is a business where we are not yet fully scaled.
Ian, sorry. We'll finally come over to the other side of the room.
It's no problem. Ian White from Autonomous. Thanks much for taking my questions. First up, please, what feedback could you share regarding the user reception of Workspace so far? You had some interesting statistics with the 1H update. I wondered what the latest view on that was now that, and that rollout's more advanced. Secondly, can you just provide a little bit more color on what specifically you have seen to drive the upgrade to the revenue synergy guidance? I know that the release mentioned, I think, some aspects around FX and those businesses to me seem to be at sort of early stage of growth or recovery. Just wondering what the sort of new information is, if you like, that's led to the upgrade there.
Finally, on the Microsoft partnership, can you just talk me through considerations there that you made in terms of thinking about the partnership around the risk of lock-in with Microsoft? Basically, how do you weigh the need to retain sort of sufficient in-house expertise and negotiating power with Microsoft, especially towards the end of the partnership, versus the benefits that the partnership might bring to the group? Thank you.
Thank you, Ian. Maybe I'll take your first and third and you can touch on the revenue synergies uplift. The feedback from users on Workspace continues to be very positive, and easier to use, easier to find data on it, lighter on their desktops, better functionality. As I mentioned in the presentation, we are continuing to add new features and new capabilities. This is not a static product, and it's continuing to get better and better. Again, as I mentioned, and you saw the demo in the video, it's going to get better and better and significantly change as part of the partnership with Microsoft. Really excited about the opportunity set there.
To your third question with respect to the risk of lock-in as you described it, a couple things on that. First of all, this is not an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft. We have very strong existing relationships and do significant amounts of work with other cloud providers, and that will continue. And there will be parts of our business that will be in other cloud providers' services for the duration. The other point I would make is that our open access model extends to the cloud. What I mean by that is that we will serve our customers where they want to be served.
Although we may be housing a certain product, or designing it to be native to Azure, in Microsoft's cloud, we will make it available and there are some interesting engineering aspects to this that we will be working through with the various cloud providers, but we will make it available to our customers where they wanna have access to it. I think it's really important to make those points. From a commercial perspective, from a regulatory perspective, from a risk perspective, we are very focused on maintaining the capability to use multiple cloud providers and not to have that risk of overdependence on any one provider. At the same time, we're very excited about the partnership opportunities with Microsoft.
Turn it over to you.
Sure. Revenue synergy guidance. I think the first thing I'd say is the upgrade in revenue synergies is really the thesis that we had at acquisition has been proved out and been proved out to be more valuable than we first thought. A lot of the synergies we're talking about are the same synergies that we were talking about at acquisition. They're just more valuable, and we can take them to a broader range of customers. You know, the biggest revenue synergy areas that we've talked to you about before is using Refinitiv's data in our indices, particularly fixed income. Selling that data with our indices, so that cross-sell, putting Yield Book into Workspace, you know, all of those areas.
As I say, it's largely the same, but they're more valuable, and we can take it more broadly to a broader customer set.
Ben.
Morning. It's Ben Bathurst from RBC. I've got a question on targets. I think I'm right in saying that your initial targets announced at the time of the acquisition set to expire at the end of 2023. Does that mean we should be expecting new medium-term targets at some point in the next year or so? If so, when?
Anna, you wanna...
Sure. You're absolutely right. Our targets at acquisition really took us to the end of 2023. You know, towards the end of this year, we will come back and share with you how we're thinking about the journey from here. Right now, we're very focused on making sure we absolutely knock those acquisition targets out of the park.
Any more in the room? No. Okay, I'll open it to the com--. Oh, sorry, Mike. Sorry, one more. Sorry.
Just a couple of... I'm sorry. Michael Sanderson, Barclays. First one, a note on the slide, you specifically talked about leverage and what you're willing about. I mean, historically, we've talked about the more recurring subscription nature of revenues and the model. Is that a reiteration that's now sort of long-term reiteration, or is this just sort of reiterating the past as how we think about what sort of leverage you put in? The second one, I guess, on the political angle, clearly there's some developments with discussions with EU and other parts of the world. Are there any sort of tone that might feel that financial services feels it could be making better progress for the clearing side of the business?
You wanna take the leverage question.
Sure. Our capital allocation policy is our capital allocation policy. Within that, we talk about a 1 to 2 times leverage range. It's something we continue to review, but it's working very well for us at the moment. I think the most important thing is we're very cash generative. Within that cash generation, we have a lot of freedom to invest in the business, do the M&A we want to do and return.
With respect to your question around the, I'll call it the improvement in tone, in relations between the U.K. and the E.U., that's only a good thing, in terms of the markets overall. I think from our perspective, fragmentation's not helpful, for the markets. Now, as we've said in the past, we are, I would say, fairly confident given the messages that have come out of the E.U., including the European Commission, including recently ESMA. There's not going to be a cliff edge in June 2025. That seems increasingly clear. And our customers have also made it increasingly clear that they, and when I say our customers, our members in the E.U. have made it increasingly clear that they want to make sure they have continued access to LCH Limited.
All, all of that continues to be playing out. I think I've said in the past that we are optimistic and hopeful that that will continue to play out well. If anything, the improvement in tone is making us that much more optimistic that that's going to play out fine. The improvement in tone is only a good thing. I think, you know, I was reading in the paper this morning that we may have the financial services MoU between the UK and the EU finally get signed. That doesn't have a direct impact on us. It's tonal. We're regulated in the EU by ESMA. We're regulated by the Bank of England. We're regulated by the CFTC. It's a good thing if the regulators are cooperating with each other and if there are good political relationships there. All positive from our perspective. Last check for the room. Okay, operator, over to you. Could you let us know if there's anyone queuing on the call, please?
If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question from Russell Quelch of Redburn. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just checking you can hear me okay in the room.
Very well.
Good stuff. Thanks. A few questions here. Firstly, I'll start off with a clarification on the back of Greg's question, if that's okay, and appreciate you've got lots of products with different market penetration, but how much of the 60% growth, revenue growth in 2023 do you expect to be driven by pricing? I guess the reason for the question is, do you have to be less aggressive on pricing than perhaps peers in this environment in order to improve retention and ensure retention stays high as you move customers over to new platforms?
You wanna take that?
Yeah, sure. To come back to sort of what I said to Greg Simpson. When we're talking pricing here, we're predominantly talking about the subscription revenue that's largely in the D&A business, which is 70% of our revenue. Historically, we've taken low single digit pricing there, call it 2%. We're taking a little bit more than this year, which is, you know, not more than is, you know, of the order of 1% on that book of business. Are we less aggressive than our customers? No. A lot of the stuff that you're seeing in the press is headline pricing. You know, the number I get asked a lot about is the Bloomberg 9% increase. They take price every 2 years, so you need to halve that, so 4.5%.
There's always a difference between a headline price increase and the yield you actually achieve because, you know, there'll be different reasons for different, and different places where contractually, not every customer has the price increase applied to them. You know, I think it's all quite consistent. That's largely how I think about it.
Okay. That's good. Then just coming back on Mike's question as well around leverage, 'cause you're now at 1.8 times, you're targeting 1-2. If I look across the Data & Analytics peer group, mainly in the US, the average leverage is sort of 2-2.5 times, depending on where we are in the cycle. Would you be prepared to, you know, move up towards that range to use that capacity to drive growth, either, you know, M&A or buyback, or is there something perhaps in your covenants that restricts you from doing that right now?
Go ahead.
We have no restriction. I think. I'll come back to. We're generating a lot of cash, and we have the cash generation that we need to deliver on all the things that we want to do. While, you know, leverage is something we continue to keep under review, you know, we're sticking with our 1-2 times for now.
Okay. Sorry, if I just squeeze one more in on the fixed income indices, 'cause you've spoken a couple of times about that today. How do you take market share in this space versus incumbents in the space, particularly people like S&P now coming post the post the Info deal, coming with rolling out new product in this area? It's highly competitive. There are incumbents there already. Where is your competitive advantage here?
Is that question, I couldn't quite hear at the beginning, specifically around fixed income indices or indices in general?
Yeah. Thanks, David. Particularly fixed income indices, yeah, where you're talking a lot about growth.
We have a great franchise in fixed income, in the index product, and it's actually one of the significant competitive advantages and differences with respect to the FTSE Russell index product compared to a number of the other, basically the other top two, the other two players in the top three, if I can put it that way. We continue to invest in the space. We do very, very well from a competitive perspective in terms of RFPs or the head-to-head pitches. We're continuing to invest in it, and I look forward to continuing to do really well. We've got new inflows, new products, that we have been launching.
The number of products that we are putting out has gone up dramatically, over the past year or two compared to the product development pipeline that we had in the past. Part of that is related to having additional investment in the space. Part of that is related to, having the benefits of, access to the Refinitiv data, and that's part of the synergy case that we've been talking about. The product is doing very well. The space is doing very well for us.
Great. Thank you very much.
Next question, please, operator. Operator, hello? I think you still got Russell's line open by the sound of things. Operator?
Kyle Voigt at KBW, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just one follow-up on the Microsoft partnership. You previously disclosed GBP 250 million-GBP 300 million of cash costs related to the partnership from 2023 to 2025. Just wondering how much of those costs are embedded in the margin guidance for 2023 specifically, and it might be helpful if you could provide an exit 2023 margin run rate inclusive of the Microsoft cost, just so we have that like for like with the 50%, excluding it on a exit basis. Also I was wondering if you could run through how we should think about those costs as we get past that 2025 point. Do those costs really fall away and so are kind of more one-off, in nature, or do they kind of become embedded into the expense base on an ongoing basis past 2025?
Thanks, Kyle. I'll turn that over to Anna.
Where to start? Maybe I'll do the second one first. What we've shared with you is the product that... What we're talking about here is product development costs. It is one-off cost, and we've been quite clear about it, and we've called out the investment that we're making before we start to get to revenue. We'll need to continue to invest from 2025 onwards, at that point, we'll be seeing a revenue flow come in, and the investment will be very commensurate with the returns that you're starting to see. We'll guide on those numbers nearer the time. I'm not going to unpick our 48% margin guidance into its component parts because there's an awful lot of moving pieces in there.
You know, as you work it through, you can see that there is. If you think about the level of underlying margin improvement we've delivered this year of 110 basis points, you can see as you look forward to 2023, there is a level of investment going in against ongoing underlying margin improvement, and that is against the combination of Microsoft and also the early-stage M&A businesses that we've got.
Great. Then just one follow-up for me if I could. Just with the Euronext clearing migration now set for the third quarter of 2024, I know it's small in context of the larger group, but just wondering if you could update us again on the financial impact and if there could be any potential offsets on the expense side as those revenues migrate away.
Yeah, Kyle, as we announced, when they made their indication of that migration last year sometime, this is immaterial for LSEG. Nothing really to add in terms of, you know, it was immaterial then. It's We're growing, so it's can you say more immaterial now.
Fair enough. Thank you.
Yep.
Thanks, Kyle. Operator, next question, please.
Yes. Next, we have a question from Jonas Thormann at HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. Jonas Tolman, HSBC. 2 questions from my side, please. First of all, the costs development were probably 1 reason for a slight miss, and then the increase is probably stronger than anybody had expected. Is this something the inflationary environment you have to live with? Do you start any new cost savings initiatives, new measures, or do you really think if you stop guiding on costs as well, that you have the only ability to live with that is to compensate this via higher price increases on the revenue side? Secondly, also on a small business of yours, the cash trading business in UK, you lost market share and the yield deteriorated. Any countermeasures for the origin of the group? Thank you.
Should I do the first one?
Sure.
2023 cost. A couple of years ago, we gave you cost guidance, and you're right, we've stepped away from it, and we've moved to a margin guidance for 2023. That's because in a high growth environment, we think that is the right way to run our business. Sorry, high growth, high inflation environment, because we're managing both the impact of the inflation on our top line and also on the cost base. What you can see as you look at our margin, which is in line with expectation for 2023, there's a number of moving parts. There is some ongoing efficiency delivery, just as we've delivered this year. You will see us continue to work very hard to run this business more efficiently, and there is more opportunity to do that.
You will also see us investing for future growth, investing in the Microsoft partnership, which will accelerate growth from 2025 onwards, and investing against early-stage M&A that's got a long runway for growth. The way I think about it is our cost base is carefully controlled. We work very hard to drive efficiency, and we will continue to do so, and we will invest where there is a runway for growth as we are.
On your second question on cash trading in the UK, as you mentioned, this is a very small part of our overall revenues, certainly sub 5%. Nothing really new in terms of what's going on in that space. Just to break that down a little bit, there's obviously the London Stock Exchange, there's Turquoise, and we have seen some sort of subdued volumes in that space. When there is more volatility, you tend to see a lot of the volume coming back to the primary exchange. We have done a few things with respect to Turquoise in terms of bringing in some incremental volume there that has meant some moves on some of the pricing and the relationships with some of the biggest providers there. A few puts and a few takes there, but nothing really dramatic to touch on there. I don't see any signs of any longer term trends there.
Thank you. Operator, any more?
Yeah. Mike Werner at UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just have a question on costs, and thank you for the improved guidance with regards to being able to capture the bulk of your cost synergies by the end of 2023. I'm just thinking beyond that. You know, those cost synergies I think have, you know, obviously helped the EBITDA margin and allowed you to invest in the business. You know, as you look out to 2024 and 2025, do you see further opportunities to capture cost synergies above what you're currently targeting? Is this one where, you know, the tailwinds or the benefits from synergies are likely to slow in those years?
You know, again, if you, will have an impact on your EBITDA margin as we look out, as you guys continue to build scale. Thank you.
Thanks, Mike. Anna
You're right, we've guided today that we'll be substantially done with our cost synergies by the end of this year. That is a run rate exit at the end of this year. We'll see the in-year benefit of those cost synergies benefiting both 2023 and 2024. Now looking beyond that, you're not going to see us announce further cost synergies from the integration, but you will see us continue to drive efficiency. There is a lot of opportunity to continue to drive efficiency in this business through running our processes better, through better automating things. We are very motivated to continue to drive that efficiency, you will see that happen beyond 2024.
In terms of what does that mean for margin over the medium term, as somebody asked me earlier, is the 50% exit rate margin, you know, are we done? No, there's opportunity for further scalability in this business, and therefore margin enhancement as we continue to drive the cost at the top line and as we continue to manage our cost base sensibly. You will see us invest where we see there's opportunities to further accelerate that growth.
Thank you. Just actually a quick follow-up, if you don't mind. I think, David, you mentioned earlier that you expect to close the price gap in some of your markets. Is this something where we can maybe expect to see actually an acceleration of pricing power as we look out over the next couple of years?
I think that's a fair conclusion. We're investing in our product. We're improving our product significantly. We're seeing stronger retention. We're seeing stronger customer interest in what we're providing. We've said this before, when we are asking our customers for an appropriate return on the investment that we're making, and that investment is adding incremental value for them, they're willing to pay for that. The answer to your question is yes.
Thank you.
Next is Andrew Coombs of Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I'm sorry I can't be there in person. Just a couple of follow-ups. Just firstly, coming back to this point on the 6% to 8% revenue growth. When you answered this question previously, you admitted that it's 1% of that's inorganic this year, you talked about some of the pricing initiatives. You talked about the higher synergies. You talked about the Microsoft agreement. As a function, if I'm just reading between the lines, it sounds like you think 6% to 8% is actually a sustainable level even on an organic basis. Is that a fair conclusion?
Go ahead.
Our guidance for 2023 is 6% to 8%. But you can be absolutely sure that the investments that we're making and the things that we're doing are around improving the quality of our business in order to sustain good growth.
A second question, just to follow up on kind of the inorganic point. I mean, you said you weren't gonna expand on financial criteria. If I look at the M&A areas of interest for yourself and what you've historically done has been bolt-on in order to expand your existing capabilities, is there anything that you particularly look at and think you could benefit from? Any particular areas where you think you would need inorganic deals in order to improve your offering?
I'll answer that question in a slightly different way, which is that we did four acquisitions last year, each of which was relatively small, sort of a couple hundred to 200-300 million or so. That's a lot. I mean, that's small in size, but to do that amount of M&A in a year is a lot, and it kept the team very busy. One aspect of our approach to M&A that we have talked about is trying to do, when we're doing bolt-ons to the extent that we can do them that, in slightly bigger size. Because you're doing the same amount of work for a 200 million dollar or pound transaction as you are for a 500 million dollar or pound transaction.
If you can add incremental value in that one transaction and move the needle a little bit more, that's just more efficient for the team. The integration work is the same amount for the size, et cetera. We have talked about trying to do modestly larger transactions in the bolt-ons. You'll see this in Acadia. Acadia is about double the size of the transactions that we announced last year. I wouldn't call out any particular area specifically where we're looking to fill a gap. We'll continue to scour the landscape, if I can use that phrase, in terms of figuring out whether there are opportunities that make sense for us from a strategic perspective and from a financial perspective. We'll continue to maintain the discipline that we have maintained both strategically and financially.
If it makes sense, we have a lot of different areas of potential growth, internally, organically. We have a very broad platform, and so if there are assets out there, that make sense, we certainly have, as Animesh, we certainly have the cash, and the financing capability to do it while continuing to invest organically, while continuing, our progressive dividend policy and while continuing our share buyback. Thank you, David. Thank you.
Benjamin Goy of Deutsche Bank, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Two smaller questions left on my side. The first, maybe you can also talk about your cash CapEx this year, not only the GBP 750 business as usual. Then secondly, just want to check on Trading & Banking Solutions. It looks like the implied growth rate in Q4 accelerated. I just want to check that was mainly adding TORA or is there also quarter-on-quarter an acceleration in the growth of the underlying business? Thank you very much.
Wanna take this?
Yeah, sure. I think I heard your question right on cash CapEx. If I don't quite nail it, come back at me. Cash CapEx, GBP 966 million or something was the number you saw in the cash flow slide for 2022. Prior year, that same number was GBP 600 and some. That is both BAU CapEx plus the Refinitiv acquisition integration CapEx, which was about GBP 300 million over the couple of years. If you look at that together, we're absolutely on track to our guided number, which is actually an accruals number of GBP 650-700 million for the year just gone.
If you look forward, we've said that we will be investing GBP 750 million, which is a little bit more in 2023, and that increase really in the vast majority is some of the Microsoft spend and the early stage M&A. There's a slight uplift because of currency, but of course, you see the benefit that comes through on revenues associated with the stronger dollar as well. This.
Thank you. Means that this year there's no addition to the business as usual, so it's GBP 750 is odd number, the reported number, essentially?
What I'm saying is we've delivered in the year just gone. Well, across the couple of years, so 2021 and 2022, we've delivered absolutely in line with our cumulative guidance, and that guidance is a little bit higher for 2023, reflecting the impact of Microsoft and also the M&A.
He might be asking about integration CapEx.
Oh, sorry.
for the year. I think.
We haven't guided on explicitly, but we're in line with our absolute integration plans. The CapEx OpEx split moves around a little bit, which is why we don't sort of guide on it explicitly, but we'll share it with you at the end of the year.
The question around Trading & Banking.
Trading & Banking.
Yeah.
Yeah, Tora has helped the Q4 numbers, but also we've continued to see good underlying performance in that business. It's a bit of both ongoing retention and sales improvement plus the benefit of Tora.
Terrific. Thank you.
No further questions on the conference call lines.
Thank you very much. I'll hand back to David. Great. Well, I'm happy to do it from here. Thank you all for joining us, both here in person and online and on the video. Really appreciate it, and we look forward to executing on our ambitious agenda for 2023. Thanks very much.