RNS’s competitors begin to make inroads into regulatory news market, according to latest KTS survey

22/08/2003

The latest PIPs survey by Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC reveals that the leading provider of regulatory news distribution Ð the London Stock Exchange’s Regulatory News Service (RNS) – lost 6.52% of its market share to rival primary information providers (PIPs) over the last six months. Since the market was opened to competition in April 2002, there has been fierce competition and price-discounting as the various PIPs jockey for position.

The source of KTS’s data is its UK live financial news and data product, QuoteTerminal, which aggregates all the PIPs announcements.

The other major development was the decision by Newslink, which claims to be the UK’s largest independent news aggregation and delivery service, to suspend its regulatory news service at the end of June.

The main beneficiary of RNS’s loss was BusinessWire Ð its market share rose from 1.53% to 6.32% in the past six months. As a result BusinessWire overtook Waymaker as the PIP with the third largest share of the market. The other PIPs increasing their market share were Waymaker, which jumped from 2.80% to 4.73% and Hugin, which rose from 0.42% to 0.58%.

PR Newswire suffered a very small fall (0.08%) in its share of the market, but still retains second place having issued 9.22% of regulatory announcements during the previous six months. PIMS’s share of the market also fell by 0.23% to 0.36%.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, chief executive of KTS, said:

Ã’The regulatory news market was opened up to competitors some sixteen months ago now, so some might say that it’s about time that the new players began to grab a decent slice of the market. However, RNS is a well-known, trusted name and in my opinion it was almost inevitable that it would hold on to most of the market while its competitors tried to make a name for themselves. I also believe that, despite the progress the new PIPs are now making, it will be a long time, if ever, before RNS finds itself being challenged as market-leader.