RELX

T14.0% portfolio

RELX Plc

AI '25: Apps & Edge Deployment AI '25: Data Owners Alt & Market Data '26: Risk Analytics Business Services '26: AI Governance, Trust & Compliance Data Owners '25: Education, Research & Scientific KnowledgeData Owners '25: Insurance, Claims & Catastrophe RiskData Owners '25: Legal, Regulatory & IP InformationSoftware '26: Legal Tech

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Overview

RELX Plc provides data-driven analytics and decision tools across four segments: Risk (35%), STM (32%), Legal (20%), and Exhibitions (13%). It serves banks, ins

RELX Plc provides data-driven analytics and decision tools across four segments: Risk (35%), STM (32%), Legal (20%), and Exhibitions (13%). It serves banks, insurers, law firms, universities, and corporations globally. The company leverages proprietary content and AI-enabled solutions, like Lexis+ AI, to deliver value and drive strong growth, with over 90% of Risk revenue from machine-to-machine interactions.

What They Do (Plain English & Analogies): RELX is like a super-smart information provider for professionals. Imagine if you needed to make a really important decision, like a bank deciding if someone is a fraud risk, a scientist needing to find the latest research, or a lawyer preparing a complex case. RELX gives these professionals the highly specialized data, analysis tools, and expert insights they need to make those decisions accurately and quickly. They essentially take vast amounts of information, clean it up, analyze it with advanced technology (including a lot of AI), and then deliver it in a way that helps their customers solve specific problems, almost like a highly specialized, always-on consultant powered by data.
Very Brief History: Established in 1903 as Reed Elsevier PLC, the company adopted its current name, RELX PLC, in July 2015. Over its history, it has evolved into a global enterprise focused on delivering data-driven analytical solutions and decision-making tools across various professional sectors. It has strategically structured its operations into four key divisions: Risk, Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM), Legal, and Exhibitions.
"Street Stereotype": RELX is generally perceived by investors and analysts as a high-quality data and analytics compounder. The market sees it as having an accelerating ability to monetize its offerings through AI, particularly with products like Lexis+ AI and new STM tools. It's also recognized for its resilient subscription-based revenue and its Exhibitions division, which is now considered structurally stronger post-COVID. Its strong cash generation is often highlighted as a support for ongoing share buybacks and dividends.
Subsidiaries On Linked In*: LexisNexis — Major division for legal and professional information; LinkedIn: lexisnexis
Elsevier — Major division for scientific, technical, and medical information; LinkedIn: elsevier
RX (Reed Exhibitions) — Major division for exhibitions and events; LinkedIn: rx-global
LexisNexis Risk Solutions — Major division within Risk, focusing on fraud, identity, and insurance analytics; LinkedIn: lexisnexis-risk-solutions
Customer Sectors & Example Clients: RELX's customers span a variety of professional sectors, including banks, insurers, law firms, universities, corporations, and event exhibitors. In the Risk division, customers include financial institutions for financial crime compliance and digital fraud solutions, and insurance companies for contributory databases and market-specific solutions. Legal clients include law firms and corporate legal departments. STM serves scientific researchers and academic institutions globally. While specific top client companies are not named in the transcript, based on their business model, their clients would include major global banks, insurance carriers, top-tier law firms, and leading academic and research institutions worldwide.
New Customers / Segments They'Re Targeting: RELX is actively targeting new customer segments and expanding its offerings within existing markets. In the STM division, they are developing tools like LeapSpace, which has a potential addressable market of over 10,000 to 15,000 institutions and potentially over 10 million individual researchers globally. They are also exploring an individual researcher subscription option for these tools. Within the corporate market, which is currently a relatively small segment of STM revenue, RELX sees an important future growth opportunity, believing that higher-value, more usable tools will drive increased sales and packaging appropriate for corporate clients. In Legal, they are expanding the adoption of their core AI-enabled legal platform, Lexis+ AI and Protege, to serve an increasing number of use cases across law firms and corporate legal departments.
Supply Chain And Sourcing Geographies: RELX's core 'supply chain' revolves around the acquisition, curation, and processing of vast amounts of data and content. This includes public records accumulated over decades, some of which are no longer publicly available or are difficult to collect due to format or location. They also license data from over 10,000 different sources globally, with usage often regulated and controlled. Additionally, they rely on unique contributory data sets, some of which are involved in their Legal division, and dozens of these across the company. Proprietary data and content are also created internally by employees or external contractors over many years. The company has been proactively reducing its involvement in print-related activities, indicating a shift away from traditional physical supply chains for content distribution. Specific sourcing geographies for data are not detailed beyond being global, and for print, the transcript only mentions 'managing the distribution' without specifying production locations.
Sales Geographies And Expansion Plans: RELX operates globally, delivering its solutions to professional and corporate clients across North America, Europe, and other international markets. The company has hundreds of thousands of users of Lexis+ AI across the globe. While the transcript does not explicitly detail plans to expand sales into *new* specific geographic regions, the ongoing rollout and adoption of new AI-enabled products like Lexis+ AI and LeapSpace are inherently global initiatives, aiming to increase penetration and usage within their existing international footprint. The company's strategy focuses on enhancing value for customers globally through continuous innovation and embedding new technologies.
How Key Themes May Help/Hurt: The buildout of 'Software '26: Legal Tech' is a significant tailwind for RELX, particularly through its LexisNexis Legal division. The theme's focus on AI-powered legal research and workflow tools directly aligns with RELX's strategy of accelerating AI monetization through products like Lexis+ AI and Protege, driving double-digit spend uplift and demonstrating pricing power. The 'AI '25: Apps & Edge Deployment' and 'AI '25: Data Owners' themes are also highly beneficial. As foundational AI models commoditize and value shifts to applications and proprietary data, RELX's extensive, unique, and continuously updated datasets across all divisions (Risk, STM, Legal) provide a strong, defensible moat. Their long history of embedding AI and machine learning, especially in Risk, positions them to capitalize on agentic AI for productivity gains and enhanced product experiences. However, these themes also present potential challenges. Competitive threats from other AI-enabled workflow tools (e.g., Harvey, Westlaw AI) could erode RELX's moat if it lags in innovation or adoption. The increasing complexity of AI governance, security, and data quality, as highlighted in the 'AI '25: Apps & Edge Deployment' bear points, could introduce regulatory hurdles and operational complexities. While RELX emphasizes its content advantage, the commoditization of generic AI models could pressure the monetization of less differentiated offerings if not continually enhanced by their unique data.

3 Main Long-Term Bull Details

Accelerating AI Monetization and Content Advantage: RELX is successfully embedding AI-enabled analytics and decision tools across all business areas, driving strong growth and demonstrating pricing power, particularly with Lexis+ AI in Legal and new tools in STM. Their uniquely differentiated, comprehensive, and trusted content base, combined with proprietary algorithms, creates a sustainable competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate.
Resilient Subscription Base and Strong Cash Generation: The company benefits from a heavily subscription-based business model, providing resilient and predictable revenue streams. This strong cash generation consistently supports significant share buybacks and increasing dividends, enhancing shareholder returns and providing financial flexibility for selective acquisitions.
Improving Growth Trajectory and Operational Leverage: RELX has achieved an improving long-term growth trajectory by shifting its business mix towards higher-growth analytics and decision tools. The company consistently manages cost growth below revenue growth, leading to expanding operating margins and strong earnings growth across all four business areas.

3 Main Long-Term Bear Details

Competitive Threats from AI Innovators: The rapid evolution of AI, particularly in Legal, poses a risk of new entrants or existing competitors (e.g., Westlaw AI, Harvey) eroding RELX's market share or pricing power if its AI-enabled offerings are perceived to lag or if its content advantage becomes less differentiated by generic AI models.
STM Market Pressures and Slower Adoption: The Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) segment faces potential pressures from open access mandates and university funding environments, which could moderate growth. Additionally, the adoption curve for new tools in the academic sector can be slower due to institutional budget cycles and decision-making processes.
Exhibitions Cyclicality and Macroeconomic Sensitivity: While Exhibitions has shown strong growth post-COVID, it remains a cyclical business. Macroeconomic weakness, budget tightening by exhibitors, or unforeseen global events could derail its momentum and impact its rebased growth and margin leverage.

Competitors And Differentiation: RELX faces competition from various players in its different segments. In Legal, competitors include Thomson Reuters' Westlaw AI and emerging AI workflow tools like Harvey and Legora. In the broader legal tech space, they also interact with hundreds of other software and workflow companies, including major players like Microsoft. In STM, Clarivate is a competitor in research intelligence. For Risk, while not explicitly named as direct competitors in the transcript, the discussion around Palantir highlights a different approach to big data and algorithms. RELX differentiates itself primarily through its 'uniquely differentiated, comprehensive content' and 'trusted, verified, continually updated content and data sets'. They combine these content assets with deep customer understanding and advanced AI tools to deliver proprietary algorithms, judgments, inferences, and interpretations that are 'extremely hard, if not impossible, to replicate'. Their strategy is to embed content-related workflows within their platforms and be interoperable with broader workflow software tools, rather than competing directly in general administrative workflow software.
Recent Performance & What The Market'S Focused On: RELX delivered strong financial results in 2025, with underlying revenue growth of 7%, underlying adjusted operating profit growth of 9%, and adjusted earnings per share growth of 10% at constant currency. The adjusted operating margin improved by just under 1 percentage point to 34.8%. Cash conversion remained strong at 99%, and the company completed a GBP 1.5 billion buyback, with a further GBP 2.25 billion announced for 2026. The market is focused on the continued strong momentum in Legal AI adoption (Lexis+ AI, Protege) and its impact on spend uplift, the steady performance and new product rollout in STM (LeapSpace), and the resilience and margin leverage of the Exhibitions business. Concerns around potential incremental competition in Legal AI and the impact of print revenue decline are also being watched.

Revenue Segments And Estimated Mix: Risk — Mix: ~35%; Source: Overview; Trend: Underlying revenue growth was 8%, underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 10% in 2025. Margin up 40 bps.
Risk - Business Services — Mix: >40% of divisional revenue; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Strong growth driven by financial crime compliance and digital fraud/identity solutions.
Risk - Insurance — Mix: ~40% of divisional revenue; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Strong growth driven by innovation and adoption of contributory databases and market-specific solutions.
Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) — Mix: ~32%; Source: Overview; Trend: Underlying revenue growth was 5%, underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 7% in 2025. Improving momentum. Margin up 70 bps.
STM - Databases, Tools & Electronic Reference — Mix: ~40% of divisional revenue; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Strong growth driven by higher value-add analytics and decision tools.
STM - Primary Research — Mix: >50% of divisional revenue; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Good growth driven by volume growth (articles published grew 10% in 2025).
Legal — Mix: ~20%; Source: Overview; Trend: Underlying revenue growth improved to 9%, underlying adjusted operating profit growth of 12% in 2025. Margin up 80 bps.
Legal - Law Firms & Corporate Legal — Mix: ~70% of divisional revenue; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Double-digit growth driven by adoption of Lexis+ AI and Protege.
Exhibitions — Mix: ~13%; Source: Overview; Trend: Strong underlying revenue growth of 8%, underlying adjusted operating profit growth of 9% in 2025. Margins significantly above historical levels. Margin up 250 bps.
Print and Print-Related Activities — Mix: n/m; Source: 2025 earnings transcript; Trend: Revenue reduction of over 20% in 2025; profit expected to decline in high single digits each year.
Product Brands: LexisNexis
Elsevier
RX Exhibitions
Lexis+ AI
Protege
LeapSpace
ScienceDirect AI
Scopus AI
IDVerse

Bull / Bear Details

RELX is a high-quality data & analytics compounder, demonstrating strong 2025 financial results and continued positive momentum. Its AI-enabled solutions, parti

Thesis

RELX is a high-quality data & analytics compounder, demonstrating strong 2025 financial results and continued positive momentum. Its AI-enabled solutions, particularly in Legal (Lexis+ AI) and Risk, leverage proprietary, hard-to-replicate content to drive accelerating monetization and resilient subscription-based growth. Strong cash generation supports significant share buybacks, reinforcing the investment case as of 2026-07-15.

Bull case

Legal AI adoption is driving significant growth, with Lexis+ AI's enterprise-wide subscription customer base more than doubling in 2025 and usage growing even faster. This propelled Legal's underlying revenue growth to 9% and operating profit growth to 12%, demonstrating strong monetization and the value-add of its AI-enabled legal platform and nearly 300 content-related workflow tools.
The STM segment's underlying revenue growth outlook was upgraded to "good to strong," supported by a robust 20% increase in article submissions and 10% in publications in 2025. The commercial launch of the LeapSpace platform, a high-value AI-enabled tool, is receiving strong positive feedback and targets a large addressable market of institutions and researchers.
RELX delivered robust 2025 financial results, with 7% underlying revenue growth and 9% underlying adjusted operating profit growth, alongside a strong 99% cash conversion rate. The company announced a substantial GBP 2.25 billion share buyback for 2026, a 50% increase from the prior year, reinforcing its commitment to shareholder returns and capital efficiency.

Bear case

Despite RELX's strong content moat, the Legal segment faces ongoing competitive threats from new AI-enabled workflow tools (e.g., Harvey, Legora) from other large software companies. While RELX aims for interoperability, these tools could still challenge market share or pricing power in specific workflow areas, potentially eroding parts of its competitive advantage.
The STM industry's adoption curve for new tools is inherently slower due to academic funding, budget constraints, and longer institutional decision cycles. Additionally, the company expects a continued high single-digit annual decline in profit from print and print-related activities, posing a persistent drag on overall revenue and profit growth.
While the Exhibitions segment showed strong 8% underlying revenue growth and 9% operating profit growth in 2025, it remains susceptible to cyclical macroeconomic weakness or budget tightening from exhibitors. Such external factors could derail its momentum and impact overall group performance, despite the segment's improved growth profile and digital initiatives.

Bull / Bear Case

Bear Case: Despite its content moat, RELX's Legal segment faces increasing competitive threats from new AI-enabled workflow tools (e.g., Harvey, Legora) from other large software companies, which could challenge market share or pricing power. The Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) industry's inherent slowness in adopting new tools, due to academic funding cycles and institutional decision processes, could temper the pace of growth from new platforms like LeapSpace. Furthermore, the company anticipates a continued high single-digit annual decline in profit from print and print-related activities, acting as a persistent drag on overall performance. The Exhibitions segment, while performing well, remains susceptible to cyclical macroeconomic downturns or budget tightening, potentially impacting group results.
Bull Case: RELX Plc demonstrates strong momentum, driven by its AI-enabled analytics and decision tools built upon a proprietary, hard-to-replicate content moat. The Legal segment is experiencing significant growth, with Lexis+ AI's enterprise-wide customer base more than doubling in 2025 and usage accelerating, contributing to 9% underlying revenue and 12% operating profit growth. The Risk segment continues its robust performance with 8% underlying revenue growth, 10% operating profit growth, and over 90% of revenue from machine-to-machine interactions. The STM segment's outlook was upgraded to "good to strong," supported by strong article submissions and the commercial launch of the high-value LeapSpace platform. Overall, RELX delivered strong 2025 financial results (7% underlying revenue, 9% operating profit, 99% cash conversion) and announced a substantial GBP 2.25 billion share buyback for 2026, reinforcing shareholder returns.
More Compelling & Why: Bull. Despite recent stock underperformance, RELX's current P/E ratio of approximately 21.6x is below its historical median of around 30.3x, suggesting a potentially undervalued position given its strong underlying business fundamentals. The most compelling argument is RELX's proven ability to leverage its deep, proprietary content and AI integration to drive accelerating, resilient growth across its core segments, particularly in Legal and Risk, which is not fully reflected in the current valuation. My view would flip if there was clear evidence of sustained deceleration in underlying revenue growth across key segments or significant erosion of market share due to competitive AI offerings impacting operating margins.

Key Factors5 rows

Key Factor	Why It Matters	What To Watch	What It Signals	Where/How To Track	Free Alt Data	Paid Alt Data
Exhibitions Underlying Revenue Growth & Operating Margin	Exhibitions' continued strong performance and margin expansion indicate a successful post-COVID recovery and structural improvement, demonstrating resilience against macro headwinds and the effectiveness of digital initiatives.	Commentary on underlying revenue growth (target 8%+) and adjusted operating margin improvement year-over-year; forward booking trends and attendance figures for key events.	Bullish: Exhibitions segment maintains or exceeds 8% underlying revenue growth; adjusted operating margin continues to improve year-over-year; positive commentary on event portfolio growth and digital initiatives. Bearish: Deceleration in revenue growth; margin contraction; negative commentary on macro impact on bookings or attendance.	Company earnings calls and transcripts, investor presentations. Next earnings call (likely Q1 2026 results, around May 2026, or H1 2026 results, around August 2026).	Industry reports on global exhibition market trends; trade show attendance figures (if publicly available for specific events).	Placer.ai: Foot traffic data for major exhibition venues; Eventbrite/similar platforms: Ticket sales trends for relevant events.
STM AI Tool Rollout & Adoption (LeapSpace)	The successful rollout and penetration of high-value AI analytics tools like LeapSpace are crucial for accelerating STM's growth trajectory and expanding its addressable market beyond traditional academic publishing.	Commentary on commercial uptake, user feedback, and penetration into the target market of 10,000-15,000 institutions and 10+ million researchers; specific metrics on value uplift or time savings reported by customers.	Bullish: Faster-than-expected uptake in academic or corporate markets; positive commentary on value uplift and user growth; contribution to STM's 'good to strong' underlying revenue growth. Bearish: Slower-than-expected adoption due to long academic purchase cycles or funding constraints; limited reported value uplift.	Company earnings calls and transcripts, investor presentations. Next earnings call (likely Q1 2026 results, around May 2026, or H1 2026 results, around August 2026).	Academic news outlets, university technology adoption reports; Google Scholar search trends for 'LeapSpace' or related research tools.	SimilarWeb: Web traffic to LeapSpace platform; Gartner/Forrester: Reports on academic research tool adoption.
Risk Segment New Product Contribution & AI-enabled Revenue Mix	The Risk segment's continued strong performance is driven by its deeply embedded AI analytics and rapid innovation, with new products displacing older ones and maintaining a high proportion of automated, data-driven interactions.	Percentage contribution of new products to Risk revenue growth (e.g., maintaining or exceeding 6%); commentary on the pace of innovation and new data source integration (e.g., IDVerse acquisition impact); sustained over 90% machine-to-machine revenue.	Bullish: New product contribution remains strong (e.g., >5%); continued expansion of differentiated data sets and global fraud infrastructure; sustained 8%+ underlying revenue growth in Risk. Bearish: Decline in new product contribution; slowdown in innovation or data integration; any dip below 90% machine-to-machine revenue.	Company earnings calls and transcripts, investor presentations. Next earnings call (likely Q1 2026 results, around May 2026, or H1 2026 results, around August 2026).	Industry reports on financial crime compliance, digital fraud, and identity solutions; regulatory updates on data usage in risk analytics.	IDC/Gartner: Market share reports for risk analytics and fraud prevention; Thinknum: Job postings for 'Risk Analytics AI' or 'Fraud Prevention AI' roles at RELX.
Share Buyback Program Execution	The increased share buyback program signals management's confidence in strong cash generation and commitment to returning surplus capital to shareholders, providing downside support and enhancing EPS.	Quarterly updates on the amount of shares repurchased and capital deployed against the £2.25 billion target for 2026; commentary on leverage levels (target 2.0x-2.5x).	Bullish: Buyback program executed as planned or accelerated; leverage maintained within or towards the lower end of the target range (2.0x-2.5x). Bearish: Delays or reduction in the buyback program; significant deviation from target leverage range without clear strategic rationale.	Company press releases, regulatory filings (e.g., RNS announcements in the UK), quarterly financial reports. Ongoing throughout 2026.	Financial news outlets tracking company buyback announcements; stock exchange data on daily share repurchases.	Bloomberg/Refinitiv: Share repurchase data; FactSet: Capital allocation analysis.
Lexis+ AI and Protege Enterprise-Wide Subscription Customer Base Growth and Usage	Strong adoption and usage of AI-enabled legal platforms like Lexis+ AI and Protege are critical for RELX's Legal segment growth, demonstrating pricing power and competitive advantage against rivals.	Percentage increase in enterprise-wide subscription customer base for Lexis+ AI (previously doubled in the past year); growth in active users (currently hundreds of thousands globally); commentary on spend uplift and new functionality releases (e.g., pace of new workflow tools beyond 300).	Bullish: Enterprise-wide customer base growth continues to double or exceed prior year's doubling rate; active users grow significantly beyond hundreds of thousands; sustained double-digit growth in Law Firms & Corporate Legal segment. Bearish: Deceleration in customer base or user growth; negative commentary on spend uplift or competitive pressures.	Company earnings calls and transcripts, investor presentations, press releases. Next earnings call (likely Q1 2026 results, around May 2026, or H1 2026 results, around August 2026).	Google Trends: 'Lexis+ AI' or 'Protege AI' search volume; legal tech industry news sites for adoption trends.	Apptopia/Sensor Tower: LexisNexis app downloads/usage; Thinknum: Legal tech job postings mentioning Lexis+ AI or Protege.

Key Reported Metrics, Reratings Triggers & Results3 rows

This metric is crucial for assessing the monetization of RELX's AI investments, particularly Lexis+ AI and Protege, and its ability to sustain growth amidst com

Key reported metrics			Rerating thresholds
Metric	Last period	Why it matters	What's needed for rerating	Rerating context	Earnings date
Legal Segment Underlying Revenue Growth	9%	This metric is crucial for assessing the monetization of RELX's AI investments, particularly Lexis+ AI and Protege, and its ability to sustain growth amidst competitive threats in the legal tech market.	Legal Segment Underlying Revenue Growth needs to hit 10%+ (double-digit growth) for Q2 2026, with management commentary confirming continued acceleration driven by Lexis+ AI adoption. This would represent an acceleration from the 9% reported in 2025 and align with management's stated expectation of 'double-digit growth' in the Law Firms & Corporate Legal sub-segment. Peer performance, such as Thomson Reuters' Legal Professionals segment growing 9% organically in Q1 2026, sets a strong benchmark.	Achieving double-digit underlying revenue growth in the Legal segment is critical as it validates RELX's successful monetization of its AI investments, particularly Lexis+ AI. This demonstrates the company's ability to drive spend uplift and differentiate its offerings amidst competitive threats in the legal tech market. Sustained acceleration reinforces RELX's investment thesis as a high-quality data & analytics compounder, justifying its valuation and strengthening its competitive position.	2026-07-23
Group Underlying Revenue Growth	7%	This metric indicates the overall health and momentum of RELX's diversified business, reflecting the effectiveness of its strategy to shift towards higher-growth analytics and AI-enabled decision tools.	Group Underlying Revenue Growth needs to hit 8% or higher. This would represent an acceleration from the 7% achieved in 2025 and surpass current analyst forecasts of 6.1-6.5% for 2026. This target is also in line with the 7-8% organic revenue growth expected by peer Thomson Reuters for Q2 2026.	Achieving 8%+ group underlying revenue growth would signal accelerating monetization of RELX's AI-enabled solutions and proprietary data, validating its competitive advantage against emerging AI threats. This confirms the investment thesis of RELX as a high-quality data & analytics compounder, driving a positive rerating by demonstrating stronger-than-expected growth and operational leverage.	2026-07-23
STM Segment Underlying Revenue Growth	5%	This metric reflects the progress of STM's business mix evolution towards higher-value analytics and tools, and the adoption of new products like LeapSpace, which are key for long-term growth in this segment.	For RELX Plc's stock to rerate higher, the STM Segment Underlying Revenue Growth metric needs to hit 6.5% or higher. This would represent a clear acceleration from the 5% growth reported in 2025 and validate management's upgraded 2026 outlook of "good to strong" for the segment. It would also indicate outperformance compared to the broader STM publishing market's projected 3.2% CAGR from 2026 to 2035.	Achieving 6.5%+ growth in the STM segment is critical as it would confirm RELX's successful pivot towards higher-value analytics and AI-enabled tools, validating its investment thesis. This demonstrates effective monetization of proprietary content and AI, reinforcing its competitive moat, and justifying a higher valuation multiple from investors.	2026-07-23

Key Questions

Can RELX sustain the accelerated growth and adoption of Lexis+ AI and Protege, effectively differentiating against emerging AI workflow competitors and driving

Can RELX sustain the accelerated growth and adoption of Lexis+ AI and Protege, effectively differentiating against emerging AI workflow competitors and driving continued spend uplift in the Legal segment?

Question 2: Will the upgraded outlook for STM, driven by new AI tools like LeapSpace and strong article submissions, translate into sustained "good to strong" underlying revenue growth, overcoming the inherent slowness of academic adoption and open access mandates?
Question 3: Can the Risk segment sustain its strong underlying revenue and profit growth, leveraging its deep AI integration and proprietary data moats, amidst potential macroeconomic sensitivities and evolving regulatory scrutiny on AI in critical decision-making?

Earnings Transcript SummaryTable

2026-02-12 · 2025H2 Earnings Call

3 Things Management Is Most Focused On	Call Takeaway & Tone	Prior Quarter'S Y/Y Growth By Segment	3 Things Analysts Most Pressed On (And Mgmt Responses)	Revenue Segments
1. Leveraging AI and advanced analytics: Management consistently highlighted the development and rollout of AI-enabled analytics and decision tools as the core driver of growth across all business areas, with Risk's revenue being over 90% from machine-to-machine interactions and Legal seeing strong adoption of Lexis+ AI and Protege. They emphasized their 'technology-agnostic philosophy' and continuous evaluation of new AI tools to enhance customer value. 2. Driving strong underlying revenue and profit growth with margin expansion: Management reported 7% underlying revenue growth and 9% underlying adjusted operating profit growth for the group, with a strategic focus on managing cost growth below revenue growth to improve margins across all four business areas. They expressed expectations for continued strong underlying growth in 2026. 3. Disciplined capital allocation and strategic direction: Erik Engstrom reiterated an 'unchanged' strategic direction, focusing on shifting the business mix towards higher-growth analytics and decision tools. Nicholas Luff detailed capital allocation priorities: organic development (CapEx around 5% of revenues), selective acquisitions (average spend around GBP 400 million annually), consistent dividend increases (7% proposed for 2025), and returning surplus capital through share buybacks (GBP 2.25 billion announced for 2026) to maintain leverage within the 2.0x to 2.5x range.	The call conveyed a positive and confident tone, highlighting RELX's strong financial performance in 2025 with robust underlying revenue and profit growth. The key takeaway was the successful execution of its strategy, driven by the ongoing shift towards higher-value, AI-enabled analytics and decision tools built on proprietary content. Management expressed optimism for continued strong growth in 2026, emphasizing the sustainable competitive advantage derived from their data moats and AI innovation, coupled with disciplined cost management and strategic capital allocation. Analysts' concerns about competition and market shifts were addressed by reinforcing the company's unique content foundation and adaptable technology approach.	For H1 2025, Risk reported 8% underlying revenue growth. STM reported 5% underlying revenue growth. Legal reported 9% underlying revenue growth. Exhibitions delivered 8% underlying revenue growth.	1. Competitive threats in Legal from new AI-enabled workflow tools (e.g., Harvey, Legora): Management responded by emphasizing RELX's 'uniquely differentiated, comprehensive content' and 'trusted, verified, continually updated content and data sets' as the foundational competitive advantage for their AI tools like Lexis+ AI and Protege. They clarified that their tools are 'content-enabled' and that they aim to integrate the best new tools while being interoperable with broader workflow software, rather than directly competing in general admin/workflow solutions. Nicholas Luff noted that Lexis+ AI's enterprise-wide subscription customer base more than doubled in the past year, with usage growing even faster. 2. Impact of autonomous driving on the auto insurance market and potential long-term risks: Management, through Nicholas Luff, viewed autonomous driving and enhanced safety features as creating 'opportunity' rather than risk. He explained that the evolving industry, with more data generation and increased complexity, enhances the value of RELX's sophisticated risk analysis tools. He also noted that while accident frequency might decrease, the severity and cost of accidents are rising, increasing the 'value at stake' for their analytics. 3. Operating leverage and margin expansion with compute-intensive AI, and the balance between acquisitions and buybacks given low leverage: Nicholas Luff explained that new technologies enable both product functionality and internal process efficiencies, allowing RELX to keep cost growth below revenue growth and potentially widen the profit-to-revenue growth gap. Regarding capital allocation, he reiterated organic development as the primary focus and stated that while they are open to larger, strategic acquisitions, the increased GBP 2.25 billion share buyback for 2026 is intended to bring leverage back to the middle of their target range (2.0x-2.5x), reflecting the current lower M&A spend.	Overall underlying revenue growth was 7%. Underlying revenue growth for Risk was 8%, STM was 5%, Legal improved to 9%, and Exhibitions was 8%. Revenue from print and print-related activities saw a reduction of over 20% in 2025.

Transcript TidbitsTable

2026-02-12

About Expanding Eligible Market	About Competition	About The Broader Industry	Where Things Are Headed	Updates On Theme	Broader Themes Emerging	Bullish-Leaning Quotes (Short)	Bearish-Leaning Quotes (Short)	Hiring
RELX is expanding its differentiated data sets, building out global fraud infrastructure, and integrating advanced authentication and behavioral intelligence in Risk. In Insurance, the company is expanding products across the insurance continuum and lines, adding data sources and analytics. For Legal, new functionality and deeper content integration are enabling the company to increase value-add and serve an increasing number of use cases. In STM, the LeapSpace platform's potential addressable market includes 10,000-15,000 institutions and over 10 million individual researchers, with the corporate market identified as an important future growth opportunity.	RELX acknowledges 'incremental competition around AI-enabled workflow tools from other large software companies' in the Legal segment, specifically mentioning tools like Harvey or Legora. However, the company differentiates its offerings based on its 'uniquely differentiated, comprehensive content, our collection of trusted, verified, continually updated content and data sets,' which is leveraged to combine with advanced AI tools. RELX views these workflow tool developers as 'additional partners' rather than direct competitors in content-related use cases, aiming for interoperability. In the Risk market, the company believes it is 'incredibly difficult to replicate' its competitive advantage due to 90% of revenue from machine-to-machine interactions, massive scale of data sets (thousands of sources, public records, contributory data), network effects, proprietary algorithms, and heavy regulation.	The STM industry is characterized as a 'totally global industry' with a continuously increasing number of scientific researchers, growing information intensity, and an accelerating desire for publication. The auto insurance industry is evolving to make driving safer, generating more data, and becoming more complex due to enhanced safety features, telematics, and autonomous driving, leading to fewer accidents but higher severity and cost. The wider legal technology market for law firms is large and expected to grow significantly, with firms continuing to evaluate and experiment with new tools.	RELX expects continued strong underlying revenue growth with underlying adjusted operating profit growth exceeding underlying revenue growth across all four business areas. The strategic direction remains unchanged, driven by an ongoing shift in business mix towards higher-growth analytics and decision tools, supported by the continued evolution of artificial intelligence. Profit from print and print-related activities is expected to continue to decline in the high single digits each year. The STM outlook has been upgraded to 'good to strong' underlying revenue growth. The company also noted the possibility of 'slightly 2 or 3 larger acquisitions' in the future, although organic development remains the primary strategy.	Software	The pervasive and accelerating integration of AI across all divisions to enhance product value, drive efficiency, and accelerate product development. The strategic importance of proprietary, trusted, and comprehensive data sets as a foundational competitive advantage in the age of AI.	We delivered strong financial results in 2025. We continue to see positive momentum across the group. Underlying revenue growth was 7%. Underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 9%, and adjusted earnings per share growth was 10% at constant currency. All four business areas continue to perform well. Strong growth continues to be driven across segments by the development and rollout of our deeply embedded AI-enabled analytics and decision tools with over 90% of divisional revenue coming from machine-to-machine interactions. The enterprise-wide subscription customer base has more than doubled in the past year. And the usage is going up faster than that. The number of articles submitted continued to grow very strongly across the portfolio by over 20% in 2025, and the number of articles published grew 10%. The outlook statement is a more positive statement than we've had previously. That is an upgrade in our outlook. We continue to return our surplus capital through the share buyback with GBP 2.25 billion of spend announced today for 2026.	The profit contribution from print and print-related activities declined but at a lower rate than revenue. Going forward, we expect profit from print and print-related activities to continue to decline in the high single digits each year in line with historical trends. Everything in the STM industry goes a little more slowly than it does in other industries, partly because of how they think of funding and spending and budget and also because the purchase cycles, the decision cycles at academic institutions are typically slightly more involved and take longer.

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Date	Comment	Comment Type	Comment Sentiment	Link	Price Reaction
2025-07-24	Solid quarter with 7% revenue growth and margin gains; Legal AI momentum strong, STM steady, Exhibitions resilient. Stock reaction mixed as print carve-out, policy noise, and AI competition tempered enthusiasm.	Earnings Transcript	Mixed		-1.82% (vs SPY: -2.22%)
2026-07-23	RELX reported strong H1 2026 results with 7% underlying revenue and 9% adjusted operating profit growth, driven by accelerating Legal (10%) and STM (6%) segments, easing AI disruption fears. Exhibitions lagged slightly due to Middle East uncertainty. Full-year guidance was reaffirmed. The stock surged 5.10% (outperforming SPY), reflecting positive market sentiment and validating its AI-driven growth strategy.	Earnings Transcript	Positive	https://www.relx.com/investors/results-reports-and-presentations/2026	+5.10% (vs SPY: +6.23%)

Upcoming EventsTable

Catalyst ID	Estimated Timing	Estimated Date Start	Estimated Date End	Catalyst	Why It Matters	Ticker Or Theme Specific	Transcript Date	Source Type
RELX_4b920baf	August 2026	2026-08-01	2026-08-31	The EU AI Act's high-risk requirements are scheduled to take effect.	This regulatory event could increase compliance costs and potentially limit the scope or speed of new AI product rollouts for data owners like RELX, particularly in regulated segments such as Risk and Legal.	Theme	2026-02-12	earnings_transcript