23 July 2026
If you are covering Relx's latest financial results, please find below a comment from Matt Dorset, equity research analyst at Quilter Cheviot:
"Despite the well-publicised 'SaaSpocalypse' earlier this year, it has been a good first half for Relx. Sales growth came in at 7%, which was in-line with expectations. But more importantly in Legal and Science, Technical & Medical (STM), which are the two segments seen as at risk from AI, growth accelerated to 10% and 6% respectively which is very positive and goes some way to pushback on AI fears, especially as the growth acceleration was supported by AI enabled analytics and tools. Operating profit increased by 9% which was in-line, and earnings per share increased by 11% and was a 2% beat.
"Management continues to highlight the ongoing shift in business mix to higher growth analytics and decision tools as supporting growth. It sees the value of combining their unique and comprehensive datasets with AI as the best opportunity to beat off the threat posed by large language models.
"The full year outlook was reiterated with Relx continuing to see positive momentum across the group and expecting another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and earnings. At the segment level guidance was reiterated apart from at STM where growth was upgraded to "strong", from “good to strong” previously.
"In terms of valuation, Relx has partly recovered from the sharp derating earlier in the year, but still trades at a level well below its peak last year and at a significant discount to US peers. This derating looks overdone and continued solid and even accelerating results are supportive, although it will clearly take much longer to dispel AI fears."
