RELX plc (RELX) ☆

AI applications & software · Industry Index 11 (rank #107) · $40.09 (+2.40%) · mkt cap $69.6B

ⓘ Data freshness

price: as of 2026-10-30 index: as of 2026-10-30 fundamentals: latest filing 2026-06-30 Reports quarterly (financials via Yahoo Finance; not SEC-registered)

FTSE 100 information and analytics group. Its LexisNexis Legal & Professional division is the legal-research incumbent — £959M underlying revenue in H1 2026, on course for ~£2B for the year — and now ships Lexis+ with Protege, an agentic legal assistant with Microsoft Word and Outlook integration. Also owns Elsevier in medical publishing.

Industry exposure 0.3 (LexisNexis Legal & Professional is one division of a broader information-and-analytics group (Elsevier, Risk, Exhibitions), so only part of the group is exposed to the AI application shift.)

Signal

signal: as of 2026-10-13

Short (~2 weeks)

16%

Low-confidence · Neutral

Conviction 16

Price momentum— Technical uptrend across short+medium horizon(s) — vote 0.83, confidence 0.35 from 11 indicator sub-signal(s).[price] · derived internally
Structural— Industry Index 10.7 (rising 0.4 over window) — structural headwind.[index] · derived internally

Medium (~3 months)

20%

Bullish

Conviction 20

Growth trend— Revenue 9% YoY (accelerating), net margin expanding.[filing: revenue FY2025 vs FY2024]
Price momentum— Technical uptrend across short+medium horizon(s) — vote 0.83, confidence 0.35 from 11 indicator sub-signal(s).[price] · derived internally
Structural— Industry Index 10.7 (rising 0.4 over window) — structural headwind.[index] · derived internally

Long (~6 months)

Low-confidence · Neutral

Conviction 0

Growth trend— Revenue 9% YoY (accelerating), net margin expanding.[filing: revenue FY2025 vs FY2024]
moat— Editorial prior (subjective, NOT backtested): wide moat / co_leader / moderate pricing ⇒ wider/leading long-horizon tilt 0.30. Bounded, low-confidence input.[moat: Editorial moat profile — relx — wide moat, co_leader, moderate pricing (as of 2026-02-19)]
Structural— Industry Index 10.7 (rising 0.4 over window) — structural headwind.[index] · derived internally

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Relationship network

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EvenUp — portfolio company
Harvey — competitor
Legora — competitor

Key relationships

EvenUp — portfolio company · REV, the venture arm of RELX (owner of LexisNexis Legal & Professional), participated in EvenUp's $150M Series E at a $2B+ valuation — the legal-information incumbent holds a stake in the challenger. source: evenuplaw.com
Harvey — competitor · LexisNexis, RELX's legal division, ships Lexis+ with Protege into the same law-firm buyer as Harvey; the article contrasts LexisNexis's £959M H1 2026 revenue against Harvey's $300M ARR. source: nonbillable.co.uk
Legora — competitor · LexisNexis's Protege Work integrates into Microsoft Word and Outlook, the same surface Legora sells into; the article contrasts LexisNexis's scale against Legora's $100M ARR. source: nonbillable.co.uk

Options positioning

delayed · aggregate: as of 2026-10-16

Call vs put volume: 75 calls · 12 puts — tilt +72.4% toward calls
Vol/OI turnover: 0.02×
Premium ($ notional proxy): $30286 calls · $2291 puts — tilt +85.9% toward calls
OTM tilt: +54.5% toward OTM calls
IV skew (put − call): +41.2%

Moat

moat: latest change 2026-02-19

RELX sells information-based analytics and decision tools in four business areas. In 2025, per its Annual Report, Risk (LexisNexis Risk Solutions) had revenue of £3,485m and adjusted operating profit of £1,305m; Scientific, Technical & Medical (Elsevier) £2,714m and £1,035m; Legal (LexisNexis Legal & Professional) £1,806m and £415m; and Exhibitions (RX) £1,186m and £410m. The moat rests on content and data that are hard to replicate. A Stanford study describes a historical Westlaw-LexisNexis "virtual duopoly" in legal research. A PLOS ONE study found Reed-Elsevier the largest publisher of natural and medical sciences papers in 2013, and RELX reports that Elsevier articles accounted for "over 18% of global research output and 29% of citations" in its latest comparison. Risk is built on contributory databases such as the C.L.U.E. claims history database, which "collects and reports up to seven years of US personal automobile, property claims and small business information". The products are cheap relative to what customers spend: RELX says they "often account for less than 1% of our customers' total cost base". Group adjusted operating margin rose to 34.8% in 2025 and to 35.5% in the first half of 2026. AI is the main test of the moat. RELX is turning it into upsell: about 90% of Legal new-sales value now comes from the AI-enabled Lexis+ with Protégé platform, and Legal underlying revenue growth reached 10% in H1 2026. On the same call, an analyst cited AI-native legal players Harvey and Legora with combined annual recurring revenue above $400 million, and the CEO said RELX is "not going to be the leader" in the much larger legal workflow software market. RELX names the shift to open access as a principal risk for Elsevier. On the 2026 call, an analyst raised a U.S. OMB proposal to make journal subscription costs and article processing charges unallowable expenses on federal research awards.

Rating: wide

Independent sources support entrenched positions in RELX's two content businesses. In legal research, a Stanford-led study of legal AI tools (arXiv 2405.20362v1, 2024-05-30, https://arxiv.org/html/2405.20362v1) says Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis "have historically enjoyed a virtual duopoly over the legal research market" (citing a 2006 article for that point) and "continue to be two of the largest incumbents now selling legal AI products". In scientific publishing, Larivière, Haustein and Mongeon in PLOS ONE (2015-06-10, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502) found Reed-Elsevier published 24.1% of natural and medical sciences papers in 2013, the largest share, and that its Scientific, Technical & Medical division's profit margin "steadily increased from 30.6% to 38.9% between 2006 and 2013." RELX's 2025 Annual Report (published 2026-02-19) shows the economics continuing: revenue of £9,590m, adjusted operating profit of £3,342m and an adjusted operating margin of 34.8% against 33.9% in 2024, with 54% of revenue from subscriptions. The limits are in the same report. Its principal risks say "We operate in highly competitive and dynamic markets" that change with "technological innovations, such as the use of artificial intelligence" and "the entrance of new competitors". Exhibitions holds "a global market share of less than 10%" in "a fragmented industry", and the Chair noted "share price volatility across a number of sectors, including software and data services." Long-held positions in legal research and scientific publishing, with margins that have kept rising, support a wide rating. The main threat is AI-native competition, which has not yet slowed reported growth.

Type: intangibles ip

RELX says its advantage is proprietary content and data. The 2025 Annual Report says it builds products by combining "our unique content and comprehensive data sets with advanced technologies", describes Lexis+ AI as "built and trained on one of the world's largest repositories of accurate and exclusive legal content", and cites more than 3,000 Elsevier journals including the Cell Press and The Lancet families. On the H1 2026 results call (2026-07-23, https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/investors/transcripts/first-half-results-2026-transcript.pdf) the CEO said Risk grows by "leveraging our unique contributory and proprietary datasets, with over 90% of revenue coming from machine-to-machine interactions." Independent support comes from PLOS ONE (2015), which says libraries face a publisher oligopoly in which "each product represents a unique value and cannot be replaced". According to the annual report, in June 2025 LexisNexis agreed a strategic alliance with Harvey, an AI platform for legal and professional services, under which LexisNexis "will integrate its Lexis+ AI capabilities (powered by LexisNexis content) within the Harvey platform". Switching costs add to this: legal products are sold "on a paid subscription basis, with subscriptions often under multi-year contracts."

Leadership: co leader

RELX's own 2025 Annual Report ranks its businesses as Risk "Key verticals #1", STM "Global #1", Legal "US #2" and "Outside US #1 or #2", and Exhibitions "Global #2". Independent sources, both dated, support two of these. PLOS ONE (2015) puts Reed-Elsevier first in natural and medical sciences publishing with 24.1% of 2013 papers, ahead of Springer (11.9%) and Wiley-Blackwell (11.3%). The Stanford study (2024-05-30) describes legal research as a historical duopoly of Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, and found that "Lexis+ AI is the highest-performing system we test, answering 65% of our queries accurately." The publishing data is from 2013, Legal is second in the U.S. by RELX's own account, and the Risk and Exhibitions ranks are the company's own claims. That supports co-leader, not clear leader.

Pricing power: moderate

The 2025 Annual Report says RELX products "often account for less than 1% of our customers' total cost base but can have a significant and positive impact on the economics of the remaining 99%", and reports a group adjusted operating margin of 34.8% in 2025 against 33.9% in 2024. On the H1 2026 call the CFO reported a margin of 35.5%. He attributed the gains to cost discipline: "we focus on ensuring that cost growth remains below revenue growth in all of our businesses." The CEO said that "roughly 3/4 of the renewal value is coming from the Lexis+ with Protégé package", which means renewals are moving customers onto the higher-value AI platform. Independent evidence on Elsevier is older. PLOS ONE (2015) says libraries "have to manage with less as prices increase" and that, because of the oligopoly, they are "more or less helpless". It also found the STM division's profit margin never fell below 30% over the 1991-2013 period it studied. RELX does not disclose list-price increases. Most of the evidence is margin-based. The margins are high and rising, but management credits the gains to keeping cost growth below revenue growth, and the only independent evidence of price increases is from 2015. That supports moderate, not strong, pricing power.

Curated moat judgment grounded in the cited source. source: relx.com

Compare with…

Value-chain position

Layer: AI applications & software

Upstream (suppliers): —
Downstream (customers): —
Competitors: Harvey, Legora

An AI-application-layer user of frontier models: on the H1 2026 call the CEO said RELX takes AI tools "from the sort of frontier lab companies" and runs them inside its own products on verified content. The 2025 Annual Report says LexisNexis will integrate Lexis+ AI capabilities, powered by LexisNexis content, within the Harvey platform.

Derived from this company's mapped supply-chain edges and its industry layer.

Signal contribution editorial prior

The moat prior voted +0.30 on the long (~6-month) horizon at weight 0.20 — the swarm call there is neutral (score 0.13, conviction 0).

Editorial prior — subjective, not backtested. It is bounded (±0.6), low-confidence, and never votes on short/medium. See exactly how it voted →

Product lineup

Products & services with an editorial market-share band and technical barrier band — qualitative judgments tied to a cited basis, never invented figures.

Product	Market share	Technical barrier
Elsevier databases, tools and electronic reference (Scopus, Reaxys, Embase, ClinicalKey, LeapSpace) · Research and clinical databases and AI tools Abstract and citation, chemistry, biomedical and clinical reference databases and AI tools such as Scopus AI, ScienceDirect AI, LeapSpace and ClinicalKey AI, sold to academic, corporate and health institutions; around 40% of STM revenue per the H1 2026 call.	Unknown The 2025 Annual Report gives no share figure for these products and says competition is "generally on a title-by-title and product-by-product basis" against Springer Nature, Clarivate and Wolters Kluwer. No independent share source was found, so the band is left unknown.	Moderate The tools draw on Elsevier's own content; Scopus covers more than 31,000 journals from 7,000 publishers, according to the report. But the report says "Decision tools face similar competition, plus software companies and customer home-grown solutions". On the H1 2026 call the CEO said adoption in STM is slower than in Legal because the customer base is more fragmented and decision cycles are longer. The barrier is therefore moderate.
Elsevier primary research journals (ScienceDirect, Cell Press, The Lancet) · Scientific and medical journal publishing More than 3,000 peer-reviewed journals distributed on ScienceDirect under subscription (pay-to-read) and open-access (pay-to-publish) models; Primary Research is a little over half of STM revenue.	Top 3 PLOS ONE (2015) found "three publishers account for more than 47% of all papers in 2013: Reed-Elsevier (24.1%; 1.5 fold increase since 1990)", followed by Springer (11.9%) and Wiley-Blackwell (11.3%), in natural and medical sciences. RELX's 2025 Annual Report says the latest comparison showed Elsevier articles at "over 18% of global research output and 29% of citations". The independent data is from 2013, more than ten years old, and the newer figure is RELX's own claim, not independent evidence. That supports top 3 today, not leader.	Deep PLOS ONE says that "in scholarly publishing each product represents a unique value and cannot be replaced". RELX's 2025 Annual Report reports more than 4.2m article submissions in 2025, and on the H1 2026 call the CEO said submissions grew by over 20% in the first half. The barrier is not unchallenged. The report lists the shift toward pay-to-publish open access as a principal risk, and on the H1 2026 call an analyst raised a U.S. OMB proposal to disallow journal subscription costs and article processing charges on federal research awards.
Lexis+ legal research with Lexis+ AI and Protégé · Legal research and analytics Case law, statutes, the Shepard's citation service and Matthew Bender commentary, delivered on the Lexis+ platform with the Lexis+ AI generative assistant and Protégé agentic assistant; Law Firms & Corporate Legal is around 70% of Legal revenue.	Top 3 The Stanford study (2024-05-30) says Thomson Reuters (Westlaw) and LexisNexis "have historically enjoyed a virtual duopoly over the legal research market", citing a 2006 article for that point. RELX's 2025 Annual Report ranks Legal "US #2" and names Westlaw (Thomson Reuters), CCH (Wolters Kluwer) and Bloomberg as its principal U.S. competitors. As the second of two incumbents, the line is top 3, not leader.	Deep The Stanford study says the two incumbents "continue to be two of the largest incumbents now selling legal AI products", and found Lexis+ AI the most accurate of the tools it tested, though the legal AI tools from both incumbents "each hallucinate between 17% and 33% of the time". The 2025 Annual Report says products are sold on paid subscriptions "often under multi-year contracts", that 85% of Legal revenue is subscription, and that LexisNexis will integrate its Lexis+ AI capabilities, powered by LexisNexis content, within the Harvey AI platform. AI-native rivals are scaling, which the CEO acknowledged on the H1 2026 call.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions Business Services (financial crime compliance, fraud and identity) · Fraud, identity and compliance analytics Financial crime compliance and digital fraud and identity solutions, including ThreatMetrix and IDVerse; over 40% of Risk revenue.	Unknown The 2025 Annual Report says RELX was "recognised as leaders in 29 industry analyst reports", but these reports were not read here, and RELX's own description is not independent evidence. It names the major credit bureaux as principal competitors. No share figure was found, so the band is left unknown.	Moderate The report says ThreatMetrix uses "one of the largest cross-industry data networks in the world" and the CEO said Risk relies on proprietary datasets. But the report also says the credit bureaux compete "in many cases" across "various capabilities within each solution offering", so the barrier is moderate.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions insurance data and analytics (C.L.U.E. and contributory databases) · Insurance underwriting and claims data Contributory claims-history and vehicle data, analytics and decision tools for auto, home, commercial and life insurers; Insurance is around 40% of Risk revenue.	Unknown RELX's own market-position table ranks Risk "Key verticals #1" and its report calls these "Industry-leading products", but these are company claims. The 2025 Annual Report says competitors such as Verisk "largely address different activities to ours". No independent share source was found, so the band is left unknown.	Moderate C.L.U.E. "collects and reports up to seven years of US personal automobile, property claims and small business information to inform insurance pricing and underwriting decisions". On the H1 2026 call the CEO said Insurance growth is driven by "adoption of contributory databases". A pooled claims database is hard to copy, but the only evidence for its strength is RELX's own description, so the band is moderate.
RX exhibitions · Trade shows and events 274 face-to-face events across 41 industry sectors in 25 countries in 2025, plus digital tools for exhibitors and visitors; over 70% of RX revenue comes from exhibitor fees.	Unknown RELX calls RX "one of the largest event organisers globally in a fragmented industry, holding a global market share of less than 10%" and ranks it "Global #2". It names Informa, Clarion and the larger German trade-fair operators (Messe Frankfurt, Messe Düsseldorf, Messe Munich) as other international organisers. The rank is the company's own claim and no independent ranking was found, so the band is left unknown.	Moderate The 2025 Annual Report says "Competition also comes from industry trade associations and owners of event venues" in a fragmented industry. Exhibitions earned adjusted operating profit of £410m on £1,186m revenue in 2025, and on the H1 2026 call the CFO said Exhibitions margins "remain well above historical levels". Strong margins in a fragmented, open market point to a moderate barrier.

What you're looking at

These charts plot RELX plc's reported income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet from its SEC filings through 2026-06-30. Every figure is as-filed XBRL — none of it is an estimate.

Over the reported window, revenue grew 25% to $12.9B (FY2022→FY2025); gross margin moved 64% → 66%; net income at $2.8B in FY2025.

Analyst consensus — third-party estimates from Yahoo Finance, as of 2026-10-26. Not SEC filings and not a TradingPilot forecast. source: finance.yahoo.com

Period	EPS (est.)	Revenue (est.)	YoY
FY 2026	—	GBP 10.1B (GBP 9.9B–GBP 10.2B) · 15	+5%

Each figure shows the consensus mean, its (low–high) range where available, and · the number of analysts behind that estimate.

Our model leans Bullish on the stock over the medium horizon — a market-direction call, not an earnings forecast. See the Signal tab.

Cash flow & liquidity

Balance sheet

Some recent figures are from Yahoo Finance where the latest SEC filing hasn’t posted yet — FX-converted to USD and reconciled against SEC-filed periods.

Filings

2026Q2 · filed 2026-06-30 source: finance.yahoo.com
2025Q4 · filed 2025-12-31 source: finance.yahoo.com
FY2025 · filed 2025-12-31 source: finance.yahoo.com
2025Q2 · filed 2025-06-30 source: finance.yahoo.com
FY2024 · filed 2024-12-31 source: finance.yahoo.com

Show 2 older filings

FY2023 · filed 2023-12-31 source: finance.yahoo.com
FY2022 · filed 2022-12-31 source: finance.yahoo.com

Key ratios vs peers

Comparing against peers…