LONDON – 4 December 2025 – RELX PLC (LSE: REL, NYSE: RELX), the data and analytics group behind LexisNexis and ScienceDirect, continues to trade in a consolidation zone despite delivering another year of high‑quality growth, aggressive share buybacks and upbeat analyst forecasts.
As of Thursday, RELX shares trade around 3,037p in London and about $40 on the New York Stock Exchange, putting the stock roughly 28% below its 52‑week high of 4,205p reached earlier in the year. [1]
Where RELX Stock Stands on 4 December 2025
On the London Stock Exchange, RELX changes hands at about 3,030–3,040p, with MarketScreener showing 3,037p in real‑time Cboe Europe data on 4 December. [2] Investing.com records a 52‑week trading range of 2,976p to 4,205p, meaning the current price sits around 28% below the peak, despite the company’s strong operational performance. [3]
In New York, the ADR is quoted around $40.19, only marginally higher than Tuesday’s close of $39.66, when trading volume spiked more than 170% to 2.93 million shares, according to MarketBeat. [4]
The December 2025 investor presentation pegs RELX’s market capitalisation at about £56 billion, with over 36,000 employees serving customers in more than 180 countries and listings in London, Amsterdam and New York. [5]
Fundamentals: High Margins, Cash Generation and a Bigger Buyback
RELX’s latest investor deck, published on 1 December 2025, reiterates the group’s 2024 scale and profitability: [6]
- Revenue: £9.4 billion
- Adjusted operating profit: £3.2 billion
- EBITDA margin: 39.5%
- Adjusted operating margin: 33.9%
- Cash flow conversion: 97%
- Net debt / EBITDA: 1.8x (as of 25 November 2025)
The first‑half 2025 results, released in July, showed that this profitability is not a historical artefact but an ongoing pattern: [7]
- H1 2025 revenue: £4,741m (up from £4,641m), underlying growth +7%
- Adjusted operating profit: £1,652m, underlying growth +9%, with margin rising to 34.8% (from 34.1%)
- Adjusted EPS: 63.5p, +10% at constant currency
- Interim dividend: 19.5p (up 7%)
Capital returns are central to the equity story. In February’s AGM documentation, RELX confirmed its intention to deploy £1.5 billion into share repurchases during 2025. [8] By mid‑year, £1.0 billion of that programme had already been executed, with another £75 million completed after 1 July and the remaining £425 million scheduled for deployment before year‑end. [9]
This sustained buyback sits alongside a rising dividend and contributes meaningfully to EPS growth, especially when layered on top of mid‑single‑digit to high‑single‑digit underlying revenue growth.
Q3 2025 Trading Update: High‑Single‑Digit Growth Across the Portfolio
RELX’s 23 October 2025 trading update confirmed that momentum continued into the third quarter. For the first nine months of 2025 the group reported: [10]
- Underlying revenue growth: +7%
- Risk division: +8%
- Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM): +5%
- Legal: +9%
- Exhibitions: +8%
Management reaffirmed guidance for “another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit”, with strong adjusted EPS growth on a constant‑currency basis. [11]
An earnings call transcript on Investing.com fleshes this out: CEO Erik Engstrom highlighted that growth is broad‑based, with particularly strong expansion in: [12]
- Financial Crime Compliance and Fraud & Identity products inside the Risk division
- AI‑enhanced databases and researcher tools in STM
- Lexis+ AI and the Protégé AI assistant driving double‑digit growth in law‑firm and corporate legal segments
- Exhibitions returning to – and now sustaining – strong growth, supported by digital initiatives around in‑person events
Despite these solid numbers, the stock reaction in October was muted to slightly negative, with commentary from brokers such as Hargreaves Lansdown describing the update as “no surprises” and noting a modest share price dip on the day. [13]
AI as the Core Growth Engine
Underneath the segment numbers, RELX is positioning itself as a scaled AI and data infrastructure play rather than a traditional publisher.
In July 2025, Reuters reported that half‑year profit rose 9%, with revenue up 7% to £4.74 billion and adjusted operating profit reaching £1.65 billion, driven largely by demand for generative‑AI tools in legal, scientific and risk markets. [14]
Key AI initiatives include:
- Lexis+ AI with Protégé – an integrated legal workflow platform and personalised AI assistant used for drafting, research and document analysis, now rolling out globally across LexisNexis products. [15]
- ScienceDirect AI and other STM tools, used by researchers and scientists to interrogate RELX’s vast corpus of peer‑reviewed content. [16]
- AI‑powered financial crime compliance, fraud & identity and insurance underwriting tools inside the Risk division. [17]
RELX itself describes its long‑term trajectory as an “ongoing shift in business mix towards higher‑growth analytics and decision tools,” with AI explicitly called out as a key driver of customer value and revenue growth in its half‑year and trading‑update commentary. [18]
A separate news story this year underlined RELX’s more open stance towards the wider AI ecosystem: LexisNexis has formed a strategic alliance with legal‑AI startup Harvey, integrating RELX’s content directly into Harvey’s platform and taking an equity stake in Harvey’s $300 million funding round. [19] This both protects RELX’s content moat and embeds it into third‑party AI workflows used by elite law firms.
Analyst Sentiment and Price Targets: Strong Buy, High Upside
Despite the pullback from its highs, analyst coverage remains firmly constructive.
Consensus ratings
- Investing.com lists RELX (ticker REL on the LSE) with a “Strong Buy” consensus, based on 13 analysts: 11 Buy, 1 Hold, 0 Sell. [20]
- StockAnalysis shows the NYSE‑listed ADR (RELX) with an average rating also classified as “Strong Buy”, with recommendation trends in 2025 evenly split between Strong Buy and Buy and no Sell ratings. [21]
Price targets
The current analyst price‑target stack implies substantial upside from today’s price level:
- Investing.com’s consensus 12‑month target is about 4,450.9p, implying roughly +46.6% upside from around 3,036p, with a target range of 3,900–5,300p. [22]
- MarketBeat’s London forecast (REL ticker) shows an average target of 4,520.67p from four analysts, with a high of 4,920p and low of 4,072p, implying nearly 50% upside from a spot price of 3,018p. [23]
On the New York side, MarketBeat notes that recent U.S. broker coverage is broadly positive – one Strong Buy, four Buy and one Hold – even as it flags that the ADR is currently trading below both its 50‑day ($44.03) and 200‑day ($48.66) moving averages, with a debt‑to‑equity ratio of 2.55 and relatively low liquidity ratios (quick 0.42, current 0.47). [24]
Earnings and revenue forecasts
StockAnalysis’ consensus model points to continued compounding: [25]
- Revenue projected to rise from £9.43 billion in 2024 to £10.01 billion in 2025 (+6.2%), then £10.68 billion in 2026 (+6.6%).
- EPS forecast to grow from 1.03 (2024) to 1.32 in 2025 (+28.4%), reaching 1.46 in 2026 (+10.3%).
A separate estimate snapshot cited by Seeking Alpha puts 2025 revenue expectations at around $12.79 billion, with a range of $12.22–13.28 billion, broadly consistent with mid‑single‑digit top‑line growth and some operating leverage. [26]
Valuation: Quality at a Premium
Hargreaves Lansdown’s October research note frames RELX as a “high‑quality, recurring‑revenue data analytics business”, but one that no longer looks cheap on traditional metrics: [27]
- Forward P/E (next 12 months): 25.2x
- 10‑year average forward P/E: 21.4x
- Prospective dividend yield: 2.0%
- 10‑year average yield: 2.4%
In other words, investors are paying a valuation premium relative to RELX’s own history, presumably for the stability of subscription‑based cash flows, the group’s entrenched market positions and its optionality around AI.
Hargreaves also highlights that: [28]
- Around 84% of group revenue is digital,
- More than 50% of revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, and
- Exhibitions, now about 12% of group revenue, are increasingly digitised and margin‑accretive.
Taken together, RELX screens like a cash‑rich software‑and‑data platform with an events kicker, rather than a cyclical media group.
Ownership and Flows: Institutions Are Still Accumulating
Recent filings also show ongoing institutional interest in the stock:
- On 1 December 2025, MarketBeat reported that American Century Companies increased its stake in RELX by 9.8% in Q2, bringing its holding to 462,477 shares, worth about $25.1 million at the time. [29]
- Other investors – including ABC Arbitrage, Ameriprise, Northern Trust and Connor Clark & Lunn – have also been adding, and MarketBeat estimates that hedge funds and other institutions now own roughly 15% of outstanding shares. [30]
On 3 December, separate MarketBeat coverage flagged a 172% surge in trading volume in the ADR to nearly 2.93 million shares, noting the stock’s technical downtrend relative to its moving averages and its leveraged capital structure. [31]
From a capital‑structure perspective, a recent TipRanks corporate announcement shows 1.88 billion ordinary shares in issue and 1.82 billion voting rights as of November 2025, implying a modest level of treasury shares held by the company. [32]
Capital Returns: £1.5bn Buyback and Progressive Dividend
RELX has leaned into its reputation as a cash‑return machine:
- The company plans to repurchase £1.5 billion of shares in 2025, with two separate non‑discretionary buyback programmes announced in April and June under UK and EU Market Abuse Regulation. [33]
- By 30 June, £1.0 billion of this had already been executed, with another £75 million bought back in early H2 and £425 million still earmarked for completion before year‑end. [34]
- Dividends continue to grow roughly in line with profits; the interim dividend increased 7% in 2025, matching 2024’s full‑year dividend growth rate. [35]
This combination of growing cash flows, rising dividends and large buybacks goes a long way towards explaining both the elevated P/E and the analyst enthusiasm, even as the headline yield remains modest at around 2%.
Opportunities and Risks for RELX Stock Heading into 2026
Key bullish arguments
- Structural growth in data & analytics
RELX sits at the junction of several secular trends: regulatory compliance, digital risk scoring, open science, and AI‑supported legal work. Demand for better data and decision tools rarely shrinks, even when GDP does. [36] - Deep competitive moat
Proprietary datasets (case law, journal archives, risk and claims data) are difficult to replicate, and RELX has spent decades embedding its tools into client workflows. That stickiness supports pricing power and recurring revenue. [37] - AI as an accelerator, not a threat (so far)
Rather than being disintermediated by generic AI models, RELX is monetising its curated content through products like Lexis+ AI and Protégé, and even partnering with external AI platforms such as Harvey to extend its reach. [38] - Robust cash generation and disciplined balance sheet
EBITDA margins around 40%, cash conversion in the high‑90s, and net debt/EBITDA below 2x give the group both resilience and flexibility to keep funding buybacks and bolt‑on M&A. [39]
Key risks to watch
- Valuation risk
With the forward P/E already above its 10‑year average, any slowdown in AI‑driven growth or margin expansion could prompt a derating, even if earnings continue to rise. [40] - Execution risk on AI rollout
RELX is rolling out complex AI tools across highly regulated markets (law, banking, healthcare). Mis‑steps around accuracy, bias, data privacy or intellectual‑property rights could invite litigation, regulatory scrutiny or reputational damage. [41] - Leverage and liquidity metrics
While absolute leverage is manageable, the ADR screens with a high debt‑to‑equity ratio (2.55) and relatively low quick and current ratios. If credit markets tighten, buybacks or M&A could become more constrained. [42] - Macro‑sensitive pockets
Exhibitions and some transactional products are more cyclical than the subscription core. A sharp downturn in corporate marketing or conference budgets could temporarily drag on group growth, even as data subscriptions hold up. [43]
Bottom Line: A High‑Quality, AI‑Levered Compounder on Sale vs Its Highs
As of 4 December 2025, RELX looks like a classic quality compounder that has stepped back from its highs while its operating metrics remain in good shape:
- High‑single‑digit underlying revenue growth
- Expanding margins and double‑digit EPS growth
- A fully funded £1.5bn buyback and steadily rising dividend
- Strong analyst conviction with “Strong Buy” consensus and mid‑to‑high‑40% implied upside on 12‑month price targets
The main debate for investors is whether today’s sub‑peak price adequately compensates for valuation risk, leverage and the execution challenges that come with leading the AI transformation of legal, scientific and risk information markets.
Either way, RELX’s 2025 numbers and 2026 forecasts position it firmly on the radar of investors looking for defensible data moats, AI monetisation and reliable cash returns – a combination that remains relatively scarce in today’s public markets.
References
1. www.marketscreener.com, 2. www.marketscreener.com, 3. www.investing.com, 4. www.marketbeat.com, 5. www.marketscreener.com, 6. www.marketscreener.com, 7. www.relx.com, 8. www.relx.com, 9. www.relx.com, 10. www.relx.com, 11. www.relx.com, 12. www.investing.com, 13. www.hl.co.uk, 14. www.reuters.com, 15. www.lexisnexis.com, 16. www.reuters.com, 17. www.relx.com, 18. www.relx.com, 19. www.businessinsider.com, 20. www.investing.com, 21. stockanalysis.com, 22. www.investing.com, 23. www.marketbeat.com, 24. www.marketbeat.com, 25. stockanalysis.com, 26. seekingalpha.com, 27. www.hl.co.uk, 28. www.hl.co.uk, 29. www.marketbeat.com, 30. www.marketbeat.com, 31. www.marketbeat.com, 32. www.tipranks.com, 33. www.businesswire.com, 34. www.relx.com, 35. www.marketscreener.com, 36. www.relx.com, 37. www.hl.co.uk, 38. www.lexisnexis.com, 39. www.marketscreener.com, 40. www.hl.co.uk, 41. www.reuters.com, 42. www.marketbeat.com, 43. www.relx.com
