London, March 4, 2026, 07:56 GMT — Premarket
- RELX shares last closed up 0.8% at 2,596p.
- The group disclosed fresh repurchases as its buyback programme runs on.
- LexisNexis’ legal chief said new AI models leave the business “in a better position”.
RELX (REL.L) shares closed up 0.8% at 2,596 pence on Tuesday, their last close ahead of Wednesday’s London session. The stock has been sensitive to headlines on how artificial intelligence may reshape legal and data services. 1
The company is in the middle of a £450 million share buyback programme running from Feb. 12 to March 20. It is part of £2.25 billion earmarked for buybacks in 2026, the company said in a regulatory statement.
That matters because the argument around RELX is not just earnings season anymore. A LexisNexis executive said fresh AI models strengthen, rather than weaken, the legal business: “Every time we see a new model, every time we see a step forward, we’re actually in a better position,” Sean Fitzpatrick told Business Insider. He said LexisNexis’ proprietary content “cannot be replicated”, and pointed to a database of roughly 200 billion legal documents, with about 4 million added daily. 2
In a late filing on Tuesday, RELX said it bought back 500,000 shares on March 3 at prices between 2,544p and 2,603p, at a volume-weighted average price of 2,562.3074p. It also disclosed another 500,000-share purchase on March 2 at an average 2,567.2031p; VWAP is an average that weights each trade by its size. 3
RELX also updated investors on March 2 on its share count for disclosure purposes, saying it had 1,804,927,533 voting rights after accounting for 23,337,957 shares held in treasury. That denominator matters for shareholders calculating whether they must notify stake changes under the UK’s disclosure rules. 4
The AI pushback is not new for RELX, but it has become more pointed as the shares swung around legal-tech headlines. At its Feb. 12 results, the company said AI-embedded products should drive growth for “many years to come”, and finance chief Nick Luff said RELX uses its data and algorithms to “get out the right judgments” for professional users. RELX’s selloff earlier in February also caught peers Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters in the crossfire, Reuters reported at the time. 5
Rates sit in the background for London-listed defensives with steady cash flow. The Bank of England’s next Bank Rate decision is due on March 19, with Bank Rate currently at 3.75%, according to the central bank. 6
But buybacks do not settle the core question investors keep coming back to: whether AI agents will pull routine legal work away from subscription research platforms, or push customers deeper into them. If renewals or pricing show strain, the stock can still gap lower on a thin headline.
For now, traders will watch for more repurchase updates and any fresh read-through from rival legal and data groups as London opens. The tone can shift quickly when a new tool or partnership drops into the legal AI race.
The next fixed point on RELX’s calendar is April 23, when it holds its annual general meeting and issues a trading update for the 2026 financial year. 7
