London, March 25, 2026, 13:01 GMT
RELX shares lagged London’s broader rally on Wednesday, slipping about 1% to roughly 2,407 pence by 1253 GMT even after the information and analytics group launched a fresh £350 million buyback this week. The stock was still below the 2,565 pence price set in last week’s large share sale. 1
That matters now because RELX is still trying to rebuild confidence after an AI-driven selloff in legal and information stocks. In early February, Anthropic’s legal AI rollout hit RELX and peers Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters, sharpening doubts over how durable subscription pricing and research workflows will be as generative AI spreads. 2
Monday’s programme runs through April 22 and will be executed by J.P. Morgan Securities. The buyback — a repurchase of the company’s own shares — follows a £450 million tranche completed on March 20 and sits inside a £2.25 billion plan for 2026, company filings showed. 3
RELX has kept the operating story steadier than the share chart. In February it reported 2025 revenue of £9.59 billion and adjusted operating profit of £3.342 billion, with underlying growth of 7% and 9% respectively, and it said it expected another year of strong underlying growth in 2026. 4
Legal, one of the businesses most exposed to the AI debate, posted 9% underlying revenue growth and 12% growth in adjusted operating profit in 2025. RELX said adoption of Lexis+ AI and its integrated legal assistant Protégé helped drive the unit. 4
Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff told Reuters in February that RELX’s continuously updated content and proprietary algorithms should help it keep an edge, generating the “right judgments” for professionals making high-value decisions. The company said AI-embedded products should support growth for years to come. 5
The broader FTSE 100 was about 1% higher, helped by hopes of a Middle East ceasefire and data showing UK consumer inflation held at 3.0% in February. RELX was not following that move. 6
There is also plain supply to clear. Goldman Sachs said last week an institutional seller was offloading 24 million RELX shares, and the bookrunner later priced the sale at 2,565 pence. 7
The buyback may help sentiment, but it does not remove the bigger risk. Investors are still debating whether generative AI will erode pricing power in legal and analytics products, and RELX remains far below its 4,183 pence year high. 2
RELX completed £1.5 billion of buybacks in 2025, and its annual results said a further £250 million had been repurchased in 2026 by Feb. 11. That suggests capital returns are doing much of the near-term support work while investors wait for clearer proof that the AI case can lift the valuation again. 4
