London, May 18, 2026, 13:10 (BST)
RELX PLC shares rose in London on Monday, adding to Friday’s rebound as investors weighed the data group’s artificial-intelligence, or AI, pitch against a still-live threat from legal technology rivals. Delayed data put RELX at 2,458 pence, up 1.44%, though the stock remained down 19.1% this year and 40.5% over one year; the FTSE 100 was quoted about 0.5% higher. MarketScreener UK
That matters now because RELX is not just trading off a quiet Monday tape. Investors are still testing whether AI will lift its LexisNexis, Elsevier and risk-analytics products, or weaken the paid data and workflow model that has long supported the shares. Reuters reported in February that AI fears had hit RELX, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer after Anthropic launched legal and workflow plug-ins. Reuters
RELX tried to answer that question again in a May investor presentation published Friday, casting the group as a provider of information-based analytics and decision tools rather than a legacy publisher. The company said its strategy remained focused on higher-growth tools, organic growth and targeted acquisitions, with underlying cost growth kept below underlying revenue growth; “underlying” strips out items such as currency effects and portfolio changes to show like-for-like performance. MarketScreener
The April trading update gave the same steer. RELX said it expected another year of strong underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth, and said its Legal arm was benefiting from adoption of Lexis+ with Protégé, an agentic legal assistant — software that can work through steps of a task, not just answer a prompt. Relx
Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff told Reuters in February that automation alone was not the whole story, arguing that RELX’s constantly updated data and content gave it an edge. The point, he said, was to use proprietary algorithms to produce “right judgments” for professional users. Reuters
Capital returns are also part of the support. RELX is running a £350 million share buyback from April 23 to May 22, after another £350 million tranche finished on April 22, both within a planned £2.25 billion of repurchases for 2026; shares bought back will be held in treasury, meaning the company holds them rather than leaving them in public circulation. Business Wire
The competitive backdrop has not eased. Anthropic on May 12 expanded Claude tools for lawyers with connections to Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw and CoCounsel, Harvey, Box, Everlaw and DocuSign, and Anthropic associate general counsel Mark Pike told Reuters the company was seeing an “incredible uptick” in legal-industry AI adoption. Reuters
Thomson Reuters, which competes with RELX in legal research, is plugging CoCounsel Legal deeper into Claude rather than standing apart from it. Its technology chief, Joel Hron, said the company was “actively building integrations” that connect general-purpose AI to professional environments; Thomson Reuters also described CoCounsel as “fiduciary-grade,” meaning legal work that is designed to be traceable and trusted. Thomson Reuters
AJ Bell head of markets Dan Coatsworth framed the same tension after RELX’s results, calling them a “pivotal moment” after concern that Anthropic’s legal AI tool would “eat its lunch.” He said RELX’s message was that AI was “an opportunity, not a threat,” though investors still showed trepidation over third-party disruption. Halifax Investments
The risk is that RELX’s defence proves too slow, too expensive, or not enough for investors. Morgan Stanley downgraded RELX to Equal Weight from Overweight last week — a move from a positive stance to a more neutral one — and cut its target price to 2,970 pence from 3,320 pence, with The Fly reporting that the firm cited valuation and strong competition from workflow-focused startups; if those tools win legal workflows at lower prices, RELX could face slower Legal growth and another valuation reset. TipRanks
Near term, investors will watch whether the buyback and the May presentation can steady the stock before the next formal numbers. RELX lists July 23 for its results for the six months to June 30, followed by an Oct. 22 nine-month trading update. Relx
