LONDON, June 10, 2026, 10:03 BST
RELX PLC shares dropped in early London trading Wednesday, with the stock last seen near 2,534 pence after opening at 2,616 and touching a low of just above 2,530 pence. The professional data and analytics group remained in the spotlight after starting a new £200 million buyback tranche.
UK stocks were flat near three-week lows with traders watching a shaky Middle East ceasefire and rising inflation risk. Disappointing numbers from WH Smith didn’t help the mood. Buybacks on their own weren’t moving the dial. The timing is key here.
RELX said it will start a non-discretionary buyback from June 9 through June 26, with a bank running the process under fixed instructions instead of RELX buying day to day. This comes after it wrapped up a £150 million buyback on June 8. The buys are part of a larger £2.25 billion repurchase plan for 2026. ABN AMRO is running the programme alone. Shares bought back will go into treasury, cutting the company’s share capital.
RELX has been buying its own shares again. The company said it picked up 2,951,292 ordinary shares in the market from June 1 to June 5. Prices ranged from 2,475.7993p to 2,623.0525p on a volume-weighted average basis. That brings total buybacks since Jan. 2 to 60,417,002 shares.
Buybacks boost earnings per share since they cut the share count. But that doesn’t resolve the wider debate about RELX. At issue is whether RELX’s data and workflow tools can hang on to pricing power as artificial intelligence makes searching, drafting and analysis cheaper.
RELX has been arguing the opposite. In April, the company said it got off to a good start this year in all four business segments and still expects strong “underlying” growth for both revenue and adjusted operating profit. That measure removes impacts from currency, M&A, and disposals. RELX also flagged its AI-driven tools in Risk, Scientific, Technical & Medical, Legal, and Exhibitions. Relx
RELX CEO Erik Engstrom said in February the group saw “strong underlying revenue and profit growth and strong new sales” in 2025. RELX posted 2025 revenue of £9.59 billion, with underlying revenue up 7% and adjusted operating profit up 9%. The company also said it planned £2.25 billion in buybacks for 2026. Relx
Some analysts say the recent selloff may have gone too far. TipRanks said last week that Goldman Sachs analyst James Tate CFA started coverage of RELX with a Buy rating, pointing to the company’s structural strength, AI-driven products, and compounding cash flow. Bernstein also has a Buy and a £34.50 price target, according to TipRanks.
RELX still faces doubters. The stock trades with peers like Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer, and investors are questioning if exclusive legal and professional data remains a moat while AI tools advance. RELX, Thomson Reuters, Wolters Kluwer and other European data stocks sold off in February after Anthropic pushed into legal AI.
FTSE 100 ends down 1.4% as banks, energy stocks drop The FTSE 100 closed off 1.4% at 10,227.33 on Tuesday, the lowest since May 15, with banks and energy names weighing. Investors tracked the Middle East conflict and falling oil.
RELX faces a risk that investors will keep pricing in AI as a threat, not yet as a growth driver. If legal and risk buyers hold back on spending, new AI workflow players drag on prices, or UK risk appetite slips again, the buyback may support the share count, but might not move the multiple higher.
RELX faces a push and pull for investors right now—consistent cash, buybacks and locked-down data are in its corner, with AI pressures and a shaky London market pulling the other way. The next thing investors are waiting on isn’t another buyback number. They want to see that AI is helping revenue more than it’s letting in new competitors.
