London, June 27, 2026, 18:02 (BST)
- RELX finished Friday’s session at 2,363p, slipping 0.25%. Shares lost 0.6% this week.
- The stock has lost 21.8% so far this year and is down 40.0% over the past 52 weeks, trailing the FTSE 350 in both stretches.
- RELX plans a £2.25 billion buyback for 2026, which is about 5.2% of its market value as of June 26, according to LSE data.
- Relx’s next scheduled event is half-year results on July 23.
RELX PLC (LON:REL) closed Friday at 2,363p, slipping 0.25% on the day as London markets wrapped up for the weekend. Shares finished the week down 0.6%, lagging the FTSE 350 by 1.8 percentage points, according to LSE data. The stock showed how investors are weighing cash returns against AI risk.
RELX has lost 21.8% so far this year and is off 40.0% over the past 52 weeks, trailing the FTSE 350 by 27.2 and 57.9 points. The stock trades 41.1% below its 52-week high but remains 17.4% above the low. The bigger story isn’t this week’s move, but that de-rating.
Buybacks look different now. RELX said this month it would start a £200 million non-discretionary buyback from June 9 to June 26, right after wrapping up a £150 million programme on June 8. Both are part of a £2.25 billion buyback scheme running until 2026. With the LSE market cap at £42.98 billion on June 26, the year’s buyback equals about 5.2% of the company’s equity.
Investors are watching because the buyback is coming after RELX’s valuation dropped, not when it was at highs. The LSE’s June 26 tearsheet showed RELX trading at 20.8 times earnings versus a five-year median of 30.3. Price-to-sales was 4.6, compared to a 6.1 five-year median. Free cash flow yield was at 2.64%, up from a five-year median of 1.85%.
Selling in RELX doesn’t track with the past year’s numbers. RELX put up 2025 revenue at £9.59 billion, up 7% underlying, and adjusted operating profit hit £3.34 billion, up 9% underlying. Adjusted EPS grew 10% at constant currency. CEO Erik Engstrom called it “strong underlying revenue and profit growth” for the year. Relx
The market is split over how much growth is locked in as AI shows up in legal and professional jobs. Reuters Breakingviews said in February that RELX dropped 14% after Anthropic put out its new Claude tools. UBS analysts told Reuters about 88% of RELX’s revenue wouldn’t get hit much by large language models.
RELX’s legal business isn’t backing down. Sean Fitzpatrick, who heads LexisNexis’ legal unit, told Business Insider their proprietary legal content “cannot be replicated”. He put the total at about 200 billion legal documents, with roughly 4 million more coming in daily. On AI-generated legal answers, Fitzpatrick said: “You can’t be ‘probably’ right.” Business Insider
RELX bulls got some relief from the April trading update. The company said Legal kept up double-digit growth in law firms and corporate legal, with more customers using Lexis+ with Protégé. In Risk, demand for fraud, identity and financial crime compliance helped. RELX added that all four divisions had a good start to the year.
The chart doesn’t look strong. As of June 26, the stock traded 6.3% under its 50-day moving average and 16.6% below the 200-day. RSI was at 41.4 — above oversold, still far from overbought. Friday’s volume came in at 4.55 million, trailing the 5.45 million average on Google Finance.
RELX has its next company event on July 23, with results coming for the first half ending June 30. Other items on the calendar include the 2026 interim ex-dividend on Aug. 6 and a nine-month trading update set for Oct. 22.
