LONDON, March 9, 2026, 21:23 GMT
RELX PLC picked up 500,000 of its own shares Monday, paying an average of 2,639.7143 pence apiece—a transaction just over 13.2 million pounds. That brings its 2026 share repurchases to 23.23 million so far. The buyback is part of RELX’s wider 2026 strategy, with the company targeting 2.25 billion pounds for share buybacks this year.
RELX got caught up in the recent selloff across data and legal-information stocks after Anthropic rolled out a new Claude chatbot plug-in back in February. Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer took hits too, and it’s put a spotlight on whether these entrenched information providers can still drive growth as generative AI pushes further into both research and legal fields.
RELX will keep the repurchased stock as treasury shares, according to the company. Treasury holdings now stand at 27.34 million shares, while the number of ordinary shares in issue—excluding treasury stock—remains at 1.801 billion, the filing said.
Monday’s buy slots into a 450 million-pound batch set to run through March 20. RELX laid out that tranche on Feb. 12, right after wrapping up a 250 million-pound program on Feb. 6, and said it’s part of 2.25 billion pounds targeted for buybacks by 2026. On the same day, RELX posted 2025 revenue of 9.59 billion pounds, adjusted operating profit at 3.342 billion pounds, and put forward a full-year dividend proposal at 67.5 pence.
Back in February, Chief Executive Erik Engstrom pointed to AI as a key driver, saying it’s “enabling us to add more value” as RELX rolls out updates and gets new features to market more quickly. Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff told Reuters the company’s edge comes from its constantly refreshed content and proprietary algorithms, which, he said, provide “the right judgments” for professionals tackling high-stakes decisions. RELX has rolled out or announced 13 generative AI offerings so far, with Lexis+ and Protégé among them. Relx
RELX stuck to its message from last week’s March investor presentation, saying it continues to see positive momentum throughout the business and is still forecasting solid underlying growth in both revenue and adjusted operating profit this year. That outlook hasn’t shifted, despite AI concerns dragging shares down to 2021 territory.
Not everyone’s buying it. Peter Tuz, president at Chase Investment Counsel, put it bluntly on software buybacks: “I don’t think the buybacks are enough.” Andrew Slimmon at Morgan Stanley Investment Management chimed in, saying those post-plunge announcements can feel like “an attempt to stop the decline.” Reuters
UBS AG London Branch continues to manage the current RELX programme on its own, with this tranche set to wrap up March 20. RELX is still competing across legal and information sectors alongside Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer. Investors are watching to see how fast AI tools might reshape customer workflows.
