LONDON, March 24, 2026, 19:50 GMT
Shares of RELX PLC hovered near 2,440 pence in London late Tuesday, slipping about 1% from Monday’s finish. This comes just after the British information group kicked off a fresh £350 million share buyback, set for March 23 through April 22. That move trails a £450 million buyback, which wrapped up March 20.
Timing is a factor here. RELX is pushing cash returns as investors press on about the potential impact of generative AI on data, analytics and legal-information businesses. Back in the early part of this year, RELX, along with Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer, took a hit after Anthropic rolled out a legal plug-in for Claude, sparking an AI-driven selloff.
RELX named J.P. Morgan Securities to handle the non-discretionary buyback, sticking to prearranged rules while acting independently. Shares repurchased in this program will go into treasury, so they don’t return to the market.
RELX on Monday said it’s rolling out part of its planned £2.25 billion buyback program for 2026. Back in February, the company reaffirmed its outlook for the year, anticipating underlying revenue to rise solidly—describing the pace as “good-to-strong”—and pegging adjusted operating profit to outpace that revenue growth. Relx
Management keeps insisting AI is a double-edged sword. Back in February, Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff told Reuters that RELX relies on its data and “proprietary algorithms” to provide the judgments and interpretations its customers depend on. Reuters
A few analysts have drawn similar lines. Back in February, JPMorgan’s Daniel Kerven argued, “Relx is not a software business that is going to be eaten by AI.” Morningstar’s Rob Hales, for his part, said he was taken aback by just how quickly investors sold off the sector. Morningstar, Inc.
The latest buyback hasn’t been enough to lift the stock anywhere near its 52-week peak of 4,183 pence, according to delayed pricing data. That goes some way to show why Tuesday’s action felt tentative, despite a 0.7% climb in the FTSE 100 as energy stocks rallied.
Buybacks, though, won’t address the main worry. Should lawyers, bankers, insurers, or researchers start relying more on AI to handle basic tasks, RELX’s analytics division risks seeing slower growth. The company reports next on April 23.
