Relx Q3 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Relx reported 7% underlying revenue growth for the first nine months and maintained its full-year outlook for strong revenue, adjusted operating profit, and constant-currency adjusted EPS growth.
• Risk and Legal led performance, growing 8% and 10%, respectively, supported by AI-enabled analytics, fraud and identity solutions, and continued adoption of the Lexis+ Protégé platform.
• STM revenue rose 6% as customers adopted AI products such as LeapSpace, while Exhibitions grew 4% but was reduced by about 3 percentage points by Middle East disruptions.

Relx NYSE: RELX reported 7% underlying revenue growth for the first nine months of the year, with CFO Nick Luff saying the company continued to see positive momentum across its portfolio as it shifts its business mix toward higher-growth analytics and decision tools.

The company maintained its full-year outlook, expecting another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit, as well as strong adjusted earnings-per-share growth on a constant-currency basis.

Risk and Legal lead growth

Risk, which accounts for about 40% of group profit, delivered 8% underlying revenue growth in the first nine months, in line with the first half. Luff said the division’s performance was supported by deeply embedded AI-enabled analytics and decision tools, with more than 90% of its revenue coming from machine-to-machine interactions.

Within Risk, Business Services continued to benefit from financial-crime compliance products and digital fraud and identity solutions, alongside strong new sales. Insurance growth was driven by further innovation and adoption of contributor databases and market-specific tools, also supported by new sales.

Luff said fraud and identity remains an important opportunity as customers confront threats such as synthetic identities and deepfakes. He said Relx is expanding its capabilities beyond identification of an individual to include device intelligence, behavioral biometrics and document authentication. The company has also integrated IDVerse, an acquired capability, into its platform.

Risk Insurance volumes remained high, although shopping and switching activity was not growing at the same pace seen over the prior two years. Luff said transaction-volume factors across Risk’s businesses generally balance over time, while innovation remains the primary driver of the division’s consistent high-single-digit growth.

Legal, which contributes up to 10% of group profit, posted 10% underlying revenue growth, matching the first-half rate and representing an acceleration from the prior year. Law firms and corporate legal, which account for approximately 70% of the division, continued to grow at a double-digit rate.

Luff said more than 50% of the U.S. Legal revenue base is now on the Lexis+ Protégé platform, while adoption outside the U.S. is lower because launches occurred later. The vast majority of new sales and a large majority of renewals are now moving to the platform, according to Luff.

He said customers that adopt the newer platform generate an uplift in spending compared with older products, though he said the company could not separate the contribution of AI-enabled functionality from the broader legal research offering. Relx said its legal strategy is based on a curated and continuously updated content set containing billions of documents, sourced from more than 3,000 courts and tens of thousands of other sources.

STM growth and AI product adoption

Scientific, Technical & Medical, or STM, which represents about one-third of group profit, grew underlying revenue 6% in the first nine months. Luff said databases, tools and electronic reference products benefited from the rollout and adoption of AI-enabled offerings built on trusted scientific content.

LeapSpace, Relx’s recently launched research-grade AI workspace, has received positive customer feedback and is experiencing rapid growth in usage, Luff said. The product’s user base doubled during the 90 days from March to June, and the rate of user growth has accelerated since then, he added.

At this stage, the company is prioritizing user adoption over monetization, and Luff said LeapSpace’s revenue contribution is not material. He described the product as a longer-term opportunity, citing customer feedback on research efficiency, time savings and trust in the platform’s outputs.

Relx said ScienceDirect AI has been incorporated into LeapSpace, with existing customers migrated to the new product. Scopus serves a different use case and continues to perform on trends similar to those reported earlier in the year, Luff said.

Primary research continued to benefit from strong submission volumes, with article submissions up more than 20% year-to-date. The company said it is being increasingly selective in publishing submitted work to maintain and improve the quality of its journal portfolio. Published article volumes continued to rise at roughly the 7% pace reported at the half-year stage, according to Luff.

Open-access, author-pay submission and publication volumes are growing faster than the overall average, he said, while both pay-to-read and pay-to-publish models continue to grow.

Exhibitions affected by Middle East disruption

Exhibitions, which also contributes up to 10% of group profit, posted 4% underlying revenue growth. Luff said strong ongoing growth in the business was reduced by about 3 percentage points due to Middle East disruption, including effects on regional events and travel-related exhibitions.

Excluding the Middle East impact, the Exhibitions portfolio continued to grow in the approximately 7% to 8% range established in recent years, he said. The company expects the fourth-quarter impact to be similar to the year-to-date effect.

On the competitive environment in Legal, Luff said Relx continues to evaluate new tools, models and integration opportunities based on customer value. The company has about 25 partnerships and integrations, including with Microsoft, and uses a technology-agnostic, multi-model approach. Relx also recently established an innovation lab that brings legal professionals together with product developers and engineers to develop practical workflow tools.

Relx plans to provide additional detail on STM’s growth opportunities and AI initiatives at an investor seminar scheduled for November 3.

About Relx (NYSE:RELX)

RELX PLC is a global information-based analytics and decision tools company serving professional and business customers. The company provides data, software, research, and workflow solutions that help organizations make decisions, manage risk, improve productivity, and access specialized knowledge.

Its main business areas include scientific, technical, and medical information; risk and business analytics; legal information and technology; and industry-focused events. Products and services include research platforms such as ScienceDirect and Scopus, legal research and workflow solutions offered through LexisNexis, and risk-management, fraud-prevention, and identity solutions provided through LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

RELX serves customers internationally, including universities, researchers, law firms, government agencies, insurers, financial institutions, corporations, and healthcare professionals.

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