RELX (REL) Investor update summary

Overview and growth drivers

• H1 2026 STM accounted for 28% of revenue and 30% of adjusted operating profit; revenue mix was 78% subscription and 22% transactional.

• Underlying revenue growth was +4% in 2025 and +3% in H1 2026; adjusted operating profit growth was +7% and +8%, respectively.

• The long-term revenue growth trajectory improved from 2% to 4%, then 6%; Primary Research is growing at a mid-single-digit rate, with strong Decision Support growth.

• Structural demand drivers include global R&D expenditure growing at a 5% CAGR and global health expenditure growing at a 3% CAGR plus inflation.

• Priorities include increasing customer value in Primary Research and Decision Support, accelerating innovation through modular platforms, and growing profit faster than revenue.

Primary Research

• Submissions rose from 1.3m in 2015 to 4.2m in 2025, a 12% CAGR, and grew more than 20% in 2025 and H1 2026; published articles increased from 400,000 to over 800,000, a 7% CAGR.

• Articles had a Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 1.46 versus the industry average of 1; ~40% were published in top-10% journals, up from 32% in 2022.

• The portfolio spans 3,000+ journal brands, with 4.6m+ submissions, 800,000+ published articles and 2.9bn article views and downloads.

• Growth initiatives include launching 70–80 journals annually, article transfers, scalable editorial processes and integrity screening, with human judgment retained.

• AI-enabled submission tools cut median author submission time by 60%; peer-review preference is ~85%, and both tools have rolled out to more than two-thirds of 3,000 journals.

Decision Support

• Decision Support is ~40% of revenue; Research Solutions account for just under half of the segment, Nursing around a quarter, with the balance in medical education, physician care, specialist use cases and patient engagement.

• Growth levers include upgrading existing tools with AI, launching products such as LeapSpace, building interoperable suites and embedding tools in customer workflows.

• LeapSpace, launched in January 2026, combines research content, Scopus data and user materials; ~1,000 institutions subscribed and over 1m users engaged with features.

• LeapSpace surveys found 97% of users reported time savings, more than half reported savings above 50%, and almost 90% said it helped formulate or refine research questions and hypotheses.

• Sherpath AI reached 100,000 students in 2026, 20% of U.S. nursing students; a university’s nursing-product revenue rose from $0.2m in 2025 to a forecast $1.7m in 2027 under a three-year suite contract.