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25 Jul 2024
Legal growth acceleration and margin beat

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Legal growth acceleration and margin beat
RELX PLC (REL:LON) | 3,998 -199.9 (-0.1%) | Mkt Cap: 73,629m
- Published:
25 Jul 2024 -
Author:
Kassab Sami SK -
Pages:
13 -
Relx reported solid H1 results on margin beat
Organic revenue growth of ~7% came in line with expectations while adj. EPS beat by 1%. This was largely driven by 110bps group margin expansion yoy (vs. consensus 30bps) on a combination of higher margins in Exhibitions coupled with stronger operating leverage and cost efficiency gains.
Legal growth acceleration
Legal organic revenue growth has accelerated to 7%. This is largely driven by the shift to Lexis+ with some initial revenues from Lexis+AI. Management''s narrative on GenAI is unchanged. We continue to anticipate a further acceleration to a peak of 8% next year.
STM likely to accelerate too, but in FY25
Article submissions to Elsevier were up 20% in H1 24 after 12% growth in FY23 and 7% in FY22. This acceleration bodes well for the long-term value of this business. With the mix shift towards higher growth revenue streams accelerating (faster electronic growth, faster print decline in H1), we continue to believe that STM will accelerate to 5% in FY25 but have reduced our FY24 forecasts from 5% to 4%.
Exhibitions: faster growth and higher margin business
With over 500bps margin expansion in H1, RX beat expectations to an even greater extent than Informa Markets yesterday (c.200bps). FY top-line growth is likely to slow down in H2 with seasonally lower margins than in H1.
Outperform reaffirmed
As in the past, Relx''s H1 24 was solid but not spectacular. The AI story is unfolding nicely. The stock trades on a 3.8% FY25 Eq FCF yield, an attractive level for a GenAI winner offering a total shareholder return of c.15% pa. We reaffirm our Outperform rating with an unchanged TP of 4,000p on the back of nominal estimate revisions.