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09 Mar 2022
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RELX PLC (REL:LON) | 3,950 1422.2 0.9% | Mkt Cap: 72,851m
- Published:
09 Mar 2022 -
Author:
Kassab Sami SK -
Pages:
7 -
Focus on accelerating growth
On Relx roadshow, management reaffirmed that renewal rates were in line with history at STM and Legal and reaffirmed that New Sales were strong. Relx''s strategy aims at maintaining high single digit revenue growth for many years in Risk while accelerating top-line growth in STM/Legal.
Automation to offset cost inflation
Relx expect costs to grow less than revenues. Automation (e.g. AI algorithms instead of humans to summarise legal cases or extract details from chemistry journals), offshoring, cloud migration, real estate consolidation and operating leverage should help offset higher cost inflation.
Focus on product innovation as a growth driver
Relx has a strong focus on innovation, ranging from new datasets for automotive manufacturers to applying data analytics in Life Insurance (e.g., drug prescription history as a driver of life insurance risk premia) or crop yield analytics for US farmers to patient treatment efficacy and medical diagnostics for instance.
No meaningful direct impact from Russia / Ukraine
Relx generates less than 0.5% of revenues from Russia/Ukraine. It operates a sanction-monitoring business but played down any significant short-term increase in revenues as its sanctions database is priced per transaction and not by the number of sanctions.
Exhibitions initially focussed on Reopening
On Exhibitions, management is currently focussed on capturing the benefits from the industry reopening. Relx has cut around GBP100m of RX overhead costs during Covid and has closed down 100 lower margin events which accounted for c10% of pre-Covid divisional revenues. We continue to believe that this division is likely to emerge from Covid with structurally higher operating margins. We continue to view an exit from Exhibitions as a likely scenario in the second part of this decade.