Comics festival and AI drive boom in Relx sales

Strong demand for artificial intelligence and in-person conferences has put Relx on course to grow revenue and operating profits this year.
The information and analytics group, which is among the largest companies in the FTSE 100 with a market value of more than £65 billion, had underlying sales growth of 7 per cent in the first nine months.
Risk, one of Relx’s four divisions, generated more than a third of company revenues in the first half of the year, driven by demand for digital fraud and identity check services, particularly across insurance markets. Its legal division, which includes the LexisNexis database, was up 7 per cent.
The scientific, technical and medical unit which owns ScienceDirect, the world’s largest scientific and medical database managing more than 2,700 scientific journals, reported growth of 4 per cent in the period, with article submissions growing strongly in the pay-to-publish sector.
However, its smallest business, exhibitions, which includes World Travel Market events, the Comic Con comics festival and the London Book Fair, was the standout performer, up 13 per cent over the period.
“We continue to see positive momentum across the group,” the company said, “and we expect another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit, as well as strong growth in adjusted earnings per share.”
Relx, known as Reed Elsevier from 1992 until 2015, was once a producer of books and magazines but has made a gradual transition away from physical media, selling one of its last print magazines in 2019. Now, 84 per cent of revenues are digital, with only 4 per cent in print.
It employs more than 36,000 people, of which two fifths are in North America, and has offices in 40 countries. The shares, which have risen almost 30 per cent in the past year, rose by 35p, or 1 per cent, to close at £36.24.