UK's RELX says generative AI is driving profit growth

LONDON (Reuters) -British business information group RELX said it expected another strong year of growth in 2025 after reporting a 10% rise in profit last year, as its generative AI products gained traction in the legal and medical professions.

Shares in RELX, which competes with Thomson Reuters and have risen 23% in the last 12 months, were up 0.6% at 4,148 pence in early trading, hitting an all-time high.

Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff said growth was being driven by increasing take-up of the products as lawyers, bankers and medics benefit from the generative AI functions available, highlighting an uptick in demand for its 'Lexus+AI' product.

"Where generative AI in our world is really so transformative, is in where you've got the very text-heavy content sets, like in legal and science and medicine," he said.

Lawyers were seeing "good efficiency gains and productivity gains" from Lexus+AI, he said, which helps them summarise cases and identify the relevant cases in an intuitive way, and he was confident that a new personalised version launched two weeks ago in the United States would boost sales further.

There were similar trends for RELX's Scopus AI product, aimed at researchers, and ClinicalKey AI, for healthcare professionals, Luff added.

RELX has been one of the most consistent performers on the FTSE 100 index in recent years in terms of growing profit and revenue, and returning cash to shareholders. It announced a 1.5 billion pound ($1.87 billion) share buyback on Thursday.

The group reported adjusted operating profit of 3.20 billion pounds in 2024 on revenue of 9.43 billion pounds, up 7% on an underlying basis.

For 2025, RELX said it expected "another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit", reiterating the same forecast it made a year ago.

($1 = 0.8008 pounds)

(Reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by Sarah Young and Bernadette Baum)