Key insights
- Goldman Sachs initiated RELX with a 'buy' rating, citing strong AI resilience and growth prospects. The firm assigned RELX the highest AI moat score in its European Media & Internet coverage, indicating a low risk of disruption from AI. This positive outlook on a significant European company, particularly regarding AI's impact, could signal broader investor confidence in companies with robust competitive moats against technological shifts, potentially influencing US tech and information services sectors.
Investing.com -- Goldman Sachs on Wednesday initiated coverage of RELX Plc with a "buy" rating and a 12-month price target of £30 per share, citing the information and analytics group’s resilience to artificial intelligence disruption and strong long-term growth prospects.
Goldman Sachs said RELX had been "misplaced in the AI ’at risk’ category" and assigned the company a structural AI resilience score of 9 out of 10 under its newly developed segment-level AI moat framework, the highest rating in its European Media & Internet coverage universe. By comparison, rival Wolters Kluwer received a score of 6.8.
The analysts said the rating reflected RELX’s strong competitive positioning across its operating divisions. Its Risk and Legal businesses each scored 9.9 out of 10, while Exhibitions also received a 9.9 rating. STM Primary Research scored 7.7 and STM Tools 6.6.
Goldman Sachs highlighted the Risk division, which generated 39% of group adjusted EBIT in 2025, as a key source of competitive advantage.
The business draws on more than 25 contributory databases that the broker described as difficult to replicate, while benefiting from regulatory barriers around customer data collection and deep integration into client workflows.
The analysts forecast group organic revenue growth of 7.5% in 2026, accelerating toward 8% annually between 2027 and 2030.
Legal was expected to be the fastest-growing segment, with growth reaching 10%, while STM growth was forecast to accelerate to 6.2% by 2030.
Risk and Exhibitions were both projected to sustain organic growth of around 8% throughout the period.
Goldman Sachs forecast adjusted earnings per share of 140.14 pence in 2026, rising to 157.35 pence in 2027 and 180.07 pence in 2028. The estimates are 1% and 3% above consensus forecasts for 2027 and 2028, respectively.
Free cash flow is expected to reach £2.61 billion in 2027 and £2.93 billion in 2028, implying a compound annual growth rate of about 9% between 2026 and 2030.
Goldman Sachs’ discounted cash flow valuation assumes an 8.5% weighted average cost of capital, a 2% terminal growth rate and EBITDA margins broadly stable at around 41%.
The broker said a reverse discounted cash flow analysis suggested the market was pricing in annual free cash flow growth of only 2.5% in perpetuity beyond 2030.
RELX was trading at 17.7 times estimated 2026 earnings, compared with a global information services peer average of 20.6 times, according to Goldman Sachs. The £30 price target implies a valuation of about 19 times estimated 2027 earnings.
A sum-of-the-parts analysis based on Goldman Sachs target multiples for peers including Verisk, Thomson Reuters, Springer Nature and Informa produced a valuation of £31 per share, the note showed.
Goldman Sachs identified several growth catalysts, including Protégé, RELX’s new Legal AI platform, the LeapSpace offering launched in its STM business in early 2026, and accelerating new-product contributions within Risk.
New products contributed 6 percentage points to Risk’s organic growth in 2025, up from a historical average of around 5 percentage points.
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