Each investor has shares they kick themselves for not shopping for years in the past. For me, RELX (LSE: REL) is a type of. The FTSE 100 inventory is up 96% in 5 years and round 281% over a decade (excluding dividends).

RELX’s efficiency up to now this 12 months? Up 16.7%, outpacing the Footsie as soon as once more.

What it does

With a market cap of £67bn, RELX is the UK’s fifth-largest listed firm. It’s larger than family names like Lloyds and Rolls-Royce, but will get a fraction of the monetary media protection.

In fact, its identify isn’t on excessive avenue banks or engines powering the planes we journey on. So it largely flies below the radar, regardless of being the FTSE 100’s best-performing inventory EVER(!).

What does it do? Effectively, the agency supplies information analytics providers which are deeply embedded throughout a broad vary of industries.

It operates by 4 primary divisions:

• Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) supplies research info for scientists and healthcare professionals. This contains British medical journal, The Lancet.
• Threat presents data-driven options to assist banks and insurers handle threat and stop digital fraud.
• Authorized supplies instruments for authorized research, primarily centred round LexisNexis.
• Exhibitions organises commerce reveals and a few of the world’s largest popular culture occasions.

2024 is chugging alongside properly

As we speak (24 October), RELX launched an encouraging buying and selling replace. It reported 7% underlying income progress within the first 9 months of the 12 months, with enchancment throughout all 4 divisions.

Its Exhibitions unit was the standout performer, up 13%, whereas Threat (now the largest division) grew 8%. Income elevated 7% for Authorized and 4% at STM.

For the complete 12 months, administration expects robust underlying progress in income and earnings. In response to forecasts, we’re taking a look at income growing by round 4%-5%, to £9.54bn, with earnings rising at a sooner tempo.

The inventory has responded positively, rising 1% to three,625p, as I write.

Engaging options

As an investor, I discover the corporate’s various finish markets very enticing. It helps legal professionals, medical doctors, bankers, scientists, and extra. This offers it large optionality for progress.

In the meantime, an growing quantity of income is subscription-based and due to this fact recurring, offering a stable base for the enterprise to continue to grow by to 2030.

I additionally like that there’s a pleasant steadiness to the general income combine, as we will see under.

That mentioned, this can be a information firm, so may turn into a goal for cyberattacks. Clearly, a safety breach would trigger reputational injury amongst clients.

Past this threat, the inventory is valued extremely at 27 instances anticipated earnings per share for 2025. Any earnings slip-ups may trigger the share price to dip sharply.

A knowledge powerhouse

RELX has efficiently transitioned from conventional print to the digital age and is well-positioned for the subsequent tech revolution: synthetic intelligence (AI).

The corporate’s huge, hard-to-replicate datasets give it a big aggressive benefit. By leveraging machine studying, it may possibly create superior insights and AI-driven providers, enabling its clients to make faster choices.

For instance, its new generative AI platform (Lexis+ AI) is sort of a legal-focused model of ChatGPT. It continues to develop within the US and was lately launched in additional worldwide markets.

To me, RELX seems nicely set up to proceed thrashing the FTSE 100 no less than till the tip of the last decade. As such, I feel it’s lastly time I purchased some shares!