RELX PLC (RELX): ANSOFF MATRIX [Dec-2025 Updated]

You're looking for the clearest path forward for RELX PLC after their strong H1 2025 results, and honestly, mapping out growth in this AI-driven market requires more than just a gut feeling. As someone who has spent two decades mapping strategy, I see the company sitting on a clear playbook, balancing safe bets like pushing Lexis+AI adoption-which already drove the Legal division's +9% underlying revenue growth-with aggressive moves. They have the firepower, evidenced by their £7,443m net debt position, to fund big leaps like acquiring a FinTech firm or developing new ESG consulting services, all while pouring that £262m H1 acquisition spend into next-gen tools. This Ansoff Matrix breaks down exactly where RELX PLC can grow, from deepening existing client relationships to making transformative bets; check out the four clear lanes below to see the strategy in action.

RELX PLC (RELX) - Ansoff Matrix: Market Penetration

You're looking at how RELX PLC (RELX) can deepen its hold on existing markets with current offerings, and the numbers show a clear focus on digital adoption and capital return to signal strength.

The push for deeper penetration in the Legal segment is evident through the adoption of new technology. For the first half of 2025, the Legal division delivered underlying revenue growth of +9%, directly supported by the rollout of Lexis+AI. This is a step up from the 7% underlying revenue growth reported for the full year 2024 in that division. The strategy here is to make the AI-powered tools indispensable to existing US legal firm clients, increasing the value captured from that established customer base. The Legal division represented 20% of RELX's sales in 2024.

Within the Risk division, cross-selling Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) tools to the existing Insurance client base is a key penetration tactic. The Insurance vertical, which represents just under 40% of the Risk division's revenue, is already a core focus, with RELX working with 99% of US personal auto and home insurers. To drive deeper adoption of FCC and related fraud tools, the broader Risk solutions detected over 2 billion automated bot attacks for customers in 2024.

For the Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) division, bundling existing journal access with new AI research solutions is the mechanism for market penetration. The STM division reported 4% revenue growth in 2024. The company is developing tools like Elsevier's Scopus AI and ClinicalKey AI to integrate with its established content, aiming to increase the subscription value for current academic and healthcare customers.

Aggressively pricing digital Fraud & Identity solutions is about taking share from competitors in the existing market space. The digital Fraud & Identity solutions, part of the Business Services segment within Risk, showed strong momentum. The LexisNexis Digital Identity Network, a core component, analyzed more than 345 million transactions daily as of 2024.

To signal financial confidence to the market and stabilize the stock price, RELX PLC is executing a significant capital return program. The company intends to deploy a total of £1,500 million on share buybacks in 2025, following £1,000 million in 2024. As of the first half of 2025, £1,000 million of this 2025 program was already completed, with the remaining £425 million planned for deployment before the year-end. This aggressive deployment is underpinned by a strong balance sheet, with the Net debt/EBITDA ratio at 2.2x as of June 30, 2025, and an adjusted cash flow conversion rate of 100% for the first half of 2025.

Here's a quick look at the divisional performance metrics supporting these penetration efforts:

The focus on existing customers is also reflected in dividend policy, with the proposed full-year 2024 dividend increasing by +7% to 63.0p, and the interim 2025 dividend also increasing by +7% to 19.5p.

RELX PLC (RELX) - Ansoff Matrix: Market Development

You're looking at how RELX PLC (RELX) is pushing existing products into new geographies or customer segments. This is Market Development in action, and the numbers from the first half of 2025 show the strategy is gaining traction.

Accelerate Lexis+AI and Protégé roll-out across new international markets.

The Legal segment saw a strong underlying revenue increase of 9% in the first half of 2025, which reflects this international push. Lexis+AI, the generative AI platform, has been actively rolled out globally following its US introduction in 2023. By June 2024, commercial launches hit the UK and Australia, followed by France in July 2024, and Canada in French in September 2024. The platform also launched in Asia, specifically targeting customers in China, Japan, and Korea. Overall, there are more than 1.1 million Lexis+ users across nine countries, including the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

Expand Risk division's digital Fraud & Identity solutions into new US government sectors.

The Risk division delivered underlying revenue growth of 8% for the first nine months of 2025, with its H1 2025 revenue hitting £1,748 million. The Government Solutions vertical is a key area for expansion, driven by analytics and decision tools. More than 7,500 federal, state, and local government agencies use RELX solutions to prevent fraud and speed up citizen access to systems. For context on the scale of the digital identity work, the LexisNexis Digital Identity Network analyzes over 345 million transactions daily. In 2024 alone, the solutions detected around 690 million human-initiated fraud attacks and delivered over 511 million US consumer credit assessments.

Launch a new series of Exhibitions in high-growth Asian markets, leveraging the improved event portfolio.

The Exhibitions business is showing strong momentum, reporting an underlying revenue growth of 8% in the first half of 2025. This segment generated £581 million in revenue for H1 2025, with an adjusted operating profit of £234 million. Management noted that this growth reflects an improved event portfolio profile, establishing Exhibitions at strong ongoing growth above pre-pandemic levels.

Translate and localize STM's Databases and Tools for non-English speaking research institutions.

The Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) division posted underlying revenue growth of 5% in H1 2025, with revenues of £1,323 million. RELX serves customers in over 170 countries and territories, indicating broad international reach for its databases. For example, Reaxys, the chemistry platform, utilizes data on 298 million substances and 68 million reactions. ScienceDirect, the primary research platform, hosts content from over 5,100 journals.

Target mid-market law firms with simplified, lower-cost versions of core Legal analytics.

While specific mid-market pricing isn't public, the overall Legal segment's 9% underlying growth in H1 2025 suggests successful expansion beyond the largest clients. Law Firms & Corporate Legal already represents over 60% of the Legal revenue base, and this strategy aims to capture the next tier of firms using the core Lexis+ platform, which has over 1.1 million users in nine countries.

Here's a quick look at how the segments driving this market development performed in H1 2025:

The group's financial health supports this expansion, with an interim dividend declared at 19.5p (up 7%) and an adjusted cash flow conversion rate of 100% in the first half. RELX also deployed £1,000 million of its announced £1,500 million share buyback plan in H1 2025.

RELX PLC (RELX) - Ansoff Matrix: Product Development

You're looking at how RELX PLC is pouring resources into new product development, especially around artificial intelligence, to drive growth in its established markets. The company completed three acquisitions in the first half of 2025 for a total consideration of £262m. This spend supports the ongoing shift towards higher growth analytics and decision tools across the group. Annually, RELX PLC spends $1.9bn on technology to fuel these developments.

The focus on digital and AI-enabled tools is clear, with fully digital products now accounting for 84% of group revenue. The success of these product developments is reflected in the H1 2025 underlying revenue growth across the divisions where these new tools are being deployed.

For the Scientific, Technical & Medical division, the development of AI-powered researcher solutions is key to improving on the 5% underlying revenue growth seen in H1 2025. The Legal segment has seen the launch of Protégé General AI, which expands personalized AI capabilities and was in customer preview as of August 2024. As of October 2025, RELX PLC has 17 examples of commercially available products incorporating generative AI.

In the Risk division, predictive analytics models are already showing real-world impact, particularly in the Insurance segment. For instance, the LexisNexis Risk Classifier solution, using advanced algorithms on electronic data, showed significant increases in records scored for life insurance applicants between 2019 and 2023:

• Black individuals: 403% increase in records scored.
• Hispanic individuals: 379% increase in records scored.
• White individuals: 231% increase in records scored.

The foundation for these tools relies on massive data sets; LexisNexis content sets include more than 100bn documents and records, with over 2m documents added daily from over 50,000 sources. The Exhibitions business is integrating generative AI for digital initiatives, supporting its 8% underlying revenue growth in H1 2025.

Finance: draft Q3 2025 technology spend variance analysis by next Tuesday.

RELX PLC (RELX) - Ansoff Matrix: Diversification

You're looking at how RELX PLC might push into entirely new product/market combinations, which is the riskiest but potentially highest-reward quadrant of the Ansoff Matrix. This involves launching new offerings into markets where RELX doesn't currently have a strong, established presence, so you need to see the capital available and the scale of the markets they might target.

For entering the regulatory technology (RegTech) market with new compliance analytics, consider the scale of the existing Risk segment, which generated £3,245m in revenue in 2024. Business Services within that segment, which covers Financial Crime Compliance, represented around 45% of that revenue in 2024. The historical focus on fraud prevention is evident, with past acquisitions like ThreatMetrix in 2018 for $821M and FircoSoft in 2014, which are adjacent to pure RegTech.

Developing a new data-driven consulting service for the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sector is supported by RELX PLC's established sustainability credentials. RELX currently maintains a AAA MSCI ESG rating, a status held for ten consecutive years as of the first half of 2025. This rating provides a foundation for offering related consulting or data services.

Targeting small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) with a simplified, low-cost risk assessment platform means entering a market segment that is less reliant on the large professional/enterprise clients that drive the core £9,434m total revenue reported for 2024. The Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) segment, which had £3,051m in revenue in 2024, offers a comparison point for a large, established business area to contrast against a new, lower-cost SME focus.

Entering the K-12 education market with simplified versions of Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) electronic reference tools means targeting a market with significant scale. The global K-12 Education Market size was valued at approximately USD 153.39 Billion in 2024 and was expected to reach USD 172.03 Billion in 2025. The STM segment's underlying revenue growth was +4% in 2024.

The financial capacity for such large, transformative diversification moves is supported by the balance sheet. Net debt at 30 June 2025 stood at £7,443m, with the Net debt/EBITDA ratio at 2.2x. This is an increase from the 1.8x Net debt/EBITDA reported at the end of 2024. The company has demonstrated an appetite for M&A, completing three acquisitions in the first half of 2025 for a total consideration of £262m, following five acquisitions in 2024 for £195m. The average annual spend on acquisitions is noted to be about £400m.

The execution of these diversification strategies relies on deploying capital effectively, contrasting with the £1,500m share buyback program intended for 2025.

• Acquisition consideration in H1 2025: £262m.
• Acquisitions completed in 2024: Five.
• ESG Rating: AAA MSCI.
• STM Underlying Revenue Growth: +4% (2024).
• Risk Business Services Revenue Share: Around 45% (2024).