- Full year profit up 10%
- Dividend hiked by 7%
- Buyback raised to £1.5 billion
Shares in business information and data analytics company Relx (REL) climbed 2% to a new all-time high of £42 after reporting 10% growth in adjusted full-year operating profit and projecting another strong year in 2025.
The shares are up 27% over the last 12 months, comfortably ahead of the 16% gain in the blue-chip FTSE 100 index. The outperformance is even more pronounced over the past five years with the shares doubling against an 18% advance for the benchmark.
WHAT DID THE COMPANY SAY?
Chief executive Erik Engstom commented: ‘Our improving long-term growth trajectory continues to be driven by the ongoing shift in business mix towards higher-growth analytics and decision tools that deliver enhanced value to our customers across market segments.
‘We develop and deploy these tools across the company by leveraging deep customer understanding to combine leading content and data sets with powerful artificial intelligence and other technologies.
‘This has been a key driver of the evolution of our business for well over a decade and will remain a key driver of customer value and growth in our business for many years to come.’
INCREASED SHAREHOLDER RETURNS
Underlying revenue for the year to December increased by 7% to £9.43 billion, while underlying operating profit grew by a tenth to £3.2 billion. The board is proposing a 7% increase in the annual dividend to 63p per share, covered roughly twice by earnings.
After completing a £1 billion share buyback in 2024, Relx intends to deploy a total of £1.5 billion on share buybacks in 2025 with £150 million already completed.
Consensus estimates are for a dividend per share of 68p for 2025, equivalent to circa £1.3 billion, taking projected total shareholder returns to just shy of £3 billion in 2025. This is equivalent to a yield of 3.9% based on the current market capitalisation.
Looking ahead, the company said it continued to see positive momentum across the group and expects to deliver ‘strong’ underlying growth in revenue and adjusted profit, as well as strong growth in earnings per share.
