Ciaran Donnelly

Ciaran Donnelly asked about the mix of publicly available versus proprietary curated data underpinning Legal products, the difficulty of replicating these data sets, and the depth of RELX's competitive moat. He also asked if RELX would license its proprietary data for API plugins like CoCounsel. Lastly, he inquired about the dynamics of base market versus product innovation growth contribution in Risk for 2025 versus 2024, and the outlook for 2026.

Answer

CEO Erik Engstrom detailed that RELX's content foundation includes public records (some no longer public), licensed data from over 10,000 sources, unique contributory data sets, and proprietary content created internally. He asserted that this combination, along with proprietary algorithms and interpretations, makes replication extremely difficult, forming a sustainable competitive advantage. Engstrom stated that licensing out core content is not RELX's strategy, as it's the centerpiece of their information-based approach. CFO Nick Luff explained that in Risk, new products contributed 6% to growth in 2025 (vs. 5% in prior years), while older products contributed 2% (vs. 3%), indicating an increased pace of innovation.