130 0 Kommentare TRADING UPDATE – April 2021

Regulatory News:

7.00am BST
22 April 2021

RELX, the global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools, has issued the following update on trading ahead of its Annual General Meeting, reaffirming the outlook for the full year.

Highlights

Our three largest business areas, STM, Risk and Legal, which together accounted for 95% of revenue in 2020, have started the year well.
Exhibitions, which accounted for 5% of revenue in 2020, has continued to be impacted significantly by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Full year outlook

We continue to expect each of our three largest business areas, STM, Risk and Legal, to deliver another year of underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth in 2021, similar to pre-Covid-19 trends. The timing and pace of recovery in Exhibitions remains uncertain.

Scientific, Technical & Medical (38% of 2020 revenue)

Electronic revenue, which represents around 85% of the divisional total, has continued to grow well. Print revenues have stabilised following the Covid-19 related disruption in the first half of 2020.
Trends in our customer environment continue to vary somewhat by segment. In Primary Research we have continued to see strong growth in article submissions. Open access revenues are continuing to grow very strongly across geographies. Databases & tools and e-reference have started the year well.
Full year outlook: We expect another year of modest underlying revenue growth, with underlying adjusted operating profit growth slightly exceeding underlying revenue growth.

Risk (34% of 2020 revenue)

Transactional revenue, which represents around 60% of the divisional total, has seen good growth rates at the start of the year stepping up further from mid-March as we begin to lap last year’s Covid-19 related disruption. Subscription revenue, which represents around 40% of the divisional total, has remained resilient overall, albeit with some impact from delays in customer product implementations last year.
In Business Services, demand for fraud prevention and identity products continues to grow strongly, with the digital identity segment growing particularly well. Insurance market activity is now showing strong growth against the disrupted comparative period of the prior year. End customer markets for Data Services show varying dynamics, while Government continues to grow strongly.
Full year outlook: We expect a year of strong underlying revenue growth, with the fundamentals of the majority of our customer markets in line with, or slightly ahead of, pre-Covid-19 trends. We expect underlying adjusted operating profit growth to broadly match underlying revenue growth.