Relx increasingly seems to have the reliability of a old friend. It would be a real surprise if the reinvented data and analytics specialist failed to deliver underlying revenue and profits growth in the mid-single-digit percentages in any given year.
While its nature and performance might not be enough to set pulses racing, it has become a staple holding for much of the institutional investment community. Is it a surprise, perhaps, that it is less widely held by individual investors?
For those put off by its rather clumsy name, Relx is often referred to as the old Reed Elsevier, formed in 1992 when Reed International, a British book and magazine publisher, merged with Elsevier, a scientific publishing house based in the Netherlands. Renamed in 2015,