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Not long ago, RELX (LSE: REL) was considered by many to be the FTSE 100‘s artificial intelligence darling. The analytics company had all the tools to take advantage of the introduction of AI. The company even released fully formed services for doctors and lawyers to take advantage of this new technology. And how has the share price been doing?
In short, the last year has been a disaster. While Relx was riding the crest of the AI wave for some time – notably doubling in value between 2022 and 2025 – the share price has now collapsed like a house of cards. The shares lost 49% in value since last May. What on earth happened here? And does Relx have the makings of a brilliant bargain? Or is this a falling knife to be avoided at all costs?
A hindrance?
The strange thing here: look at an isolated snapshot of the company in February 2026 and you’d see no problems at all. The firm posted full-year earnings on 12 February. Numbers were looking good.
To understand the decline, we need to turn our attention to the valuation. RELX was trading at around 30 times earnings for a while. That’s very high – over double the FTSE 100 average at points – and suggested investors saw a company in great shape with a bright future.
The forward price-to-earnings ratio is now 14. The colossal drop roughly mirrors the fall in share price, dropping by around half. Put simply: investor sentiment around the company has cratered.
Why is that? In a word, AI. The development of artificial intelligence threatens not to help RELX but to hinder the firm and perhaps even destroy it.
Risk tolerance
The big recent news – that some are calling the ‘Claude Crash’ – was Anthropic releasing a version of AI that could do high-level analysis of legal and financial data straight out of the box. The thinking being that the RELX product line might be made obsolete and customers could go straight to the source. The share price dropped 14% on the day of the release.
It’s a quickly changing situation, but there could be scope for opportunity here too. Following that recently posted earnings, the dividend was raised and a raft of share buybacks was announced.
Perhaps most importantky, management was quick to address the impact of new technology too, stating that it is “inconceivable” that AI could replicate the business as a whole. The shares jumped 8% higher in the days following.
From an investor’s perspective, this is a tricky one. Artificial intelligence is improving all the time. This could make certain products and companies obsolete.
On the other hand, there are no guarantees that the biggest problems with artificial intelligence, like ‘hallucinating’, will ever be completely ironed out. I think a stock like RELX could be worth considering for that reason, though it will need a high degree of risk tolerance on the part of the investor.
