Narrow-Moat RELX Books a Difficult Third Quarter

Narrow-Moat RELX’s third-quarter trading update read very similarly to its second-quarter update. While three of its four businesses continue to perform reasonably well given the circumstances, the exhibitions business is feeling the pinch. Revenue here is down 70% year over year, and while the company, and investors, had been pinning some hopes on a resumption of the events calendar toward the end of 2020, these hopes now appear to be dashed, in the major markets of Europe and North America at least. The company now expects revenue of GBP 345 million for full-year 2020 from this business, little more than one quarter of the level delivered in 2019. While we plan on updating our near-term estimates on the back of this update, we do not expect this to alter our view on the stock, which we believe to be fairly valued relative to our GBX 1,615 fair value estimate.