FTSE 100 shares round-up: reaction to L&G and RELX updates
Both these companies are in optimistic mood, but how have investors reacted? City writer Graeme Evans shares the highlights.
23rd October 2025 13:44
by Graeme Evans from interactive investor
The RELX company logo on a smartphone. Photo: Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Record territory for the FTSE 100 index today contrasted with the run of two of its founding members as updates failed to lift high-yielding Legal & General Group (LSE:LGEN) and AI-focused RELX (LSE:REL).
The higher price of oil and other commodities meant BP (LSE:BP.), Shell (LSE:SHEL) and Anglo American (LSE:AAL) drove London’s top flight to a new intraday high of 9,579.
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The fallers board included L&G, even though the 9% yielding insurance stock said earnings for this year will be towards the top end of guidance.
RELX, which has outperformed the FTSE 100 for 13 of the past 14 years and has risen three-fold in the past decade, is also out of form after a 6% decline so far in 2025.
A third-quarter update failed to inspire a turnaround for the Elsevier journals and LexisNexis owner, despite nine-month revenues growth in line with hopes at 7%.
It forecast another year of strong underlying growth and said it continued to benefit from the ongoing shift in its business mix towards higher-growth analytics and decision tools.
In the past two decades RELX has transformed its digital focus to 84% of sales from 22% in 2000. Over the same time frame, print revenue has gone from 64% to just 4% in the first half.
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The company spends £1.5 billion a year on technology and employs about 12,000 “technologists” globally, of which about half are software engineers. It has already launched more than 15 generative artificial intelligence (AI) products, making it the UK’s leading quoted AI company.
The biggest parts of RELX are its Risk and Business Analytics division and the Elsevier journals operation Science, Technical and Medical. Legal is the group’s third-largest division, with the smallest being the Exhibitions arm.
Despite its AI-led growth, shares have failed to recover from August’s market jitters sparked by the lower full-year revenues guidance of US-listed information services business Gartner.
UBS has a Buy recommendation and price target of 4,570p, which compares with today’s level of 3,446p. Bank of America said in August that shares were at a “rare entry point”.
Another bad day for L&G
Today’s selling of Legal & General shares means the stock has fallen 10% since August, a performance not helped by uncertainty leading up to the later-than-usual Budget.
Chief executive Antonio Simoes today hosted the final one of three deep-dive presentations, having previously provided investors with detail on L&G’s potential in the institutional retirement and £1.1 trillion asset management divisions.
The retail business serves 12.4 million customers in the UK across four core markets of workplace, annuities, lifetime mortgages and protection. In each L&G is a top-three provider.
It said the retirement landscape was undergoing “material structural transformation”, driven by demographics, regulatory and policy change.
As responsibility for retirement shifts from employers to individuals, it estimates that workplace defined contributed assets will double to £1.5 trillion by 2034 alongside growth of annual retail annuities volumes of 2.5 times to £20 billion.
It said: “L&G is ideally positioned to seize this opportunity as the UK’s leading defined contribution and retirement platform.”
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L&G’s two new near-term targets for retail are to achieve £40-50 billion of workplace defined contribution net flows and 4-6% annual retail operating profit growth. This would imply 2028 operating profit of £500-540 million, which is above consensus City expectations.
L&G said: “Over the next decade, growth in Retail operating profit will accelerate and we will see a shift in profit mix. By 2034, 40% of the profits originated by Retail will be fee-based earnings, a significant increase from below 15% in 2024.”
Looking across the group, L&G said it was on track to deliver core operating earnings per share growth at the higher end of its 6-9% range.
Broker Peel Hunt said: “L&G is one year into its refocusing programme, which we believe will be fully embedded next year. Today’s statement suggests the group is on track.”
The City bank believes there’s significant potential to extract value from the life and asset management businesses, which should be crystallised in the next three years.
It points out that stock trades at an attractive 10 times forecast 2026 earnings, while being supported by a 9% yield.
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