 |
| | |
| 2020 Results for RELX and LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group | | Dear Colleagues,
Today RELX announced its financial results for 2020. As CEO Erik Engstrom observed in his note to all RELX colleagues earlier today, the three largest RELX business areas continued to perform well, with a focus on analytics driving good growth in electronic revenue. For more details, I encourage you to visit the RELX investor site to review the materials they have provided, which include a detailed press release, a presentation and a recorded webcast discussing the year's performance.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group
LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group (RSG) saw underlying revenue growth of 3%, which was a very positive result in a challenging year. Approximately 60% of our revenue is transactional and was impacted significantly by the initial COVID-19 shutdowns in March and April. Volumes in many of the transactional segments have returned to pre-COVID levels. The remaining 40% of subscription-based revenue experienced delays in new business closes and customer implementations; however, renewal rates in December improved, signalling a stronger trend moving into 2021. New business closes were down across much of the portfolio, as customers prioritised their initiatives and spending during this unprecedented year. - Business Services, which includes the merger of Accuity and the acquired ID Analytics and Emailage businesses, is now our largest segment, representing approximately 45% of revenue. This portfolio achieved solid growth in 2020, with double-digit growth in fraud solutions and at VitalChek. Digital identity solutions such as ThreatMetrix continued to perform strongly, while areas such as credit risk were more challenged.
- Insurance, which represents approximately 40% of RSG revenue, achieved modest growth. Successful new product revenue and growth from customer implementations were somewhat damped by volatility in consumer shopping trends and delayed new business closes.
- Data Services achieved modest growth, with XPertHR and Nextens each achieving solid growth driven by new business closes and high renewal rates. ICIS also achieved solid growth, despite the impact of cancelled events, with high renewal rates and good account growth. Proagrica achieved modest growth, as new business closes were delayed. As expected based on market conditions, Cirium and EG revenues were down versus the prior year but are positioned well when sector growth returns.
- Government achieved strong growth driven by key customer wins and overall very strong new business closes.
- Health Care revenue was flat driven by market conditions and shifts in customer prioritisation. However, new business closes were strong in the 4th quarter, providing an uplift starting into 2021.
The Risk business continues to play a crucial role in RELX's overall performance, as you can see in the chart below, illustrating our relative impact on 2020 revenues for RELX.
Staying strong during COVID-19 through innovation
Despite the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19, our core business has managed to remain strong. We did this by relentlessly focusing on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, looking after our customers and keeping our services live, and continuing to invest to maintain our momentum and competitive advantage.
I have spoken and written repeatedly about how proud I am of the way our people have rallied and thrived under enormous pressure, but it's also nice to hear that kind of feedback from outside of the company. In the early months of the pandemic, one of our Fortune 50 clients in the financial services sector complimented us on "operating business as usual" during this crisis. He said there had been no reported issues with our performance—and he could not say the same for some of his other major providers. This is a powerful testament to the strong processes and systems we have in place, and reminds us that this kind of stability and commitment to customer service does NOT go unnoticed!
Clearly, the pandemic has required us to be nimble, adaptive and most of all, innovative. Fortunately, innovation has always been a core strength of our business, and that strength will continue to position us well for executing on our future goals.
- Business Services will continue enabling financial transparency and inclusion by further evolving its global solutions portfolio including its financial crime compliance suite by leveraging and extending high-value data and analytic capabilities to provide more comprehensive risk management and payments solutions and by identifying more creditworthy consumers through new, innovative credit risk assessment tools.
- Insurance will deliver additional data assets and advanced analytics including a next-generation life insurance mortality model that incorporates public records, credit attributes and driving behaviour data with lab testing and prescription information; a transformative risk assessment tool for home insurers that utilises aerial imagery and weather event data; and ROI insights for claims organisations via our prefill solutions and Claims Compass platform to improve operational efficiency.
- In Data Services, Cirium will accelerate direct access for global airlines and the aviation industry to its analytics, through a new private cloud solution. ICIS will further enhance the value it delivers to global customers with the addition of forecast analytics to predict the markets of tomorrow. Proagrica, XpertHR, EG and Nextens will continue to drive growth by increasingly connecting data across each market and accelerating go-to-market performance to expand penetration of their analytics and workflow solutions.
- Government will streamline and speed citizen access to digital-based services by providing front-end identity solutions, mitigate homeland and national supply chain threats through continuous vetting services and lead the law enforcement market with Accurint Virtual Crime Center's investigative intelligence.
- Health Care will continue to drive higher value Identity Access Management solutions across the healthcare ecosystem supporting the move to digital health.
Thank you for an incredible performance
Given all the challenges we have faced in 2020, and acknowledging that we might not have hit all our original targets, it is still no exaggeration to say that I consider this to be our best competitive performance since I’ve been CEO. At our next all-RSG town hall on 16 February, we will spotlight some of the innovations that helped us maintain our momentum. Until then, I want to thank every single one of you for an absolutely incredible performance in 2020. I'm immensely proud to be part of this great organisation. Here's to a safe, healthy and even more successful year in 2021!
Mark Kelsey
Chief Executive Officer |
| | |
| | |
|
