Relx Group, formerly Reed Elsevier, is a UK registered media company and a global provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services. In 2015, the STM arm of Elsevier published 400,000 new research articles in more than 2,500 journals. Elsevier’s journals are primarily published and delivered through the ScienceDirect platform, the world’s largest database of scientific and medical research, which hosts over 13 million articles and 30,000 e-books.

RELX Group’s positive financial performance continued throughout 2016. The company recorded revenues of 6.9 billion GBP, up 15%, against 6 billion GBP in 2015. The company saw an underlying revenue and profit growth across all four business areas of 4%. The underlying adjusted operating profit grew by 5%. Revenue by format for 2016 includes 72% from electronic (up 2%), 15% from face-to-face (maintained its position) and 13% from print (down 2 %). Engstrom noted: “We achieved good underlying revenue growth in 2016, and continued to generate underlying operating profit growth ahead of revenue growth, with underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth across all four business areas.”

The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. In 2016, 55% of revenue by destination came from North America, 25% from Europe, and 20% from the rest of the world.

During 2016 the Legal business generated 82% of its revenues from electronic formats during 2016. Seventy-nine percent of the STM businesses and 92% of the Risk & Business Analytics segment revenues were achieved through electronic formats.