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Last week’s tech sell-off was a reminder of just how quickly the market can flip its view on who wins and loses from AI. Just over a year ago, data companies such as Experian or Relx were firmly in the “winner” camp based on their ownership of huge proprietary datasets that could be used to develop generative and agentic AI tools.
But the narrative shifted in the summer as investors began to worry that these companies could see their margins eroded by competition from AI, or cut out of the picture altogether. Experian has been hit particularly hard by fears that businesses could develop their own credit-scoring models as language models become more powerful and computing costs fall.
Those worries ramped up again last week after news that Anthropic, the Amazon-backed company behind the Claude chatbot, had upgraded its coding tools. That sparked a sell-off across software, data and publishing stocks, sinking Experian further, despite the prospect of 12 per cent earnings growth this year and modest upgrades at the first-half results.
Once trading at a hefty premium to the wider European market, the valuation gap that the company and fellow premium-rated data vendor peers enjoyed has now largely disappeared, even though Experian’s recent trading was in line with expectations and a £1bn share buyback was recently announced.
Some analysts think the panic has gone too far. Panmure Liberum’s Joachim Klement called the fears “overdone” and based on “first-level thinking”. Experian’s chair Mike Rogers seems to agree, having bought nearly £41,000 worth of shares in early February.