Reliance Industries reported a 7.3 per cent rise in Q3 consolidated net profit at ₹18,540 crore, while revenue from operations rose 7 per cent to ₹2.4 lakh crore, with Reliance Retail notching up over ₹90,000 crore in gross revenue and Reliance Jio’s key metric average revenue per user (ARPU) crossing the ₹200 mark.
The segmental results showed that the top-line growth was driven by the retail business, which rose 8.8 per cent to ₹90,351 crore, while its dominant oil-to-chemicals business rose 6 per cent to ₹1.5 lakh crore.
RIL reported an EBITDA of ₹48,003 crore, up 7.8 per cent on year while EBITDA margin improved 10 basis points to 18 per cent in the quarter.
The conglomerate spent ₹32,259 crore in the quarter under review, down from ₹34,000 crore spend in Q2 and ended the quarter with an outstanding debt of ₹3.5 lakh crore, higher than ₹3.4 lakh crore it spent in the September quarter.
Jio Platforms revenue increased by 19.2 per cent y-o-y due to the continuing flow of tariff revisions for mobility services and healthy growth in homes and digital services businesses. ARPUs were healthy at ₹203.3 but was lower than analyst expectations.
“Robust growth in digital services business was led by sustained subscriber addition and consistent improvement in customer engagement metrics,” said CMD Mukesh Ambani. “This was well supported by a favourable subscriber mix, with an increasing number of users upgrading to 5G networks. Jio’s compelling offering of home broadband services also continued to rapidly gain ground and maintain its pre-eminent market position. “
O2C
RIL’s dominant O2C business reported a refinery throughput of 20.2 million ton, up 8 per cent on year, the growth coming from leveraging benefit of favourable feedstock sourcing, higher volumes compared to year ago and strong volume growth.
In the domestic fuel retailing, gasoline volumes rose 44 per cent and diesel 23 per cent.
The company said it saw robust domestic demand across products such as oil, polymers and polyester.
There was mixed trend in the margin environment amid weak global demand and fuel cracks declined from elevated levels year ago. On a sequential basis EBITDA went up 16 per cent led by recovery in refining margins.
“Refining margins recovered sequentially, with petrochemical deltas exhibiting a mixed trend. Upstream segment continues to play a pivotal role in providing the crucial transition fuel bolstering India’s energy security,” said Ambani.
Reliance Retail
The retail segment saw a strong performance across all formats led by festival demand. The operating profit of the segment rose 9.5 per cent to ₹6,828 crore and the company said the growth in the top-line and EBITDA was driven by festive demand and streamlining of operations in past quarters and productivity gains.
Grocery saw a over 37 per cent growth in B2C and Campa Cola seems to be have captured quite a good customer base.
Responding to the quick commerce initiatives by food aggregators, the company has launched express deliveries on a pilot basis across over 4,000 pin codes.
Jio
The company has rapidly scaled up 5G, with over 170 million subscribers across its network and accounting for 40 per cent of its wireless traffic.
RJio is going strong on broadband connectivity with a total installed base of 17 million and expanding JioFiber connectivity outside the top 1,000 cities and towns.
AI powered applications are the new frontiers where it plans to offer a whole bouquet of services.