Reliance Industries: Climbing New Heights
Undoubtedly, Reliance Industriesis the undisputed No. 1 company in India having the biggest turnover of Rs 15.7 lakh crore in 2018-19. It is therefore no surprise that RIL is again ranked number one in the annual list of top BW 500 companies for FY19. The last fiscal saw a number of mile-stones achieved by some of its leading companies — Reliance Retail crossed Rs 1,00,000-crore revenue milestone; Jio, the disrupter in the telecom services and broadband data space, crossed 300 million consumers. Jio added on average 10 million subscribers a month to become the world’s fastest grow-ing digital services company. In calendar year 2018, Jio car-ried close to 71 per cent of the total 4G traffic in India, the company said in its annual report for FY19, adding some interesting data points. For example, every Jio subscriber consumed on an aver-age 10.9 GB data, 823 minutes of voice calls and 17 hours of video per month, it said.
During the year, Reliance generated a record PBDIT of Rs 92,656 crore, up 26.8 per cent y-o-y. RIL said it enjoys prime credit ratings as a result of its fiscal prudence and strong cash flows.
The petrochemicals business of RIL delivered its highest ever earnings. “I am proud of the entire Reliance team; their hard work and dedication has laid the foundation for these achievements and many more to come,” said Mukesh D. Ambani, CMD of Reliance Industries.
For FY2018-19, RIL’s net profit jumped 13.1 per cent to Rs 39,588 crore, while revenue climbed 44.6 per cent to Rs 622,809 crore from the previous fiscal, helped by higher real-ization for refining and petrochemical products with a 22 per cent increase in average Brent crude price on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis. “Focus on service and customer satisfaction led to higher numbers of subscribers and footfalls across our consumer businesses, driving robust revenue growth. Our endeavour is to create better experiences for our customers, leading to a better shared future,” he added.
Retail & Petrochemicals: Top Performers
Reliance Retail’s revenue growth in FY 2018-19 was primar-ily driven by aggressive store addition and spurt in same-store sales. Growing at a rate of nearly 10 stores per day in the last two years, Reliance Retail witnessed one of the fastest store expansions in the world. It added a total of 2,829 stores to its tally during FY 2018-19. As on 31 March 2019, Reliance Retail operated 10,415 retail stores in over 6,600+ towns and cities, covering 22 million sq. ft. of area.
The impressive earnings in the petrochemicals business is a result of Reliance’s investments over the last few years. This is reflected in the production of 37.7 MMT and highest ever earnings delivered by the business this year. The EBIT margins increased 180 bps this year on the back of strong integrated polyester chain margins. The petrochemicals business achieved record EBITDA of Rs 37,645 crore, up 45.6 per cent y-o-y. Petrochemicals earnings demonstrated the earnings power of the new plants commissioned over the last investment cycle, unmatched integration and feedstock flexibility.
In 2020, all eyes will be on the performance of Reliance Jio Gi-gaFiber, the ultimate broadband experience that was launched in September. It enables the customer to surf, stream, game and work with plans upwards of 100 mbps and it comes bundled with fixed landline with free call-ing, low-cost pack for US/Canada international calls and much more. The premium customers have been promised Jio’s ‘First Day First Show’ release of new films by mid-2020. Jio Fiber will come bundled with popular OTT services. Ambani said Jio will now focus on four aspects — IoT, Home Broadband Service, Enterprise Broadband Service and SME Broadband Service. In all, the Jio consumers are in for a treat in 2020.
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