Reliance Industries (RIL) reported a 41% rise in quarterly profit, helped by higher price realisations from its oil-to-chemicals (O2C), digital services (Jio) and retail businesses.
The company’s profit has now grown to £1.94 billion for the first quarter of current financial year. The total revenue crossed £22.3 billion, up 55%, even as geopolitical conflict caused significant dislocation in energy markets. Operating profit, a yardstick for underlying business performance, increased 53% to £3.95 billion.
“Despite significant challenges posed by the tight crude markets and higher energy and freight costs, O2C business has delivered its best performance ever,” said RIL chairman & MD Mukesh Ambani. Operating profit of O2C grew 63%, led by a sharp rise in transportation cracks and better volumes.
Operating profit of digital (Jio) too climbed 26% to £1.17 billion due to strong revenue growth and margin improvement. Jio’s average revenue per user (ARPU) - a key metric that influences income - was at Rs 175.7 in the first quarter, up 27%. ARPU is the total revenue of the telecom operator divided by the number of users on its network. Launched in 2016, Jio has about 420 million customers as of June 30 and saw data and voice traffic growth of 27% and 17%, respectively, on its network.
Operating profit of the retail business zoomed 97% to £371 million, led by higher contribution from fashion & lifestyle and consumer electronics verticals and growing operating leverage with strong like-for-like growth over the previous year across consumption baskets, the company said. Reliance Retail has 15,866 outlets as of June 30 this year.
