Reliance Industries said its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended June 2017 was £910.8 million, up 28 per cent from £711.3 million a year earlier, following high margins from petrochemicals business. RIL's revenue for Q1FY18 was £9.05 billion, up nearly 75 per cent from £ 7.14 billion during the same quarter of the previous fiscal. Reliance said during the April-June quarter, gross refining margin was at $11.9 per barrel, which was at a nine-year-high level.
In a statement, Reliance CMD Mukesh Ambani said, “Our industry-leading portfolio of assets in the refining and petrochemicals business contributed to considerable improvement in our earnings for the quarter. Retail business also witnessed accelerated growth momentum with YoY revenue growth of 74%.” GRM is one of the most important profitability measures for a refiner. Compared to Reliance's GRM, the same number for refiners in Singapore was at $5.5 per barrel. Reliance said that during Q1FY18, its revenues from refining increased 18.3 per cent to £6.69 billion from £ 5.65 billion during the year-ago period.
RIL has also acquired 24.9 per cent stake in Ekta Kapoor-owned Balaji Telefilms for £41.32 million. Balaji said that the proceeds from the transaction would be used to boost content development initiatives, especially for ALT. Just last month, ALTBalaji had integrated JioMoney, the mobile wallet from Reliance Payment Solutions, to provide digital transaction experience to its subscribers.
“We welcome Reliance Industries as a partner in our growth journey towards becoming the preferred content producer for the Indian diaspora across all means of video consumption and across all geographies. This investment is a vote of confidence to the Company's strategic move to own our IP and our viewers,” said Jeetendra Kapoor, Chairman, Balaji Telefilms. RIL said, “RIL is engaged in the telecom, digital and media businesses. This investment in content production is in line with RIL's commitment to invest and grow in telecom digital and media businesses.”
