The consolidated net profit of Reliance Industries Ltd, the oil-to-telecom conglomerate owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, rose 13.5 per cent in the October-December quarter to ₹11,640 crore from a year ago despite a marginal decline in revenue from operations to ₹1,68,858 crore.
The consolidated net profit was at ₹10,251 crore on operational revenue of ₹1,71,300 crore in the third quarter of FY19.
The revenue decline was mainly due to a 10.6 per cent drop in the oil-to-chemicals business revenues which was partially offset by continuing growth in consumer business.
Exports (including deemed exports) from RIL’s India operations dropped 13.7 per cent during the quarter to ₹53,804 crore from ₹62,378 crore a year ago, due to lower price realisation from petrochemical and refining business.
“The third quarter results for our energy business reflects the weak global economic environment and volatility in energy markets. Within our oil to chemicals chain, downstream petrochemicals profitability was impacted by weak margins across products with subdued demand in well-supplied markets,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries.
RJio’s performance
Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio), a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, posted a net profit of ₹1,350 crore for the reporting quarter, a 62.5 per cent rise from ₹831 crore recorded during the comparable year-ago period. The Q3 net profit includes a one-time exceptional item of ₹177 crore provisioned for Average Gross Revenue (AGR) payments.
The telecom company’s operating revenue rose 28.3 per cent to ₹13,968 crore, from ₹10,884 crore in the third quarter of previous fiscal.
The company also began getting access charges within two months of implementing the Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC), with outgoing traffic reducing to 48 per cent by end of the quarter, Anshuman Thakur, Head of Strategy and Planning at RJio, said. “Prior to this, the outgoing traffic was at 62 per cent,” he added.
RJio’s subscriber base rose to 370 million as of December 2019, registering a 32.1 per cent growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. The Mukesh Ambani firm’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), a financial metric of a telecom firm, stood at ₹128.4 per user per month, compared with ₹120 recorded in second quarter ended September 30, 2019.
Total wireless data traffic during the quarter rose 39.9 per cent to 1,208 crore GB, while total voice traffic stood at 82,640 crore minutes (30.3 per cent) on YoY basis.
The company’s revenue from refining and marketing business dropped 7.2 per cent to ₹103,718 crore from ₹111,738 crore a year ago.
The gross refining margins —what a refiner earns by turning a barrel of crude oil into refined products— rose to $9.2 per barrel from $8.8 per barrel a year ago. The crude throughput was almost flat at 18.1 million tonnes (mt) from 18 mt a year ago.
The petrochemicals business reported a 19.1 per cent drop in revenue to ₹36,909 crore from ₹45,619 crore in the third quarter of FY19, hit by new capacity additions globally, inventory over-hang and global demand slowdown.
The throughput in petrochemicals rose to 9.9 mt from 9.7 mt a year earlier.