RIL’s Q4 net profit zooms to `13.2K cr
„Full-year net up 35%, revenue down 18%
New Delhi, April 30: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd more than doubled its March quarter net profit on sequential recovery in its consumer businesses of retail and telecom as well as in petrochemicals, as improved spreads offset continued weakness in refining business.
Consolidated net profit rose to Rs 13,227 crore in January-March compared with Rs 6,348 crore earned a year back, the company said in a statement on Friday. The fourth quarter net profit included Rs 797 crore exceptional item due to gain on sale of US shale assets.
Revenue was up 13.6 per cent to Rs 1,72,095 crore.
While the oil-to-chemical, or O2C, business improved quarter-on-quarter, it was lower than year-ago earnings primarily due to weakness in the refining business because of pandemic impacting fuel demand. This was more than made good by a spurt in consumer-facing businesses of telecom and retail, which now contribute 45 per cent of earnings as compared to 33 per cent a year back.
Jio, the telecom arm, posted a 47.5 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 3,508 crore as it added over 1.54 crore net subscribers. But its per user earning fell to 138 per month from Rs 151 in the previous quarter. It had 42.62 crore subscribers at the end of March.
A record revenue from grocery business and strong growth in consumer
electronics saw pre-tax profit from retail business rise 41 per cent to Rs 3,623 crore. The firm added 826 stores to take the number of stores to 12,711.
While there was a sustained recovery in petchem margins, refineries operated at lower capacity due to the pandemic, pulling down O2C Ebitda by 4.6 per cent to Rs 11,407 crore.
For the full 2020-21 year, revenue was down 18.3 per cent at Rs 539,238 crore and net profit was up nearly 35 per cent at Rs 53,739 crore.
Mukesh Ambani, RIL chairman and managing director, said: "We have registered robust recovery in O2C and retail segment, and resilient growth in Digital Services business (which includes telecom unit Jio)."