MUMBAI: Energy-to-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries on Monday reported a flat net income for the quarter ending March at Rs 21,243 crore. However, the annual earnings hit a record high of over Rs 1 lakh crore, driven by a recovery in its core oil and petrochemicals business and sustained momentum from the telecom and retail businesses.
For the full fiscal, the Mukesh Ambani-led company set two records crossing the Rs 10 lakh crore consolidated revenue mark and the Rs 1 lakh crore consolidated pre-tax profit while the net profit touched Rs 69,621 crore up from Rs 66,702 crore in the preceding financial year. Its FY24 revenue rose 2.6% to Rs 10,00,122 crore and consolidated pre-tax profit rose to Rs 1,04,727 crore.
The oil-to-chemicals business, which is the main milch cow for the company, reported a growth in profitability annually, as well as sequentially, while the earnings from its retail business rose on new store openings despite lower footfalls. The telecom revenue soared as it outpaced competition in subscriber addition and data traffic. The mainstay oil refining and petrochemicals business reported an 11% growth in revenue at Rs 26,3834 crore despite an 8.5% decline in exports.
With the consumer base of Jio Inforcom swelled to 48.18 crore from 47.09 crore at the end of December on a flat per-user revenue of Rs 181.7, its revenue rose 12% to Rs 33,835 crore and earned net profit of Rs 5,583 crore in the fourth quarter, which was 12% more than what it had earned in the same period in the previous fiscal. Also, aiding the business was rise in data traffic to 40.9 billion GB from 38.1 billion GB in the preceding December quarter.
For the full year, Jio posted a profit of `21,424 crore compared to Rs 19,124 crore in FY23. Profit from the retail business climbed 11.7% to Rs 2,698 crore as store count rose to 18,836 from 18,774. This was in spite a drop in footfalls to 27.2 crore from 28.2 crore in the December 2023 period but were higher than 21.9 crore recorded in the March 2023 quarter.
Oil and gas pre-tax soared 47.5% to Rs 5,606 crore as higher gas volume partly offset lower price realisation.
The flagship KG-D6 oil and gas block in Krishna Godavari basin is now producing about 30 million standard cubic metres a day of gas and 23,000 barrels of oil/condensate per day.
Its outstanding debt rose to Rs 3.24 lakh crore from Rs 3.11 lakh crore in December. But its cash balance stood at Rs 2,08,341 crore net debt only at Rs 1.16 lakh croe as of end March which is marginally lower than the Rs 1.25 lakh crre net debt as of March 2023. Chairman Mukesh Ambani said all segments of business have reported robust financial and operating numbers.