Reliance Industries Ltd.

A greenfield plant described as one of the largest beverage plants in Asia has been commissioned partially and is expected to be completely ready; it is also an integrated food park facility where work has started.

A three-year roadmap targets rapid online growth this year via dark stores, omni-channel platforms and JioMart, plus market-by-market operational metrics; management says each market needs a clear path to positive unit economics and that scale benefits should convert into margins and cash generation over the next two years, alongside product mix, own brands, monetization and market-based income.

An in-house AI media studio called JAMS was used to launch the first fully AI-generated micro-content, a micro-drama on Tadka.

And in that context is where when you look at the overall performance, I do want to say that it has been an extraordinary performance too. The kind of agility we have shown has been incredible and I will tell you why it is. But starting with the numbers, topline up 25% primarily because of oil prices, but it is also a fact that Jio topline was also up 12%, even retail was up close to 12%. So, it is not just about O2C. EBITDA has been strong and when you look at EBITDA and recurring EBITDA, because last time, same time, we had the Rs.8,900 Crores of Asian paints and that is why right through the presentation I have backed it out, otherwise it just does not make comparable numbers and it does not make sense with those numbers like that. So, when you look at that, our overall EBITDA is more than Rs.54,000 Crores, so we are up 10%. Net profit at almost close to 23,200, again up 6%. And when you see the numbers, strong performance, by O2C up 17%, JPL 15%. And that is really those where they stand out performance. And we will also talk about the other businesses. So again, consumer businesses is now again back to, it is about 50% of the overall mix. And, cash flows continue to be strong, more than from a cash profit point of view, really funding the overall capex.

Between last quarter and current quarter, we are talking of an increase from $68 a barrel to $104.5 average. Of course, there were days in between when the prices went significantly higher than this because of the SOH closure.

Why exactly? What happened in the Middle East was besides crude also product, LPG got affected and then also significant amount of naphtha comes from the SOH. All this got suspended during the SOH closure. And also, most of the Middle East countries had to cut their production because of the inability to evacuate the crude. Only a few countries like Saudi Arabia, from Yanbu and then some crude from UAE, which is connected to the pipeline to Fujairah, that could move out. And then Oman, of course, is outside the SOH, Strait of Hormuz, so they could export. But otherwise, Middle East production almost came down by about 12 million during this period. Of course, there was some production because they were still consuming for their own requirement. Even refining capacity was down because products could not be evacuated. Of course, the ceasefire announcement helped some improvement in the traffic. We were thinking it is getting normal, but of course, all of you have read about the recent hostilities again that have started because of which it is virtually closed. A few ships may be slipping through, but by and large, the flow is affected. I mentioned about the refining capacity utilization, it dropped everywhere but we could maintain a high throughput level operating rate.