Digital, retail biz boost RIL Q3 net by 26% to Rs 15k crore – Times of India

MUMBAI: Reliance Industries (RIL), India’s largest company in terms of market value, reported a 26% rise in its third quarter profit to Rs 14,894 crore, benefiting from higher price realisations in its digital services and retail businesses. Revenue declined 21% to Rs 1.2 lakh crore, it said on Friday.
Operating profit was flat at Rs 26,094 crore in the October through December months due to weak earnings in its dominant O2C (oil-to-chemicals) business. The company said from the third quarter, it will disclose O2C as a separate business segment after it decided to combine its traditional refining and petrochemicals units. RIL’s consumer business accounted for 51% of its operating profit compared to 37% in the year-ago period.
“The world is now closing ranks for a strong global action on climate change. This gives Reliance the right opportunity to accelerate our own ambitious new energy and new materials business wedded to the vision of clean and green development. In line with this vision, our O2C business has formally reorganised its reporting segments to reflect our new strategy and management matrix for this enterprise,” said RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani.
“The reorganised structure will enable Reliance to pursue new opportunities for growth, with strategic partnerships with the best and the biggest in this business globally. The O2C platform will increasingly move further downstream and will create planet-friendly and affordable energy and materials solutions.” Operating profit of O2C declined 28% to Rs 9,756 crore due to lower product sales and price realisations.
But operating profit of digital services (Jio) rose 48% to Rs 8,942 crore due to an improved average revenue per user (ARPU) and higher data usage by people, while remaining sheltered at homes due to Covid. ARPU is the total revenue of the telecom operator divided by the number of users.
Jio continued to be the star contributor to RIL’s operating profit. Its ARPU was Rs 151 in the December quarter, up from Rs 128 a year ago. Jio, which was launched in 2016, has 410 million customers and saw a data traffic growth of 31% on its network.
Operating profit of retail increased 13% to Rs 3,102 crore. RIL said that 96% of its store network was opened in the December quarter after Covid related curbs were eased.