On Friday, Reliance announced that its FY22 revenue rose 47% to 7.9 lakh crore ($105 billion), driven by strong growth in its Oil-to-Chemicals (O2C) and Consumer ( Jio & Retail) was supported. Profit rose 26% to Rs 67,845 crore ($9 billion), maintaining the top position as India’s most profitable private company. Operating profit, a measure of underlying business performance, rose 34% to Rs 1.2 lakh crore.
“Despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic and heightened geopolitical uncertainties, Reliance has delivered a robust performance in fiscal 2021-22,” said Chairman and CEO Mukesh Ambani.
Though Reliance has launched new businesses in retail, telecom, and more recently green energy over the years, its O2C unit continues to make up the bulk of its revenue. “The gradual opening of economies…sustained high utilization rates at all sites and improvements in transportation fuels margins and volumes have strengthened our O2C revenues,” Ambani added.
For the January-March quarter of fiscal 2022, Reliance’s profit rose 20% to Rs.18,021 crore, driven by higher margins from its O2C and Jio units. Revenue totaled Rs 2.1 lakh crore, an increase of 37%. Operating profit increased by 30% to Rs 33,493 crore in Q4FY22 supported by better pricing realizations.
O2C operating profit rose 25% to Rs.14,241 crore, led by high cracks in transport fuels, partially offset by lower margins in polymers and intermediates and higher energy costs. Margins of downstream products have been impacted by weak naphtha cracking economics and excess supply of fiber intermediates, the company said in a statement.
Digital (Jio) operating profit also rose 25% to Rs 11,209 crore on strong revenue growth and margin improvement. Jio’s average revenue per user (ARPU) – a key metric affecting earnings – stood at Rs 168 in Q4 FY22, up 21%.
ARPU is the telecom operator’s total revenue divided by the number of users on its network. Launched in 2016, Jio has 410 million customers as of March 31 of this year and has seen data and voice traffic growth on its network of 48% and 17%, respectively.
The retail business’ operating profit edged up 2% to Rs.3,712 crore. The retail segment does not include RIL’s Petro retail business. This business is housed in a joint venture with the British BP. Financial Services operating profit rose 102% to Rs 172 crore while Oil & Gas rose 218% to Rs 1,556 crore. RIL’s gross debt at the end of the FY4Q4 was Rs 2.66 lakh crore. And it had about Rs 2.31 lakh crore in cash and cash equivalents.