BENGALURU: The Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani headed Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) reported its financial performance for the quarter / year ended 31 March 2017 (Q4-17/FY-17, current quarter/current year). RIL’s digital venture Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio) has been touted as the largest startup in the world with investments announced to the tune of Rs 1,50,000 crore. The company plans capex at Rs 18,000 crore for Q1-18. The company says that capex investments will drop sharply from Q2-18 onward. This is indeed a huge sum, when one considers the fact that its nearest peer and the largest telecom operator in terms of subscriber base until Jio overtook it, Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), had capex of Rs 20,591.9 crore during the entire financial year 2016. It may be noted that Airtel has operations in other geographies besides India, and the capex number mentioned above includes those countries also. RIL claims that Jio contributes to more than 80 percent of data consumption in India.

Further, RIL plans capex of Rs 2,500 crore for fiscal 2018 for its organized retail segment – Reliance Retail Limited (Retail segment) that had a phenomenal performance during FY-17. Reliance Retail reported revenue of Rs 33,765 crore for fiscal 2017, 60.2 percent more than the Rs 21,075 crore reported in the previous year. Quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q), the segment’s revenue in Q4-17 at Rs 10,332 crore was 18.9 percent more than the Rs 8,688 crore in Q3-17 and year-on-year (y-o-y) it was 83 percent more than the Rs 5,646 crore in Q4-16.

The Retail segment’s EBIT in FY-17 at Rs 784 crore (2.3 percent EBIT margin) was 55.6 percent more than the Rs 504 crore (2.4 percent EBIT margin) in the previous year. Q4-17 EBIT at Rs 243 crore (2.4 percent EBIT margin) was 5.2 percent more that Rs 231 crore (2.7 percent EBIT margin) and 89.8 percent more y-o-y than Rs 128 crore (2.3 percent EBIT margin).

The Retail segment’s Business PBIT in FY-17 at Rs 1,203 crore was 40.4 percent more than the Rs 857 crore in FY-16. Business PBIT in Q4-17 at Rs 366 crore was 9.9 percent more q-o-q than Rs 333 crore and 65.6 percent more y-o-y than Rs 221 crore.

RIL’s Revenue (turnover) increased by 12.3 percent in FY-17 to Rs 3,30,180 crore from Rs 2,93,298 crore in FY-16. The company’s revenue increased 10.3 percent q-o-q to Rs 92,889 crore in Q4-17 as compared to Rs 84,189 crore and increased 45.2 percent y-o-y from Rs 63,954 crore.

Overall RIL reported record annual consolidated net profit of Rs 29,901 crore in FY-17, up 18.8 percent as compared to the Rs 25,171 crore in FY-16. Consolidated net profit for Q4-17 at Rs 8,046 crore was 6.8 percent higher q-o-q as compared to Rs 7,533 crore and was 12.3 percent higher y-o-y than the Rs 7,167 crore.

Note: The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee - Rs (also conventionally represented by INR). The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:
(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.
(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.