RIL's m-cap increases by Rs 1.5 trillion in four days post Facebook deal

Shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) gained 4 per cent to Rs 1,475 on the BSE on Monday in the early morning deal. The stock has surged 19 per cent in the past four trading days after the company announced $5.7 billion equity deal with Facebook. In comparison, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex has gained 4.1 per cent during the same period.

RIL on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 announced that Facebook would invest Rs 43,547 crore ($5.7 billion) in the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Jio Platforms to expand its presence in India.

A sharp rally in stock price has seen the market captialisation (market-cap) of RIL increase by Rs 1.5 trillion in four trading days. The company’s market-cap stood at Rs 9.35 trillion in the intra-day trade today, from Rs 7.83 trillion on April 21, 2020, the exchange data shows.

The stock hit a two-month high today and has recovered 68 per cent from its last month low of Rs 876 touched on March 23, in an intra-day deal. RIL's m-cap touched an all-time high level of Rs 10.17 trillion on December 19, 2019 on closing level basis.

This deal could have far-reaching benefits for Jio Platforms, presenting a plethora of opportunities in its fiber and digital business endeavors. The partnership would accelerate RJio's digital monetization drive; management's renewed focus on digital ecosystem would open up multiple new e-commerce opportunities as the company plans to leverage JioMart and WhatsApp to enable small Indian kirana stores to transact digitally with their customers.

“Facebook stake purchase in Jio Platform positions RIL as a global digital services player and opens the possibility of more deals in future. This will help allay leverage concerns and showcase RIL’s ability to create world class assets and monetize at right value with global majors. The deal will help strengthen RIL’s balance sheet and allay concerns on deleveraging, especially on potential delay in completing the Aramco deal,” analysts at Prabhudas Lilladher said in an event update report.

“The cash inflow from the Facebook deal is expected to reduce RIL’s consolidated net debt (Rs 1.53 trillion as on December 2019) by 29 per cent and also improve net debt/EBITDA ratio to 1.2x in FY2021E. Moreover, the commercial partnership between Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail and WhatsApp would accelerate Jio’s new commerce initiative and would be crucial to build a digital ecosystem and leverage the JioMart platform using WhatsApp,” the brokerage firm Sharekhan said. It maintains ‘buy’ rating on the stock with an unchanged price target of Rs 1,710 per share.

At 10:26 am, RIL was trading 3.5 per cent higher at Rs 1,466 on the BSE, against 2.3 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex. A combined around 1.5 million shares changed hands on the counter on the NSE and BSE so far.