Reliance registers 17.3% hike in quarterly net profit

Reliance Industries announced record net profit for the fourth quarter, clocked at Rs. 9,435 crores, primarily backed by favourable outcomes in the refining and petrochemical business.

The company, who announced results of the fourth quarter and fiscal, reported a 17.3 percent hike in profit from last year's figure of Rs 8,046 crore, primarily backed by an increase in the start-up of petrochemicals projects and realisations for refining and petrochemical products.

Apart from that, the conglomerate reported a 21.8 percent increase in revenue to Rs. 90,894 crore, while exports rose 32.5 percent to Rs. 51,295 crore in the fourth quarter of the fiscal ended March 31, 2018, backed by higher volumes and product prices in the refining and petrochemical business.

Furthermore, Reliance-owned Network18 Media and Investments Limited reported consolidated revenue of Rs. 825 crores as against Rs. 388 crores in the corresponding period of the previous year, led by the impact of subsidiary TV18 acquiring control of entertainment JV Viacom18, partly offset by HomeShop18 ceasing to be a subsidiary due to its share-swap acquisition of ShopCJ during the quarter.

"FY 2017-18 was a landmark year for Reliance, where we established several records on both operating and financial parameters. Reliance has become the first Indian company to record PBDIT of over USD 10 billion with each of our key businesses - refining, petrochemicals, retail and digital services achieving record earnings performance. Substantial synergies, productivity gains and production growth in our energy and materials business have allowed us to perform at very competitive levels despite the uptrend in oil prices through the year," said Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani.

Meanwhile, the company's telecom network, Jio, reported a net profit of Rs. 723 crore, backed by sustained growth in subscriber base to 186.6 million and strong customer traction on digital offerings.

Furthermore, the standalone revenue from operations for Jio was Rs. 7,128 crore, thus seeing a 3.6 percent quarterly hike, and standalone net profit of Rs. 510 crore.

The company revealed that total wireless data traffic during the quarter was 506 crore GB, while total voice traffic during the quarter was 37,218 crore minutes.