RIL Q2 Results: Five Key Highlights

Reliance Industries Ltd. announced its second-quarter results, reporting an 11% increase in net profit to Rs 19,323 crore for the quarter ended September 2024. Despite this growth, the oil-to-telecom conglomerate faced limited overall growth in the second quarter of the current financial year as negative pressure on gross refining margins impacted its oil-to-chemicals segment. However, robust performances in the retail and telecom sectors helped offset some of these challenges.

"I am happy to note that during this quarter Reliance once again demonstrated the resilience of its diversified business portfolio. Our performance reflects robust growth in digital services and upstream business. This helped partially offset weak contribution from O2C business, which was impacted by unfavourable global demand-supply dynamics," said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, in an official statement.

The company's oil-to-chemical segment reported an Ebitda decline of 23.7% to Rs 12,413 crore, with margins down 300 basis points to 8%, compared to 11% in the previous year. Additionally, exports fell 15.7% year-on-year to Rs 70,631 crore.

Here are five major highlights from Reliance Industries Ltd.'s second-quarter earnings report:

• Net Profit and Revenue: RIL's net profit rose 11% sequentially to Rs 19,323 crore, exceeding Bloomberg's consensus estimate of Rs 18,814 crore, while the revenue decreased by 0.3% to Rs 2.31 lakh crore, below the Bloomberg estimate of Rs 2.36 lakh crore.

• Ebitda and Margins: Ebitda increased by 0.8% to Rs 39,058 crore, though it fell short of Bloomberg's estimate of Rs 40,438 crore. The margin improved to 16.9%, compared to 16.7% in the previous quarter.

• Net Debt: As of Sept. 30, 2024, net debt was marginally lower at Rs 116,438 crore, compared to Rs 1,17,727 crore on Sept. 30, 2023. Cash and cash equivalents increased by 5.55% quarter-on-quarter to Rs 2,19,899 crore.

• Oil & Gas segment: The firm's revenue fell 6% year-on-year to Rs 6,222 crore on lower price realisation. The earnings were partly offset by an increase in gas and condensate volumes in the KGD6 and CBM fields.

• Reliance Jio: The telecom major reported a net profit up 14% to Rs 6,231 crore versus Rs 5,445 crore. The company reported a revenue up 7.0% to Rs 28,338 crore versus Rs 26,478 crore.

Shares of Reliance Industries rose as much as 0.58% during the day to Rs 2,760.15 apiece on the NSE, closing 0.03% higher at Rs 2,745.05 per share. This performance is in contrast to a 0.66% advance in the benchmark Nifty 50.

Over the last 12 months, RIL shares have increased by 17.11%, with a year-to-date rise of 5.98%.

Twenty-seven out of the 37 analysts tracking RIL have a 'buy' rating on the stock, seven recommend 'hold' and three suggest 'sell', according to Bloomberg data. The average of 12-month analyst price targets implies a potential upside of 20.5%.