Despite slowing down of operations during the second wave of Covid19, Reliance Industries Limited on Friday reporter strong performance when compared on yearly basis. However, quarter on quarter the performance seems to be affected by the pandemic disruptions. The overall performance of the company was dominated by better than expected oil refining petrochemicals and telecom business. Due to the second wave of Covid, retail business got affected.
For the quarter ending on June 2021, India’s largest company registered revenue growth of 57.5 percent compared to June 2020. The total revenue for the first quarter of 2021-22 for RIL stood at Rs1,58,862 crore. Net profit for the company was Rs13,806 crore, an increase of 66.7 percent compared to the previous year.
However, quarterly (comparison between March and June), the company recorded 7.7 declines in revenues and an eight percent decline in profits. The quarterly numbers look disappointing because of 18 percent degrowth in revenues from the retail segment of the company. Due to localized lockdowns and curfews in most of the country, retail operations seem to have felt the pressure.
The retail business faced challenges in the operating environment due to the Covid19 situation. “The operating environment was challenging through the quarter as restrictions were enforced across several States due to the second wave impacting operations, supply chain and mobility. Given the constraints, footfalls during the quarter were at 46 percent of pre-Covid period and were comparable to the same period last year but significantly lower than 88 percent footfalls in the preceding quarter,” the company said in a statement.
For the telecom business, revenues continued to scale up on additions in subscribers and higher data consumption. During the quarter Jio Platform Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance registered revenue growth of 8 percent compared to the previous quarter. The company added 4.23 crore new customers and total data traffic was 20.3 billion GB during the quarter; a 38.5 growth.
“I am happy that our company has delivered robust growth despite facing a highly challenging operating environment caused by the second wave of the COVID pandemic. The results of the First Quarter of FY2022 demonstrate the resilience of Reliance’s diversified portfolio of businesses that cater to large parts of the consumption basket,” Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited said in a statement after the results.
Reliance Industries announced its March quarter results on April 30. At the time of the announcement share price had closed at Rs1,994.45. At the close of trade on Friday, the share was quoted at Rs2105.20. Between the two results, the share price has gained 5.55 percent compared to an increase of 8.6 percent in Sensex.
