Reliance Industries Limited

Good evening and welcome to the first quarter FY24 Financial Resources presentation of Reliance Industries Limited. I will now request Srikanth to walk you through our consolidated performance followed by a deep dive on each of our business segments. Over to you, Srikanth.

Yeah, thanks, Shani. Starting off with financial performance, I did 42,000 crores up 5.1% year-on-year. This growth really masks the growth that we have seen in Jio, which is 17%, in retail of 34%, in upstream of 47%, and the fact that, of course, the O2C was down 23%. As you know, the context being first quarter, F523 was... It was an exceptional quarter given the dislocation coming on account of the Russian-Ukraine conflict, which had driven margins to historic highs. And as you know, Mukhusi, it was the highest ever earnings. And from then on, as you know, the graphs have declined between 60 to 70 percent. PVC specifically in petrochemicals was down 35 percent. So the context being that it was an abnormally high quarter in that same time last year. And, you know, those numbers are corrections of 4 to C that you see is more a reflection of the highs that have reached then. So as I highlighted, that was more than offset by the strong performance across our businesses. Net profit at 18,258 crores, lowered by 6% on the back of higher depreciation and finance costs. On the consumer business side, growth continues to be strong with an expanded physical and digital footprint. We have 314 million transactions, which is up 43%. Very strong growth across formats, grocery especially at 59%. And when you look at Jio, the highlight was the addition of 9.2 million customers and the good adoption of 5G. On the energy business side, I talked about the fall impacts, and I highlighted the extent of the fall that we have seen. But when you look at the numbers per se, if you look at it over a three-year average basis, it is higher than that. And we have seen strong performance coming on the oil and gas side, both realization as well as volumes were pretty good, and NGA1 production has started. On the retail side, again, as I said, 34% growth on EBITDA on a year-on-year basis, 20% on revenue. We continue to add and expand 555 stores, taking us close to 18,500. Different metrics, be it footfalls, be it registered customers, all that the traction is good. You know, for example, registered customers are 38%, footfalls are 42%. So engagement is pretty strong. And importantly, the digital commerce and e-commerce continues to be at 18%, but on a significantly expanded revenue base. As you know, we completed Metro Cash and Carry acquisition, and the integration is underway. On the digital side, EBITDA up 17%, revenues up 12.5%, ARPU up close to 181, which is a 2.8% growth year-on-year. As I highlighted, the number of customer ads is something for us to highlight, 9.2 million customers, taking our total customer base to 448.5 billion customers. And when you look at data traffic, it continues to be strong, 28% growth with increased usage across the board. So in a sense, retail has benefited from the network and the infrastructure investments that we have been doing. On OTC side, EBITDA at 15,300 crores, as I mentioned, down 23% year-on-year. I highlighted the exceptional strong year about water. I also highlighted the fact that margins have been significantly lower. When you look at it from point of view of fuel cracks, clearly still the demand is good and it keeps the cracks at above mid-cycle levels. However, on downstream, you know, downstream margins have definitely been more muted given the supply overhang as well as the fact that you do see a bit of subdued demand in as far as downstream chemicals are concerned. However, having said that, the India demand environment is pretty strong. Oil demand up almost 5%, polymer up 16%, polyester up 5%. of 5% and as you have seen there is a fairly conducive environment as well as fuel retailing is concerned. On oil and gas at 4,015 crores of EBITDA which is 47% higher year-on-year benefiting both from volume and price and our production now is at steady state production is about close to 21 mm CMD and As I said, production is up 18%. Price realization has been up. It's now about 10.81, so another 10% close to that. And we have successfully placed 29 MMSCMD of KGD6 gas, essentially signed GSPS with our customers. And it is across a variety of businesses. So these are the numbers when you bring them together. Overall, when you look at revenues down 5%, but we must keep in mind that group prices have been lowered by 31% overall, but the fact that we had strong performance in retail and geo has meant that the revenue fall is only about 4.7. With that growth, we talked about 5.1%, and I talked about the strong traction in the consumer business side, net profit impacted with higher finance cost and depreciation. This is something that we have been telegraphing across the whole of the last set of quarters about the increase. But as you can see, finance cost on a quarter-on-quarter basis is almost flat. When you look at it from a Q point of view, though BTE is up almost 2%, the net profit is down 14%. And I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the previous quarter, the tax rate provision was at 11.5%. as we transitioned into the new tax regime from FY25. So this quarter on, it is at 25%. So the normalization of tax rate is really what explains the quarter-on-quarter net profit fall. So this is just the pictorial representation of the bridge. You've seen the fall in O2C, but across the board you can see each of the other businesses delivering strong performance. And also on the other side, benefiting from the fact that in the same time last year, there was this impact of rising yields on the portfolio, but obviously now it isn't there, so you can see that. swing in terms of profitability. But as important is the fact that you're seeing rising contributions from other businesses with RTC International in Singapore or METL or India in Sports. All of them have been showing strong performance and that explains the increase on the other segment. And this is the quarter on quarter bridge. Again, OTC muted or a little weak, but offsetting performances across the explanation remain probably the same on the other side too, for the other segment too. And per capita usage is the one I would definitely highlight now at 25 GB a month. So on the net debt side, I would like to highlight that the net debt figure now reflects the demerger of JFSL. Around 15,500 crores of cash and liquid investments have been transferred from RIL's consolidated balance sheet to JFSL as part of the scheme. So now JFSL will have a total liquid asset base of 20,700 crores, including cash equivalents in RIL-associated Reliance Services and Holding Limited, which is now, as you know, part of JFSL. So in short, we are talking about JFSL having 20,700 crores. Net debt has remained flat despite accelerated capex on rollout of infrastructure in the consumer business. The capex for the quarter was 39,600 crores, which was funded largely by all the internal cash flows of 33,000 crores. And the important point again here is, you know, it's accelerated because the rollout of 5G network is on track to be completed by December 23rd. With this, I'm handing it over to Kiran.

Thank you, Srikant. Let me start the update for this quarter with our 5G rollout, which has been underway since October of last year. Happy to announce that we are ahead of time with respect to how we're looking to complete this plan. Our plan on record is to complete our pan-India rollout before the end of this calendar year, December 23rd. You can see pictorially already how that 5G rollout has come along. What you see in yellow is the band versus what you see substantially making rapid progress is what is shown in green. 65% of the scope is already completed, and as we speak, more than 90% of the census towns are already covered by Jio's 5G signal. If you look at the number of sites which are deployed, 115,000 5G sites already deployed in Pan India, which roughly translates to nearly 700,000 5G cells, which is contributing to this rollout. So all in all, we are on track to complete what is going to be the fastest 5G rollout anywhere in the world, creating a Pan India coverage for a large country like India within just over a year. If you look at what that has translated to, this entire 5G leadership that we are establishing is also resulting in accelerated customer acquisition numbers. If you look at how the net addition numbers have looked quarter on quarter, you can see that it has been growing quite healthily. When we started our rollout in late last year, the number was around 5.3 million net ads. Then it grew to nearly 6.5 million, and now we are approaching the 10 million mark of net ads. In fact, this number is nearly 1.7 times of what it was just a couple of quarters ago. And obviously, this is the net ad picture, but if you look at even from a retention perspective and also net potent coming from other operators, all of this is being driven by the superior network quality that is being established through both the 5G and the 4G deployments which are underway. So if you look at also how this number has grown year on year, subscriber growth, in a climate where the overall industry growth is very nearly zero, pretty flat growth, what you're seeing is why the rest of the industry has seen degrowth of nearly 3.7%. That has largely been driven by nearly 7% growth year on year in geo-subscriber base. And if you look at the net portents, we were about more than two and a half times the net portents for us as compared to our nearest competitor. While the 5G growth is really driving the top end with respect to quality customers, people who are really keen to upgrade their phones and take advantage of this network, at the bottom of the pyramid, which is really this longstanding vision, which has also been shared by our chairman pretty early, which is to make India 2G moot. I think just recently we announced this product, which is called Jio Bharat. This is a unique go-to-market approach where we have designed this instrument, which can be delivered at under a thousand rupees price point with respect to the phone. But unlike in the past, what we are doing is really creating an ecosystem. So not just us, but this designed by Jio product is now being supported by multiple OEMs. And all of these are being created in India. The entire supply chain and the assembly is being done in India through multiple OEMs with Jio as the technology provider. So it has really been received well in the recent past few days. Our idea is to quickly deploy about a million of these devices through our own offering as well as through the OEM partners and to learn from it and adapt in a very agile way, improve this product rapidly and continue that growth. We're pretty confident that this device, both from a price point perspective and also from completely disruptive offerings. So it supports video streaming, including live video streaming on such an affordable device and also things like UPI. So really the India stack coming to life, even at this price point on the device. So all in all, this entire package really translates into welcoming customers. what used to be 2G customers stuck with 2G devices onto now the full 4G ecosystem while still having the same level of affordability that they had with 2G devices. So we are really looking forward to learning quickly from this initial deployment and to really push ahead that vision of 2G MOOC India as quickly as possible. GeoFiber coming to our home rollout. Today, glad to announce that Of all the wired broadband net ads which are happening in the country, GeoFiber is driving nearly 80% of that net ads. And that has largely been driven by, obviously, a superior product offering, but also very competitive and very innovative tariff plans, which have really made it more attractive to customers. And if you look at what this has led to, it's nearly a 50% year-on-year growth in the subscriber base that we have. Also, the good news is nearly 98% of the new additions are coming on the post-paid plan, which obviously means a higher quality customer base as well as obviously higher stickiness. We are also really pushed to accelerate this rollout through a partnership program. So really we are partnering with the local cable operators as one of the channels. They have deep presence into the towns of India. They have great relationships and obviously they have physical presence in those catchments. So really we are looking now to that partnership to really accelerate this rollout. Already we have partnerships live in more than 1,000 towns, and that's also really one of the secrets behind how we've been able to grow this fast. Of course, in terms of even data, this growth has been around 50% year on year, but if you see the the data traffic on geo fiber that has grown even higher, which has largely been driven by even higher engagement of the, of the customers, uh, over the past year. Uh, looking forward, obviously we have spoken about this, uh, in, in, in the past updates. Uh, but while the, the fiber rollout is, is accelerating, we are also looking to even accelerate that further by using what we call fiber, which is delivering fiber like experiences using wireless. Um, and, um, while we have the 5G rollout underway, what we have done is we have created a very dedicated slice because, as you know, we are a standalone network, standalone 5G architecture, which allows things like network slicing. So we have created a dedicated network slice for home connectivity in such a way that it does not conflict with, obviously, the mobility capacity that we are also rolling out. So in a way, we have created two lanes in our 5G highway, one indicator for the home rollout, air fiber, and while still continuing to serve our 5G mobile customers with the best network anywhere in the world. Of course, within the home, again, we are upgrading our Wi-Fi offering. As you know, our geo-fiber offering comes not just with the connectivity to the home, but also wall-to-wall Wi-Fi coverage. So we are now upgrading our Wi-Fi offering to Wi-Fi 6. So our home gateways now going forward will be Wi-Fi 6 compatible, which also means better indoor coverage to Wi-Fi as well. Also, single sign-on. So along with our connectivity, we are also providing a set-top box along with – a bundled offering of pretty much all the OTT media applications, plus, of course, a number of other partner applications like YouTube, etc., all part of that set-top box offering. And what we are doing now is creating a single sign-on framework, which has already been there, but making it even more intuitive and stronger to even support the air fiber offering as well. And, of course, now with additional technologies coming in, we are also augmenting our network operations center and a service operations center so that not just the network quality but the end-to-end service experience of our user including of course the broadband coming into the home, the Wi-Fi within the home and obviously all these applications being delivered through the set-top box all can be monitored and any issues can be proactively addressed even before sometimes our customers are even able to highlight any problems that they may be facing. So all of this taken together between GeoFiber and GeoAirFiber means that we are accelerating our home broadband ambitions to connect as much as 100 million homes in the quickest possible time frame. Now coming to digital platforms, one of the success stories that we have had in the last quarter is GeoCinema and really using GeoCinema to showcase a streaming experience at scale around IPL as the initial showcase of what is possible. Obviously, even before IPL, we had already started introducing the geocinema capabilities through the FIFA as well as the women's IPL leading up to the men's IPL that we had. But with men's IPL, we really created world records in pretty much every category that we can think about when it comes to live streaming. 32 million concurrent users watching IPL at its peak. with more than 17 billion streams served over the season, obviously translating into nearly 160 billion minutes of watch time. And of course, all of this being done in multiple languages with all kinds of interactive features. And effectively, you know, this has really set the stage for the future. I think looking forward, we can see even more content coming through the streaming format as compared to what has traditionally been a linear broadcast-oriented format, which means obviously a set of superior watching experiences that all of the Jio customers can expect to have going forward. All of this has been done through what we call a glass-to-glass solution, which has been built by Jio platforms. Everything from Obviously, the lowest latency, showing a screen which is coming through the streaming format, through the cloud, even faster than it can be put on a screen, even through technologies like DTS, which are much simpler technologies. Production being supported, while traditionally we only had up to HD, but through the streaming format, we were able to support both 4K and 8K videos. Multiple cameras being offered simultaneously for users to choose from. Obviously, a pan-India content delivery, content distribution network that we were able to create from scratch to be able to support the delivery of this media at scale. Multiple other options for keeping the customers engaged, including things like Watch Party, where you can watch things with your friends. Play Along, which is obviously gamification of content, so that people can actually even consume interactive games while they're watching the match. a new monetization model so this was entirely free from a subscription perspective but behind the scenes obviously we stitched up our own ad platform so that we were able to monetize it through the ad monetization framework and like i said all of these being done in multiple languages simultaneously Some of it obviously being also curated content and curated commentary that we were introducing from GeoCinema itself. So really an end-to-end solution which really proved the point that India is ready for streaming and really migrating away from the linear model that the world is moving away from, but India could do it much faster. One of the other things which is also one of the other platform areas which is also finding traction is our IoT platform. So everything from monitoring assets to utilities to things like transportation to even things like agriculture. So now our IoT platform slowly but surely has been gaining adoption. If you look at the right, there are these logos, everybody from Mahindra, Havel, Schneider, Tata Power, and then it comes to automotive partnerships with the likes of BMW, Volkswagen, Ather, and on the Agri side, people like Amul. All of that really using the power of the sensors that we have designed and embedded into many of these solutions that we are using, supported by the narrowband IoT network, which is FanIndia, and in many cases also providing the backend analytics and cloud capabilities, all packaged as one end-to-end solution that we are able to offer across these industry verticals, across these customers. So again, this is an exciting area for us looking forward And this will be a very strong source of additional revenue for JPL looking forward. I will invite Anshuman to talk about our financial and operating metrics.