BENGALURU: The Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) organized retail segment - Reliance Retail,  continued its growth momentum and profitability in the quarter ended 30 June 2106 (Q1-17, current quarter). RIL’s organised retail segment contributes to less than 1 percent to gross revenues and yet, in terms of sheer numbers is bigger than most of other major players in the organised retail space in India. 

Reliance Retail revenue for Q1-17 grew 45.8 percent year-over-year (y-o-y) to Rs 6,666 crore from Rs 4,572 crore in the corresponding year ago quarter (Q1-16). Quarter-over-quarter (q-o-q), the retail segment’s revenue also grew at double digits – a remarkable 18.6 percent from Rs 5,646 crore in the immediate trailing quarter (Q4-16). RIL says that the increase in turnover was led by growth in digital, fashion & lifestyle and petroleum products.

Note: The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee - Rs (also conventionally represented by INR). The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:
(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.
(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.

Reliance Retail reported segment EBIT (Earnings before interest and taxes) of Rs 148 crore (2.2 percent EBIT margin), 31 percent higher y-o-y as compared to Rs 113 crore (2.5 percent EBIT margin) and 15.6 percent higher q-o-q than Rs 128 crore (2.3 percent EBIT margin).

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), a subsidiary of RIL, extended its trial services to all LYF devices users under the Jio LYF preview offer. (LYF is the mobile handset brand of Reliance Retail) This has enabled testing of all the services to customers outside the initial set of test users. RJIL now has over 15 lakh test users on its network claims an RIL release. The average monthly consumption per user is in excess of 26 GB and is increasing rapidly. Average voice usage per month is over 355 minutes. The test program will be progressively upgraded into commercial operations in coming months says RIL.

RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said, “At Reliance Jio, we have built an entire ecosystem that will allow Indians to live the digital life to the fullest. This transformational ecosystem consists of broadband connectivity, devices and powerful applications and services which will be available to every consumer in India.”

RIL numbers

For Q1-17, RIL achieved a turnover of Rs 71,451 crore ($ 10.6 billion), a decrease of 13.4 percent, as compared to Rs 82,509 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. The company says that decline in revenue was led by the 26 percent y-o-y decline in benchmark (Brent) oil price which averaged at $ 45.6/bbl (bbl is oil barrel) in Q1-17 as compared to $ 61.9/bbl in the corresponding period of the previous year. Impact of lower prices was partially offset by higher volumes in refining and petrochemicals segments.

Profit after tax including exceptional items was higher by 18.1 percent at Rs 7,113 crore ($ 1.1 billion) as against Rs 6,024 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Said Ambani, ““At Reliance, we continued to harness the power of our integrated energy and materials business portfolio. We maintained our earnings growth trajectory during this quarter, as the world grappled with new dimensions of economic uncertainty. Though regional refining margins trended downwards, our high-conversion refining system was able to take advantage of higher margins on middle distillates and wider discounts on sour crude oils. Our refining business delivered another record performance and achieved industry leading GRM (gross refining margin). Our petrochemicals business has a wide product portfolio, superior feedstock linkages and serves high-growth end-markets in India. As a result, we achieved yet another quarter of margin expansion in petrochemicals business and delivered EBIT growth of more than 20.5 percent y-o-y.”