RIL m-cap hits ₹19.6 lakh cr as share zooms to 52-week high

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL) shares surged one-year high today, taking the company's m-cap to ₹19.6 lakh crore and retaining its top position in the BSE’s top 100 companies by market capitalisation.

The shares opened a gap up during the morning trade and rose to an intra-day high of ₹2,891, its fresh 52-week high, before settling at ₹2,891.90 at 2 PM on the BSE. At the time of filing the report, 5.92 lakh shares were changing hands at the counter against the two-week average of 4.60 lakh. With the share price hitting a record high, RIL's m-cap has also soared to ₹19.5 lakh crore.

The surge in the RIL shares was witnessed following reports that suggested Mukesh Ambani's media business could merge with Walt Disney's India unit by as early as February, and that the termination of Sony-Zee's $10 billion deal poses brighter prospects for the company.

The RIL shares have surged 5.53% in the past week, while the scrip has given an 11.87% return in the past month. In the six-month and January months so far (year-to-date period), the RIL shares have surged 13.57% and 11.76%, respectively.

RIL posted good Q3 FY24 results this month, with better-than-expected earnings across standalone, retail and Jio. The company's consolidated PAT stood at ₹17,265 crore, which was up 9.3% y-o-y but down just 0.7% q-o-q, primarily driven by strong performance across businesses and marginally lower tax rate of 24.6%.

RIL's consolidated EBITDA of ₹40,656 crore, which was up 16% y-o-y; and down 0.8% q-o-q, was above estimate by many analysts. The company's oil & gas segment’s EBITDA was up 21% q-o-q led by higher gas production while that of O2C declined by 21% q-o-q to ₹11,069 crore.

RIL’s retail business posted strong revenue growth of 24%/8% y-o-y/q-o-q to ₹74,373 crore (2% above our estimate) and EBITDA margin remained stable q-o-q at 8.1% (in-line) in Q3FY24.

Reliance Jio’s EBITDA surged 3% q-o-q but its ARPU remained flat at ₹181.7. Jio Platforms posted revenue growth of 3.1% q-o-q to ₹27,697 crore, which was supported by robust net subscriber addition of 11.2 million q-o-q to 471 million subscribers as of December 2023. PAT was up by 2.8% q-o-q to ₹5,445 crore.

BNP Paribas-led brokerage Sharekhan has maintained a "BUY" rating on the RIL stock, with a revised SoTP-based PT of ₹3,130. "We firmly believe that it is a compelling long-term investment bet given strong prospects across business and potential value unlocking from retail, digital services, and financial services portfolio would add to shareholders’ returns over the coming years." Another brokerage major Prabhudas Lilladhar has given an "Accumulate" rating to the stock, with a CMP of ₹2,657 and a target price of ₹2,912.

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