Reliance Industries on Friday reported a 19 per cent jump in net profit for the fourth quarter of the last fiscal to Rs 19,299 crore from Rs 16,203 crore a year ago.

All the three divisions of the company — oil-to-petrochemicals (O2C), retail and telecom — reported strong earnings.

A stronger margin from refining crude oil into products such as petrol and diesel, resilient fuel export earnings on lower windfall tax and chemical business witnessing a buoyancy from the use of ethane as feedstock drove the oil-to-chemical (O2C) business.

While higher subscriber additions and stable ARPU (average revenue per user) helped boost the telecom segment’s earnings, the retail segment was driven by an increased store footprint.

Analysts had forecast a decline in net profit as they saw continued weakness in petrochemicals margins. But using ethane imported from the US helped the company as its prices softened during the quarter.

The total income rose to Rs 2.19 lakh crore from Rs 2.14 lakh crore a year back.

Sequentially, the net profit was up 22 per cent from Rs 15,792 crore in October-December 2022.

For the full fiscal (April 2022 to March 2023), Reliance reported its highest-ever net profit of Rs 66,702 crore on a revenue touching close to Rs 9 lakh crore. The firm had a net profit of Rs 60,705 crore on a revenue of Rs 7.36 lakh crore in the preceding fiscal.

Operationally, all businesses were firing all cylinders. EBITDA at Rs 41,389 crore, was up 22 per cent year-on-year.

The mainstay oil refining and petrochemicals business, called O2C, posted a 14.4 per cent rise in EBITDA to Rs 16,293 crore. While digital services, which includes telecom, EBITDA at Rs 12,767 crore was 17 per cent higher, retail EBITDA was up 33 per cent at Rs 4,769 crore. Oil and gas EBITDA more than doubled to Rs 3,801 crore — an eight-year high.

In retail, Reliance increased the number of stores to 18,040 from 17,225 in the preceding quarter. Store footfall soared 41.3 per cent to 219 million.

Reliance said the windfall profit tax on the export of diesel and ATF impacted the profit for the quarter at Rs 711 crore, down from Rs 1,898 crore in the preceding three months.

Retail business net profit was up 13 per cent to Rs 2,415 crore on the addition of more stores, growth across consumption baskets and rising contribution from digital channels.

Jio Platforms

RIL’s digital services arm Jio Platforms reported a 15.6 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 4,984 crore. The company reported a net profit of Rs 4,313 crore a year ago.

Its revenue from operations in the reported quarter increased 14.4 per cent to Rs 25,465 crore from Rs 22,261 crore in the March 2022 quarter.

The company’s annual revenue crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in 2022-23.

Jio said it has already deployed around 60,000 sites for 5G services across 700MHz and 3500MHz bands and is on track to complete the pan India rollout by December 2023.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) increased 6.7 per cent to Rs 178.8 from Rs 167.6 in the March 2022 quarter.

However, the APRU, a key parameter to measure the growth of telecom companies, remained almost flat on a sequential-quarter basis.