Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) reported a stronger-than-expected performance for the June quarter, with double-digit growth across its key businesses--oil-to-chemicals (O2C), digital services and retail--helping the conglomerate weather one of the biggest energy-market shocks in recent years.
The company posted record recurring operating profit and its highest-ever recurring quarterly net profit, even as reported earnings were affected by a one-off gain in the year-ago period.
Consolidated revenue rose 25 percent from a year earlier to Rs 3.40 lakh crore, driven by robust momentum across O2C, digital services and retail, all of which delivered double-digit revenue growth.
Recurring consolidated EBITDA rose 10.1 percent from a year earlier to a record Rs 54,067 crore, while profit before tax increased 8.5 percent to Rs 30,630 crore.
Recurring profit after tax (before minority interest) climbed 6.1 percent to an all-time high of Rs 23,196 crore.
Reported profit, however, declined by 24.6 percent because the corresponding quarter last year included a one-time gain of Rs 8,924 crore from the sale of its stake in Asian Paints Ltd.
The company invested Rs 38,682 crore during the quarter, with operating cash flows comfortably funding capital expenditure. Net debt remained largely stable at Rs 1.23 lakh crore at the end of June.
"Reliance has made a steady start to FY27, with all businesses delivering strong operating performance. Our diverse business portfolio has once again demonstrated its resilience in a quarter which witnessed continuing geopolitical tensions and volatile commodity markets," said Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani.
Jio Platforms
Jio Platforms continued to be one of the biggest growth engines. Digital services revenue grew 20 percent from a year earlier, outpacing the core connectivity business as cloud computing, content, Internet of Things and managed services gained traction. EBITDA at Jio Platforms rose 15 percent to Rs 20,865 crore, with margins expanding to 53.3 percent. The telecom business ended the quarter with 533.3 million subscribers, including 285 million 5G users, while fixed broadband subscribers rose to 28.6 million. Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased 3.3 percent from a year earlier to Rs 215.6.
Reliance said data consumption remained strong, with total traffic rising 27 percent from a year earlier to 69 exabytes. JioAirFiber retained its global leadership with more than 14 million subscribers, while the company added more than 73 million 5G users and 8.6 million fixed broadband customers over the past year.
"Jio's performance across mobility, home broadband and enterprise services remained strong, driving healthy earnings growth of 15% Y-o-Y. During the quarter, Jio Platforms Limited filed its DRHP with SEBI, a significant step towards its public listing," said Ambani in a statement.
Anshuman Thakur, Senior Vice President of Jio Platforms, said that digital services growth outpaced connectivity growth, a trend seen over the last several quarters. “It's of a smaller base, but nonetheless, it's growing and growing well,” he said.
He further added that 5G data traffic is now one and a half times the 4G data traffic on the network, growing much more rapidly.
“Another key focus for us has been migrating more customers from 2G to 4G and 5G. We are continuing to drive this transition by expanding digital offerings through JioBharat devices, offering affordable plans, and working closely with OEM partners. This remains a strategic priority for us,” said Thakur.
Commenting on the Jio Platforms results, Akash M Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, said, “Jio has established itself as a deep tech company and demonstrated the velocity of innovation across multiple advanced technologies. This is underlined by our strong patent portfolio which has been recognised globally. We intend to use these technologies to offer an ever-expanding bouquet of services to every citizen of India and drive industry-leading growth for many years to come.”
Retail & FMCG
Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd also delivered healthy underlying growth, with grocery, consumer electronics and fashion all expanding at a double-digit pace. Revenue from the retail business rose 7.4 percent to Rs 90,408 crore, while adjusted for the demerger of Reliance Consumer Products, gross revenue increased 11.6 percent.
EBITDA of Reliance Retail fell 1.1 percent to Rs 6,309 crore, with margins narrowing by 80 basis points to 7.9 percent due to scale-up of digital commerce.
The retail network added 252 stores during the quarter, taking the total to 20,169, while customer transactions jumped 46 percent from a year earlier to 568 million. Registered customers increased to 396 million.
"Reliance Retail delivered resilient growth this quarter, with steady performance across all consumption formats and channels. The consumer products business is growing rapidly with the portfolio of FMCG brands gaining real traction with Indian consumers," said Ambani.
Growth was particularly strong in digital commerce, where grocery orders more than doubled, while Ajio Rush continued to scale rapidly and the Shein platform maintained its growth momentum. JioMart continued to expand, servicing about 5,500 PIN codes across more than 1,200 cities. Consumer electronics also posted healthy gains, led by air conditioners, laptops, mobile phones and small appliances.
Dinesh Taluja, Chief Financial Officer, Reliance Retail said that overall user transactions have grown 46 percent, while revenue growth was about 12 percent indicating that the number of transactions is growing much faster than revenue. “That's a function of the growing contribution of digital commerce in overall revenues,” he said.
Taluja added that Reliance Retail is looking to grow its online businesses pretty rapidly this year. “We will scale this online business aggressively, but with the right unit economics,” said Taluja.
On the FMCG side, Ketan Mody, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of Reliance Consumer Products Ltd (RCPL), said that all FMCG categories showed significant momentum in the June quarter. “Home care, personal care, processed food, confectionery, chocolates-everything had started kind of giving us good growth,” he said.
RCPL now has more than 5,000 distributors and reaches more than 3 million retail outlets, he added.
Commenting on the retail and FMCG unit earnings, Isha M. Ambani, Executive Director, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited said, “Reliance Retail delivered resilient performance in Q1 FY27, with growth across the key consumption baskets. Our continued investment in digital commerce underscores the transformative power of our digital platforms. Our expanding customer base, widest store network, and growing omni-channel capabilities position us well to continue fulfilling every need, every dream, for every Indian, every day."
0ils to Chemicals
The O2C business benefited from a sharp recovery in transportation fuel cracks and stronger downstream chemical margins, lifting EBITDA by 17.2 percent to a four-year high of Rs 17,010 crore. The business was aided by significantly higher gasoline, diesel and aviation turbine fuel margins, although gains were partly offset by the windfall tax on fuels, under-recoveries in domestic fuel retailing and lower production due to planned maintenance shutdowns. The Jio-bp fuel retail network expanded to 2,221 outlets.
Anant M. Ambani, Executive Director, Reliance Industries Limited, said "Our Energy business delivered a stellar performance in a backdrop of macro challenges arising out of the largest energy market dislocation. The results reflect the inherent strength of deeply integrated O2C operations and our agile response to changes in the market environment. Along with delivering a superior financial performance, I am particularly proud of the efforts our business undertook to protect Indian consumers with uninterrupted supply of essential fuels."
Commenting on the performance of the Oils-to-Chemicals (O2C) business, Srinivasan T, Chief Operating Officer, O2C (Refining) at RIL, said, "Fuel cracks have been good. Crude prices have risen, but because of production in the US, ethane has been good. Refining capacity in both Russia and the Middle East was affected, which resulted in good numbers, but there were also challenges. There were under recoveries on our retail sales,” said
“We saw freight rates rising by 10X (due to war). EBITDA margin is a bit lower because of an increase in insurance and freight rates,” he said.
Amit Chaturvedi, President, Petrochemicals at RIL, added that last quarter was an absolute roller coaster and volatility in raw materials prices was phenomenal.
“Cost of making ethylene from naphtha shot up like anything due to increased prices and freight rates. Availability of natural gas was also affected severely due to disruption in supplies from Qatar,” he said.
Oil & Gas
The oil and gas business remained largely stable, with EBITDA of Rs 4,973 crore, supported by higher condensate output from KG-D6 and increased coal-bed methane (CBM) production. However, natural declines in KG-D6 gas output, lower gas price realisation and higher government levies weighed on earnings. KG-D6 gas price realisation was lower by 10.8 percent and CBM price realisation was up 21.2 percent from a year earlier.
Sanjay Barman Roy, President – E&P, commented that in KGD6, while there is natural decline, it is lower than anticipated. “We are trying to offset natural decline in KGD6,” he said.
“We've seen gas prices being much higher because of stranded volumes in the Strait of Hormuz. We saw prices come down after the ceasefire, but it is still higher than pre-war levels. We can get better price realisations,” he added.
Media
JioHotstar also reported its highest-ever quarterly engagement, averaging 530 million monthly active users, while IPL 2026 became the biggest-ever T20 event across digital and television platforms. EBITDA rose 3.1 percent to Rs 1,049 crore from a year earlier.
Ishan Chatterjee, CEO - Digital and Sports, JioStar, said this was a good quarter for JioStar. “We launched Tadka, our own in-house micro content platform. We saw 100 mn+ active users within two months of launch. We now have our own in-house AI media studio. We launched our first ever fully AI-generated micro drama,” he commented.
Source: Money control
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