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Reliance posted its Q2 numbers on Friday. Here is what you should expect from this article: a simple breakdown of its three biggest businesses.
- Reliance’s oil-to-chemicals business, its core energy segment
- Reliance Retail
- Jio Platforms
First, the big numbers: Reliance delivered its best quarterly performance yet.
- Net profit: ₹29,550 crore, up 33.8%
- Revenue: ₹3.62 lakh crore, up 27.8%
- EBITDA: ₹62,409 crore, up 23.9%
All three reached record highs.
Reliance also earned more than ₹50,000 crore in profit during the first six months of FY27, another first for the company.
Note: the company did not reach these numbers because every business performed equally well. Most of the heavy lifting came from the company’s oldest and largest segment - Oil-to-checmical (O2C)
The O2C segment reported its highest-ever quarterly operating profit at ₹25,203 crore, up 67.9%.Meanwhile, revenue grew 44.2% at ₹2.32 lakh crore.
The how: the segment performed well because the gap between the cost of crude oil and the selling price of fuels widened sharply.
Crude prices rose more than 40% from last year, while several refined fuel prices increased even faster. Reliance was therefore able to sell finished products at much higher prices while controlling its input costs.
Reliance responded by sourcing more crude from Europe, Latin America and North America. It also processed a record amount of crude during the quarter.
2. Reliance Retail grew, but margins shrunk:
- Gross revenue: ₹91,716 crore, up 6.4% on a comparable basis
- EBITDA: ₹6,120 crore, down from ₹6,817 crore
- EBITDA margin: 6.7%, down from 7.5%
Retail’s performance was affected by the timing of the festive season. Several major festivals moved into the December quarter this year, meaning some shopping that would usually happen during Q2 was postponed.
The company also absorbed higher product costs instead of passing all of them on to customers. At the same time, it continued investing in its business-to-business and online operations.
However, JioMart’s revenue grew 42% as customers placed larger orders and purchased more items in each order.
3. Jio keeps adding users:
- Gross revenue: ₹47,485 crore, up 11.3%
- EBITDA: ₹21,879 crore, up 16.6%
- Net profit: ₹8,387 crore, up 13.7%
- EBITDA margin: 54.1%, up from 51.6%
The improvement came from more subscribers, higher customer spending and growth in Jio’s digital services.
This matters because Jio does not need customer numbers to grow dramatically every quarter. It can also earn more by encouraging existing users to purchase larger plans, broadband connections and additional digital services.
Oil and gas: Reliance’s upstream oil and gas business, which extracts fuel directly from fields had a quieter quarter.
