Reliance Industries Q1 profit jumps 76% on sale of Asian Paints stake, robust consumer business performance

Reliance Industries Q1 Results Live

Reliance Industries Ltd’s fiscal first quarter net profit jumped 76.5 percent to Rs 30,783 crore, led by a gain from the sale of its stake in Asian Paints and strong growth in consumer-facing businesses. Excluding the one-time gain of Rs 8,924 crore, recurring profit still rose a solid 25 percent from a year earlier.

Consolidated revenue rose 6 percent to Rs 2.73 lakh crore, supported by strong growth in retail and digital services. Operating profit (EBITDA) jumped 36 percent to Rs 58,024 crore, with a healthy contribution from consumer businesses.

"Reliance has begun FY26 with a robust, all-round operational and financial performance. Consolidated EBITDA for 1Q FY26 improved strongly from a year-ago period, despite significant volatility in global macros," said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries.

Jio Platforms posted a 25 percent rise in profit to Rs 7,110 crore, with EBITDA up nearly 24 percent to Rs 18,135 crore. Net subscriber additions remained strong at 9.9 million during the quarter, taking the total to 498.1 million. JioTrue5G users crossed 200 million, while JioAirFiber is now the largest FWA (fixed wireless access) service globally with a subscriber base of 7.4 million. Average revenue per user or ARPU rose to Rs 208.8 on the back of recent tariff hikes and seasonal reasons. Jio maintained its industry-leading customer engagement with per capita data consumption of 37 GB per month. Total data traffic grew 24 percent from a year ago to 54.7 billion GB during the quarter.

"We have delivered a milestone quarter at Jio with our 5G and Home subscriber base crossing the 200 million and 20 million marks respectively," said Akash M Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Anshuman Thakur, Senior Vice President, Jio platforms said that Jio is one of the leading deep tech companies in India, with enormous amount of innovation and technology development done over the years. "We've created unparalleled tech infrastructure in the country, and most of this with our own technology stack," he noted.

Thakur added that Jio is now one of the largest cloud players in the country, for enterprises. "And with our own JioCloud…we are now a force to reckon with when it comes to consumer cloud services as well."

Reliance Retail’s revenue rose 11.3 percent from a year earlier to Rs 84,171 crore, with EBITDA rising 12.7 percent to Rs 6,381 crore. Consumer brands under the FMCG business reported sales of Rs 11,450 crore in just their second year. Store additions remained brisk, with 388 new store openings, taking the total count to 19,592 across 77.6 million sq ft. The registered customer base grew to 358 million, making Reliance Retail one of the most preferred retailers in the country. Total transactions recorded were at 389 million, up 16.5 percent from a year earlier. JioMart continued to expand quick hyper local deliveries registering 68 percent sequential growth from the preceding three months and 175 percent growth of daily orders from a year earlier.

"Reliance Retail delivered resilient performance during this quarter driven by our relentless focus on operational excellence, geographical expansion and sharper product portfolio. Our continued investments in cutting-edge technologies and differentiated product offerings have enabled us to serve our customers better and scale with agility," Isha M. Ambani, Executive Director, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited.

Commenting on the quarterly numbers, Reliance Retail CFO, Dinesh Taluja, said that Reliance Retail India's online grocery industry is growing at almost 40 percent on a year-over-year basis.

"It is shaping consumer habits where people are valuing convenience and speed. So in that context, JioMart is the fastest growing online grocery platform in the country today. Our daily orders have grown on a 68 % on a quarter-on-quarter basis," said Taluja.

JioStar, the media and entertainment unit, reported gross revenue of Rs 11,222 crore and EBITDA of Rs 1,017 crore. A blockbuster IPL season helped push JioHotstar’s app downloads past 1 billion on Android and viewership to a record 1.19 billion across TV and JioHotstar. Monthly active users averaged over 460 million.

The oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business saw revenue dip 1.5 percent to Rs 1.55 lakh crore from a year earlier due to lower crude prices and planned maintenance shutdowns. However, EBITDA rose 11 percent to Rs 14,511 crore due to favourable margins on domestic fuel retail, and improvements in transportation fuel cracks. This was partially offset by lower volumes, and polyester chain margins. Reliance BP Mobility’s retail fuel network expanded to 1,991 outlets, outpacing industry growth.

Amit Chaturvedi, President, Petrochemicals, noted that polyethylene delta was down due to weak demand and overcapacity in China. However, he added that upcoming festival season is likely to benefit the segment.

Oil & gas revenues also fell 1.2 percent to Rs 6,103 crore, and EBITDA slipped 4.1 percent to Rs 4,996 crore. The segment was impacted by lower KG-D6 output, lower CBM (coal bed methane) prices, and one-time maintenance expenses.

Sanjay Roy, Executive Vice-President for Exploration and Production, RIL, commented that revenues have been lower mainly due to planned shutdowns and natural decline in production from the KG D6 block.

"We will continue to augment oil and gas production. We have a rig coming in next year. We expect to undertake exploration largely around the KG D6 basin because that is the fastest way we can augment production," said Roy, adding that the company will continue to pursue collaborative exploration.

On the new energy business of RIL, which is focused on building a comprehensive and integrated renewable energy ecosystem, Karan Suri, Senior Vice President, New Energy noted that the new energy business will become a self funded platform in a few years through its profitability and monetisation.

"It will deliver a perpetual, perennial growth for our shareholders," he commented.

Capital expenditure for the quarter stood at Rs 29,887 crore, while net debt rose marginally to Rs 117,580 crore as of June 30, from Rs 117,083 crore at the end of March.

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