Reliance Industries, India’s most valued listed company, held its 47th Annual General Meeting on 29th August 2024. For Indian equity investors, Reliance AGM is a rare opportunity to gather clues about the company’s roadmap, where the firm also gives out important numbers such as revenue and the pace of growth.
The Reliance AGM 2024 was no different. The company which reported its highest annual profit of Rs.79,020 crore in FY24, is also India’s most valuable listed company with a market cap of Rs 20.6 lakh crore.
While the energy-to-media group’s AGM outlined its ambitious plans to go big on AI and proposed to consider a 1:1 bonus issue, there was no word on listing its two consumer-facing businesses, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Reliance Retail. Let’s now read the fine print on Reliance’s vision of transforming itself into a deep-tech company and how each of the company’s verticals performed last year.
Here are the highlights of Reliance AGM 2024:
- Reliance has had a phenomenal growth year. Chairman Mr. Mukesh Ambani proposed a 1:1 bonus for all Reliance shareholders.
This is by far the biggest AGM highlight from a retail investor perspective. The Reliance AGM 2024 provided a business roadmap for the company. Here are some of the most important business highlights:
- Reliance to focus on deep tech, with advanced manufacturing capabilities.
- The Chairman introduced ‘Jio Brain,’ a comprehensive set of tools to streamline AI adoption across the Jio network.
- The Jio Cloud storage offer will go live around Diwali, bringing AI to photos, and the Jio phone call AI will bring AI to phone calls.
- The Reliance-Disney merger is approved. This is likely to impact the Media and Entertainment segments positively.
- Reliance Retail is the fastest-growing retailer in India.
- Jamnagar will become the world’s energy capital, with considerable investments planned in both traditional and new-age energy resources.
The above six points summarize the Reliance AGM at a glance. Read on to learn more about key developments and announcements in each business vertical.
Business Vertical Updates
Digital Services
Jio and Jio Broadband
Jio stands out as a digital innovator as it completed the pan-Indian rollout of Jio True 5G using a fully homegrown 5G stack.
Jio has transformed India into an inclusive digital society at a very cost-effective rate compared to other countries. Today, Jio’s network carries nearly 8% of global mobile traffic. Reliance also made significant inroads into home services, with nearly 30 million home customers across digital broadband and digital TV services. This makes them one of the largest digital home services providers globally.
Jio Brain
The Chairman introduced ‘Jio Brain’, Reliance’s answer to bringing generative AI to every Indian home.
Jio Brain will enable the company to accelerate AI adoption across Jio, driving faster decisions, more accurate predictions, and a better understanding of customer needs. The company will also start using Jio Brain to drive a similar transformation across other Reliance operating companies, and to fast-track their AI journey.
To realize its vision of ‘AI Everywhere For Everyone,’ Reliance plans to establish gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centers in Jamnagar, powered entirely by Reliance’s green energy, reflecting its commitment to sustainability and a greener future.
Led by momentum in connectivity, Reliance is targeting to double Jio’s revenues and EBITDA over the next three to four years.
Media and Entertainment
The Reliance Media business achieved over ₹10,000 crore ($1.2 billion) of revenue. This represents an industry-leading growth of 49%.
The Reliance-Disney merger is complete and approved. They will now combine content creation with digital streaming.
Some notable mentions were that JioCinema is revolutionizing digital sports and entertainment with its new subscription pack. Reliance-owned TV channels News18, CNBC TV18, and Colours TV dominate in their particular segments.
The transformation of Moneycontrol into an advanced fintech provider of data and analytics for users in India and beyond, with 8,50,000 paid MC Pro subscribers.
Reliance Retail
Reliance Retail recorded gross revenue of ₹3,06,848 crore ($36.8 billion), a growth of 17.8% over last year. During the year, Reliance Retail undertook an equity fundraising of ₹17,814 crore ($2.1 billion), achieving a valuation milestone of $100 billion.
According to the business update, Reliance Retail is the largest and the fastest growing retailer, expanding at 2.5 times the rate of the rest of modern trade. JioMart, Reliance Retail’s online store adds another layer of convenience, offering hyperlocal delivery with a wide and relevant assortment.
Reliance Retail’s extensive network of Smart Points in over 1,300 cities gives it a significant competitive advantage in the e-commerce space.
Other segments such as Ajio in online shopping, Ajio Lux in premium and luxury online shopping, and Milk Basket in grocery subscription continue to show robust growth.
Oil to Chemical (O2C)
This segment continues to be Reliance’s largest growth engine.
The O2C business achieved revenues of ₹5,64,749 crore ($67.9 billion) and an EBITDA of ₹62,393 crore ($7.5 billion) last year.
This robust performance was made possible through several key actions.
- Maintaining a sharp focus on operational excellence. The manufacturing assets operated at their maximum capacities, with gasification units contributing significantly through stable operations and higher throughput.
- Sustained efforts to source advantageous feedstock from diverse and complex geographies in a challenging environment. The diversification efforts led to the processing of 60 grades of crude oil, including 13 new grades.
- Reliance acted swiftly when the freight markets skyrocketed due to geopolitical factors. With vessels coming under missile attacks in the Red Sea, the company chartered more vessels on a long-term basis to control freight costs.
- Strong domestic demand for fuels and downstream chemicals helped improve product placement in the domestic market.
- Continued efforts to build deep-tech and Advanced Manufacturing competencies.
New Energy
Some of the biggest announcements in the Reliance AGM were made in this business vertical.
A big announcement on the renewable energy front was—-Reliance will begin production of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. The firm will complete the first phase of its integrated solar production facilities in the coming quarters. This includes modules, cells, glass, wafer, ingot, and polysilicon, with an initial annual capacity of 10 GW.
Reliance plans to harness low-cost solar energy and make it available around the clock. Reliance has already begun construction of an integrated advanced chemistry-based battery manufacturing facility with a 30 GWh annual capacity at Jamnagar. Production will commence by the second half of next year.
Reliance envisions making Jamnagar the energy capital of the world. Jamnagar will also become the cradle of Reliance’s New Energy business. The Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Manufacturing Complex will be the world’s largest, most modern, modular, and integrated ecosystem at a single location.
To achieve this vision, Reliance is fully committed to investing up to ₹75,000 crore to establish this manufacturing ecosystem, extensively enabled by all emerging technologies including AI, IoT, Machine Learning, and Robotics.
We recommend you go through the Reliance AGM 2024 full speech to get a complete picture of the company’s vision for the years to come.
Misses from shareholders’ perspective
While the AGM delivered many hits in terms of growth prospects, the vision for the new energy business, and a 1:1 bonus share bonanza for shareholders, there were a couple of misses from the shareholder’s point of view.
There’s a strong buzz around initial public offerings for Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail. Back in 2019 AGM, the Reliance management had announced the IPO plans of these two corporate entities within the next five years.
But no announcements were made about listing these verticals separately, which appears to have dampened investor enthusiasm.
The 1:1 bonus made up for the non-announcement of the IPO front.
Conclusion
We have summarized Reliance AGM 2024 for you, covering the important announcements. The AGM lasted more than two hours, with hundreds of announcements outlining the company’s vision for the following year. We strongly recommend that you go through the full speech to get a clear understanding of Reliance’s game plan.
