Reliance Industries recovered from its intra-day low of Rs 262.20 on Friday after the company announced a big rise in net profit even as analysts were expecting a fall.

The scrip of the petrochemicals making and oil refining giant jumped 4.05% to Rs 278.90 by 12:50 IST. The diversified Reliance Industries registered volumes of over 3.16 million shares on BSE by then.

In afternoon trades on Friday, RIL came out with third quarter results ended 31 December 2002. For Q3, the company registered a 24% rise in net profit to Rs 1,083 crore (Rs 10.83 billion) compared to Rs 873 crore (Rs 8.73 billion) in the corresponding period of the previous year. Total income increased by 7.58% to Rs 11,243 crore (Rs 112.43 billion) from Rs 10,450 crore (Rs 104.5 billion) in DQ 2001. The figures for the corresponding periods have been restated, wherever necessary, to make them comparable.

The 24% rise in net profit has squarely beaten a capitalmarket.com poll (of three analysts) estimate that net profit would be in the range of Rs 766-828 crore (Rs 7.66-8.28 billion). The poll had predicted net sales at Rs 11,045-12,500 crore (Rs 110.45-125 billion).

On 28 December 2002, RIL launched mobile telephony services nationwide through Reliance Infocom, the day being the birthday of its founder late Dhirubhai Ambani. Reliance Infocomm, an arm of RIL, is expected to roll out basic telephony services in 17 states. It has already laid 40,000 km of optic fibre across the country to cover various facets of telecom services including basic, Internet and long distance telephony.

Reliance Infocomm is expected to provide cheaper services. It is banking on a lower margin-high volume game. RIL has reportedly invested a huge sum in Reliance Infocomm.

RIL is basically a petrochemicals maker (the largest in the country) and a petroleum refiner (after it merged group company Reliance Petroleum with itself last year). The company has emerged as among the largest private sector players in the oil exploration segment as well.

Late October 2002, RIL said that its Krishna-Godavari  basin (Andhra Pradesh) gas project will go on stream around mid-2004. The cost of development of the project may total $1.3 billion, it added.

Earlier, RIL had indicated gas reserves in the range of 7 trillion cubic feet, or 45 million standard cubic metres per day, in its new discovery off the country's eastern coast. However, later reports indicated that RIL's D-6 deepwater block in the KG basin may contain up to 15 tcf reserves of natural gas.

Recently, RIL's initiative in the oil and gas exploration segment received a further boost when it was awarded a new set of oil and gas blocks. Out of the 23 blocks put up by the government under the NELP-III, RIL, in consortium with Hardy Oil of UK, bagged nine blocks including seven of the nine prime deepwater blocks on offer.

The Centre has cleared the acquisition and RIL is likely to sign the production sharing contract agreement soon.

As on 30 September 2002, the promoters' holding in RIL was at 43.7%, while the public, domestic and foreign institutions held 15.3%, 13% and 26.4% respectively.

BSE Code: 500325

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