Reliance Industries Quarterly Profit Rises 25%

Indian energy-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. (500325.BY) posted a 25% growth in net profit for the last quarter, thanks to improved margins from its petrochemical and telecom businesses.

Net profit stood at 94.23 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) in the three months through December, up from 75.33 billion rupees a year ago and ahead of the 84.84 billion rupees predicted by a poll of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

Reliance revenue rose 31%.

The company gets almost 95% of its profit from oil and petrochemicals. In recent years, it has been investing to expand into new sectors such as telecommunications, retail and e-commerce.

Reliance last year started offering cut-rate mobile services to promote its new telecom venture Jio, which it claims now has more than 160 million subscribers.

Write to Vibhuti Agarwal at vibhuti.agarwal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 19, 2018 09:15 ET (14:15 GMT)