Reliance Industries Net Profit Rises 12%

Indian energy-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. said Monday its net profit rose 12% last quarter, aided by strong revenue from its core oil refining and petrochemicals business.

The company, which operates the world's largest crude-oil refining facility, said its consolidated net profit rose to 80.46 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in the three months ended March 31, from 71.67 billion rupees a year earlier. The profit is lower than the 82.46 billion rupees predicted by a poll of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 45% to 928.89 billion rupees from 639.54 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said.

The company's gross refining margin--the difference between what it paid for crude versus the price of the refined product it sold--rose to $11 per barrel during the quarter, from $10.8 a barrel a year earlier.

"Refining and petrochemicals businesses achieved record levels of profitability, underpinned by our ability to access feedstock competitively from global markets," Chairman Mukesh Ambani said in a statement.

Reliance has been making forays into telecom and retail, spending aggressively in the sectors to diversify its revenue sources.

The company shook up the country's telecommunications industry through a new cellular company Jio, which aims to lure customers away from the competition and bring millions of Indians online for the first time by offering data at low rates.

"Jio continues its rapid ramp-up of subscriber base and as of 31st March 2017, there were 108.9 million subscribers on the network," Mr. Ambani said.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 24, 2017 09:29 ET (13:29 GMT)