Reliance Industries Ltd

NSE:RELIANCE

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[B. Srinivasan]

Good evening. Thank you for your patience, and apologies for starting this first quarter of financial year 2021-2022 financial [indiscernible]. I'll hand over now to Srikanth Venkatachari, who would start with the overall performance of the company for this quarter, and he will be followed Kiran and Anshuman, who will talk about Digital Services and [ other partnerships ]; followed by Dinesh Thapar, who will present the retail section. And Sanjay Roy will talk about the exploration [ and production business ], and Srikanth will talk about the O2C [indiscernible]. Over to you, Srikanth.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really sorry about the delay in this. So like in usual, we will do the first 7, 8 minutes on the consolidated numbers and then do the individual businesses. So moving to the first slide.So it's been a record quarterly EBITDA, strong performance in O2C and Digital Services. Our EBITDA is at INR 27,550 crores, is up 28%; net profit also on a pre-exceptional basis at INR 13,806 crores, which is 67% higher. And this is on the back of a normalized tax provision. When you look at O2C, this is the fourth sequential quarter of growth, a significantly lower impact of second wave as compared to the first one. And we believe that demand is on track, and in the next 1 to 2 quarters, we see that kind of recovery.Retail was definitely impacted by restricted store operations. Of course, we were able to mitigate, to some extent, by ramping up our digital commerce. On the digital side, we continue to see good traction in subscriber growth as well as data usage, in some sense, I would say, not affected by second wave barring some of the FTTH rollouts, which did get impacted. The fact that network was superior and very high customer engagement helped.On the Oil& Gas side, the benefit coming from ramp-up of KG-D6 production, all our strategic growth initiatives are on track.When you look at the numbers, you can see that revenues are -- there has been a strong year-on-year growth, up 57% as well as profits that we saw. Overall, when you look at quarter-on-quarter revenues, it is lower by 8%, and that is because of curtailed retail operations. It was, to some section -- I mean, it was offset to a great extent because of higher realization in O2C as well as the KG-D6 ramp-up. And the overall EBITDA was -- improvement clearly led by O2C, Digital and Oil & Gas, which helped to offset actually the retail weaknesses.On the finance cost, this would be the fourth consecutive quarter of lower finance costs. So now finance cost is 50% lower on a year-on-year basis and 16% lower on a quarter-on-quarter basis. And that is on the back of the fact that we have been able to repay our liabilities on the back of capital inflows as well as very proactive optimization of our liability cost.When you look at PBT, yes, the benefit of better EBITDA as well as lower finance cost translates itself in PBT growth both on a year-on-year basis as well as on a sequential basis. On the tax side, the amount -- the tax amount is higher on a year-on-year basis as well as on a Q-on-Q basis. This is because tax provision in this financial year is at a normalized level. So even after considering this, the pre-exceptional net profit, INR 13,806 crores, is 67% higher on a year-on-year basis and only about 2.8% lower on a Q-on-Q basis. So in summary, strong operating performance despite the pandemic-imposed challenges.Next slide. So this is just the breakup of the EBITDA, and we will see it in the subsequent quarters, but strong operational performance. You can see O2C up 50% year-on-year and also sequentially up by 7.2%. We benefited from a very favorable margin environment as well as optimization in our feedstock and energy costs. Retail, sharply lower at 46% because of curtailment of store operations and lower footfalls but compensated by good traction in our omnichannel. Our Digital Services, both up sequentially as well as year-on-year, maintained -- we maintained customer addition as well as very strong usage growth that we will see. And on the Oil & Gas side, a 66% jump Q-on-Q on the back of ramp-up of KG-D6. So benefiting really from a diversified business mix.On the balance sheet side, we continue to have more cash than debt, and the levels are slightly higher than what we saw in March by -- and it's INR 3,861 crores. So in -- for us, we have a very strong balance sheet. We have a very strong cash flow generating businesses, which will help us in our growth initiatives and to drive long-term value.Just one -- a few slides on each of the businesses before I hand over to Anshuman. Overall, when you see the O2C environment for demand and margin, very strong growth in demand. We are seeing that reflected in transportation margins, which are at a 4- to 6-quarter high. We are also seeing that kind of strength in downstream chemicals. Q-on-Q domestic demand for fuels has been impacted. And in the O2C section, I'll make the case that -- why it is -- compared to Q1 last year, why the impact has been very muted in as far as O2C is concerned. But when you look at it on year-on-year, obviously, there is a strong demand growth across.From an operational standpoint, we saw the numbers, EBITDA INR 12,231 crores, which is up 7% Q-on-Q as well as almost 50% year-on-year. We had higher feedstock going through. We were able to optimize light feed cracking. We were able to very swiftly flex our business model moving from domestic to exports when you saw the wave 2 come through and also benefiting again from energy cost optimization because a lot more of -- we're accessing a lot more of domestic gas.Next slide. On the Digital Services, the healthy growth of customers, 14 million plus, with -- taking our total customer base to 441 million. Our churn rates have declined. It's below 1 now at 0.95%. We are also seeing a very strong growth in as far as per customer utilization. It is up 18% to almost 15.6 GB. We were -- we benefited from the ramp-up in infrastructure and the customer focus right through this quarter. And when you look at it from overall, therefore the revenue standpoint, 18% growth year-on-year in RJIL revenue, EBITDA up 21% and our EBITDA margin now at close to 47%.On the Retail side, beyond doubt, there has been significant restrictions that has definitely disrupted our stores and logistical operations. Footfalls at 46% of pre-COVID, this is very similar in some sense to how it was in Q1. And while sentiment is reviving, I would say we characterize that as being cautious. But having said that, we continue to grow more than 100 stores. And actually, we have 700 stores, which are right -- fit-out ready at this point in time.Vaccination, overall, we have done very well and more so in the context of Retail, a lot of front-end facing staff there. We have vaccinated 99% plus of the people.On the revenue side, gross revenues at INR 38,000 crores, up 22% year-on-year, and EBITDA at INR 1,941 crores is about 80% year-on-year. Though sequentially, it did fall by about 46%. The big push here has been -- or the drivers have been really on electronics and fashion, where we saw better trading conditions compared to last year. And the scaling up of our digital commerce and merchant establishment has come in very useful. Now they contribute to almost 20% of our retail sales.And with this, I'm handing it to Anshuman.

[Kiran Mathew Thomas, Director]

I'll kick it off, Srikanth. Kiran here.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Sorry, Kiran.

[Kiran Mathew Thomas, Director]

So I think getting into Digital Services, a quick highlight for the quarter. Some of it, Srikanth mentioned, but again, highlighting here. The Connectivity business is continuing to sustain the momentum of growth. We closed this quarter with a total customer base of 440-odd-million customers. And in the last quarter, we have added, on a net basis, 14.3 million customers.Overall data traffic on Jio's network crossed 20 exabytes for the quarter. So 20 exabytes would be 20 billion gigabytes for the quarter. ARPU is pretty stable at around INR 138. Even though the subscriber count has been increasing steadily, the ARPU has been pretty stable. There has been a very clear focus on ramping up our infrastructure and especially operationalizing the additional spectrum that we acquired recently as well as a number of customer-focused initiatives, all of which have contributed to a real increase in the customer experience and, therefore, the customer engagement and utilization of Jio's services.In spite of COVID-related challenges, the financial performance has been pretty strong. The revenues are at INR 18,000 crores, which is a year-on-year growth of nearly 20%. The JPL EBITDAs are up nearly 21% year-on-year to now reach INR 8,892 crores with a nearly 47% EBITDA margin.Also significant are some of the key partnership announcements that we have made in the last quarter. The most prominent of them was with Google to use Google Cloud to power Jio's own 5G solutions, which we'll talk about in a minute, as well as for sustaining a lot of growth that we are seeing in multiple of our sectors, spanning retail -- both the traditional retail as well as JioMart and in a number of digital services, prominently JioSaavn in Music and JioHealth.It is not just the hyperscale cloud but also the relationship is extending to the edge cloud infrastructure that Google Cloud is setting it up. And the idea being that when we talk about low-latency solutions like 5G, edge becomes very important, especially in use cases like gaming, video entertainment and so on. So again, we'll be looking not just to deploy our 5G -- our own 5G components but also to work very closely with Google Cloud to develop edge use cases based on 5G.Likewise, the relationship with Microsoft that we had announced last year, that is now reaching a stage of early operationalization. We have already operationalized 10-megawatt capacity of Jio-Azure cloud data centers. To remind everybody, our partnership was to jointly create a cloud infrastructure for India using the Azure capabilities but Jio building the infrastructure to power that. So 10 megawatts of initial capacity has been created in 2 locations, Jamnagar and Nagpur. We are currently bringing on certain pilot customers who can start using that to run their workloads, and planning and work is already under way to enhance that capacity over the coming quarters.Similarly, we have an announcement that -- we had announcement that we have made with -- on the partnership with WhatsApp. Some of the early use cases are now already in the market. There is, of course, a lot of exciting work which are ongoing. But talking about some of the use cases that we have already launched, certainly the ability to recharge through WhatsApp using the WhatsApp Bot framework is already operational. We do make recommendations to our -- the smart bots are able to recommend the top 3 plans that customers may want to choose and likewise, remind us for recharge as well as all the other notifications WhatsApp is being increasingly used as a channel. Again, this is just early part of the engagement. There's a lot more joint product development work that we are doing, all of which will be unveiled in the coming quarters.Just to also highlight that it has not always been purely about business growth. There were a lot of initiatives that we launched keeping in mind the need to alleviate the hardships and the pain and suffering being experienced across the country. One of the concepts that we launched in the last quarter was targeted at our JioPhone users who are typically from the bottom of the pyramid -- economic pyramid. We found that a lot of people were finding it difficult to make regular data recharges, but we thought we should extend an arm that even if there is some delay, but we continue to offer up to 300 minutes of outgoing calls for all JioPhone users so that they are never disconnected if they have to make an emergency call or reach out to near and dear ones. And also, when they do the data recharge, we ensure that if they are buying one, we are also giving an extra recharge because, in these trying times, you never know when that might come handy.Also from a data loan, even if they run out of data, you can -- we were offering something called emergency data load, where they can continue to use data for some time until they are able to get to a recharge whenever next convenient to them.Also the network itself, we have been very -- in a very focused way, increasing our network capacity. Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, we recently acquired additional spectrum in the auctions that happened, and I'm glad to report that nearly almost all of that spectrum has been operationalized resulting in a very significant increase in customer experience that we've been able to notice right across, everything from indoor coverage to download speeds to video experience and so on. A large chunk of customers are now -- a vast majority of customers are able to get in excess of 10 megabits per second speed. And we also find that this additional capacity has unlocked nearly 26% year-on-year increase in per capita consumption to now over 15.5 GBs per month per customer.Also, interestingly, what these additional spectrum investments have done in addition to increasing the customer experience, it has also created an additional step change in capacity, which we believe will hold us in good stead to onboard up to the next 200 million customers on our network. Also talking about a significant innovation that our engineers have been able to make, which is Jio 5G. And what Jio 5G is, is a complete end-to-end 5G stack, which has been developed within in-house by Jio engineers, which is completely cloud native, which is fully software defined and end-to-end managed. So not just the 5G components themselves but also the entire management framework to manage such a complicated network, all of those have been built internally.As you also know -- many of you may know that we have also now received the approvals and the trial spectrum to initiate 5G field trials, and we are initiating this using our own Jio 5G stack that we have developed internally. So we have received 100 megahertz in the 3.5 gig band, also called the n78 band, which DoT has allocated for trials. The entire network, which is also quite satisfyingly what we call a stand-alone -- in a stand-alone mode, so not as an overlay on 4G but a purely stand-alone 5G-capable network, all the components are now installed in all of the data centers across our country. And obviously, because of the fact that we are a 0 legacy network, we'll be able to -- as soon as we get the operational spectrum be able to quite quickly and seamlessly upgrade our offerings from 4G to 5G.We are also working to build certain, what we will call, showcase applications in various verticals, everything spanning from health care to education, entertainment and retail, specifically highlighting the capabilities of 5G. One of the examples is a 5G-connected ambulance that we are developing so that all the capabilities of an emergency room, hospital emergency room can be extended to an ambulance no matter where it is at any point in time. This, we are doing in collaboration with our HN Reliance Foundation Hospital.Similarly, ability to deliver rich augmented reality and virtual reality content, again, taking advantage of the low-latency, high-bandwidth capabilities of 5G to students at home as well as in the classroom, and again, we are developing these concepts together with Reliance Foundation School. All of these would hopefully showcase enough of those capabilities and in addition to delivering these use cases also from the other ecosystem partners also to step up and use the 5G capability that we are creating to come up with literally hundreds and thousands of innovative solutions like this.JioFiber continues to build traction. I think as Srikanth mentioned in his preamble that because of COVID and the fact that JioFiber requires a lot of physical activities, both on the streets as well as within buildings and homes, this has been obviously a challenging year for such work. But in spite of that, I'm glad to report that JioFiber today is now used by more than 3 million connected homes. And obviously, as things are improving as we're coming out of the Phase 2, fingers crossed, this will pick up, and we'll have a strong ability to increase this base in the coming days.But of course, all the work, which we were doing in the public spaces, fortunately, that was not as impacted. And today, Jio's optical fiber is physically present outside more than 12 million premises. So what that means is as soon as the COVID situation improves, the ability to connect -- convert those proximities into actually consuming customers is extremely high.Engagement metrics, for those people who already have JioFiber, we have been seeing a steady improvement. For example, on average, a JioFiber home consumes nearly 300 gigabytes of data every month, and we are seeing that month-on-month this trend is going up.And in terms of engagement, we also have a set-top box offering that we are offering. It's something that connects to your TV, and we have the large screen experience that we have created through this box. And we are finding that we are experiencing more than 5 hours of engagement on average per household. Again, multiple devices are connecting because we extend WiFi in the home on the back of fiber. And on average, we are seeing up to half a dozen devices per home, and these numbers are again increasing. So it's a winning product. I think now it's a question of physically deploying as the situation -- the macro situation improves across the country.Again, you can see the momentum is continuing from a customer base perspective. Again, to highlight, in June of last year, we were a shade under 400 million. Today, we are at 440 million. Data traffic, like I mentioned, we were at 14 exabytes or 14,000 crores GBs for the quarter, and you can see that we are exiting now at nearly 20 exabytes, which is a 40% increase year-on-year.From an operating metrics perspective, again, I'm not repeating the customer base, but in terms of net additions, last year -- similar quarter last year, we added nearly 10 million customers that has now grown to 14 million net additions this quarter. ARPUs are holding quite steady quarter-on-quarter. Data consumption, 14,000 crores to 2,000 crores. Per capita, again, from a shade over 12 GB per customer per month to now in excess of 15 GB per customer per month. In terms of voice minutes, a shade under 1,000 crore minutes per day that we were carrying on our network to now in excess of 1,169 crore minutes per day. And even from a per capita basis, that number has grown from nearly 750 minutes per user per month to now in excess of 800 minutes per month. So overall, it shows an increasing customer engagement, a growth in the customer base and obviously growing consumption and, therefore, growing revenues when it comes to Connectivity part of our business.Maybe at this point, I'll hand it over to Anshuman, who can just walk us through the financials as well.

[Anshuman Thakur]

Thanks, Kiran. So I'll quickly summarize the financial performance for the quarter, starting first with RJIL, the Connectivity business, where we reported revenues of INR 17,994 crores for this quarter, which, on a like-to-like basis, was an 18% growth over the same quarter last year. The dip in March '21 that you see is on account of the IUC regime moving to bill and keep. The EBITDA also showed an upward growing trend. We had -- RJIL had EBITDA of INR 8,631 crores for the quarter. That was a 19.3% growth year-on-year with a 48% EBITDA margin. So the margin has been holding fairly steady. Even though we've been expanding network capacity, we added more spectrum.Moving on to the Jio Platforms Limited financials. These are consolidated financials at the Jio Platform Limited level and include the RJIL as well as other subsidiaries. We had operating revenues of INR 18,952 crores for the quarter, an EBITDA of INR 8,892 crores. The EBITDA margins, again, was steady at 46.9%, 4.4% higher than the same quarter of last year. Now this quarter, it was important for us -- this is an important one because of the tough circumstances on the ground with the second phase of COVID, where in April and May, we had a lot of challenges on the ground. There were things beyond the normal call of duty that we were doing, and expenses went up also because of -- we did give out benefits to customers given the tough circumstances. Kiran spoke about the JioPhone offers that we gave away during the quarter. Yet we managed to hold on to the EBITDA margin, and that was good. EBIT at INR 5,727 crores and net profit grew 44.9% year-on-year to INR 3,651 crores for the quarter.Moving on, just a light summarizing, the thoughts at this point in time. This was a tough quarter for the business because of COVID-related disruptions. The on-the-ground situation was not good, especially April and May, both months. We -- and even now the recovery is just about beginning. It's -- there's still -- hopefully, things will keep getting better, but it was a tough quarter in that perspective. We -- however, that doesn't -- from our point of view, we are very optimistic about the overall demand scenario and our ability to service that demand. And that is where, while there have been challenges and delay in incremental monetization of our FTTH and digital platforms, but we see a long runway ahead of us, both on the mobility side with what we've done with our network capacity and devices, 5G rollout and even on the fiber to the home and enterprise side where the demand has been extremely strong. And our services have been taken up, wherever possible to render those services have been taken up, and customer traction has been extremely high. So hopefully, if things keep improving, we will see more traction on -- with our products on the field.So that -- with that, I'm going to hand over to Dinesh to take you through the summary of the results of Reliance Retail.

[Dinesh Thapar, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Anshuman. Good evening, everyone. Before I get started to talk about the performance of Reliance Retail, a few comments on the operating context.It has been a challenging quarter though improving. I'll talk about how we're seeing it. But there were significant restrictions that were imposed. We've spoken about it in April when we had our last call, as different states went into a staggered phase of lockdowns and restrictions. The second fortnight of April and May were particularly challenged with operations being ceased across most of the network. We started to see some signs of easing come across in June, and it's getting better. The direction of change is getting better as we look into July as well.Business for the most part of the quarter was confined to essentials, which for us was largely the Grocery portfolio, not the entire portfolio because even within our grocery stores, it was only the essentials part of it which could have gotten sold. And seamless logistics was clearly impacted due to the constraints. And I want to say that between wave 1 and wave 2, while supply chains were clearly a lot better prepared, the restrictions that were imposed across the breadth of the country, across the states meant that there was some impact on mobility and really, logistics, particularly last-mile fulfillment.Across the store network, we had about 26% of our stores that were fully opened through the quarter; 35% partially open, which meant that they opened for only certain hours in the day or certain days of the week. And within that was a story of 2 parts: grocery partially opened for 70% thereabouts and nongrocery stores for about 30-odd percent. So really 60%, the network was opened in some form, whether fully or in part, which compared to about 50% last year. So marginally better trading conditions compared to same time last year.But I think it's important to also point out that whilst store network was open for this period of time that I just mentioned, the 60-odd percent, you're aware that even for the period of time that they were open, we could only operate for certain hours. So therefore, what we've tried to do is to give you a sense that, even though stores are open, they're not really operating at full efficiency at the moment.And so if you look at it across the months, in April, 70% was really functional from an operating hours perspective. That went down to 25% in May as more and more restrictions were imposed. It started to get better in June as there's been progressive easing across the states. And then like I said, as I look at July, we are encouraged with the direction of change. It quite hasn't gotten back to the levels of April as yet, but it is trending upwards.Footwalls have dropped to 46%, which is about comparable to the same time last year when wave 1 struck but significantly lower than the 88%, 90% that we saw in quarter 4, which was just about the time that business started to see some level of normalization come back.And consumer sentiment, which was significantly impacted with the outbreak of wave 2 latter March, early April, thereabouts, in our -- in the way we're seeing it, it has started to improve and start to revive, although it remains very cautious. And therefore, as we see the situation, it's still quite uncertain because many moving parts across the country, across the various states, but we remain very optimistic seeing the direction of change in July.In terms of the key messages, I think I mentioned this the last time around. As a retail business with a very, very significant proportion of its team out in the field, out in operations to run store network, to run our distribution centers, our warehouses and our frontline operations on fulfillment, it was really important to secure our operations and to secure employees. And as we exited the quarter, we had over 99% of the retail team that had been vaccinated across the breadth of the country. The last little bit that's left is really to do with conditions of people who've gone through ailments, gone through medication and, therefore, have a lead time before which they get vaccinated. So significant progress in that one.In terms of business, there's been an uptick of revenues at 32%. You see the headline numbers at 22%, but if I stripped out the effect of the petro retailing business that was transferred out, comparable business, which has continued, is up 32%. Grocery has remained very resilient. Grocery has done well. It serves the needs for essentials right through this period ever since COVID struck us. But there's been a step-up across the other consumption baskets, most notably in fashion and lifestyle and our electronics business, where we've seen better trading conditions relative to same time last year.EBITDA is a tad short, INR 2,000 crores in this quarter but up 80% over the same time last year, buoyed by the revenue build back that has happened on Fashion & Lifestyle and Consumer Electronics and, of course, boosted by the investment income that you have now seen for a couple of quarters.Our expansion thrust continues. We were able to commission 123-odd stores, primarily in the month of April, not too much that has happened after that. But there are about 700-odd stores that are ready -- already been fitted out and just await commissioning. So as operating curves are lifted, this will come to market and get commissioned. And then of course, there is another pipeline that we have that is in various stages of development. What we've continued to do is to scale up digital commerce and merchant partnerships, and that, you will make out from the next chart that I say, is turning us in very good stead in times like this.Double-clicking on to revenue. So robust revenue performance, 32%, like I said, year-on-year up. That's excluding the impact of the petro retailing business that was transferred out. Groceries remain very resilient. It's done well and it's continued right through from quarter 1 of last year, and it's continued to serve the needs of customers even in a very constrained data. There's a bit of a misnomer saying but grocery is continuing. Groceries continue to operate under significant restrictions as well. And that business has been very resilient. There's a build back that has happened on fashion and lifestyle and electronics, and from what you just heard on the Jio numbers and the RJIL numbers, clearly, Connectivity has seen its consistent uptick that has been used to seeing now for some quarters.Here's the big piece, which I think we've been investing in and talking about. Digital and new commerce has partially alleviated the impact on the shutdown of the store network and what was under 5% same time last year and virtually nothing before COVID had struck because the only digital commerce business we had at that point of time was Ajio and Fashion & Lifestyle, has contributed to about 20% of sales, of the retail sales in this quarter. So it gives you a sense of the fact that these revenue streams, which did not exist up to about a year back or 15 months back today, have meaningfully contributed and alleviated the impact of the restrictions that we've been faced with.Petro retailing, I've just spoken about, that's a drag that we've seen for a few quarters and will be now on the base as we go forward.EBITDA, at about INR 2,000 crores. So first quarter this year was a little under INR 2,000 crores, up 80%. Quarter 1 last year was a ballpark of INR 1,000 crores. Fashion & Lifestyle has been the biggest contributor to this because that's where revenue has come back in some way, clearly on better trading conditions although very constrained relative to the last quarter that we saw, which was quarter 4 but better than the first quarter of last year when the first set of COVID restrictions were imposed. Electronics has continued to be on momentum, done well and on better trading conditions and higher store days has done better this time around.We've continued to remain -- raise a sharp focus given that we're a retail business, a relatively lower-margin business on managing our costs, and that's continued to contribute to the resilience of our EBITDA even in times like this, as revenue's been pulled out. And the results continue to have a boost from the investment income. This quarter has been about INR 550-odd crores. And we've said this in the past that the reason it's here is because, over a period of time, as we deploy the resources that we've put into surplus investments on which we're earning this investment income, we expect it to get replaced by EBITDA from really the new streams of business that we invest in.Store expansion, 123. That number could well have been over 1,000 this quarter, but like I said, we were constrained. April was pretty much the only month we could really put up a few stores, 700 in the offing and many more at various stages of development. But the larger message I want to leave with you is that the thrust on expansion continues and very strong emphasis around it.Financial summary, quick headlines. Revenue came in at INR 38,547. That was 22% on a reported numbers basis. EBITDA was up 80%, INR 1,941; and profit after tax was more than double over same time last year at INR 962 crores. Of course, sequential results have been impacted by the fact that I just mentioned, significant restrictions. I just used 2 data points. We had about 95% of the store network that was operational in quarter 4 relative to, like I said, 60% between a mix of fully opened and partially opened. And footfalls, which were 88%, 90% last quarter, were close to 45% this quarter. So it gives you a sense that the sequential results are not strictly comparable. They're not apples to apples in terms of the operating environment.To give you a quick sense of what's gone behind each of these businesses. So Consumer Electronics on a year-on-year basis is up 1.8x. The investment that we made to activate Reliance Digital, which is the digital commerce asset that we have for our electronics business, has meant that it has seen the highest ever sales in this quarter. So that's a record on that one, and we continue to grow momentum on that part of the business.Lower footfalls -- for whatever little amount of time that the store network was opened, we did see lower footfalls. But those, as has been the case now for a few quarters, was partially offset by higher conversions that we're seeing and larger ticket sizes. So across the breadth of our businesses, this is a trend that we are seeing. Clearly, conversions are much higher than pre-COVID levels and build value is clearly trending way above averages of pre-COVID.This is a business, which has invested in hooking up its entire network, runs truly omnichannel, so clearly a seamless experience that you run between offline and online. So the entire omnichannel promotions that we ran, the financing types that we have with banks, so very compelling offers, exchange offers. And clearly, the strength of partnerships that we have with brand vendors to really be able to launch a range of products provided the boost to sales.So in many ways, I keep saying that the secret sauce that this business has to do well has continued to play out in this quarter. They just continue to execute really well despite the constraints that they've been faced with.Broad-based double-digit growth across all categories pretty much. And I think building on our experience from the last time around, this time, recognizing that there was uncertainty, there was an early phase of execution that we did on air care so that we didn't miss out the summer season. So early loading and a good early execution and preplanning that we had done on that category meant that we were able to catch clearly that season.And we continue to build out our own brands business. Strategically important, we are building out this portfolio. This is anchored around 2 brands primarily at this stage, which is BPL and Kelvinator, and between the mix of the portfolio and its presence across general trade, not just our own stores across general trade, each of those are growing.Looking at Fashion & Lifestyle, our apparel and footwear business, and this is the one I mentioned, clearly better trading conditions. When I talk about trading conditions, I'm talking about store operation days and footfalls, has meant that this business is 3x over same time last year. And the business has continued to do well. Regional activation, in-store activations because here's where we're challenged, right? We're not able to control the footfall because that's restricted and constrained by the context. But as customers come into store, what we're doing is to really activate very impactfully within store, and that's led to higher conversions and higher bill values at least offsetting the lower footfalls that we have.Our small town performance has been very resilient. I've seen this for a few quarters. It's continued to bear out in the current quarter as well. Across the breadth of our business, small towns have been far more resilient. They did drop but clearly not to the extent that some of the larger towns did. And they're contributing meaningfully to our business right now. And in the Fashion & Lifestyle business, for example, the operating metrics, the economics that we have on small towns is clearly well above the average, so very, very encouraging to see that.And then, of course, the hyperlocal capability that we have for Fashion & Lifestyle, we've got -- we built out Ajio in a big way, but now we're building out fashion on JioMart, and we hooked up our Trends stores for hyperlocal fulfillment, and that's now been extended across 450-odd cities.Ajio's had a fantastic run. We started to -- Ajio, in many ways, rose to the occasion in the first quarter last year when the store network in Fashion & Lifestyle was shut down. And it has grown ever since, quarter after quarter, pretty much an improvement on all operating and customer metrics: monthly active users, traffic on-site, orders, all up 4x year-on-year. And the point I think I mentioned the last time around, we're growing momentum on this business significantly.The revenue that we clock per quarter on Ajio now is equal to the revenue that we did for a full year in the period pre-COVID. Yes. So that's the business, which has continued to be on momentum, and it's now contributing very meaningfully to our apparel and footwear business.Successful execution of events and with each event, clearly, operating metrics getting better and customer metrics getting larger. And we've ramped up capacities. And this is the next thing that we're now investing in significantly. So whether it is last-mile fulfillment, whether it is supply chain or distribution center capacity or fulfillment center capacity or it is indeed the technology platform, we're now investing really for new peaks that we are starting to see on this business.And on merchant partnerships, we're scaling up. Of course, we were constrained. Many markets across the country were shut down because of the restrictions, and these were fashion and lifestyle markets, clearly not deemed to be essentials. But as markets opened out in June, we started to bring the business back. We're currently present in a little under 2,400 cities poised for further expansion in the months ahead as markets start to open out. And we expanded the portfolio. We're doing everything that is required from a capability standpoint, right on assortment, right on seller onboarding to prepare this business for significant expansion in the months ahead.On jewels, I think jewels has had a very good run. Revenues are up 2.5x over same time last year, higher operating days. But importantly, I think we think better product mix, more jewelry, lesser gold coins and that always all goes well. Of course, when sentiment is a bit weak, diamond contribution does take a beating as it is -- as it did in the case of quarter 1 last year as well. So diamond contributions come off a bit, but the good part is, within gold, we're seeing a better mix, which is veering more towards jewelry, less towards just holding gold coins.We continue to leverage design capabilities. Collections are doing well, well received. The virtual gold voucher facility that we pioneered was to really be able to lock in gold for customers who couldn't visit stores but wanted to lock in the price at that point of time and then they would redeem it once stores open. That was met with a very encouraging response. And I think Reliance Jewels continues to receive a lot of external acclaims. It's now something that we've seen for many quarters and just reflects the way this business is being built out.On our luxury and premium brands business, clearly, the emphasis on digital commerce, which is now about 30% of this business, has really been able to salvage revenues at a time when most of the store network shut down. A large part of the store network is in malls, which still remains shut. We continue to expand the portfolio. Ajio Luxe, which I'm hoping many of you would have experienced by now, the offering on that from our premium and our luxury brands has been extended, and there's more in the offing.Strong rebound on Hamleys as U.K. has reopened, but let's recognize that a lot of the traffic that we saw in the U.K. business was really domestic traffic. The foreign tourist into U.K., which is also a sizable contributor to the Hamleys U.K. business, has not yet happened, but at least, we've seen a good rebound from the domestic traffic on the U.K. Hamleys business.And we continue to expand the partnerships. And this time around, we've announced the joint venture with the Creative Artists Agency and the Global Brands Group, which is really brand management companies, which will just expand the portfolio that we have under this business.On Grocery, I mentioned very resilient, double-digit growth in the continuing business. The quarter-on-quarter performance was impacted by operating restrictions because -- it is a bit of a misnomer to say that grocery did not see any constraints. The reality is the grocery network was also subjected to the same limitations on operating hours and the restrictions on portfolio that could be sold. So the quarter-on-quarter performance clearly was impacted, but it remains resilient otherwise in terms of the essentials part of the portfolio.Our stores were reorganized to ensure dependable footfall was happening. We were absolutely offering a safe shopping environment, broad-based growth across categories, typical categories that do well in times like this and led the performance with staples, processed foods and parts of the HPC business. We've continued to leverage relationships with key vendors to ensure better availability. And I did mention that supply chains were not as broken as they might have been given the suddenness of the first wave last year. Clearly, between partners and ourselves, we were completely, as a network, better prepared, and that just ensured better availability this time around. And we work very closely with them on activations and promotions really bring the best to customers.We continue to focus -- it's a strong emphasis and a strong priority within the business to now build our own brand portfolio over here. And we've now had the launch of our own brand called Puric InstaSafe, which is built around the proposition of hygiene, and we're now looking to extend that into general trade as we scale up our new commerce business.JioMart has really came in many ways to the rescue. You just heard me make an overarching point, saying that in a quarter when the store network was stifled, digital commerce and new commerce, in many ways, contributed about 20% of the business. JioMart continues to scale up further. JioMart has just about completed a year. It was born in May of last year and has grown from strength to strength. It's continued to grow scale. Orders on JioMart have been up 25% quarter-over-quarter, which means over the last quarter as well. So there is continuing momentum that we are seeing on JioMart and very high levels of repeat. We're seeing over 75% of repeats on JioMart, which is very, very healthy [ for it ]. We've now extended coverage to about 218 cities. And our Kirana partnerships are up by 1/3 over the same time last quarter -- sorry, over last quarter. And we continue now to build capabilities for faster onboarding. So as curbs are lifted, you could expect a rapid acceleration of our onboarding on Kirana partners.So therefore, looking ahead, let me again say it's a big priority for the retail business given the dispersion and where our employees are working clearly in frontline, to continue and finish this whole journey on vaccination. So therefore, vaccinating employees, their families and partners and securing operations is clearly our foremost priority. [indiscernible] are due for their second shot over the next few weeks.But we remain very steadfast and committed to our medium-term and immediate-term priorities, which is to accelerate the new store opening. That's taking a bit of -- it's been stalled by clearly the operating restrictions. We're looking to get back to that as markets open and as operating curbs are lifted, scaling up digital commerce. We think it's a way of life. It's -- and we're, therefore, preparing for this and we're expanding capacity.JioMart will continue to expand its play. We've spoken about how we're taking it horizontal across categories and how we are growing the assortment on JioMart. We will continue to grow new commerce partnerships across business and across geographies. And there's enough preparedness right from infrastructure to teams that are now in place to really be able to enable this.Launch and scale up new businesses. JioMart Digital, which is our foray of new commerce in the electronic space, is due for launch in the months ahead. Subscription services is very much in the offing. Building up the marketplace is in the works. Expanding beauty is clearly in the offing. And then newer businesses that we had acquired, which is Urban Ladder and Zivame, very much being invested in and plans that we have to exponentially grow each of them.An integral part of the priority for the retail business is to really also build the larger ecosystem. And what we're doing is to expand design centers and really look to see how we invest in design, research and development across the country. And there's fair amount of work that we've progressed in that direction. That is awaiting execution. And we're looking to develop the vendor ecosystem and fast-track the supply chain infrastructure augmentation, which, again, has been stalled by the current circumstances but for which a lot of readiness has been built. And we will execute, therefore, as the situation eases out and normalizes.And last week, we announced the acquisition of a controlling interest in Just Dial. And we're very excited about that acquisition in the context of the larger retail priorities and how we're going to be building up new commerce and the retail plans. There is some part of the process of the acquisition, which needs to be completed over the next couple of months, and as we do that alongside, business teams are engaging on how we can really leverage this acquisition for the retail plans and really grow the business. So a very exciting space, and that's really going to be a priority for us over the next few months.So let me end by saying that we remain very optimistic about the direction of change. Many moving parts, but clearly, July has been a better month than June in the first 20 days that we've seen it. In terms of store operations, it's a tad lower than where April might have been, but it's trending upwards and we're very optimistic with that direction. And we remain very strongly committed and confident to be able to restore the growth momentum that you've been used to seeing in the Reliance Retail business in the pre-pandemic era as soon as operating conditions normalize.With that, thank you, and let me hand it over to Sanjay. Sanjay, over to you.

[Sanjay Barman Roy, Senior Vice President of E&P]

Thank you, Dinesh. On the Oil & Gas segment, the -- as you are aware, we commissioned the R-cluster field in December of last year, the satellite cluster field in April of this year. On the back of that, the production ramp-up is under way, and we are very much on track. The -- in the quarter gone by, we produced 36 Bcfe, which is actually almost at par with what we had produced in the entire year in FY '20. Based on the strong production growth, we are now seeing revenues at 10-quarter highs and EBITDA at 22-quarter highs.As you're aware, we have now achieved an aggregate production of about 18 million standard cubic meters, which is slightly ahead of our plans. And in -- as part of our monetization, we had conducted 4 rounds of bidding, 1 round for CBM and 3 rounds for KG-D6. We pioneered the e-auction process in India for domestically produced gas, and we have successfully contracted 18 million standard cubic meters of gas. Now what we saw was, again, the demand levels have been restored to the pre-COVID levels, and there has been strong, intense competition in the e-auctions. You had participants from the fertilizer, power, steel as well as refining and petrochemicals and resellers. So all in all, there was intense competition and we were quite pleased with the outcomes.Now with the strong rally in gas prices, we expect that we should at least have a 50% to 60% increase in gas prices starting from the next half onwards. So that's the outlook. Again, many good triggers. We believe that gas has an important role to play as we transition towards decarbonization. So that's the outlook. And -- if you go to the next slide, please.So just as a comparison, as I was mentioning earlier, so in FY '20, we produced about 39 Bcfe. As compared to that in the first quarter of this year itself, we have produced 36 Bcfe. So that's the kind of growth, and we expect to sustain this growth and augment it over time. Most of the production has -- 95% of the production has been from KG-D6. Currently, we are contributing nearly 20% of India's gas production.Next slide, please. All right, so on the basis of this production growth, we can now see the top line growth. The revenues are at highs when we look over the last -- on a quarterly basis over the last 10 quarters. And similarly, EBITDA margins will continue to improve. We have seen an improvement of almost 940 basis points Q-on-Q, but this will continue to improve as we see the increase in production and increase in prices, and the operating efficiencies that we expect will play out to improve the EBITDA margins. Once again, the whole point out here is that prices are expected to improve based on the sustained rally in gas prices. As I mentioned earlier, that we expect that from next half onwards, we should get a higher realization that is 50% to 60% in KG-D6.Next slide, please. The KG-D6 MJ Field, which is currently under development, this is not the deepwater field. It's a gas condensate field. It comprises of wells connected to a subsea production system, which is tied back to a floating production storage and offloading vessel. Now all of this is currently under way. Our second offshore installation campaign will commence from later this year around November. And our well campaign is -- development well campaign is currently under way. The drilling and completions is under way right now. And both the FPSO as well as the subsea production system is on track for first gas in the third quarter of FY '23. Now with the augmentation of production from MJ Field, we expect to cross the 30 million standard cubic meter mark from KG-D6 by 2023.So that's the production outlook. Meanwhile, we are also making efforts to consolidate our -- and leverage our understanding of the basin, the geology and even leverage the existing deepwater infrastructure we have. So we're looking at exploration prospects in the block, KG UDW1, which we expect to mature this fiscal and potentially look at drilling. If successful, we can now -- we can tie it back to our existing infrastructure.So that's the outlook in terms of the future growth. Thank you. Over to you, Srikanth. Thank you.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thank you. This is the last section from a business standpoint on O2C. The environment, as you know, consumer sentiment has been rising, vaccination drive and monetary policy support has meant you're seeing it in the global oil demand, which went up by 1.2 million barrels per day on a Q-on-Q basis. Also, we saw similar trends in demand for both polymer and polyester more so because of demand in U.S. and Europe.Mobility indices-wise, it's at 88% now -- or 88% of the pre-pandemic level. In early part of Jan, it was closer to 60%. So you can see the demand there and the mobility there. Q-on-Q demand was impacted by second wave, and as I will try to make a case in the subsequent part of the presentation that the demand for both polymer and polyester were significantly lower than what we saw in the first quarter of FY '21. But when you look at it from a year-on-year growth for oil, up 19%; polymer demand, up 28%; polyester, up about 200% plus.Also, it is reflected in operating rates. If you see the cracker operating rates globally, it was at 82%, slightly higher than what it was in the previous quarter, and we saw that even in the refining operating rates at 76% versus 74%. So clearly, there is the demand environment, and increased mobility is showing in as far as the business is concerned.So when you look at the feedstock price environment, again, you saw oil close to $69. This is the average price, up 13% Q-on-Q. This is 11-quarter high. It was obviously supported because of global fuel demand and also supply management by OPEC+. We also saw that translate in terms of higher cracker feedstock prices. Both naphtha and ethane were up between 8% to 9%. Also, the prices were higher because crackers started the operation post the Arctic freeze. We continue to see global supply chains being impacted with high sea freight and container shortages.When you look at the product margin environment, you can see that in the margins, again, the transportation fuels at 4- to 6-quarter high. We are also seeing it in the downstream petrochemicals, where year-on-year PVC delta up 43%. Polypropylene is up about 15%. PTA is 72%; PX, 14%, so a strong rebound in as far as the margin is concerned.So this was the slide I was referring to. So if you look at the numbers on the left, we have plotted the deltas for PE, PVC and PP, and these are really the bar -- these are the bar graphs. And we have plotted the demand from a -- demand on the left-hand side and deltas on the right-hand side. But the demand is really versus the pre-COVID, which is the fourth quarter of FY '20.So if you have to see first quarter FY '21 demand, weighted average demand dropped by 25% in first quarter of FY '21. But when you look at it, in first quarter of FY '22, the demand is down by 15%. But I would like to highlight that despite the Q-on-Q fall, you can see that demand is almost at the pre-COVID levels. And again, when you see the year-on-year, the growth is about 28%. And we have seen it in the demand coming through in health and hygiene, in FMCG, in packaging, in polypropylene with -- called polypropylene copolymer for oxygen concentrators.And when you see the delta, you can see that quarter-on-quarter, PVC deltas have been actually stable, flat, I would say, while PP and PE deltas are down between 6% to 13%. But still year-on-year, if you were to see, the deltas are actually 30% to 40% higher than the pre-COVID levels. And this is further aided by the fact that it is coming on the back rather of global recovery and also the fact that logistic constraints are helping maintain this kind of deltas. And when you look at stand-alone products like PP and PVC, they are well above the 5-year averages that we have seen.In polyester, actually, you can see it more starker. In the first quarter of FY '21, you saw that demand had effectively collapsed by 72%. But in this quarter, that is 1 quarter FY '22, you can see that the fall is only 30%. And even though it is 84% of pre-COVID, but you can see the sharp growth versus same time last year. So that's -- in that sense, the growth has been 203%.PET demand continued to be impacted by lockdowns. In fact, this will be the second consecutive summer season where it has got impacted. On the -- however, when you look at the deltas, it is very interesting because you see that the deltas have -- in fact, were -- on fourth quarter FY '20 and first quarter '21, were flat at 540. And then when you compare it to year-on-year, it has seen a 15% year-on-year growth. And in the first wave, when demand collapsed, yet you saw that deltas were maintained because China inventory buildup of both PX and PTA. They did that with -- because it was driven by low absolute prices, so therefore, prices really didn't fall.Similarly, in the second wave 2, while deltas now got maintained because there has been a strong growth in polyester chain margins or polyester chain in China. So therefore, the prices remained -- the chain deltas have remained, in that sense, flat. And now the broader polyester market integrated chain margins are actually now approaching 5-year averages.On the fuel demand side, you can see that if I were to work with third quarter FY '20 as the base because for transportation fuel, that is a better proxy of pre-COVID levels, you can see that by -- you can see that gasoline is almost 97%. Gas oil is at about 94% of pre-COVID. Clearly, ATF at 62% is a little far away from that kind of number. And you may have noted that the global mobility indices are only about 12% lower from -- lower than where they were pre-COVID.And you are seeing gasoline and gas oil demand coming up as I said. There is increased leisure travel pushing up hotel room rates and gasoline demand in the U.S. And when you look at some of the data on domestic air travel in the U.S., they have actually come back to the March 2020 levels. The clear driver for demand is going to be still jet fuel, which is still 38% away from the levels in pre COVID. But as the economies open up, you should see a bounce back there.This is just a pictorial representation of the direct relation between mobility and transportation cracks. And in all the 3 geographies, Europe, U.S. and U.K., as the sharp rebound -- you can see the sharp rebound in mobility, and you can also see corresponding cracks go up. And both gasoline is now -- is a 6-quarter high. Also, gas oil has also seen quarter-on-quarter improvement. But the fact that there is weak ATF means that it does weigh on gas oil cracks. ATF also, while it's on a lower base, you did see a quarter-on-quarter improvement with domestic travel in both U.S. and Europe.So bringing it together, overall, you see that revenues sharply at INR 1 lakh and 3,000 crores (sic) [ INR 103,212 crores ] is sharply higher than where we saw in the first quarter. EBITDA, as I mentioned earlier on, higher by almost 50% year-on-year and about 7.2% higher on a quarter-on-quarter basis. There has been a margin expansion by almost 60 basis points. This is on the back of transportation fuel cracks. It is also on the back of Q-on-Q improvement in deltas, especially PX, PTA and yarn.Also for us, the feedstock flexibility that is naphtha versus ethane helped. The fact that we are accessing enhanced domestic gas also helped reduce our energy cost. We are working at full capacity. And most importantly, we were able to flex our business model from domestic back to exports, similar in some sense to what we did in first quarter of FY '21.Here, just on the operating performance side, our throughputs were indeed higher by 1.6% on a Q-on-Q basis. We did maximize straight-run fuel oil and also some of the arbitrage barrels from a cost point of view. We did have an unplanned FCCU shortage, which impacted gasoline, PE, PP but then FCCU restarted and has normalized.As a strategy, we did push more of jet fuel because there was a sequential improvement in demand, so we focused on that. And as I mentioned earlier on, the placement in export markets helped mitigate the consumption in the domestic market.I also did want to take a second to really highlight the extraordinary work by our Jamnagar team in as far as medical-grade oxygen is concerned. They were able to meet the daily requirements of almost 100,000 patients during peak COVID. They were -- the air separation units, operations were increased. We also curtailed our gasifier operations to maximize oxygen production, and we didn't even hesitate for a fraction of a second to substitute that by imported LNG. So this has been something which has given us great satisfaction to be of a small help in the second wave of COVID.On the near-term drivers, we do see oil demand but still going to be inch short of what it was in terms of peak. And also the global polyolefin supply is coming through, but we are confident that strong Asian demand will absorb this. And as vaccination pace increases and COVID containment happens, it will drive consumer confidence.On the margin side, the reduction in Chinese export quota as well as demand recovery, especially in the U.S., we believe, will support gasoline margins. The international logistics constraints continue, and in that sense, it is -- I think it's a bit in terms of maintaining some of the margin there. And we continue to be very constructive on the polyester chain integrated deltas.On the demand driver side, clearly, all linked to mobility road, air as and when, which will pull demand up. From the domestic side, we are seeing across-the-board demand in health care, food packaging, FMCG and as far as petrochemicals are concerned. And also PE and PVC continue to benefit from some of the favorable policy initiatives.Of course, from what we have to look out for is, clearly, there are more lockdowns, especially in Southeast Asia. Yes, that could have an impact. Similarly, domestic side, if there were fresh restrictions, just that those things could be -- could have an impact in as far as the pace in which you will get it back. Also very high crude prices and oil prices can have an impact on demand, but we'll have to watch that.And I'll just bring all this together in a summary. This quarter, it's a record EBITDA. Overall, when we put all the businesses together, I would say, the minimal -- the impact of second wave has been minimal on financial performance. And with overall global mobility expected to improve, we do expect demand to remain firm. And that is the context in which we remain constructive about both the demand and margin environment. As Sanjay highlighted, the Oil & Gas is poised to be a significant value and growth in the coming years. Jio will just continue to -- will continue its leadership position with new offerings in both the JioPhone Next, the JioFiber as well as enterprises business and not to forget mentioning about 5G.On the retail side, we are positioned for strong recovery led by digital commerce. Sanjay talked about the fact that -- between digital and some of the new merchants, it's now close to 20% versus what it was at 4%. We are also adding stores, and we are seeing a revival -- strong revival we expect in the consumer sentiments. And a large focus now is on an accelerated start to the Clean and Green Energy business initiative that we announced in great detail in our AGM speech.So all in all, a diversified portfolio across consumption buckets -- baskets. Very strong balance sheet underpins our robust outlook for growth in -- for RIL. Thank you. Thank you all for being on the call.

[B. Srinivasan]

Thank you, Srikanth.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you. Yes.