Reliance Industries Ltd
NSE:RELIANCE
Reliance Industries Ltd
Reliance Industries Ltd., often regarded as the crown jewel of India's corporate sector, has cemented its place as a conglomerate with diverse interests ranging from energy to retail and telecommunications. Founded in 1960 by Dhirubhai Ambani as a small textile manufacturer, it quickly expanded into petrochemicals, refining, oil, and gas exploration to capitalize on India's evolving economic landscape. Reliance’s refining and petrochemical segments, anchored by the sprawling Jamnagar Refinery complex, one of the world’s largest, continue to serve as its financial backbone. This intricate operation involves converting crude oil into vital products like diesel, petrol, and myriad petrochemicals, which are then sold domestically and internationally, feeding into sectors as diverse as transportation, agriculture, and consumer goods.
The dynamics of Reliance Industries have been significantly transformed in recent years under the stewardship of Mukesh Ambani, who diversified the company’s portfolio further into telecommunications, through Reliance Jio, and retail, with Reliance Retail Limited. Jio's innovative approach, offering unprecedentedly low data rates, revolutionized India's telecom industry by rapidly capturing substantial market share. This disruption not only created a new revenue stream but also positioned Reliance as a pivotal player in digital communications and data monetization. Concurrently, its retail arm has burgeoned into one of India’s largest, presenting a wide array of consumer products and grocery items through a mix of physical stores and burgeoning e-commerce platforms. By intertwining robust traditional sectors with forward-thinking ventures, Reliance Industries illustrates a business model that effectively blends legacy operations with new-age growth engines, ensuring its enduring dominance in India's economic narrative.
Earnings Calls
Reliance Industries reported robust growth, with Q3 operating revenues up 19.4% year-on-year, totaling INR 33,074 crores. EBITDA increased by 18.8% to INR 16,585 crores, driven by higher data consumption and festive demand. The digital segment thrived, adding 3.3 million subscribers, pushing the total to 482.1 million, while ARPU rose 12% to INR 203.3. Retail revenues reached INR 90,000 crores, up 18.4% quarter-on-quarter, aided by strong festive sales. In O2C, EBITDA grew 2.4% year-on-year at INR 14,400 crores. The outlook remains positive, with ongoing investments expected to support further growth across segments.
Management
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is an influential Indian business magnate, known prominently as the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a conglomerate with interests in petrochemicals, refining, oil, telecommunications, and retail. He was born on April 19, 1957, in Aden, Yemen, and later moved to India with his family. He is the son of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, the visionary founder of Reliance Industries. Mukesh joined Reliance in 1981 and played a key role in diversifying the company from textiles into a wide array of sectors, such as telecommunications and energy. Under his leadership, Reliance has experienced significant growth and expansion, making it one of the largest companies in India by market capitalization. Mukesh Ambani spearheaded the creation of Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, a telecommunications company that launched its services in 2016 and quickly revolutionized the Indian telecom sector with aggressive pricing and high-speed internet services. This move catapulted Reliance into becoming a major player in the digital ecosystem, contributing to a digital revolution in India. Ambani has been consistently listed among the world's wealthiest individuals and is often recognized for his contributions to industry and economic development in India. He holds a degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and briefly attended Stanford University for an MBA before leaving the program to help build Reliance. His leadership and strategic vision have been lauded internationally, and he plays a prominent role in various global and national business forums. Mukesh Ambani is married to Nita Ambani, and the couple has three children. His dynamic approach continues to influence the corporate landscape in India and beyond.
Panda Madhusudana Siva Prasad is an accomplished executive associated with Reliance Industries Limited, a leading conglomerate in India. With an educational background in engineering, he brings over three decades of expertise in various industries, notably in oil and gas, refinery operations, and project management. At Reliance Industries, Mr. Prasad has been instrumental in overseeing significant projects and ensuring operational excellence within the firm's expansive energy and resources division. His role often involves strategic planning, optimizing processes, and implementing advanced technologies to enhance productivity and efficiency across Reliance's massive infrastructural projects. Panda Madhusudana Siva Prasad is recognized for his leadership qualities and his ability to drive innovative solutions, ensuring that Reliance Industries remains at the forefront of the energy sector. His contribution significantly impacts the company's growth trajectory and its commitment to sustainable practices. In addition to his technical acumen, Mr. Prasad is known for fostering teamwork and nurturing talent within the organization, making him a pivotal figure in Reliance Industries' continued success.
Parul Sharma is a Senior Legal Counsel at Reliance Industries Limited, one of India's largest and most diversified conglomerates. She is known for her significant contributions to the legal field within the company, where she plays a critical role in navigating complex legal issues and ensuring compliance with various regulatory frameworks. Her expertise includes corporate law, commercial agreements, and policy advisory, which are crucial to supporting Reliance's expansive operations. Parul Sharma's role involves collaborating with different business units to mitigate legal risks and manage litigation effectively, reflecting her adept legal acumen and strategic thinking abilities. Her work contributes to Reliance Industries’ reputation for adhering to legal and governance standards in their business ventures.
Mr. Srikanth Venkatachari is the Joint Chief Financial Officer of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), one of India’s largest conglomerates. He plays a critical role in managing the financial operations and strategies of the company. Mr. Venkatachari has been associated with Reliance for several years, contributing significantly to its financial planning and risk management frameworks. With a strong background in finance, he has been involved in numerous capital-raising activities and has helped shape the financial policies that support Reliance's diversified businesses. Under his leadership, the company has maintained a robust fiscal discipline and explored innovative financial solutions to support growth and expansion. His experience and expertise in the global financial markets are instrumental in enhancing Reliance's financial stability and strategic initiatives.
Savithri Parekh serves as the Company Secretary and Compliance Officer at Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), one of India's largest conglomerates. In her role, she is responsible for ensuring that the company adheres to legal and regulatory requirements, and she plays a key role in corporate governance. Parekh's expertise in legal and compliance matters is crucial for maintaining the integrity and transparency of RIL's vast operations. With a strong background in corporate law, Savithri is instrumental in managing board meetings, handling investor relations, and ensuring compliance with corporate policies. Her work facilitates seamless communication between the board of directors and shareholders, contributing to the effective management and strategic direction of the company. Her contributions to RIL are part of a broader career that highlights extensive experience in legal and compliance roles across various industries. Under her stewardship, RIL continues to maintain high standards of corporate governance and operational excellence.
Rohit Bansal is a senior executive at Reliance Industries Limited, one of India's largest conglomerates. He serves as the Group Head of Corporate Communications at the company. With extensive experience in media and communications, Bansal plays a crucial role in managing the public image of Reliance Industries. He is responsible for overseeing the company's communication strategies, media relations, and public affairs, ensuring the company's messages are effectively conveyed to its diverse stakeholders. Before joining Reliance, Rohit Bansal held significant positions in journalism and media, bringing a wealth of experience to his role in corporate communications. His background in media provides him with a deep understanding of how to navigate the complex landscape of public relations and communication strategy. Mr. Bansal's leadership in communication at Reliance is instrumental in shaping the company's brand and reputation in both domestic and international markets.
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Good evening and a very happy New Year to all of you. I'm very happy to welcome you to the third quarter financial year 2025 results presentation from Reliance Industries Limited. As always, we have Srikanth walking you through the consolidated numbers first, then we will have Kiran talk about Jio. We will have Anshuman talk about Jio numbers, then we will have Dinesh Taluja talk about retail and Sanjay Roy talking about our E&P performance. Then Srikanth will come back and then summarize. But before summarizing, he will also talk about the robust performance. Thank you, Srikanth, and over to you.
Thanks, Srini, and happy New Year to all of you. We had a good operating quarter with strong performance in each of our segments. Our revenue growth, EBITDA growth at close to 8% and a PAT growth of close to 12%. And specifically, the consumer businesses did well and so did O2C. We had strong sequential performance. In fact, if you were to look at EBITDA on an aggregate basis, sequentially up 9%. Retail was up 17% sequentially. O2C was up 16% sequentially. So strong improvement there. And in each of the businesses, retail, and we'll go through the slides, but it's on the back of strong festive season and good traction with our customers. On Jio, the story is about higher ARPU and the fact that we are adding consumers, especially in FTTH. O2C year-on-year has been steady, backed by feedstock optimization and strong domestic demand and upstream has been a steady performance.
Just one slide summary of the performance. As you can see, revenue and EBITDA almost 19% higher on a year-on-year basis, led by benefit of tariff hike. As you can see, ARPU at INR 203, which is up 12% and also us adding almost 3.3 million subscribers during the quarter, of which 2 have been for home. So there has been this whole point about return of customers and a post transient from the SIM consolidation concern point of view. Data traffic, very strong, 22% higher at about 46.5 exabytes of data. And also that 5G customer base is now 170 million number.
On retail side, revenue, EBITDA and PAT between 9% and 10%. And as I mentioned, very strong sequential performance with revenues up actually on a sequential basis, 18% and EBITDA at about 17%. And the big -- we obviously benefited from an exceptionally strong festive season demand. And as you may recall, we have been talking about significant efforts over the past few quarters in terms of streamlining our operations and the benefit out of that and the productivity gains that have come out, especially when you look at grocery, if you look at B2C, that's a 37% growth there and also benefiting from very strong traction in our consumer brands. In Fashion & Lifestyle, we saw a very strong rebound with some of our new formats delivering the highest ever sales. Digital benefited again from the festive and wedding season. And EBITDA margin continued to expand at 8.6%. It's up 20% -- 20 basis points on a year-on-year basis. This time, we started express deliveries pilot in about 4,000 pin codes and continuing footprint expansion, 779 stores overall that we saw.
In O2C segment, EBITDA growth about 2.4% year-on-year, but 16% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. On a year-on-year basis, I would say it's a steady performance with a lot more focus on favorable feedstock sourcing. It has -- we also benefited from higher volumes. It's up almost 9%. You may recall that last time around, there were large plant shutdowns in the same period last year, and that rebound in volumes we saw. Importantly, this time has also been a big push towards in our domestic fuel retailing. And if you see the volumes, volumes have been up 44% for gasoline and 23% for diesel. The good news also has been the fact that domestic demand has been strong, oil at almost close to 6% demand growth, polymer 11% and polyester 12%. So in a way, the mix trends that we saw in -- as far as the margin environment was concerned based on global factors did get compensated by the push in the domestic side as well as the higher volumes that we had.
Oil & Gas, a steady quarter. Revenue slightly lower because of volumes from KG D6 being there, but there was a bit of -- in terms of the price was slightly higher at about 0.8% higher at $9.74 a million Btu. Overall production still the field produces 28.04 MMSCMD. Putting these numbers together, overall, you can see that EBITDA up 8% on a year-on-year basis and almost flowing through from -- into a PAT at 12%. So benefit of all the -- each of the individual businesses doing well, you see that. This is just the bridge. Pictorially, it tells you that on a year-on-year basis, the big contribution coming from digital services, which is up INR 2,400 crores, so did retail adding INR 600 crores to the overall EBITDA. And when we -- and Dinesh will cover through some of the other operating metrics in terms of footfalls and number of transactions.
Quarter-on-quarter, big jump coming from O2C here, it is on the back of higher refining margins as well as improved PP and PVC deltas that we saw. Otherwise, even on O2C, marginal improvement in KG D6 gas price realization benefited it. Retail benefited from the festive demand that I talked about and digital on the back of both ARPU increase as well as continuing migration to 5G as well as the JioAirFiber connect that we saw. Flat in terms of net debt, you can see that broadly the same as what it was in September and just the same as what it was even in March. So continuing strength of the balance sheet and our CapEx for the quarter was around INR 32,000 crores well below the cash profits of INR 38,000 crores that this quarter we have delivered.
With this, I'm going to hand it over to Kiran.
Thank you. Thank you, Srikanth. So we want to start today about -- with an update on the progression of our True 5G services. If you look at the chart on the right, you can see that it has been a story of steady growth. We already had the pan-India network up and running for the past many quarters. And now thanks to the natural upgradation of devices happening in the market where a lot of the new handsets have 5G capability. And as soon as a customer acquires a 5G device, they automatically are able to enjoy all of the 5G services available through Jio True 5G. So the combination of having that pan-India network available and the increasing adoption of 5G devices in our subscriber base has resulted in the number of Jio 5G subscribers crossing 170 million as on December of '24. Moreover, 5G now accounts for a large chunk of the traffic on our network, nearly 40% of the wireless traffic of an overall traffic of about 15 exabytes is being contributed by 5G, and this story will continue to unfold into the future.
And more interestingly, thanks to the fact that we have this superlative True 5G network, which is a big differentiator vis-a-vis other competitors also means that any new 5G device that is sold in the market, 70% of them end up becoming a Jio customer and using Jio services. So literally, I think we are at the cusp where probably in a very short period of time, we'll be able to say that in probably one of the fastest 5G rollouts, not only 5G rollouts, but 5G adoption anywhere in the world, the total 5G traffic on our network will surpass the 4G traffic very, very shortly.
Now it is not just in the consumer side, we have also been briefing all of you over the last few quarters about True 5G also powering something called JioAirFiber. So if you look at the pie chart on the left, what is heartening is that the availability of AirFiber has really opened up demand, unlocked demand or pent-up demand from beyond what we call the top 1,000 cities and towns of India. And what we are seeing is that, as you know, nearly 70% of the population of the country is outside of the -- what we call the cities or the urban markets. And now we are really starting to see that even our addition with respect to AirFiber connections are starting to reflect that mix. And more than 70% of the new connections are now starting to come from beyond the top 1,000 towns and cities.
We also had more than 2 million connects in a single quarter in the third quarter of FY '25, which has really driven the total connected premises to nearly 17 million. And just keeping in mind that this pace is accelerating. Now as the rollout itself is kind of becoming almost a well-oiled machine and with new demand getting unlocked from all across the country and not just the urban centers, I think the pace of connections will pick up into the future. And we see that this entire greenfield opportunity of connecting 100 million-plus homes across India is now getting that additional momentum, thanks to AirFiber. And this is an area where we have a significant first-mover advantage, where essentially we are going after either to unconnected or underserved markets with this offering.
The enterprise business is also picking up momentum. If you look at year-on-year growth, there is a nearly 3x or 280% year-on-year increase in all the government -- large government tenders, which have come out. And of course, if you look at both the national and state government connectivity infrastructure, we are continuing to increase our share in that segment. Another big segment which is modernizing is all the banks. And if you look at -- the recent past, again, we've been consistently winning a lot of the connectivity tenders coming from cooperative banks. And we believe that there's a potential to get up to 150,000 bank branches across the country that we are well positioned to connect eventually.
And of course, large corporates across as some of their traditional contracts are rolling off, we are getting selected as almost near exclusive service provider because most enterprises who have multiple locations and pan-India premise presence, they are looking to have a single solution provider and Jio is well positioned to be that exclusive service provider on a pan-India basis. And wherever we have such demand coming in, we are seeing that we are the provider of choice there. In addition to connectivity, again, we are providing a true developer-friendly platform as a service for connectivity. We call connectivity and communication platform as a service. The brand name is JioCX. And in addition to that, of course, the IoT adoption, again, which requires pan-India connectivity. And of course, in the government sector through a few of the initiatives and wins that we have had also getting into private and hybrid cloud as a managed service. So across the board, I think connectivity is obviously getting strengthened, but we are also now starting to see traction for services beyond connectivity.
And also talking about communication, we launched recently the SIP business, and we are seeing a 50% growth in the installed base in the first quarter itself post launch. If you look at the -- what is -- now I just want to talk about a few themes that we are pursuing into the future. So certainly, we are living in the age of AI, dramatic transformations starting to happen across industries, across functions, across -- even across various use cases. And to enable all of that to happen and making sure that India is emerging as one of the preeminent AI nations anywhere in the world, again, we see ourselves having to pursue a few missions to support that ambition.
And the first one is, of course, setting up a national -- truly national AI infrastructure, really looking at creating AI-ready infrastructure, hard infrastructure and compute capabilities, not just in the few megawatts or even hundreds of megawatts, but really extending into the gigawatt scale because we believe that this transformation will be like across the board, and we need to be ready to ramp up and support the emergence of AI-driven use cases in the country and not just creating the scale, but also ensuring that we are able to deliver through various innovative partnerships and, of course, innovative initiatives internally to deliver one of the lowest cost inference capabilities when it comes to AI anywhere in the world. And this is a similar mission as compared to what we were able to do in broadband. So very excited by that.
Internally, I think we are seeing already multiple use cases where we are starting to weave that AI story across our operating companies in the Reliance Group. And of course, on the back of whatever we are doing here, eventually, we will be then looking to offer this as a platform even for other enterprises in India. And if you're looking at what other offerings beyond the platform play, what other offerings we are looking to take to market across the board, all of the consumer and small businesses and enterprise offerings that we're already providing in the market, all of them will see a lift, thanks to the adoption of AI within all of those applications as well through multiple use cases.
Looking at some of the AI-related, not just AI, but across the board, a comprehensive suite of offerings that we unveiled in the India Mobile Congress 2024, which happened over the last quarter. I think building on the AI theme, a platform called Jio Brain, which is really the plumbing on top of which we are able to rapidly spin up all of these AI use cases that I spoke about. That was unveiled and showcased. We made an announcement and now it is available through a beta offering called AI Cloud, which is again an offering for the consumer. So that was also announced and showcased.
And now taking compute into the homes, which has always been an underserved market again, partly because homes are not connected, but partly also because of the high cost of having personal computers in the home. So now we are -- we showcased a solution called the JioCloud PC, which is effectively -- and I'll talk about that in a slide shortly. But effectively, a very low cost and pay-as-you-go capability of having a personal computer, evergreen personal computer, never needed to be upgraded, always the latest specs and pay-as-you-go, you only pay for the time for which you are using that PC.
Again, services for education, again, using AI to power various, I would say, personalized education use cases, AI for skill development, again, how do you train beyond primary education. But once you get into the workforce, how do you use AI to continuously stay updated. Some use cases around how can farmers and other people involved in the agricultural sector use AI. And then, of course, many vertical-focused solutions, especially when it comes to hospitality, retail, nursing and so on. And of course, unveiling a new benchmark when it comes to providing gigabit speed connectivity to every SMB. So a combination of services, but an increasing contribution being made by AI across all of these services. Some of them are already in the market and some of them, we will be announcing the offerings being made available in the market very shortly.
Now coming to the Jio AI-Cloud offering that I spoke about. This is really a combination of putting connectivity, putting cloud storage and AI into one package and making it available to Indian customers. Connectivity is a given, I think I mentioned both in the hand and in the home. The connectivity story is really unlocking new demand. But at the same time, the existing constraint of having sufficient cloud compute available to customers, we made an announcement of providing 100 GB free of cost. I think the earlier benchmark was either 5GB or 15 GB depending on whether you are an Apple customer or a Google customer through Android, but we kind of raised the bar multifold by providing 100 GB free of cost to all Jio customers.
All of the features that one would expect to store, to share, to sync, secure, even stream various kind of media assets all from the same app without having to use any other applications, unlocking the content that you have onto the big screen through integration with our set-top box, trying to bring in additional content very easily like an integration with things like DigiLocker, where if you have even government authenticated content and documents, very easy to integrate between Jio AI-Cloud and that.
And there are already a set of AI-powered use cases where we are able to curate your content, make it available as memories on a daily basis as appropriate through significant dates or other events or other occasions, ability to group individuals through face detection, multiple magic tools to convert your photographs into avatars and also edit those photographs by removing background, adding other assets into those content. All of that today already made available, and we have just launched this as a beta offering in the market. And in the coming quarter, we will look to scale this up to every Jio customer and beyond.
The JioCloud PC that I mentioned earlier. So really, this is, again, a new frontier of adding to the lineup of digital services that we are taking to Indian homes. The key idea being that we already have a pretty capable set-top box in the home. So effectively, we are converting that set-top box and your TV into a PC because the actual compute we are able to run in the cloud. And then all you need is a keyboard and a mouse and effectively, your set-top box and your TV in combination with the Cloud PC doubles up as a PC available to you on demand. And really, I think the key power that we are looking to provide to the home is to enable multiple work and learn and create use cases.
So certainly, students today, not just for their class work, but to develop skills like coding or media creation, et cetera, beyond what they're learning in their classroom, certainly would require compute of some kind, and this, we believe, is going to be that. Gig workers who are working from home, et cetera, again, they are creators of content and sometimes the phone or the tablet is not the best form factor for productive work. And again, this could unlock many such use cases. And again, we are providing 100 GB of storage for -- with every Cloud PC. And as a basic capability, an 8GB multi-core processor is already available through the cloud to get you started.
And again, like I said, it is always updated both in terms of hardware and software because all of that is in the cloud. You don't have to really think about buying or upgrading that on your own. And there is no lock-in. There is no maintenance or anything. It's always available to you and you only pay for what you use.
So some updates that I had, and I'll just hand it over to now Anshuman to talk about both the operational and financial numbers for the quarter.
Thanks, Kiran and Srini. I wish everyone a very happy New Year. Coming to the quarterly highlights, both combination of tariff hike as well as scale-up of some of the digital platforms and improving customer mix resulted in our revenues -- operating revenues growing at 19.4% year-on-year, going up to INR 33,074 crores, corresponding increase in EBITDA as well at 18.8% year-on-year, INR 16,585 crores. So a fairly healthy quarter, a combination of a lot of things going on there and some of the digital revenues just about kicking in.
Subscriber base at 482.1 million. So we've -- as Kiran mentioned earlier on, we've started getting our -- the subscriber run rate picking up again, 3.3 million subscribers getting added in this quarter, and that number has been picking up through the quarter. The ARPU came in at INR 203.3 per month. Once again, an increase on account of the tariff hike, which was done a quarter ago, but also improving customer mix and additional revenues coming in from some of the digital services.
Home additions, Home, we had -- we added almost 2 million new connections during the quarter. And with an increasing run rate, the AirFiber, JioAirFiber product has been very successful in the market. We're seeing a lot of demand coming from towns and cities beyond the Tier 2s. We already are at 4.5 million JioAirFiber homes connected and which will be fairly -- the rate at which we are growing, we should be the largest air fiber service provider globally in the next few months.
Customer engagement continues to be very strong, 350 GB per capita monthly data usage, and that also continues to grow quarter-by-quarter. Kiran spoke about the 5G traction. The -- both the consumption and the subscribers are getting added every month and every quarter. We are the world's leading stand-alone 5G operator outside of China, and we continue to be the world's largest data operator, mobile company anywhere, including when you consider the Chinese companies as well. On the ARPU trend -- trend in ARPU, there's been a significant increase in ARPU over the last few years, 5-year CAGR is 10%. The full impact of the July '24 tariff hike, part of that impact has already played through in the last 2 quarters, but full impact is still playing out. As most of you are aware, we have subscribers who are on longer-term plans and who tend to recharge over a longer period of time. And therefore, we expect some more flow-through to happen as well.
And the affordability as well as increasing engagement should sustain both the subscriber growth run rate as well as the ARPU growth in the coming quarters as well as a bunch of new services and facilities. Kiran spoke about a few of those plus the media offerings that we're providing to our customers, we expect to gain larger -- further improve the customer wallet share that we have. The key operating metrics that we report to you every quarter, 482.1 million subscribers, net customer addition of 3.3 million during the quarter. So we clearly saw a reversal of the trend that we had seen in the last quarter and an increasing run rate of customer addition. ARPU at INR 203.3. The total data consumption crossed 46 exabytes for the quarter. It continues to grow fairly healthily 32.3 GB per user per month.
Net subscriber addition of 3.3 million -- sorry, that we saw -- the voice -- per capita voice consumption also continues to grow over 1,000 minutes per user per month of voice. So data and voice traffic grew 22.2% and 6.5%, respectively, on a year-on-year basis.
Coming to the RJIL financials. These are financials for our connectivity business. The operating revenues grew to INR 29,307 crores. That was a 15.5% year-on-year increase. And the EBITDA growing a little bit faster coming to INR 15,798 crores. The EBITDA margin at 53.9%. This is only for the connectivity business, RJIL, the connectivity service provider. And coming to the key financials for Jio Platforms Limited consolidated financials. The overall Q3 revenues came in at INR 33,074 crores, 19.4% year-on-year growth. We saw a very healthy -- we are seeing a very healthy increase in non-connectivity, the digital revenues, which grew at 60% year-on-year. The annualized run rate has crossed INR 15,000 crores. And this, we are seeing very healthy growth trend here coming in with most of the growth coming in from new customers that we are able to serve. EBITDA increased to INR 16,585 crores consolidated EBITDA. So the consol EBITDA margin at 50.1% and profit after tax at INR 6,857 crores. That was a healthy 26% year-on-year growth during the quarter.
With this, I'm going to hand over to Dinesh to take you through the results of operating and financial results for Reliance Retail.
Thanks, Anshuman. Hi. Good evening, everyone. On the retail business, we had a very strong performance with INR 90,000 crores of revenue during the quarter. So a milestone quarter for us, where our revenues crossed $10 billion in a quarter. The growth was 18.4% on a quarter-on-quarter basis and 9% on a Y-o-Y basis. Part of the growth came from the festive season and the wedding season, but also a lot of the streamlining and productivity improvements that we've been focusing on over the last few quarters that is coming to fruition, and we are seeing strong impact of that.
EBITDA came in at INR 6,800 crores, a 16.7% growth quarter-on-quarter and 9.5% growth Y-o-Y. Margin continues to expand and came in at 8.6%. Our grocery business, B2C business grew at 37% Y-o-Y. So while there's a lot of talk about quick commerce growing, we see our business growing very strongly with very healthy LFLs growing as well as our online express deliveries business is also scaling up pretty well. We are able to deliver this growth at a much higher scale compared to any other offline and online peers. So for us, the business continues to perform very well.
Also in the Fashion & Lifestyle business, which was impacted by a few headwinds in the last couple of quarters, that has seen a strong turnaround, and we had a very strong festive quarter. There was growth across all operating metrics that we registered. So our registered customer base was up 15% at 338 million. Footfalls was up 5% and number of transactions was up 11% on a Y-o-Y basis. Our digital and new commerce continues to contribute -- the contribution has remained steady at about 18%. We opened 779 new stores during the quarter. The total store count stands at 19,100. We continue to expand our partnerships. So to address the super luxury segment in India, we entered into a franchise for India with Saks Fifth Avenue, which is a global luxury retailer.
Also, in order to further strengthen the IP, we did a joint venture with Mothercare PLC, where we own a majority stake in the SPV, which was the Mothercare brand for the Indian subcontinent. Now that gives us ownership of the IP and gives us a lot more flexibility to expand the range, source locally as well as improve the margins. So it is quite a positive for us.
Quick summary, revenue at INR 90,000 crores, EBITDA at INR 6,800 crores and profit after tax of INR 3,500 crores. So as you can see, very strong growth sequentially as well as on a Y-o-Y basis. Moving on to some of the highlights across key businesses. Electronics business had strong growth during the quarter. This was the festive and wedding quarter where we see a lot of pickup in demand. We had a strong 6% LFL growth. Our average bill values continue to grow as well as conversions -- our conversion rates of people coming to the stores is also improving. We had a strong festive quarter, one -- what we measure the 1 week leading up to Diwali, we had a strong 12% growth on a Y-o-Y basis.
resQ, which is the largest service organization for electronics and our biggest differentiator that continues to expand. As you would recollect, we had launched on-demand services 3 quarters back. We added it to 75 new cities where we offer this service, and now we are present into 25 cities for these services. And overall, we are present in over 1,000 plus cities. Our own brands business continues to launch new products. There were several launches which were done during the quarter as well as we continue to expand the merchant base, which was up 75%. 85% of this business is external distribution to the distribution -- general trade distribution network and only 15% comes from our own channels.
Our B2B JMD business continues the growth momentum. Mobile phones continues to lead -- lead be the dominant category in this business. And we are seeing both increase in merchant participation as well as the wallet share of merchant partners is going, which implies that they find our value proposition strong. And over a period of time, as we expand the distribution and further increase the wallet share, this business would increase substantially.
On the apparel and footwear business, we had a very, very strong bounce back, partly the festival season, but also a lot of hard work that we had been doing on enhancing our design capabilities, improving the supply chain, the design to shelf -- shortening the design to shelf cycle using technology and AI and improving the in-store customer experience. All of that is coming together and driving this growth. We are also adding new categories into our stores, adjacencies. So beauty and sleepwear as categories, we have added across multiple store formats. Our 3 recent store formats, which we launched last year, they continue to scale well and the customer adoption is strong. We had the highest ever sales on all these formats during this quarter.
Our own brands continue to grow and their share continues to increase. Avaasa, Netplay and DNMX these are our 3 largest brands. They're amongst the leading brands in their respective categories, and they do drive a lot of footfall in our stores. Our Jio business, the focus has been on improving the economics and improving the average bill values and premiumize the offering. So that continues to do well. We have amongst the highest average bill values amongst all online fashion platforms in the country. The average bill value was up 7% on a Y-o-Y basis. We added almost 2 million customers during the quarter. We continue to expand our catalog, and we added over 0.5 million options just in the first 9 months of this year.
The total catalog now stands at 2.2 million. In this, we have to provide customers a wide range as well as exclusive brands. So most of our own brands that we have, whether partner brands or our in-house brands, they are exclusive on the platform, and they do provide us a differentiation as well as better economics compared to other platforms because if the customer has to buy, he has to come on to these platforms.
We've also launched a bunch of new brands. There were 38 international brands and a host of other national brands, which were launched during the quarter. ON, Forever 21, and Saucony being some of the few. The Black Friday sale event, we had strong performance. There was a 17% growth Y-o-Y. And when we look at the number of people we are reaching the eyeballs, the campaign reach was up 300%, which is a significant increase because increasing the awareness of the platform and helping us recruit new customers.
Premium brands business, steady performance driven by the festive demand again. We continue to strengthen our portfolio and launch new brands. So in the F&B portfolio, we had Pret and we had launched Armani Café last quarter. This quarter, we have launched the EL&N café as well as in the premium women's side, we launched the Sandro brand. We also signed the India franchise for Saks Fifth Avenue to target the super luxury segment. In addition, the IPs that we own, right, we own -- we have stakes in a lot of designer brands, we are taking them global. So for instance, Rahul Mishra and AKOK by Anamika Khanna. We are taking them to U.S. through our partnerships with Saks, where they will be present in the iconic Saks New York store. Hamleys is a tourist destination-driven business, especially in Europe. We set up our third store in Italy, and we continue to expand in new markets. We spoke about the Mothercare IP.
Jewels, overall, I think the jewelry business has been -- kind of volumes have been impacted by the substantial increase in gold prices. We had a decent quarter, especially Dhanteras and wedding season, where we did have a lot of footfalls and reasonable growth in sales. We also continue to launch new collections. So Vivaham collection is meant towards the wedding season, and we have done multiple phases of that variants of that collection over the period, and this is a property that we've built. B2C grocery was the star. The B2C business had a very strong 37% growth. The big box formats are kind of driving this growth. There is broad-based growth across categories.
The high-margin categories, general merchandise and value apparel as well as some of the premium categories in personal and home care and beauty continue to do very well. We are continuously improving our assortment and premiumizing. The benefit of that is, one, it provides a differentiation for us in terms of customers getting premium assortment in our stores. It improves the average bill values as well as the margins. So that's something that we've been focusing on. And every quarter-on-quarter, our average bill values are increasing, which is a big positive for the business.
The Tyohaar Ready Sale, a marquee property that we have built targeting the festive season. There are various festive categories, which did very well. And remember, these are footfall driver categories during the festival season. Metro, which is our B2B business delivered its highest ever festival sales. This business is scaling up very nicely. We had a bunch of local events targeting various occasions to really drive engagement with the merchant kirana partners.
Online grocery, I think 3-pronged. One is the express deliveries. So that's something that we are accelerating our presence. The big advantage we have is we have stores across the length and breadth of the country. We are today providing express deliveries across 4,000 pin codes through a network of 2,100-plus stores spread across a large spectrum of cities from where we are able to deliver within 30 to 45 minutes from our stores, and we are looking to crunch that time line even further. Compared to any other e-commerce player, the big advantage we have is that we ride on the existing infrastructure. From a customer value proposition, they get much wider assortment. We don't charge a delivery fee and a host of other benefits in terms of best pricing in the industry. So there's a very strong proposition for the customer. And for us, the unit economics are much better than anybody else given that we are leveraging the existing network rather than incurring setting up a high-cost dedicated network for this business.
Also, given the width of offering we have, our AOVs are amongst the highest in the industry because we are able to offer the full range of grocery, general merchandise, electronics, fashion that really helps us drive the average order values. The second part is the subscription business. We continue to grow this business very nicely. It's a premium service business where people actually pay for delivery. And we have to grow micro market by micro market, capture it city by city, and we are steadily increasing the presence of this business. The third part is these are our inventory-led models to fill any gaps so that a customer can have the widest choice. We continue to add 3P sellers, so we can offer the entire range to the customers, and we continue to add new sellers onto the platform. And there was a big push on the festival event to acquire customers as well as push new categories. And during the festival season, we saw a 1.5x growth in GMV during that period.
Consumer Brands business is scaling up exponentially. In the 9 months FY '25, this is our FMCG business, we had revenues upwards of INR 8,000 crores. Two of our most prominent brands, Campa and Independence, they continue to gain traction. Each one of them individually should cross INR 1,000 crores of turnover in FY '25. Campa has already gained 10% market share in the sparkling beverage category in select states. The focus here is three-pronged, expand distribution in the priority states, strengthen our product portfolio through innovative products and partnerships, products which are meant for the Indian market, for the Indian consumer that differentiates us from competition as well as build a robust supply chain where I can have the widest presence at the lowest supply chain cost. Now that we also have a critical presence in terms of distribution and supply chain, we are also starting to invest in marketing and promotions to really create brand salience, which will accelerate the presence of this business even further.
So all in all, a very strong quarter. I think the business is well positioned. There are several businesses doing exceedingly well. And we're optimistic that going forward, quarter-on-quarter, we should show healthy growth, coupled with all the productivity improvements that we have done, I think we are well positioned in the coming quarters.
With that, I'll hand over to Sanjay for Oil & Gas business.
Thanks, Dinesh. Very good evening to all of you and a very happy New Year. Just as a recap of the quarter gone by. So this was a steady quarter. We saw revenue at about $744 million, about INR 6,370 crores, which is a slight upside from the previous quarter of around 2.5%. EBITDA came in at about INR 5,565 crores, again, about more than 5% increase quarter-on-quarter. EBITDA margins were very healthy. It grew by almost 240 basis points to 87.4%. The key drivers are -- we saw an uptick in CBM production based on multilateral wells. Currently, 34 wells have been put on stream out of the 40 originally planned wells. So we are seeing a production of about 0.35 million standard cubic meters, which is quite encouraging. And the perspective is that we will continue to drill multilateral wells as these are highly capital efficient and delivering better results. KG D6 performance has been steady in terms of production, about -- in overall BCFe term, 68.5. On MMSCMD term, we are at about 28.04 million standard cubic meters and about 21,000 barrels of condensate per day.
Now the marginally lower production has been offset by higher price realizations in KG D6. Again, the ceiling price prevailing during this half is $10.16 per MMBtu, and we are realizing slightly higher values, which is $9.74. In CBM, we've realized about $10.58, which is lower, but still quite healthy. The difference being quarter-on-quarter, the prices were far elevated when you look at a year back.
In terms of the barrel -- condensate barrel realization, we are seeing about $75.24 per barrel, which is lower simply on the back of lower Brent prices prevailing during the quarter. So overall, we still remain a material contributor. We are -- from KG D6, we are generating slightly over 28 million standard cubic meters. And from CBM, we continue to increase the production. We are at about 0.8 million standard cubic meters per day. So Reliance remains a major contributor to India's gas economy.
So just to review the outlook for the gas markets. Again, prices during the quarter hovered around $13 to $15 per MMBtu, mainly the demand has been resilient, particularly in India, but there have been supply disruptions, mainly LNG terminal outages in Australia, U.S., Brunei, Indonesia. But also, there was a major geopolitical event in terms of gas, wherein there was a stoppage of Russian gas to Ukraine, which impacted almost 11 million tonnes per annum of supplies. Overall, in the short term, we expect prices to remain firm. There are delays in the LNG projects, it means the projects in Africa and Canada seem to be delayed, and that is going to have an overall impact of about 5 million tonnes in CY '25.
Also, we see the storages at much lower levels in Europe. We're seeing about 68.8% versus 5-year averages of 74.8%. But if you compare it to last year, it was almost 84%. So storage is at much lower levels. So we expect higher European gas demand. Again, bodes well for elevated prices going forward. The Indian gas market has remained extremely robust. In fact, in CY '24, we saw a significant increase in consumption almost by 10%. It went up to almost 200 million standard cubic meters in the last quarter, mainly driven by city gas distribution, refinery and pet-chem and power sectors. LNG imports also saw a surge. Despite elevated prices, we saw the overall demand for LNG go up to almost 25.5 million tonnes per annum in CY '24 as compared to 21.1 million tonnes in CY '23. So that was quite an increase in demand despite higher prices.
Also, given ceiling price is better at $10.16 per MMBtu as compared to the first half, which was $9.87. It bodes well for the price outlook for the current quarter. Thank you.
Yes. This is the O2C performance, 2 sections. One is the quarterly review and the other part of it is O2C looking beyond the near term. So as you saw, the EBITDA for this quarter, INR 14,400 crores, up 2.4% on a year-on-year basis and significant resilience from an EBITDA standpoint, given the markets that we saw. And of course, we benefited from higher volumes, that's up 9%. We benefited from the fact that there was strong domestic demand. And also given that we were able to place a lot of our domestic fuel in the domestic markets. Also the continuing advantage of naphtha -- of retail cracking versus naphtha. As you know, the costs are almost $300 a tonne more from an advantage standpoint. We also benefited to some extent with the polymer deltas, which were up between 1% and 9% across these products.
While fuel cracks were healthy, it did come off significantly from what it was last year. So this performance in a way, offsets the 15% fall in gasoline, it offsets the 38% fall in across gas oil and ATF. And also, it offsets the polyester chain margins, which were lower on a year-on-year basis by 12%.
On a Q-on-Q, which I touched upon, strong rebound at 16% higher and that benefited from recovery in mid-distillates, especially gas oil and ATF were up 11% to 13%. Polypropylene prices were up by 5% and PVC by 4%. So all in all, this helped the quarterly boost. And effectively, our EBITDA margins improved by 160 basis points to 9.6%. So on the operating performance for the quarter, the production meant for sale was close to 18 million tonnes, and this is 9% higher than what it was last time. And we continue to focus on some of the things we do in terms of, for example, in the case of prioritizing transportation fuel versus aromatics. And as you know, given the environment for aromatics, it made sense for us to prioritize production of transportation fuel. As I mentioned, we focused a lot on domestic fuel sales given the demand. Also a lot of cost optimization measures as far as using larger vehicles for delivering -- for lowering our freight cost for product placement, also focused a lot of attention and using FO for minimizing our fuel cost for the Jamnagar complex during periods when there were lower availability.
So a quick snapshot market environment, average Brent crude prices, when you look at it, 11% fall year-on-year. 7% down on a quarter-on-quarter basis on the back of stronger dollar weakness in China and non-OPEC production, which kept the markets fairly well supplied. U.S. ethane prices were lower by 3% year-on-year, benefiting us from -- because of cracking ethane. And also the operating rates in the U.S. were higher this time because of some of the crackers which were under shutdown came back into production.
Oil demand still is 1.5 million higher on a year-on-year basis, primarily led by Asia ex-Japan as well as we saw EU demand being higher and also the fact that gas prices were firm helped keep the demand for oil also firm. And on the transportation fuel side, Gasoline demand we saw was up about 0.4 million barrels at about 26.9 mb/d. Diesel was broadly flat and Jet/Kero demand was actually higher by 0.5 million, at about 8 million barrels per day and primarily Asia Pacific contributing for more than half of it.
On the specific cracks, year-on-year fall on gas oil was on the back of China demand as well as the fact that U.S. refineries were -- had a very record production there. Of course, for third quarter, the benefit, as I talked about earlier, was domestic demand was up 9.6% at about 10 million tonnes on the back of demand for PV 2-wheeler sales. You saw a lot of momentum there in passenger vehicles. For us, the focus was on really pushing domestic sales, as you saw, as I mentioned, retail volumes are up 44%, were supported by some specific schemes like Happy Hour Petrol scheme. And as I mentioned, our prioritizing of gasoline versus aromatics meant that we had more volume to sell in gasoline.
Near-term dynamics, we think that near-term outlook, given Chinese Spring Festival and Ramadan would keep the near-term outlook positive. On diesel, again, the weakness we saw attributable to China as well as the inventories were higher. Quarter-on-quarter, the cracks did improve to $15.1 per bbl on the back of lower China exports and India demand and domestic demand year-on-year is up 5% at about 24 million tonnes. For us, similar to gasoline, focus has been on stronger domestic product placement. And for us, retail volumes are up 23% in this space.
Near-term dynamics, heating oil demand and high gas prices could keep diesel constructive in the near term. In ATF, directionally, year-on-year fell in line with gas oil cracks, but improved sequentially because of holiday demand. Specifically in India, we saw ATF grew by 9% on a year-on-year basis. And for us, if you look at what Air bp-Jio recorded in terms of growth, it was like -- it was 51% compared to an industry growth of 9%. So that has been very profitable. And near-term dynamics, again, look positive with Chinese New Year and as well as the Maha Kumbh in India could possibly support demand.
PE has been fairly stable year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter. So for us, the -- again, the -- only the focus has been -- the benefit has come because of higher use of the assets that we had and try to maximize light feed cracking, so to keep the margins there. Near-term demand continues to be good for PE when you look at demand for packaging. And the -- of course, the broader overhang of incremental global capacity additions is weighing on PE. PP -- On PP was -- deltas were up 9%. Domestic demand pretty strong, 16% growth that we saw. And again, across consumer durables packaging. And again, we benefited this time from the improved asset availability. And from a near-term point of view, the upcoming expansions on BOPP films will support demand for PP.
PVC, the delta has improved by 12% year-on-year. That was mainly on the back of falling EDC prices. Again, PVC -- domestic demand, as you can see, up 16%, led by agri and infrastructure. Specifically for PVC, our actions have been on -- more on freight cost reduction, emphasis on premium grades. That's what we have been focused on and with benefits coming through. And overall demand for PVC continues to remain supported because of agri and infrastructure growth. Polyester chain delta down 12%, primarily led by PX fall of almost 47%. So that's one of the drivers. While downstream polyester margins did improve, it did pull the overall chain delta 12% lower. And for us, the focus was on synergizing the polyester production across all the acquired sites to address the strong festive demand that we saw. And also by having a common marketing approach, we maximize both sales as well as margins.
And on a more -- on that, the cotton versus PSF, that margins continue to be good. So long term, I mean, the demand is -- for PSF will remain. So you just put all these things together, you can see that even though deltas have been mixed, in fact, a lot of arrows downwards, but significantly offset by the fact that we had volume increases in each of these products as well as the fact that the domestic demand has been pretty strong.
Looking at beyond, I just wanted to lay the context. And as you can see, the last 5 years have seen significant reductions in margins anywhere between 30% to 70% across refining, polymer, polyester. And at the same time, it is also -- has come with significant volatility in the earnings. We know the factors. It was COVID. It was -- it has been large capacity additions. It has been war in Ukraine. It has been the war in the Middle East. So this has been the broader environment. So again, in that context, if you see our own margins, our own performance, as you can see, our performance has been, I would say, very resilient and with also lower volatility. And the investments that we made in light feed cracking pre-COVID, be it ethane sourcing and shipping or building the refinery off gas cracker has ensured that we have had significantly better economics than what is implied by the naphtha-based margins of the previous slide.
We also -- if you may recall, our gasification investment came in -- it contributed very positively when LNG markets were dislocated after the Ukraine war. Also, the continuing focus on the high-growth domestic market in the domestic petrochemical downstream. And these markets have grown anywhere between 8% and 10%. So that has also meant for us higher asset utilization as well as margins. And when you think about it, when you're going into the future, our capital investment plan that I will talk to in the next slide or 2 and the return to mid-cycle margins in refining and petrochemicals does make us have a constructive view on OTC growth into the future.
So before getting into the expansion projects, it just -- it will be helpful to see what is happening in terms of these 2 products. I'll not go through in detail, but except to say that when you look at polymers across PE, PP, PVC and where it is going, be it packaging, automobiles, infra, agri, health care; for each of them, if you look at the demand drivers, and that is something that is extremely visible to all of us, packaged products, food ordering, the growth of retail and e-commerce when it comes to packaging. In automobiles, you have seen vehicle sales, the demand for personal mobility and the need for lightweighting, et cetera.
On infrastructure side, you can see the thrust on infrastructure project. It is propelling cement demand and therefore, packaging there and again, higher electricity consumption, again, making the need for wires and cables. Agri, focus on micro irrigation, government schemes, all of them are playing a big part in terms of having the demand for these products. On health care, again, a lot of awareness and a lot of demand. So as -- even if you were to look in the longer-term perspective, last 3-year demand volume growth has been closer to 10%. And more importantly, looking into the future, this kind of demand environment remains intact.
On the polyester side, between PET and PSF, if you look again in terms of applications, beverages, textiles, home furnishing, automotive, nonwoven industrial, each one of them have demonstrated, again, last 3 years, if you were to see, it is about 8% growth. But again, looking into the future, it just presents a very constructive view for demand for these products. And against this backdrop, as you know, from our point of view, our strategy has always been to invest in high-growth domestic markets. We have been very focused in each of these projects on capital allocation. We have always invested at the bottom of the cycle. And this is the time to take advantage of lower project cost. It is -- so when margins are low, it's a good time to invest. And our continuing focus on scale, on flexibility, on integration, on newer technologies will remain as we invest in these projects.
So against this, if you see what are we investing in and starting with vinyls with this 1.5 million tonnes PVC and CPVC facility at Dahej and Nagothane. This, as you know, caters to a growing and a large deficit Indian market. As you know, the current deficit in India is between 2 million and 2.5 million tonnes even as we talk. So this project helps address that gap. And what this -- from a size point of view, from the 22nd player globally in terms of our current capacity, we would be among the top 10 producers.
Also, I have been emphasizing a lot about light feed cracking. And for us, we are expanding the virtual ethane pipeline. We currently have 3 ships, and we're adding 3 more VLECs to -- and that will help enhance the cost competitiveness of our cracker. And finally, on the polyester side with 1 million tonnes of specialty polyester capacity and matched by 3 million tonnes of PTA will help sustain the growing demand there. So when you look at it together, some of our points about having high-quality asset, which are vertically integrated and having the diversification of products and cost profiles being in the top 10 or top quartile when you look at it, either it be refinery or cracker and combine that with the market presence in India and the deep distribution that we have the financial flexibility for us in terms of existing business, which throw up cash helps us invest in this down cycle.
And so these 3 things, therefore, when you put this together, the point I was making about being constructive on OTC growth into the future is something that we see this business on that trajectory.
Just summarizing all the presentations that have been us thus far. So we had record consolidated earnings we saw both year-on-year as well as sequential. And with now consumer businesses accounting for 52% of our segment EBITDA. On the energy side, domestic market remains very strong and with all the momentum in economic activity. And also, there has been recovery in fuel cracks with stronger demand in APAC regions, including India. And the fact that our operating model mitigated impact of a weak downstream margin environment.
On consumer side, strong festive and wedding season demand. But importantly, I've been emphasizing over the last -- that we have over the last few quarters, focused a lot on operational streamlining. And all that you are starting to see the benefit, and we remain confident about that it is behind us and the constructive outlook for retail is very much now intact. And Jio is valid from -- you're seeing the benefit of the tariff hikes, and you are seeing the very strong traction on the customer addition side, both and especially on homes and also the broader digital services earnings growth, which was touched upon.
So overall, it has been, as I said, a strong operating quarter and strong performance across all our businesses. Thank you.