Reliance Industries Ltd

NSE:RELIANCE

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[B. Srinivasan, President]

Good evening, and welcome to the third quarter financial year 2022 financial -- the results presentation of Reliance Industries. I hope everyone is staying safe. As always, we have a panel of our leaders who would be walking through the highlights of our performance during the third quarter. First off, it will be Mr. Srikanth, who would give you a consolidated view of our performance for the quarter; followed by Kiran Thomas and Anshuman Thakur, who would walk you through the digital services part of our performance; followed by [ Gaurav Jain for retail; Sanjay Roy for E&P; and then Srikanth will come back and talk about O2C and all of our other consolidated plans and summarize it as well. Over to you, Srikanth.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Thanks, Srini, and good evening to all of you. So this is the consolidated set of slides and let me start off with the key messages starting with performance, where we had recorded quarterly EBITDA across all our 4 businesses, and the consolidated EBITDA at INR 34,000 crores, it is up 30% on a year-on-year basis. The net profit came in at INR 20,539 crores, which is up 38% and there was an exceptional item that I'll cover subsequently. On the -- going in terms of each of the individual businesses, starting with O2C, this was a sixth sequential quarter of growth for O2C and with a strong recovery in fuel margins. And we saw high operating rates across OTC facilities and our overall volumes that we processed was up by almost 5%. We also had a sharp increase in our upstream realization resulting in an EBITDA in excess of INR 2,000 crores. Moving on to retail, again, another strong revenue -- record revenue and EBITDA. Our revenue crossed INR 50,000 crores. In fact, it is closer to [ INR 58,000 crores ] and EBITDA of [ INR 3,835 crores]. Store operations normalized with near 100% operating hours and also footfalls were also in the 95% range. We added 837 stores, coming to a total of 14,412 stores. On Digital Services, we crossed the INR 25,000 crore mark in revenues and the INR 10,000 crore mark in EBITDA. And there was gross subscriber additions of [ 34.6 ], is offset by SIM consolidation. ARPU also increased to INR 152, with improving subscriber mix and tariff hike. With this, our consumer businesses account for more than INR 75,000 crores of our revenues. Moving on to the other last highlight on corporate. So we had -- in this quarter, we did a large jumbo bond issuance of $4 billion. This was for refinancing existing borrowings as well as extend our debt maturity profile. We raised [ 10 years at 2.90% ]; and 30 and 40 years at [ 3.70% and 3.80% ], respectively. And this was the largest issuance from India and also the largest from an Asia Pacific, ex Japan. When you look at the private sector categories in the BBB space, it also had the lowest coupon ever in the 30 and 40 years when you see that. Very strong demand because oversubscribed 3x.And the response to our issuance is just a reflection of how the credit markets have voted on the transformational change of the company, the growth of our consumer businesses, the capital raise and finally, the potential of the 4 growth engines that we are building. In addition, we also prepaid INR 31,000 crores of high coupon spectrum liabilities, which were anywhere between 9.2% to about 9.7%, and this resulted in a expected annual savings of INR 1,200 crores per year. So in short, within a very short span, we have effectively refinanced almost [ $3 billion ] of borrowings.On the new energy side, we are continuing to accelerate our investments. And these investments in REC Solar, Sterling and Wilson, Stiesdal, Nexwafe, Faradion all of them were announced in the third quarter. Ambri was in the quarter prior to that. And all these investments will help support the rollout of our Giga factories at Jamnagar.This is the overall consolidated numbers. In this quarter, year-on-year as well as quarter-on-quarter, shows strong recoveries in revenues and profits [ bigger ]. As you can see on a year-on-year basis, we are talking about a 52% growth in revenues, as well as our net profit, aggregate of 38%, even if I back out the exceptional item coming on the back of exiting the shale gas operations, where some of the Eagle Ford assets were sold to Ensign. Even then, if you look at it, the net profit increased 18%, EBITDA growth on a year-on-year basis about 30%. So when you look at it, it is on the back of revenue growth, for example, is on the back of higher price realizations, upstream performance, again, on the back of higher prices. On retail, it is on a -- benefited from the change in the operating context and new stores getting added. We benefited on geo side on the back of higher ARPU and also the subscriber mix. And the net profit addition is higher despite the higher charges that you see in depreciation and tax.So when you look at the bridge on a year-on-year basis, you can see that 75% of the incremental EBITDA, this time came from O2C and oil and gas. In O2C specifically, the driver of global growth also led to higher fuel margins and also chemical margins, retail benefiting from store footprint as well as robust, the omnichannel presence both help deliver retail growth. And on the digital side, subscriber additions was good, customer engagement remains solid and the value proposition continues to remain coupling.On the oil and gas side, we saw -- when you look at it on a year-on-year basis, we saw significant revival of KG D6 production and also higher price realization. When you look at it from a quarter-on-quarter, as I mentioned, every business has delivered increases, O2C again, benefiting from higher volumes that got processed as well as the sharp recovery in fuel cracks, mainly mid distillates.On retail, on the operating environment changes and demand that we saw across the entire consumption markets. And On the digital side, from higher ARPU and the mix that I talked about. On oil and gas, almost a 70% increase in KG D6 price on the back of a stable volume cost increase. all in all contributing to a 12% increase. And this is just a slide about the EBITDA growth, and you can see on an aggregate, we are talking about -- the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. From the lows that we saw in first quarter '21, we are 1.6x that number. And the economy is reopening as well as the festive season buoyancy helped and the fact that diversified business just to participate in this growth [indiscernible].On the balance sheet side, we were net cash in September, [ INR 3,585 crores ]. Now it is [ INR 2,862 crores ]. And as I've highlighted before, we have refinanced or repaid the high-cost spectrum liabilities and refinanced market borrowing. So therefore, bulk of deal change that you are seeing is net debt is on the back of the spectrum refinancing, and that was INR 10,000 crores in the last quarter. And in this quarter, we have -- we paid the remaining INR 20,000 crores. So that's one part of it.And I talked about proactive liability management through refinancing. So this is 2 objectives. One, obviously, is a significant increase in maturities and also help optimize our finance costs. The cash flows that we have and balance sheet in supporting growth initiatives across our businesses, and we continue to have the best [indiscernible]. And we decided from an international rating point of view, we are either 2 notches or 1 notches above the sovereign rating.Just a slide each on our key businesses, starting with O2C. We saw demand up by 1.1 million barrels in this quarter on the back of mobility and higher vaccination coverage. Here, specifically, we saw a very, very sharp recovery in fuel cracks and this led to a multi-quarter high on mid-distillate side. However, higher feedstock and energy cost weighing on downstream petrochemicals. And we did see some impact of elevated prices and the fact that they have been volatile on domestic demand, polymer and polyester demand down between 4% to 5%. Oil demand also year-on-year is down. But in the last quarter, we did see a 12% growth on oil -- on demand. But primarily, it is also seasonal at this time after the monsoons. On the performance -- operational performance side, we had a 6% sequential growth in EBITDA at INR 13,530. And also when you look at it on a year-on-year, you're talking about 39% growth. Our throughput and production went by sale -- went up by 5% on a quarter-on-quarter basis as we maximized our fuel output to capture the higher transportation cracks. And also we continued our focus on optimizing our fuel mix to manage energy costs.On the digital services side, 421 million customers, a gross add of 35 million and a net add of negative 8.5 million. The SIM consolidation and repurposing of customer retention efforts led to a reduction in the subscriber base in quarter 3. And when you see it even closely, it has been mainly driven by subscribers with inconsistent engagement and also those [indiscernible] core and subscriber base. Overall, engagement remains good with the traffic in excess of 7.8 exabytes per capita. Data and voice consumption, it is about 18.4 GB per customer, or [ 110 ] -- 901 minutes of time of voice. And we consistently focus on the network performance as the average speed is up about 22 Mbps in December '21.On financial performance, I talked about the INR 10,000 crore EBITDA mark and also long we had talked about striving for an EBITDA margin of 50% in RJIL and we have it now in the third quarter of FY '22. Also strong traction in as far as FTTH is concerned with 5 million wireline customers and significant enrichment of the offerings that we have, with now with 4K content on Jio TV, the Home Secure Home Automation that we have, Live TV, gaming solutions. So all of them have significantly enriched the offering.And I talked about INR 152 on ARPU, which on the back of the growth is on the back of subscriber mix and also a partial impact of tariff hike and, of course, the strong FTTH momentum. Finally, on retail, I talked about almost 100% normalization as far as the operational stores are concerned. And footfalls were also pretty close at 95% of pre-COVID levels.The important trend, which we will cover in subsequent slides, is the fact that the demand has been across consumption market baskets and very strong festival season and our continuing emphasis on agile business operation meant that we have a much higher level of preparedness to navigate volatility even from this new COVID strain.And finally, on the financial performance side, as I talked about festive season, stores, also the continuing momentum in digital and new commerce helped us deliver close to INR 58,000 crores of revenues, which is up 52% year-on-year as well as 27% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. EBITDA growth on the back of very strong operating leverage up 24% year-on-year and 31% on a Q-on-Q basis. And the -- we continue to add strongly at the 837 stores and 73 supply chain locations and also a series of investments in new categories and partnerships, which we will cover in detail in our retail presentation.With this, I'm going to hand it over to Kiran.

[Kiran Mathew Thomas, Director]

Thank you, Srikanth. So if you look at what has happened in the last quarter, the government in India has undertaken significant and decisive steps to strengthen the Indian telecom sector. As you all know, most of the operators have been under severe strain and especially with a lot of the liabilities towards the government. The government has helped to defer a lot of those liabilities into the future. And all of these actions that the government has taken, we believe, are quite positive to strengthening the India telecom sector.With these steps that the government has taken, most of the operators have also now raised tariffs across the board by about 20% to 25%, which should result in significant revenue boost for all the operators in this sector. Having said that, the combination of these verifies and obviously, the challenging environment that is still continuing around the COVID have meant that there has been a lot of consolidation on the SIM base. People who are on the low usage side as well as inconsistent recharge behavior, we have seen a compression of that base into fewer number of SIMs or even giving up those SIMs altogether.While the numbers are reducing, that also means that across the board in the industry, the quality of subscribers is continuing to increase. And this is something that Jio has also been encouraging in its customer base. And a result of the consolidation of the SIM base as well as the rationalization of the usage and the concentrating of the usage in the subscriber base also means that there is a per user improvement in the cost position as well as network efficiencies.Of course, this is what we are already doing. But looking forward, we are under active exploration to fine-tune our -- the 5G technology, that activity is ongoing as we are now undertaking active clients across multiple cities in India. And we are well positioned because of the switch [indiscernible] as well as the rich digital ecosystem that we have put in place to be able to make that transition pretty quickly and seamlessly and to help with further digitalization in India. So really, a very positive things, everything from what the government has done to improving subscriber quality as well as the road map towards having 5G. And as the sector grows, we are confident that Jio will continue to lead in that growth story.Just to talk a little bit about the tariff revisions. Like I mentioned earlier, most of the tariffs across the board and across operators have been increased by about 20%, effective 1st December of 2021. Jio has also participated in this increasing tariffs to support the sector. But still, in spite of that, we continue to offer the best value for consumers in the industry. For obviously, longer duration plans, we are giving significant benefits back to the user as well as in terms of the benefits that we offer for at the same price point, even that it's much better than the industry. All of this has resulted in gross subscriber addition continuing to be maintained at a very healthy level. And also, we are seeing that a lot of the customers are now coming in, in long-term commitment plans, which is also a good trend.Of course, this is a very recent development with respect to the increase in tariff plans. We already have users who are committed to multiple months of the earlier tariffs. So we anticipate that the full effect of the tariff hikes that we have now offered to the market will be fully reflected over the coming quarters. And -- but we can hope that in the coming quarters, we see the effect -- upside effect of many of these tariff revisions that we have done.Over the last meetings, we have always spoken about how we have gone that extra mile to help customers stay recharged, even under extreme lockdown conditions, again, some of it we are again revisiting over the past few weeks. But what we did last quarter in -- along that direction, there are other a few steps that we have taken, is to introduce Jio Autopay, taking advantage of the UPI autopay feature, now autopay supported through MyJio across all of the UPI handles when it comes to recharge. So users can configure all of their connections using Jio Autopay, and they can always remain recharged without having any disruption in this service.Likewise, we have been working very closely with our partner, Meta, especially WhatsApp as a channel. We are happy to announce that in this last quarter, we have launched recharges for Jio Connections using WhatsApp, using WhatsApp Bot. This is a unique thing because we are a showcase for WhatsApp Pay integrated with WhatsApp Bot. And of course, this is just an introduction. We are continuously monitoring usage, and this will improve with respect to user experience and adoption over the coming days. Again, making it much easier for customers to recharge and to stay connected without any disruption vessels.Quantifying some of the numbers, like I mentioned, gross adds remain very robust. If you look at the trends over the past year, some numbers, quarter-on-quarter numbers are here in the graph. You can see that gross adds have remained pretty strong at nearly 35 million. While the SIM consolidation has happened, there is obviously an impact on the net addition. But if you look at the forward-looking number with respect to the people who are opting to come into the Jio network, especially through MNP, that story remains extremely strong. And of course, we are net MNP positive, which is also a healthy forward-looking trend with respect to the adoption of Jio services.Like I mentioned, the subscriber quality has been steadily increasing. If you look at the graph at the bottom, you can see that the per capita data usage, which was a year back around 13 GB per user per month is now more than 18 GB per month per user. With respect to the cumulative usage of data, again, Jio connectivity across its entire ecosystem now supports nearly 8 exabytes of data traffic on a monthly basis. And this is a near 50% year-on-year increase over the past year.In addition to the near 50% year on increase in data consumption on the Jio network, even on quality metrics, Jio continues to improve. Our average download speeds on our network as per the TRAI MySpeed data for the month of December '21 is in excess of 20 Mbps, in fact 22 Mbps, which is again an improvement even as the usage on our network has steadily increased. We have also deployed all the newly-acquired spectrum in record time in spite of the COVID-related challenges. And this investment is obviously creating capacity well ahead of demand growth that we are seeing across all of the circles.And again, from the network side, a lot of technology solutions that we have deployed means that we are able to bring very targeted insight to our geography teams, where we use rich analytics and convert them into very specific actions that they can take to both augment capacity where needed as well as to minimize disruptions in the quickest possible way. And just to highlight, over the last year, we had to face 3 cyclones and 7 flood and heavy rainfall situations across the country. And through all of that, Jio's network has been a bedrock that people can rely upon to stay connected, especially when the needs for doing so is the highest.Looking forward, like I mentioned, we are well underway with our trials for our 5G network in multiple cities in India. But in advance of the full-scale rollout, we have already started the planning work for rolling out the 5G network, thanks to the rich analytics that we have and very clear visibility that we have of usage across our network. We have a very specific understanding of where the data consumption is the highest and growing the highest.We have very clear visibility about all the handsets, especially 5G ready handsets, which are connecting to our network and the locations from where they are committing. And we are using the most modern approaches towards network planning, especially in 3D maps and Raytracing technology because 5G is pretty unique technology, which requires very advanced network planning techniques. And we are undertaking that for all of India. So that as and when the approvals are received for us to roll this network, we'll be well geared up to prioritize our rollout where we complete the maximum contribution.Also on the infrastructure side, we are augmenting the fiber as well as the power situation across all of our sites so that the 5G as when the time comes to roll out 5G gear, especially where we have fiber assets, we have all of the planning in place to be able to deploy that extremely quickly. And of course, now 5G means we need 5G solutions and we have only created multiple C teams, both in India as well as in the U.S. to focus on very dedicated vertical solutions both of our own development as well as to bring partnerships and alliances, so that the rich set of 5G solutions can be made available in India on par or even better than the rest of the world. And we've even initiated certain partnerships as well as created a technical team in Europe to develop long-term capabilities even beyond 5G.Some of the use cases, I want to mention, and again, you can see the pictures here, these are actual pictures from videos that we have taken off of the pilots that we have already demonstrated. For example, in the hospitals, especially where we have COVID -- strict COVID protocols and isolation, we have been able to create or connect robots. And here, you can see an example of a robot, which is delivering food trays and other items to patients in a fully automated way and remotely controlled in real time using a private 5G network. Similarly, when we are moving patients, for example, COVID patients, from their homes to the hospital and back, again, most of these hospitals are having an emergency room, and now we are able to bring the same capabilities with respect to all the equipment that you can see even within the ambulance. And these ambulances are connected to the emergency room of the hospital again, in real time using 5G -- using the 5G network.Another example is for our own network, where now they can use drone technology married with 5G to be able to inspect all of the network equipment, especially towers, which are pretty high up and rather than humans having to climb up and down these towers, we are able to use connected drones to do the surveillance and monitoring of these sites. And again, for things like retail and industry, we are again piloting certain use cases, where we can use 5G connected robotics that we can bring to warehouses and you can see some of those images here.Now moving to home, I think Srikanth mentioned that now we have crossed 5 million connected homes in India, again, growing very rapidly. We are now the largest fixed line provider in India. And in addition to, obviously, the best of breed world-class fiber connectivity, another thing worth highlighting is the rich set of experiences that we have been able to bring to Indian homes in a very affordable way. For example, all of the devices, which are deployed in Indian homes are powered by what we call the Jio operating system, Jio OS, which has a rich set of capabilities, which are described here on the slide.In Indian homes, again, as you know, the usage patterns vary because the things like set-top boxes or shared devices and right baked into the Jio OS is support for user profiles, which allows parents to control what their children can access as well as for all of the users in the home. We are able to identify their usage pattern and to get very specific usage recommendations, things like voice assistant. As you know, the literacy -- digital literacy varies quite dramatically in Indian homes. Having a voice assistant brings access to the -- to all the capabilities of the Jio OS to every person in the home, right, from the youngest side to the oldest member of the family. And you can even issue comments beyond obviously controlling the set-top box for everything from home automation, asking general knowledge questions and of course, finding out what's going on in the city through weather and so on.Again, the operating systems are able to write on the boot up, renew relevant recommendations and promotions right to the opening screen. And all of this, we are able to do using multiple languages, which are obviously required to be supported across India. Things like payment to be able to recharge, like I mentioned earlier, what we have done for mobility, the same ease of experience, we are now bringing to the set-top box. So even as a home experience, you are able to continuously stay connected and never have a disruption of your services and make payments pretty promptly.Even the connectivity itself, we have been able to bring a lot of innovations. WiFi mesh as a solution, we are now deploying across all of our customers. What that means is you can be assured or we are giving you solutions where you can have one-to-all WiFi coverage. So that anywhere in the home, you get access to the same power of fiber network through this WiFi mesh solution.When it comes to video and voice smart that you can make, of course, we give you a support for traditional landline phones. But in addition to that, we are bringing the same in an app form on your mobile phone, so that even if you're far away from the fixed line phone, the same call that comes into the home model landline, customers are able to access it through the app on their smartphones.In terms of device management, we have very rich instrumentation, which gives us a lot of analytics from these devices, constant understanding about the performance status of all the technology that we have deployed in each and every one of these 5 million-plus homes. And if there is a different performance or if there is a disruption, we are able to use that analytics to proactively fix whatever is the problem, including baseline people who can visit the home where required. And of course, a rich series of applications, spanning entertainment, home automation and things like security.Just to give you an idea about the entertainment on the Jio set-top box, already, we have probably the most compelling lineup of applications. Both offered by Jio, as you can see on the left of this chart, everything from TV to music to video calling, self-service, news, photographs, music. But in addition to that, even things like live news, which you can get on the large screen television and of course, now an emerging area, which is games, through Jio Games.And on the right, you see the lineup of partnerships that we have been able to already deliver to Indian homes, everybody from Netflix, Prime Video, of course, all Disney Hotstar and of course, all the other logos that you see here already available. But worth highlighting are 2 names that I want to mention here, YouTube as well as Apple TV+. As you know, YouTube is supported on Android TV and traditionally, Google has not offered YouTube on any other set-top box other than Android TV. And likewise, Apple TV+, Apple, of course, supports on their Apple TV product, but they have not done that for any other operating system. Both these partners have made these applications available for the first time anywhere in the world on the Jio set-top box. And this is also a testament to the confidence that they have in the work that we are doing to bring the best digital experience to Indian homes at scale. With this, I will hand this over to Anshuman, who can talk about our operating and financial performance.

[Anshuman Thakur]

Thanks, Kiran. I hope I'm audible. Let me start with the quarterly highlights first. In terms of financial performance, very early financial performance across our connectivity and platform businesses, JPL revenue for the quarter came in at INR 20,597 crores. This is the operating revenues net of taxes in GST. JPL quarterly EBITDA was at cross INR 10,000 crores for the first time. So at INR 10,008 crores with a 48.6% EBITDA margin.The gross subscriber additions, as Kiran spoke about, remained very healthy, 34.6 million gross adds during the quarter. The total subscriber base at the end of the quarter was at 421 million. The reduction really on account of SIM consolidation and the repurposing initiatives that we have undertaken to encourage single SIM usage. And because of which, there was a reduction in the end-of-period subscriber base or rather, I should call it the SIM base.But that also resulted in ARPUs increasing from INR 143.6 to INR 151.6, combination of subscriber mix and tariff hikes. As Kiran said, the impact of the tariff hike has been limited so far because it's only -- it was only in December and it will gradually play out over the next few months. The customer engagement continues to be very strong. Monthly data traffic crossing be close to 8 exabytes now. Now one of the other highlights for the quarter was -- and post December has been that RJIL prepaid [ INR 30,700 crores or INR 791 crores ] worth of deferred spectrum liabilities and -- which will result in interest cost savings itself of almost [ INR 1,200 ] crores annually based on the current interest rate environment. So strong operating performance, with the EBITDA heading INR 10,000 crores for JPL in this quarter. Moving on, the operating metrics for RJIL, as I said, we closed the quarter at 421 million subscribers. Now that was a reduction of 8.4 million, but the gross addition continued to be very strong, 34.6 million and the reduction was really on account of SIM consolidation and some of the less active customers now with tariff increases, et cetera, looking at consolidating users in a single SIM. ARPU increased to INR 151.60. That was a healthy increase from INR 143.60 that we reported in the last quarter. Data traffic was up 48% year-on-year to 23 exabyte during the quarter. And both the per capita data as well as per capita voice usage continued to be very strong at 18.4 GB and 901 minutes per month. Snapshot of the RJIL key financials, as you can see, the operating revenues have been growing steadily, quarter-after-quarter. The dip that you see in March '21, just to remind you, was on account of the IUC regime moving to [ bill and keep ] and a very healthy increase in EBITDA as well over the last several quarters. So the RJIL EBITDA, which is really the connectivity business, was at INR 9,669 crores during the quarter. So like-for-like, [ increase of 13% ] year-on-year in revenues and EBITDA of 18.4%. RJIL recorded EBITDA margin of 50%. So a few quarters ago, we had spoken about the margin trajectory and RJIL now has achieved a 50% EBITDA margin with a very strong growth momentum. Coming to the JPL financials, INR 24,176 crores of gross revenues and INR 20,597 crores of operating revenues. EBITDA at INR 10,008 crores, which grew from [ INR 9,294 ] in the previous quarter. The net profit came in at INR 3,795 crores, so quarterly revenues up 14%, Y-o-Y and EBITDA margin at 48.6%, which was a healthy 160 basis point increase improve -- expansion within -- from the last quarter.So with that, we come to the end of the Jio section, the Digital Services section, I'm going to hand over now to Gaurav to take you through the Reliance Retail results. Over to you, Gaurav.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, Anshuman. Good evening to all. I hope I'm audible. Let me start with the Reliance Retail presentation. It has been a solid quarter for us as we have delivered highest ever quarterly revenues and also the best ever profit performances. It has been a quarter where all our omnichannel capabilities have really come together and to serve our customers far and wide and also supported all our businesses to really deliver their best ever quarterly performances.But before I really go into the performance for the business, let me spend just a moment on talking about the operating context. So the operating context has been improving as the restrictions were eased through the quarter progressively and there was a buildup of festive buying as the normalcy started to set in. We were able to reach back to store operating matrices and also footfalls to near pre-COVID levels at 95% and 97%, respectively. We also saw the market open up and the festive share started to come back, starting from [ Navratri ] all the way to the [ Dussehra, Diwali ] and then getting into the wedding season. Towards the end of December, there were [indiscernible] disruptions that started to get visible because of the new COVID strain. But we remain prepared and optimistic to be able to tackle the emerging operating challenges in the operating environment.Talking through the key highlights and the messages for the quarter. We delivered our revenue at a record high level at 53% year-on-year. It was also a period where it was led by a strong festive season, a bounce back of customers back into the stores. Our revenues were at a record high, and we delivered a milestone of crossing INR 50,000 crores of revenues in a quarter. It was also a period which was matched with a record EBITDA performance at INR 3,822 crores, up 24% year-on-year, which was also buoyant with revenue.Our focus on infrastructure expansion has continued through the quarter, and we have added 837 stores across the consumption basket, across geographies and also added 73 supply chain locations, measuring almost 2.5 million square foot of space to help service all our channels and our businesses. Our focus on strengthening our digital commerce capabilities and also merchant partnerships has been maintained. We continue to see more customers coming on to our platforms and getting served through an enriched experience, through better availability of products, wider choice of merchandise and also superior service deliveries, which has resulted in customer orders going up 2x year-on-year and also our merchant partnership base expanding 4x year-on-year. This has also been a period where we have strengthened capabilities through acquisitions. These capabilities will help us not only serve our customers better but also expand our portfolio of product capabilities. Through this quarter, we have made acquisitions for Jaisuryas, Amanté, Kalanikethan and also made investments into Ritu Kumar, Manish Malhotra and Dunzo. We'll talk a little bit more on these in the coming slides. So a very strong record performance in the quarter. Looking at the revenue buildup for the business, gross revenue at [ INR 57,714 crores ], up 53% year-on-year and 27% quarter-on-quarter. If you really look at revenue coming from retail, excluding connectivity and [ petro ], I think we did much stronger on the consumption baskets at 90% growth year-on-year and 49% growth quarter-on-quarter.We had highest ever store sales. And also, we maintained our momentum on digital as new commerce as well. So in many forms, it was really a truly an omnichannel experience that we delivered, where customers could either come to our stores or they could sit at their homes or at base locations and still be able to buy products across various digital platforms that we've created. The revenue buildup also has come from all our key consumption baskets. So consumer electronics as well as apparel and footwear has actually doubled their business led by festive buying through the quarter. Grocery has maintained its consistent run and also posted its double-digit growth momentum through the period.Talking about the profit performance. It has been a solid performance on the profit front. EBITDA delivered at [ INR 3,822 ] crores, which is a record high. If we exclude the investment income, the profit performance has been even stronger at 52% growth year-on-year and a 45% growth quarter-on-quarter. It has been led by a very strong broad-based recovery across businesses, especially consumer electronics and fashion lifestyle, supported by the growth that we have seen in our grocery businesses. It's also utilizing the operating leverage and the favorable mix that has driven margin expansion in the quarter, where we have seen 90 basis point growth quarter-on-quarter, delivering at [ 7% EBITDA on net sales ] at the margin level as compared to [ 6.1% ] over the last quarter.Our investment income stood at INR 300 crores for the quarter as compared to INR 775 crores last year and also INR 477 crores in the previous quarter. Talked about infrastructure expansion, and this is really one of our focus areas. We again added over 800 stores in this quarter as we did in the last quarter. In the year put together so far, we have opened [ 773 stores ], and we have exceeded the number of stores in these 9 months than what we opened in FY '20 and also in FY '21. It has been a landmark quarter in many ways for us as we achieved a milestone of operating now [ 40 million square foot ] of retail space also crossed over to 14,000 stores ended up with [ 14,412 ] stores at the end of the quarter.In addition to the store expansion, we have also been investing hugely into developing warehouse and fulfillment center capabilities. And we have added 73 new locations with an area of 2.3 million square foot across the geographies to help all our businesses. As we continue to invest in expansion of our businesses, we continue to add more people to our capabilities. This year, we have so far in the quarter added 46,000 new jobs and 75,000 new jobs in the first 9 months. This is -- when we compare to last year, where we added about 65,000 people on 2 major stores across geographies. At the end of the period, our employment opportunity now stands close to at about 300,000 across various growth in geographies. Talked about the acquisitions and the strengthening of the abilities. We have spent close to about INR 7,600 crores plus in the first 9 months in investing and acquiring assets and investing in capabilities, which will help us reach out to our customers and offer better quality of products and also improve service delivery. Investments in Ritu Kumar and Manish Malhotra has been on the designer brand front, while our investment in Amanté is in the space of intimate wear lingerie. Kalanikethan, which is a leading saree and ethnic wear retailer, while Jaisuryas is a regional grocery chain in Southern India, which is going to help us fill up gaps in some of the smaller markets in the Southern markets. Dunzo, which is a leading last mile delivery and also a quick commerce player, which will help us further strengthen our delivery capabilities to our customers.Looking at the financial summary, gross revenue, strong growth, [ INR 57,714 crores ], up 53% year-on-year, 27% growth quarter-on-quarter. EBITDA from operations at [ INR 3,522 crores ], 52% growth year-on-year, 45% growth quarter-on-quarter. There's also an expansion of 90 basis points that I talked about from EBITDA margin on operations. Total EBITDA at INR 3,822 crores, which is a record for us across any quarter, which is up 24% year-on-year and also 31% quarter-on-quarter. Profit after tax standing at INR 2,259 crores, which is a 23% growth and also a 33% growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So all-time high revenues and profit that we have delivered in this quarter.Looking into the performance highlights for our consumption baskets, talking about consumer electronics, consistent double-digit growth coming from stores. It has been a period where we have seen customers coming back to stores with a near normal walk-ins. But our conversions, average bill values, have been high, and that has resulted into some of our best sales during the Diwali period, festive period and also lending into the wedding season. We have seen broad-based double-digit growth coming from wide categories, but it has been productivity segment, which has really done well, which is constituting of products like mobile phones, laptops, tablets, et cetera.Rescue, which is our service capability and a huge enabler in serving our customers through installation, after-sales service and value-added products and services, that continues to do really well and has also sustained strong service delivery of more than 98% within the SLAs even during the tough times. The business has also launched JioMart Digital this quarter, where we are now looking at working with merchants across geographies, onboarding them. And in the initial period that we have seen, we have received extremely encouraging responses to the proposition that Jio extended. So the focus would be to onboard a wider set of merchants and service them across the country.Talking about Fashion & Lifestyle, again, a record quarter for us. The business doubled year-on-year. It has been a record quarter as the customers came in with festive buying as well as also supported by winter wear sales. It has been a period where our footfalls were nearly at pre-COVID levels, but we maintain much higher levels of conversions, average unit value were also very high, higher than the pre-COVID levels. It has been a period where we've seen a tremendous level of efforts coming together from the product capabilities that we have built in, which has led to some of the categories like men's wear, kid's wear, posting very, very strong growth. Also, specifically, the winter wear has been extremely well received in the Northern markets and also the Eastern markets, which has helped serve customers with a wider assortment and also help us deliver higher bill values.We have created a format for this Trend Small Town, which is bent for serving much more focused assortment in small towns. And that format has been considered doing well ever since it was launched. This is the quarter when we have crossed a milestone of 500 stores across geographies, and that format continues to deliver its best ever sales on a monthly and quarterly basis.AJIO, which is our destination for fashion lifestyle through digital commerce platform, that continues to grow strength by strength and delivers its best ever sales each quarter. It is yet another period of its all-time high delivery on all the metrics, whether it is the MAU, whether it's the number of orders, whether it is the delivery and also the assortment that we offer to our customers. It has capitalized on some of the key properties such as a big bold sale and also more promotions that it has created through the year and continue to engage with our customers.The focused assortment expansion on the catalog side continues where we continue to add more and more products on to the -- on to our offering. We added close to about 50 leading international and national brands this quarter. Our focus on expanding new commerce capabilities has been maintained. It has been a period where we have grown 3x year-on-year on our performance, working with our merchant partners. Our base have also now increased to over [ 3,500 towns ]. And we continuously look at engaging with our channel partners through a variety of events such as Pragati Mahotsav and Sambandam, some of them are strong initiatives, which has held in, increasing our order size and also the frequency at which the merchant has been working with us. So all in all, a very, very successful period for our fashion lifestyle business.Looking at the jewelry business, maintained a very strong double-digit growth momentum. It posted its best ever [indiscernible] best ever Diwali period sales. The festive collections, which were created, were also well received by our customers. There has been a focus of work, which has been going in towards increasing the diamond contribution, and we have also launched affordable diamond jewelry in this quarter, which has also helped us gain the diamond contribution up by 500 basis points. So our diamond contribution now is well above 25%, which is really a reflection of the strength on the product development side that we have created.On the partner brand side, revenues grew 2x, as the offline stores bounced back, the customers are able to come back to stores in leading roles. We could see that there was a growth momentum that was sustained online as well, while they were still shopping in the stores. We, in this period also launched 30 new stores, including some of the new concepts like the [ White Crow ] pop-up store, the White Crow books format in the [ JWD Mall ] in Mumbai. We continue to also enrich our portfolio of partners. We signed up with Valentino, La Martina and Starter brands during this period.Zivame, which is in lingerie, and that business continues to expand rapidly. It also had one of its best quarterly performances during this period, launched 24 new stores to reach a milestone of over 100 stores across the country. There has been a continuous focus on expanding the catalog and there was an addition of over 9,000 SKUs through the market-based model. There were also new products which were launched through the winter wear for sleepwear, [ capta ] shops, which are all well received.Talking about the grocery business, it has maintained its strong growth momentum. Even when the customers have come in, our footfalls have gained. But what we have seen is also that the customers now continuously shop with higher bill values, our conversions are much better, our throughputs are much better, leading to better efficiency of stores. The entire Diwali period has been one of our best festive periods, where we were able to impactfully engage with our customers, some of the categories that really did well were about gifting packaged foods, branded packed suites and chocolates and confectioneries. All of these categories led to strong double-digit growths in their respective segments, much ahead of the overall market growth.The quarter also saw launch of our format called Fresh Pick, which is really a gourmet store, a high-end store in JWD mall in Mumbai. We have plans to expand that format into new geographies in a paced manner. On the JioMart side, which is on the B2C side, we continuously created new highs every month, every quarter is a new high for JioMart. Our engagement with our customers is enriched. It's getting stronger with every passing quarter. We looked at Milkbasket, which was acquired during the course of the year and also integrated into our -- the Reliance Retail business. That business has been now scaled up to 1.5x on its subscriptions, on a daily basis. The business is also being expanded into new geographies. It has been a leader in the North and also in certain cities in South like Hyderabad and Bangalore, which is now being expanded to new geographies like Chennai and some of the markets in West.On the new commerce side, really, the focus has been on onboarding merchants. This has been a period where we have now onboarded 10x growth of merchants between last year and this year. And we are continuously investing in supply chain infrastructure so that we are able to serve them better. Talking about pharma, again, a period with highest ever quarterly revenues. The focus has been of building up the hyper local capabilities, which now stands at about 18% of the total orders being served. Netmeds platform continues to scale up on all the matrices. Daily orders are up, The number of monthly active users are up 2x. There has been also a rapid expansion of new commerce capabilities in the pharma space, and our operations have now extended to over 1,200 cities.Urban Ladder, which is into furniture and furnishings, that business has grown 2x over last year, very healthy inventory and its attractive offers has really helped us to capture the pent-up demand. Also some of the assets, such as the full house sale and also maha cash back offers have really helped us to gain traction with customers during this period. The business has also been looking at outstanding rates, product offers and also creating multi-brand offers, which now contributes to about 18% of the business.So I think that has been really a very, very strong quarter for us. And as we look forward into the next quarter, what we see is that there has been some volatility, which has come with the new COVID strain. But we believe that we are well prepared to navigate our way through the challenges that are being posted by the COVID strain. But as the situation normalizes, our focus would remain on accelerating the growth momentum and also the expansion.So some of the priority areas are to ensure that we will continue to increase the pace of new store rollout. We have opened now 1,700 stores this 9 months, and we'll continue to ensure that our store opening plan remains on track. We will look at scaling up of our digital commerce businesses across all the platforms, augmenting offers and also sharpen service capabilities to serve customers. New commerce value proposition, which has been really received well across the businesses. We will continue to look at onboarding merchants across geographies and also grow share of businesses as they continue to buy more.We will look at integrating all the acquisitions and also scale of these new businesses to the next level. By providing them the right ecosystem support from Reliance Retail infrastructure and also continue to strengthen and sharpen our supply chain capabilities, product design and ecosystem in line with the business expansion. So multiple initiatives would be underway as we continue to focus on serving customers far and wide. Hand over the business presentation to Sanjay for oil and gas.

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

Thank you, Gaurav. A very good evening to everyone who's on this call. And as you can see, we've had a strong quarter, quarter-on-quarter, EBITDA growth has gone up by almost 90%, and we've seen stable production at KG D6 and largely higher quarter-on-quarter. Overall, we are at about 18 million standard cubic meters of gas production. What is important is that 95% of the production is from KG D6, and which means the benefit of the prices are seen clearly. As you're all aware, the price ceiling has gone up by almost 60 -- 70% to $6.13 from $3.62 per million British thermal unit. And consequently, we can see the EBITDA margin improve.And we expect this trend to continue with energy prices remaining high. We expect that with time, we will get higher realizations, particularly in the next fiscal, where we expect the ceiling prices to be closer to $10. So now the focus is on the KG D6 field, the MJ Field, which is a gas condensate field. As you are all aware, the first phase of drilling of wells was completed. And the second phase of drilling of wells will commence in the first quarter of FY '23. This is right after the installation campaign is completed, which is currently underway. The installation campaign started on as per schedule. And we are on course for commissioning the field by the third -- 3Q of FY '23.The FPSO, which is an integral part of this field is under construction in South Korea, [indiscernible] and things are moving very well there. The construction is nearly nearing completion, and the packages are under precommissioning commissioning. So we expect for the field to all come together by the later part of this year, which means we are on track now to achieving 30 million standard cubic meters from 2023, given the higher gas prices. as well as the production upside. This bodes well for the earnings outlook as well as the margins outlook for E&P. Thank you. Let me hand this over to Srikanth.

[Srikanth Venkatachari, Joint Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Sanjay. So starting with doing the OTC presentation and starting with the demand environment, you can see the continuing recovery in global oil demand for the quarter. It was up 1.1 million barrels per day, and for the whole year, it is up about 4.8 million barrels per day on the back of, of course, higher vaccination or the entire reopening of the economies.When you look at India, the annual -- when you look at the year-on-year demand, the volume is actually lower by 4%, primarily because of weaker diesel consumption. We also saw a slight weakness in demand for polymer and polyester, which is down 4% to 5% on the back of price volatility. And in the case of Polyester, the same time last year was abnormally strong demand environment coming out of the back of Wave 1. So we saw that.On the operating rates, 140 basis points increase in refinery operating rates on the back of rising demand and also China operating rates have been impacted by their fuel control policy and car shortage there. Cracker operating rates have been fairly stable at about 86%. On the feedstock prices, as you can see, quarter-on-quarter, Brent, naphtha, ethane, all of them up between 9% and 12%. Asian LNG up to 87%. And the interesting thing here is that even when you see on a year-on-year basis, Brent ,naphtha, ethane prices were up anywhere between 80% to 90% and also Asian LNG prices up 4.5x versus what it was. So it's a Q-on-Q growth as well as year-on-year growth. And this is on the back, again, of demand. There's a significant OpEx discipline. But the prices, that kind of price hike, we are seeing that impact in the feedstock cost of petrochemicals.On the margin side, when you look at it, the big jump in margins really came on transportation fields, ranging between 33% and 89%. A 33% jump in delta as well on gasoline, 89% was on ATF and somewhere in the 55% increase was in diesel. And again, on the back of increased manufacturing, increased mobility and also very limited Chinese exports and weak winter and winter heating demand. On the polymer and polyester side, we saw about 4% -- 0% to 4% quarter-on-quarter growth and Polyester about [ 6% ]. And this was supported by some of the logistic constraints as well as higher ocean freight. The next few slides are on domestic environment. And starting off with oil demand. And as you can see that at an aggregate, oil demand is at 97% of pre-COVID. And when you see [ 53.3 million tonnes ] of oil now, it is down 4% on a year-over-year basis and primarily coming because of diesel and where incessant rainfalls and floods in Southern and Eastern states had an impact. ATF demand is up 32% year-on-year and because passenger traffic has come back pretty to 91% of pre-COVID. And gasoline demand, an improvement of about 2% led by preference for personal mobility. Overall, when you look at it quarter-on-quarter, oil demand up 12% is really seasonal factors at play and also the reduction in state taxes did support demand.Moving to the polymer side. Overall, polymers are now at 10% above pre-COVID. But as I mentioned, year-on-year as well as Q-on-Q basis, it is about 4 -- 3% to 4% lower. And this is clearly the back of the -- I talked about the 80% to 90% increase in feedstock prices that we have seen. So it is -- that impact is very much there. Products like PVC, for example, at an all-time high at almost $1,600 a ton. And when you look at the broader demand side, it remains subdued despite the festive season. It is very stable in the context -- in products which are relevant for health and hygiene and food packaging, but didn't see a slower demand for infrastructure and agriculture sectors because of the extended monsoon.On the polyester side, 13% above pre-COVID and similar to polymer, it's about 4% to 5% lower on a Y-o-Y as well as Q-o-Q basis. Again, here, volatility in raw material prices affected polyester demand. And also, as I was highlighting before, 3Q FY '21 was unusually high because it was -- that was the demand post recovery of the first initial pandemic impact. Also, there were uncertainty about changes in GST rates for fabrics, apparels and that also led to cautious downstream pipe.When you look at the business environment for polymer and polyester, you can see that margin-wise, PVC, PP, fairly stable on a Q-on-Q basis despite the higher feedstock prices. But on a year-on-year, you can see the sharp impact that you are seeing on -- because of prices of naphtha, ethane, EDC. The logistic constraints and higher ocean freights did freight -- did support Indian prices. And when you look at it on the polyester side, chain delta is up 6% on a Q-on-Q basis, and actually 35% higher on a year-on-year basis. And for the quarter, it was led by PTA, [ Jan ] and PET in aggregate, of course, [ PX ] margin was sharply lower by 41% because of the new capacity adds. And on a more broader basis, higher cotton versus polyester deltas is supporting polyester prices. So if you are an integrated producer, one can look at the chain margins, which has come to now very close to the 5-year average. Looking at transportation fuel, third consecutive quarter of demand growth, 1 million barrels per day increased about 29 million barrels. But you can see the crack, the deltas, a year back, $4; in the second quarter $8; and third quarter, $13. So this is all cracks or gasoline -- gasoil cracks are really [ 8-quarter ] high, primarily coming from gas to oil switching because you saw the prices of LNG. Significant rebound in transportation demand and also lower inventory and cuts in China helped gas oil cracks.On the ATM side, slight improvement was there. We are coming to adding up to 5.7 -- we have a total demand of 5.7 million barrels per day. Again, price is $2.50 last year, previous quarter, $5.40, now $10.20. So 8-quarter high, and again, benefiting from all the relaxation in air travel. Also, we did see demand for heating demand in Japan. But all of the -- all the cracks started to soften by the end of the quarter because of the Omicron variant scare.And finally, on gasoline, broadly flat in terms of demand, 26 million barrels per day. But price movement, gasoline is now at a 17-quarter high. $3 last year, about $10 last quarter and now $13. So it is coming on the back of removal of restrictions and the China factory in terms of supplies -- the lower channel supplies coming in from China because of disruptions there. And as I mentioned, even in the case of the other cracks, gasoline cracks also moderated in the quarter and because of a sharp jump in gasoline yields from Asian refiners, especially large exports from Japan, India and South Korea as well as the return of your families after the maintenance season.So bringing all this together, you can see that the overall revenue at [ INR 1 lakh 31,000 crores ], up 9% on a Q-on-Q basis as well as 57% higher debt on a year-on-year basis, translating to an EBITDA of [ INR 13,530 ] crores against [ 6.5% ] on a Q-on-Q basis, 39% higher on a year-on-year, EBITDA margin at [ 10.3% ] is over 30 basis lower on a Q-on-Q basis. So as I was highlighting, clearly, the big improvement in EBITDA on the back of transportation fuels. And within that, we will assume it is really the middle distillate. We maximized gasoline production, given the very strong cracks and the big aromatics economics. The downstream chemical margins were stable and demand as I was explaining in the previous slide was made in on the segment performance. The overall EBITDA margin is lower because of higher energy cost. And also the fact the denominator effect of such high prices means that for the same level of profits, your EBITDA margins do end up coming lower. On the operating performance, you can see the jump that I talked about of close to 5% increase in throughput. We maximize refinery throughput as well as the secondary units, given the sharp improvements in transportation fuel margins. For us, the availability of domestic gas as well as internal fuels meant that we could eliminate our dependence on high-cost LNG. We maximized again, domestic placement, some the commissioned the -- and stabilize the petroleum naphtha quality upgrade that got done, so helped us capture some of the higher premium. And we won the LLDP Innovator of the Year award for [ Welcad ], which is a catalyst that's something that's our proprietary catalyst to be -- won the innovator of the year award in that category. Coming to the overall macro, we do expect next year to oil demand to average about close to 100 million barrels per day, which is another 3.3 million barrels per day year-on-year. The only oil supply growth that can really meaningfully come from incremental production from OPEC+. We also think that the China's push on self-sufficiency of petrochemicals will alter the regional trade flow. On the margin side, lowering of the fuel export quotas in China will support margins and colder winter and the gas prices in Europe will mean a continuing demand for middle distillate cracks. However, we think PX/PTA and LNG margins to be really range bound due to the kind of capacity overrun that we have. On the demand side, at least from an Indian context, the broader economic revival and government policies across textile parks, export incentives, PLIs, to boost petrochemical demand, domestic demand. Also, the deferment of GST on textile industry and high cotton prices is does aid polyester, helps polyester. Overall, when you think of it from a challenges point of view, continuing high crude prices and also in the context of the spare capacities of OPEC plus being sharply lower, could have an impact on feedstock prices and as well as margins. And of course, anything which happens with COVID is something that we have to look out for.With this, I would like to come to the summary for the group as a whole. We now have multiple growth engines driving exponential value. If you look at OTC, it's a world-class integrated platform. With Jio, we have the best-in-class technology platform to capitalize digital opportunities. And in retail, as Gaurav has been emphasizing about the whole focus on omnichannel retail to maximize our reach across the Indian consumer.And we are building one of the most advanced and integrated new energy ecosystem. And when you look at our acquisitions that we announced REC Solar, which is a Norway, Singapore headquartered company, which is present across the solar value chain. When you look at Sterling and Wilson acquisition, which is really the Indian solar EPC player; Stiesdal, which is a Danish electrolyzer company; Nexwafe, which is the German next-generation wafer technology company. If you look at Faradion, which we just recently announced, which is a U.K.-based sodium ion battery company and Ambri, which we announced in the first quarter [indiscernible] correctly, that, again, is a U.S.-based company for battery but using liquid metal technology.And all of them, I mentioned this point to say that they are all coming in together and it's part of the overall new energy ecosystem that we are talking about and integrates very well with our plans on the 4 Giga factories that we talked about. Our performance continues to be strong. We have seen the numbers. It is financial, it is operating performance, and it is across all our business segments. So when you think about it, cash flows remain strong and balance sheet is strong, so it can support growth initiatives across our businesses. And finally, all these technology and all this innovation means that it also helps us achieve our 2035 Net Carbon Zero goal.With this I -- with this, I'm through with my presentation. Many thanks, and deeply appreciate all of you being on the call. Thank you.