India’s largest private sector company has put up another good performance. Indicating that the corporate sector is doing well, Reliance Industries Ltd has posted a 26.86 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 1,374 crore in the third quarter ended December 2003 (Rs 1,083 crore). Its turnover was Rs 18,864 crore for the same period as against Rs 15,600 crore previously.For the nine-month period, its gross turnover was Rs 54,066 crore (Rs 47,382 crore), while the corporate behemoth recorded a net profit of Rs 3,741 crore (Rs 3,003 crore).RIL posted a 20 per cent increase in cash profit at Rs 2,335 crore and a 28 per cent rise in exports at Rs 2,918 crore during the quarter under review. Addressing a news conference here, RIL vice-chairman & MD Anil Ambani said the company will generate a cash flow of Rs 10,000 crore per annum for the next three years.The company’s exports including deemed exports increased 35 per cent to Rs 10,755 crore as against Rs 7,954 crore for the corresponding previous nine months. On his infocomm business, Ambani said the business will notch up a subscriber base of around seven to eight million by the end of the current fiscal and make its first net profit by March 31, 2004. ‘‘The company has already posted a cash break-even, and we are expecting to make a net profit by March 31, 2004,’’ Ambani said.Ambani said there was no impact on the license fees paid to the government last year and the telecom business, like other businesses of the company, was ‘doing well’. Reliance has invested Rs 8,500 crore as of date in its infocomm business. The company has been field-testing pre-paid cards for the last couple of months and was slated to launch the services by mid-January or early February.Talking about his petroleum business, Ambani said the 3.5 per cent growth in diesel after two successive negative quarters would also help in growth. ‘‘The consumption of diesel has gone up due to increased consumption by the farm sector and the industrial sector,’’ Ambani added. The petrochem business is also showing signs of a turnaround and in the next few quarters it will contribute more to the RIL’s profit kitty.Reliance has completed seismic acquisition of about 6,800 line km of 2D seismic data and about 2,500 sq km of 3D seismic data has been acquired for the eight blocks during the third quarter, he said, adding that front-end engineering and designing for D6 Blocks were also completed.The company will set up 300 retail oil outlets in the next six months and by the end of a year it will have 600 retail petrol stations, Ambani added.On talks of NTPC sourcing gas for its power plants, Ambani said Reliance was the only domestic bidder to fill the tender and added that NTPC would make a decision in next 60 days whether it would import LNG or buy gas from Reliance.On the Dabhol power plant, Ambani said Reliance would prefer an asset sale and added that lenders would formulate a process under which the result would be a transparent and merit-based one.On the proposed external commercial borrowings of $750 million by the company, Ambani said it was reviewing its overall cost following the freeing of ECB guidelines and rating upgrade of India to investment grade.RIL was open to set up new power plants in different states and the proposed Rs 10,000 crore gas-based plant in UP was the first one, he said. The 3,500 mw plant fits well into the company’s strategy to become an integrated service provider from ‘‘well-head to socket’’ and would utilise about 25 per cent of its gas find. The UP plant will be commissioned in phases and Ambani promised his two million Delhi consumers to forget about power outages in future.
