Mukesh Ambani says Reliance now has strong balance sheet to support growth

After record fundraising, Reliance Industries Ltd now has a strong balance sheet with high liquidity that will support growth plans for its three hyper-growth engines, Jio, Retail and Oil-to-Chemicals, according to the firm's chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani.

In the company's latest annual report released on Wednesday, he said the company sold minority stakes in Jio Platforms — the unit that houses its telecom and digital business — and retail arm for almost ₹2 lakh crore and raised another ₹53,124 crore through rights issue.

"We now have a strong balance sheet with high liquidity that will support growth plans for our three hyper-growth engines -- Jio, Retail and O2C," he said.

During 2020-21, Reliance completed India's largest ever rights issue of ₹53,124 crore (oversubscribed by 1.59 times), which was also the largest in the world by a non-financial institution in the last 10 years.

"During the year, Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail raised ₹1,52,056 crore and ₹47,265 crore, respectively, from strategic and financial investors, including Facebook and Google," he said. "BP invested ₹7,629 crore for a 49% stake in our fuel retailing business."

These funds helped Reliance reach net zero-debt target ahead of schedule.

"Strong operating cash flow and largest ever capital raise further strengthened our balance sheet, enabling us to deleverage and meet our net-debt zero commitment ahead of stated timeline," he said, adding that during the year, Reliance made pre-payment of $7.8 billion of long-term foreign currency debt, with requisite approvals from RBI.

This is the highest ever pre-payment of debt undertaken by any corporate borrower in India.