Mukesh Ambani details new growth agenda, but fails to light up street

The anticipated big bang did not happen on Friday. Nor did the estranged brothers share the dais to mark their truce as speculated.

Mukesh Ambani spoke alone and long at the annual general meeting of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), outlining a mega push into petrochemicals, power, retail, and other sectors.

“What we did in the last 30 years, we will achieve in the next 10 years,” he told shareholders.

No small target that, given that RIL’s enterprise value stands at a whopping $80 billion today.

But the street wasn’t impressed. The announcement was short on specifics, market persons said.

The RIL stock dropped as much as 1.4% to Rs1,056.10 as Ambani ended his speech, after having run up 1.7% before the meeting started.

Stocks of companies led by his brother Anil also declined, despite his assurance of a “harmonious and constructive” relationship with him.

RIL will invest as much as Rs41,700 crore ($9 billion) in its polyester and petrochemicals business, Mukesh said.

The company is setting up an integrated facility with a capacity to produce 2.3 million tonne per annum of purified terepthalic acid, 540,000 tonne of polyethylene terepthalate and 360,000 tonne of polyester filament yarn. It is also looking at expanding in new product domains. Among other things, it will value-add kerosene to normal paraffin at its Jamnagar plant to mark its growth in the expanding detergent segment. It will add capacities for production of polybutadiene rubber at Baroda and styrene-butadiene rubber at Hazira. It will also set up a butyl rubber plant in joint venture with Russian petrochemical company SIBUR to cement its synthetic-rubber presence.

Ambani said the total investment by the group in the next five years in new polyester and petrochemicals would be the largest-ever in this sector anywhere in the world.

Power and broadband wireless will be among the company’s new thrust areas.

The company plans large investments in power, including nuclear and solar energy. “We will bid for every UMPP (ultra mega power project) that will come for bidding and in the next EGM (extraordinary general meeting), we will clear our concrete investment programme for power segment and it will be a mega-investment programme,” Ambani said.

Reliance would collaborate with strategic partners in telecommunications, such as service providers and infrastructure providers, and would follow an asset-light, partner-heavy approach in the broadband space, he said.

As for retail, he saw Reliance Retail growing 10-fold in the next five years to Rs45,000 crore.
—With agency inputs