RIL net debt free before schedule; to list retail, telecom biz within 5 yrs

Reliance Industries is net debt-free after raising a record Rs 1.69 lakh crore from global investors and a rights issue in almost two months, said group chairman Mukesh Ambani in a statement on Friday.

The statement came after Reliance said on Thursday Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will buy a 2.32 per cent stake in its digital unit Jio Platforms for Rs 11,367 crore.

“We have received strong interest from strategic and financial investors in our consumer businesses, Jio and Reliance Retail. We will move towards listing of both these companies within the next five years,” said Ambani.

“Today I am both delighted and humbled to announce that we have fulfilled our promise to the shareholders by making Reliance net debt-free much before our original schedule of 31st March 2021,” he said.

Starting with Facebook Inc on April 22, Reliance has sold almost 25 per cent of equity in Jio Platforms - the maximum reports suggest the company intends to dilute to financial investors.

With the Saudi investment, Jio Platforms has raised Rs 115,693.95 crore from some of the leading global investment powerhouses at a time when the world is deeply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a recession kind of environment for the global economy.

Over the past two months, Ambani's oil-to-telecom conglomerate has announced the sale of about $14 billion of assets, completed a Rs 53,124 crore rights issue and slowed the run rate of new investment by a quarter.

The group racked up net debt of Rs 1.6 trillion rupees as of March as it spent billions to build a wireless network, and Ambani had promised shareholders in August that he would slash that to zero within 18 months. Shares of Reliance rose as much as 1.7 per cent in Mumbai to a record on Friday, giving it a market value of $143 billion, Bloomberg News reported.

"Therefore, on the proud occasion of becoming a net debt-free company, I wish to assure them that Reliance in its Golden Decade will set even more ambitious growth goals," said Ambani.