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Reliance Industries Ltd
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Price: 2 846.3999 INR 0.52% Market Closed
Updated: May 16, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2021-Q4

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B
B. Srinivasan

Good evening, and thank you for patiently waiting. Thank you for taking the time on a Friday evening to be with us. Welcome to the Q4 and FY 2021 results presentation. Me and my colleagues -- my name is Srini and my colleague, Srikanth, Anshuman, Dinesh and Sanjay will walk you through both the company and our business segment's performance. I -- first of all, I just wanted to ensure and wish that everybody is staying safe and keeping well. Please continue to stay safe. Please continue to follow all of the guidelines that are issued by the government authorities on COVID. Please use mask; please maintain social distancing and please sanitize as often as possible. So I just wanted to spend the first couple of minutes on the work that we are doing on our foundation. In -- we've actually started quite early in 2020 as soon as we realized, I mean there was a lockdown and we realized that there is a lot of people who are getting impacted. So we had multiple initiatives panning -- providing food, providing COVID care, providing health care, providing testing, all of that. So currently, we have set up nearly about 1,875 beds -- all in the process of adding to a cumulative number of about 1,875 beds. 70, 75 beds are completely free for anybody. We have 875 beds currently operational between Seven Hills, NSCI; and 100 beds, which is a step-down facility of the Trident Hotel in BKC. As we speak, we are setting up a 1,000-bed COVID facility in Jamnagar for that region. In addition, we actually are producing medical-grade oxygen, a product that we never did before the pandemic. We have scaled up from virtually nothing to about 700 metric tonnes daily. This is being provided free of cost to several state governments across the country. Just to give you a sense, this -- on an average, a patient who is mild-to-severe, if I were to say that this 700 metric tonnes is equal to about 70,000 patients every day getting oxygen. In 2020, just to recap what we did. We were the first one to actually set up a COVID-19 facility in India. We set it up in Seven Hills, Mumbai. We set up 250 beds, where we operate about 125 of them currently. And we have given the rest of the beds to the -- to BMC to manage. We have also set up COVID care facilities in Lodhivali, Delhi and Mumbai. We have provided free fuel for ambulance and those on emergency services, we have provided almost 14,000 ambulances and COVID care vehicles, about 5.5 lakh liters. We have developed RT-PCR testing capacity of about 3,500. We have set up emergency camps across. And we also were one of the earliest to actually ramp up production of PPE kits, and we provide -- currently, I mean, we're doing fairly large number of PPE kits and masks on a daily basis. So these are some of the other things, as I mentioned, COVID Suraksha, we actually have plans to give free masks to about -- 1 crore free masks. We've currently distributed almost 68 lakhs across 21 states and 2 union territories so far. And this is to about 48 lakh individuals. What we are focusing is on frontline workers and those in the vulnerable sections of the society. Mission Anna Seva, we're very, very proud that it's the largest program that has ever been operated by a corporate foundation. We have already distributed in 2020 and late -- up to late 2020, we've distributed about 5.5 crore meal equivalents through ration kits, food coupons and cooked meals to 27-plus lakh people. We're currently, I mean, starting to distribute more meals. We would -- we believe that between the months of May and June, we would distribute an additional 2 crore meals. So we are partnering with 80-plus NGOs, state governments and through our own voluntary -- volunteers of Reliance Group of about 2,400 people. In addition, we've also undertaken several community initiatives. We have actually sent out COVID Advisory to about 39 lakh people. We have also done, not just for humans, but for also animal welfare, we have provided fodder and food to stray animals, to gaushalas, to cats, dogs, monkeys -- I mean, as we speak actually, today, we are providing food for animals, including monkeys and horses in Matheran. So these are things which we are quite doing it with a sense of purpose of doing -- caring for our own community in and around our places. These are some pictures of our health infrastructure that get created. You can see that -- I mean, this is Seven Hills, this is Trident, this is oxygen tanks. All of this actually are providing much needed care in the crisis that we are currently facing. Next, Hemen. This is the mask that we are distributing with a small pamphlet, which is multilingual, which actually provides how to -- what is the right process to wear a mask. I mean it's -- actually, I mean, breaks my heart to see that despite COVID being about 13, 14 months, we still see people not wearing a mask properly. So that actually is one of the concerns that most people have. So we've actually printed this very, very small, and we've also sent it on WhatsApp to all of those people who are part of our Reliance Foundation network. Next, Hemen. This is some pictures from our Mission Anna Seva. As I mentioned, I mean -- next slide. As I mentioned, we have already done 5.5 crore meals of wheel equivalent in 18 states and 1 union territory 80-plus districts. We're currently in the process of actually doing 2 crore more meals in the months of May and June, so this is our contribution to fighting the battle against COVID, and we genuinely hope that India will emerge out of this as a stronger nation, as a nation that has beaten COVID, and we all are in it together. So all of us will have to work harder together to make this COVID go away, and we -- let life come back to normal. Thank you very much for listening to me patiently. I'll now request Srikanth to take over and walk you through our consolidated financial results. Srikanth, you are on.

S
Srikanth Venkatachari
Joint Chief Financial Officer

Sorry. Thanks, Srini. And let me start off. And first let me -- I think it was mute, so good evening all. And let me start off with the consolidated financial results. Net profit at INR 14,995 crores, it is the highest, sequentially also higher and significantly higher on a year-on-year. But even after backing out the exceptional items at INR 14,200 crores, it is about 5% lower Q-o-Q, but 31% higher on a year-on-year basis. But just focusing on the quarter, when you look at revenue, the jump of 25% you see is on the back of the O2C segment, which saw about 21% growth. This is really on the back of higher volumes as well as a sharp increase in the prices of feedstock and products. The Q-on-Q EBITDA, again, benefiting from the strong performance of O2C as well as retail, both grew 17%, offset by lower other income. Depreciation has been slightly higher on Jio side. On the tax side, the tax provision is higher compared to Q3 as we have postponed the deferred tax reversal that was intended in Q4, relating to the reorganization of our businesses. We will synchronize the reversal timing-wise with the regulatory approvals. And then finally on finance cost, continuing to be lower with the paydown of liabilities post the capital flows. Next slide, please. When you look at consolidated EBITDA, as I mentioned, O2C benefiting from higher demand as well as higher volumes and margins. Retail business EBITDA growth was led by revival in store operations as well as Digital Commerce ramp-up. We continue to see digital subscribers growth in Jio, a turnaround in oil and gas business with ahead of plan ramp-up of production in the R-Cluster fields. As you know, satellite fields also we have commenced in April 21, ahead of plan. And the combined production at peak, 18 MMSCMD, will be approximately 20% of India's gas production. And our consumer businesses account for almost 49% of our overall segment. Just a few highlights. Jio, we are exiting FY '21 with 426 million customers, a strong net addition of 15.4 million, when you compare it sequentially to the previous quarter, which was close to 5. ARPU at about 138. Overall, when you see JPL EBITDA up 36% year-on-year. EBITDA margins now are close to 47%, which is almost 600 basis points higher. We are also seeing strong engagement and high customer adoption with 13.3 GB per customer usage of data and about 823 minutes of voice. On retail side, revenues have been pretty strong in the context of the operating challenges. Fashion & Lifestyle and Grocery has actually registered all-time high revenues. Consumer Electronics was also good. EBITDA at INR 3,600, again, up 41% year-on-year. We also saw a strong progress in terms of store addition. We have added about 826 stores in Q4 alone, when the whole year is about 1,400 stores. But I must say that new COVID -- when you look at the impact of the new wave, you can see it in March is when you look at the grocery operational stores also footfalls in April is about 35% to 40% of the pre-COVID levels that we saw. So yes, that headwind is there. But overall performance is very good in that context. On O2C, as I mentioned, it is about continuing recovery, up 17% Q-on-Q. On the back of stable demand; also, a lot of supply disruptions coming through, benefiting fuels, it benefited polymers and polyester. On top of that, we are able to significantly optimize our feedstock sourcing also O2C benefited from -- in the physical stimulus and also the vaccination drive, at least, globally. Our volumes was higher by 2.7% Q-on-Q. Overall, oil demand is up 2.5% year-on-year, though essentially, I would say, slightly lower quarter-on-quarter. Same thing on polymer and polyester also, yearly demand is up 12% and 21%, respectively, but Q-on-Q is almost flat, I would say. So just seeing it from the full year's perspective, the first half of FY '21 we saw a sharp demand destruction in O2C. We were able to maintain high operating rates. We were able to focus on exports. Similarly, Retail, too, they were able to negate a lot on the store and the local lockdowns and its impact on store operations by ramping up Digital Commerce. Second half, of course, benefited from a sharp recovery in demand. Also, some of the supply disruption benefited margins. We were able to place a lot more on the domestic market, even retail store operations from a low of 50% has an exit rate of almost 95%. Jio has been continuing momentum in terms of adding customers, also the more broader adoption of digital life and -- as you could see it in the engagement numbers that I talked to you about and significantly look at the capacity in terms of carrying more than 5 exabyte a month. In this context, when you look at the overall numbers: revenues on a year-on-year basis were lower, primarily, I would say, is O2C volumes lower as well as realizations being lower. And Retail business revenues was marginally lower, I would say, but the increased footprints and omnichannel offering did offset the store operation's restrictions that were there. Digital Services revenue up effectively 30%, more customers, higher ARPU, FTTH rollout. And when you look at it from net profit, including exceptional close to INR 54,000 crores, up 35%. Also, apart from the operational points that I mentioned, it also benefited from benefits of deleveraging, lower effective tax provision and also some gains on asset monetization. Next slide, please. And here, this is just the split EBITDA-wise. The sharp fall in O2C EBITDA that you can see was largely offset by Digital Services. As you can see, Digital Services up almost 46% on a year-on-year basis. Also, Retail business, when you look at it, EBITDA was flat, with cost management and Digital Commerce initiatives and investment income really offsetting -- curtailed store operations. Overall, in this year, I would say that 4.6% year-on-year reduction. When you put the context of what it was in the first half of the year, I think it is pretty creditable. And really, you can attribute it to agile operations and a lot of proactive decision-making that we saw right through across businesses. Just a summary on the balance sheet side. Continuing to be more investments than debt, INR 2,200 crores, effectively unchanged, I would say. And as you know, the overall cumulative cash inflow of INR 2,60,000 has been used to retire debt and other liabilities and really leaving us with a highly liquid balance sheet, which can then support the next phase of growth. This is just to say that the Board has made the 2 calls with respect to the rights issue. The first call for INR 314 translates to INR 13,281 crores of rights and the payment period is between 17th May and 31st May. And then the second call of INR 628 will happen in November. So what we have also done, therefore, is the entire INR 39,843 crores we have now, post the Board having made the call, we are treating it as part of -- it has come on the balance sheet, it is reflected as other financial assets and also with the corresponding credit to the other equity as share call money account. So with this, I'm requesting Anshuman to take us through Digital Services and then hand it over to Dinesh.

A
Anshuman Thakur

Thank you, Srikanth. Good evening, everyone. Let me start off with the Digital Services, starting with some of the initiative, efforts that we're making on strengthening the technology core for our Jio Platforms Limited, be it people, where we're building on talent. Through this year despite the challenges based on the ground, we have been expanding the bench length. The people, specialists at JPL. We now have over 8,000 tech specialists working there. We've been running programs to enhance their skills, practices of modifying the organization structure to enable more higher agility products and nonprojects. So a bunch of initiatives that we've been taking through the last year on the talent and organization structure for people orientation to this technology core. On the technology front, a lot of work on the foundational technologies that we have spoken about in the last 2 or 3 quarters when we have presented to you, really technology rate disruption for the various business opportunities that we see. And this would range right across AI/ML, blockchain, compute, et cetera, that we have spoken about in the past. Modifying our architecture and practices to enable all the product innovation and platform innovation that we have been doing. And then the whole stack modernization itself, cloud-native being one of the key principles of the way we are developing our technology. So everything is cloud native, everything has best-in-class functionalities. And then on the customer side, just keeping the customer in the center of everything that we do. So enabling customer experiences across touch points, enabling higher personalization for customers to give them what they need. And this is becoming even more important as there is much more digital consumption now than used to happen earlier. Using data and insights very judiciously, but using them to continuously improve what we are offering to our customers and improving the technologies that we've got. So basically, we have got the building blocks in place to drive the technology evolution, the initiatives that we are focusing on at Jio Platforms Limited. We've spoken about some of those in the past, and we'll cover some more in this presentation as we move forward. In terms of performance, resilience and COVID headwinds through the last year, you all know how challenging it has been to work, operate remotely and to keep the network running 100% of the time through a whole lot of innovation and initiatives that we have taken. Through the year, we became the first operator outside of China to cross 400 million subscribers in a signal country market. Through the year, we added 99 million subscribers, gross adds during FY '21. We'll cover the numbers for the quarter in a bit. But there were challenges on the ground because we saw -- because of which we saw some higher churn, but that trend also improved in Q4. We crossed annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion and with very strong 45% Y-o-Y increase in the RJIL EBITDA for FY '21 to INR 31,461 crores. We've continued to work on the 5G stack. We completed testing of the completely in-house developed end-to-end radio and core network solution. We've actually started deploying these solutions on the field, and we have seen good success. We're delivering over 1 Gbps throughput on our own ram with our own core network. In addition, we launched and scaled up multiple platforms like the JioMart, which has been very successful, and Dinesh is going to speak a bit more about that, but just enabling the technology for JioMart, JioMeet, JioHaptik, so a whole lot of platform innovations and deployments that we did during the year. And also working with our partners like Facebook and Google and other partners for newer areas like devices, like commerce, et cetera. So we've been -- we've achieved significant milestones in what has generally been a challenging year. Things started improving in Q4, but we are again back to the second phase, which is proving to be much more challenging. Hemen, next slide. So we've come across this other -- this another phase, which is much more severe due to this new wave of COVID. We have had to reshape our priorities. For now, the priorities are to minimize any business disruption, be it to our customers, be it to our channel partners or even to employees. We have to just make sure that everyone is safe. And given the criticality of the service that we offer, we can't afford any disruptions. And that's why we've taken a whole lot of initiatives. One puts the customer -- with a customer focus, where we are reaching out to customers to help them onboard, help them recharge. We are actually going to the customer doorsteps to offer services. We have expanded the Jio associate program that we spoke about a few quarters ago when COVID had just started, where we are enabling the offline merchants who are not able to open their stores to really still work as our associates. We're enabling others as well to step in and help in -- helping customers with their requirements and doing other businesses as well. So this Jio Associate Program has been very successful on the ground. Network becomes very important, and therefore, to use all of the automation and network virtualization that we have done, so that there is 0 impact on network. And we're proud to report that through the last year, despite all the challenges on the ground, our network, LTE network, was up 100% of your time, and we offered services across the country. Given the criticality of the service given a lot of people are now working from home, learning from home, there's health care at home, there's a whole lot of things being done digitally, we could sustain 100% network performance for all of them. Also, just ensuring that our employees, our vendors, our partners, their family members are all safe during this time, we are taking a lot of -- making a lot of effort on safety measures and protocols, just ensuring all of those are followed at all times, and that's a priority, that comes before any business initiative. We have to just ensure safety for everyone. We've launched the vaccination program, application platform called R-Suraksha for all of the employees, partners and their family members. And that's -- as Srini started off this presentation, that's a priority across all of our businesses. One of the developments of the last quarter was a spectrum auction, where we participated and we enhanced our spectrum footprint to -- between that auction and the spectrum that we acquired through a spectrum trading arrangement that we've entered into with Bharti Airtel, we've now taken our spectrum footprint to 1,732 megahertz. This now gives us 2x10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1800 band across all of the circles, 40 megahertz of contiguous spectrum in the 2300 band across all of these circles and 2x10 in 800 band across 18 of the 22 circles. The average life of the spectrum is the longest in the industry at close to 16 years. And all of the spectrum is suitable to even deploy 5G technology as well as our narrowband IoT that we are already -- we have gone commercially live with. The total cost of spectrum purchase was INR 57,123 crores, and with an upfront payment of INR 19,939 crores. This is the spectrum that we acquired the right to use in the spectrum auction. And in addition, we did a spectrum trading transaction with Bharti Airtel, where we acquired spectrum in the 800 megahertz band from Airtel for INR 1,497 crores, out of which INR 459 crores is deferred payment liability. So with this, and if you just move to the next slide, we believe we have the spectrum to now address the next 300 million subscribers. As you can see in this chart, we've got a very healthy footprint across 800, 1,800 and 2,300 band and a strong footprint of a lot of contiguous spectrum as well, which will support deployment, much more spectral efficiency and deployment of 5G as we move forward. The other initiatives during the quarter, we launched the Jio Phone 2021 offer for customers who need to be upgraded to digital services. We've -- this is part of the initiative on the 2G-mukt Bharat, where we need to provide affordable and good quality devices to customers. Of course, there's more coming in the next few months, as you all are aware. But during this quarter, we expanded the Jio Phone program with an offer of INR 1,999 for 2-year unlimited services on the Jio phone and a 1-year plan at INR 1,499 and we've seen good success, good uptake of this from customers. And this is really a unique bundling of device, connectivity and content for the customer. And there are more initiatives in the pipeline on this front. And the other initiative we took was: despite the core challenges where most markets are still very gradually opening up, we went into the market with our enterprise offering to at least start testing it out in the market, getting customer feedback, which has all been very positive so far. This is an integrated offering for enterprise customers, including connectivity, digital solutions and devices in certain plans. So basically an end-to-end offering to the enterprise customers where through 1 provider, they can get access to connectivity and to most of the tools and applications that they need for running their day-to-day business. We have monthly plans starting from INR 900 going up to INR 10,000, targeting all of the MSMEs in India. We've had a good start to this program, a lot of demand coming through, a lot of queries coming through. Again, something like this does require reaching out to enterprises, and that gets impacted during COVID. But we are in a fairly good position with the feedback we've received and the interest in the program to really scale it up significantly as challenges, as restrictions on the ground reduce. The other thing -- other area that we've worked on is just trying to catalyze the online gaming culture in India. We have hosted multiple virtual tournaments for gaming. We've tied up with partners, both in India and global, to bring these gaming programs for our customers. We've run these as campaigns. We've run these as competitions, which are being broadcasted on JioTV and YouTube. And basically, to get forth gaming culture, which is already becoming more prevalent in the country, but also to get very useful customer feedback as to what they like and how we can build on these to really grow this as another segment from our point of view. Coming to the operating and financial numbers. We ended the quarter at 426.2 million subscribers. That's a gross addition of 31.2 million for the quarter and 99.3 million for the full year. Net additions of a little over 15 million, which was fairly good considering the -- that COVID-related issues were there in still several parts of the country. Things had started improving, and which resulted in the gross additions picking up again. We've seen recent challenges on the COVID front with the lockdowns, and we have to just be prepared for it, and we have to just ensure that we minimize any disruptions and customers are able to continue to take up services and enjoy our services. On the financial performance front, JPL EBITDA for the full year was INR 32,359 crores, driven by 45% Y-o-Y increase in RJIL EBITDA, despite the COVID challenges. Quarterly EBITDA for JPL was at INR 8,573 crore with an EBITDA margin of 46.9%. The ARPU at INR 138, as you all are aware, we moved to the Bill & Keep regime for 1st of January 2021, which meant that our IUC revenues from off-net costs came down to 0. Our costs also came down. So they're almost a similar impact on both the revenue and the cost side. So the ARPU, therefore, reduced from the INR 151 reported last quarter to INR 138, combination of that and there's lesser number of days in this quarter, but primarily being driven by the reduction in IUC revenues. And then really the other area to talk about, and we have covered that already in this presentation, is various on-the-ground initiatives being undertaken for -- to really address the challenges we're facing and our employees and customers are facing on account of COVID. So a strong close to a challenging year. The connectivity business continues to perform very strongly. We are ranked #1 or we are the largest operator in the country with 426.2 million customers. Market leadership in 19 out of the 22 circles with a 45% revenue market share, AGR market share, and growing. We carry more than 5 exabytes now, getting close to 6 exabytes of traffic on our network per month with sustained network performance. And we've now created a lot more capacity as well with the new spectrum that we've acquired, which is going to get deployed by -- in the next few weeks. Our reach continues to be the widest of 4G LTE. And with our differentiated sales and distribution approach and now going really to the doorstep of the customers, helping customers come on to the network. So a very superior network and value proposition, which has helped us achieve the market share that we've got in the market. The RJIL financials trends summarized on this slide. Our revenues -- operating revenues have grown from INR 14,835 crores same quarter last year to INR 17,358 this year. The dip is on account of the IUC revenues that I spoke about. EBITDA continues to grow. The EBITDA has grown by 34.1% year-on-year from the INR 6,200 crores to INR 8,313 crores. The EBITDA margin for RJIL was at 47.9% for the quarter, very healthy, and it's industry-leading EBITDA margin really. Next. Key operating metrics. We spoke about the customer base, ARPU at INR 138.2. Total data consumption at 1,668 crore GBs during the quarter, which is 13.3 GB per user per month on a base of 426 million, that's a sizable increase from the previous quarter, and that really is because our services have been the digital lifeline for a whole lot of customers, and we are proud we have been able to deliver the good quality services during this difficult period. Voice traffic also increased to -- for the quarter, it went up to 823 minutes per user per month. Next. And the summary of the JPL financials. Operating revenues for the quarter at INR 18,278 crores, and EBITDA at INR 8,573 crores. Net profit of INR 3,508 crores, which is a 47.5% year-on-year increase in net profit. So very strong growth across all operating and financial parameters despite the COVID-related challenges, which continues to be there, there was some let up, but continues to be there on the ground. I'll now hand over to Dinesh to take you through the Retail -- Reliance Retail performance.

D
Dinesh Thapar
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Anshuman. Good evening, everyone. As I talk through Retail, let me start with the round up of the full year's performance. We see the performance for the year as clearly resilient. And I say that for a couple of reasons. It was an unprecedented year. It was a challenging operating context in which we operated. If I look at our stores, we were open only for 80%. 80% of our stores were open. Our footfalls that we saw were about 65% of pre-COVID levels. Our first quarter pretty much washed out, second quarter heavily constrained by the situation. And it's only the third and the fourth quarter that we started to see easing of operating conditions. And in that context, the retail business has recovered its revenues to come in almost at par with last year. Headline revenues are a tad lower, marginally lower compared to last year. But when I adjust it for the operating context and the fact we transferred out the petrol retailing business, you'd be aware, and we've spoken about this in the past, we transferred out the petrol retailing business from Reliance Retail to the RBML JV when that was formed, and that was a drag of about INR 9,000 crores odd on the revenues. When you adjust for it, apples-to-apples, we're marginally ahead on last year's revenues, which was a significant comeback from where we started the year with the lockdown. EBITDA performance was at an all-time high. And you'd recall as COVID had struck, we've spoken to you about a fairly ambitious cost management program that we had embarked upon, which has put us in good state. The benefits of those cost management initiatives have played out through the year. And then as the business has rebounded, EBITDA has kind of come back. It's been boosted by investment income that's come along the way as well from some of the surplus funds that we've invested in mutual funds. We've continued to stick on to the path of expansion. Even in a year like this, we've expanded capabilities, Digital Commerce platforms across all our businesses. We had it only for Fashion & Lifestyle. We've now expanded that across Fashion & Lifestyle has scaled up. JioMart was launched. Reliance Digital was activated and then for our premium and luxury brands business, we scale those up as well. So significant progress on that front. We've rolled out new commerce, and we're increasingly recruiting and working in partnership with a range of merchants across consumption baskets. And I think the one piece which we are particularly heartened about is the fact that we bought the Reliance Retail mission to life, which is really about enhancing livelihoods. And in a year like this, when it was probably most needed a pressing priority, the Retail business has created job opportunities for over 65,000 people since the start of the pandemic. We've continued to invest in acquisitions with a view on the longer term of this business, and these are acquisitions you would have read and heard us speak about in the space of really strengthening our capabilities in supply chain, last-mile fulfillment, technology platforms and really filling white spaces on the portfolio. And we will talk about some of these acquisitions in the quarters ahead as we start to scale them up. And then, of course, with the landmark event of the largest fund raise that we executed between September-October last year, the largest in the consumer and retail sector in India. So a quick set of headline numbers. Gross revenue came in at INR 1,57,600-odd crores. That from a headline perspective, as I mentioned, was about 3% lower, but when you adjust it for petrol retailing, it's actually marginally higher than last year, apples-to-apples. EBITDA at INR 9,800 thereabouts represents an all-time high and particularly heartening given the operating context in which this was delivered. Of course, it received a boost from about INR 1,300 crores of investment income. But as we look forward, as these funds get deployed into a range of investments that we have planned for the business, over a period of time, we see the investment income being replaced by EBITDA and operating profit from some of the new investments and businesses that we will be getting into. Profit after tax at INR 5,500 thereabouts, again, represents an all-time high. So really, that's the big call out. Revenues at par or marginally ahead on an apples-to-apples basis, and profit at an all-time high. So let me now zoom in and give you a sense on the fourth quarter. Let me start with the operating context, and I call it out saying this was the operating context till March because as we're all aware, things have changed quite dramatically since then. But really, we thought the operating context was coming back -- was inching back towards normal, not quite the pre-COVID normal, but really a normal that have been building up with each progressive quarter. Our stores were open -- for about 95% of our stores were opened across the network. Footfalls were coming back, improving quarter after quarter, 75% in quarter 3, 88% in quarter 4. So directionally, it was starting to come back. And restrictions and limitations across the geographies were starting to ebb and ease out. So that was one context. So clearly, much better trading conditions in quarter 4 relative to the preceding quarters. Small towns have continued to lead the performance. And when you look at it across the breadth of our business, whether it's Fashion & Lifestyle, Grocery, Electronics, pretty much across all businesses, small towns have led the way. And then, of course, I will talk about what happened with the COVID wave 2 emergence that happened in March, but that dampened sentiment, and that started to disrupt operations, and we'll talk about that a little later as we go through my presentation. So against the backdrop of this environment, the fourth quarter was clearly a landmark quarter for Reliance Retail. Our revenues were at an all-time high, our quarterly revenues and our quarterly EBITDA, it was all-time high as well. We were back to the commentary that you've been used to hearing from Reliance Retail before COVID had struck, which is the fact that our growth was broad-based, all categories delivering very strong performances. It is another quarter of a strong EBITDA delivery, and the profit after tax has now crossed a milestone of INR 2,000 crores for the first time. The pace of new store expansion has stepped up, and you'll see this reflect in a couple of slides from now. And quarter 4 was higher than all the preceding quarters put together. And we've continued to scale up Digital Commerce and merchant partnerships across our business. So talking a little bit about revenues, just to give you a sense. It is a record revenue performance, growth of about 35% year-on-year. Fashion & Lifestyle and Groceries have registered all-time highs. You heard Srikanth told this out. And as trading conditions have improved, as footfalls have improved, as stores have been allowed to operate, clearly, businesses are coming back, had started to come back to their normal rhythm. A very strong growth in Consumer Electronics. And you just heard Anshuman talk about the relaunch of Jio Phone and that clearly has helped boost the performance of Consumer Electronics. So stepped up device sales that hadn't happened for the last few quarters, but clearly a big factor that has boosted the performance of electronics in this quarter. Digital and New Commerce is now 10% of our sales. And this is fundamentally businesses that we did not have right up until 12 months back, wasn't sizable, and today is about 10% of our business with exit run rates clearly much higher and growing fast. We've had a drag from the transfer of the Petro Retailing business, that's about INR 3,000 crores, INR 3,500 crores in the quarter, and I want to call that out specifically because it is a significant effect. But as you would have made up from our headline numbers, that's been made up from new streams and the businesses that we've been building out. On profit, resilient profit. It's now a couple of quarters where we've spoken about all-time highs. It's been 41% up EBITDA this quarter over the last year, led by Consumer Electronics. Clearly, the fact that devices sales have come back to a rhythm that we might have been used to seeing in the past has helped cause and that's enabled the Consumer Electronics business to double its EBITDA. The benefit of cost management initiatives that we had embarked on early in the year have continued to play out, and you've heard us talk about this quarter after quarter, very important to remind ourselves that for a retailing business, it's just so important, especially when there is a potential for operating deleverage as revenues go, and therefore, we've embarked on this, and that's really paying out some benefits now. So the boost has come from higher investment income and margins have been maintained despite all the operating challenges that we've gone through and the limitations that we've had to operate. This is the point I was making on accelerating store expansion, and we have started to build this rhythm. We'd stopped because of the limitations in the first quarter, operating curves. And then as quarters 2 and 3, we were allowed to operate, we were getting the rhythm back in that quarter 4. We've opened about 800-plus stores, and we were poised to open an even larger number in the current quarter, but of course, we'll now need to wait and see where that goes. But the rhythm on store opening is back. And the point I want to mention is notably, if you look across retailers anywhere around the world, it's unlikely that you would find too many who would talk about store expansion of this order of magnitude or off-line expansion of this order of magnitude in a COVID-constrained era. So I think clearly a notable point to call out on that one, as we've opened about a little under 1,500 stores in this last financial year, taking the exit store count to about 12,700-odd stores. So the quick financial summary for the quarter. Revenues of about INR 47,000 crores was up 24% over last quarter and 23% over the previous quarter. This is headline revenues. EBITDA at a new high that you're seeing at INR 3,600 crores. Last year was the first time -- last quarter was the first time we'd reached INR 3,000 crores that was a new milestone itself, and we've better that. And profit after tax again represents a new high at INR 2,247 crores, which is up 45% over the same time last year. So let me give you a sense now of how it's played out across a quick set of a sense of what's going behind the numbers. So when you look at Consumer Electronics, very strong double-digit growth. The rhythm of the business has continued to be maintained strong performances across stores and Digital Commerce. And the one which has been dragging down electronics performance in the last couple of quarters was the unavailability of devices, which is now behind us and clearly devices with the launch of Jio Phone has really come back and bolstered the revenues of this business. I think this business, over a period of time, has really found its secret sauce of what it takes to be able to win in this market, impactful activation around events, around festivals, affordability programs, the best in the street that we have to offer and then leveraging our partnerships with vendors and brand owners to really drive a lot of exclusive stuff that comes through our network. And I think that's the same thing which has played out in the course of the current quarter as well and led to this growth. Growth was broad-based. Pretty much all categories delivered strong growth, clearly led by productivity devices, appliances, televisions and air conditioning, delayed winter, but a strong start to winter -- sorry, delayed summer. And therefore, as summer came in much later, a very strong start to the summer loading in air care that we had. Bounce back on the devices sales led by Jio Phones, you've heard that. And now I think over a period of time, you've heard us talk about the fact that we wired up the entire store network. We've omni-enabled it, which means today we can fulfill Digital Commerce orders through our stores. And what we've now also done is to ensure that all our DCs are omni-enabled, so in the event that stores are not entirely accessible, we can service orders out of our DCs. In any case, we've really worked and tightened our service level deliveries on what we send out of our DCs and our stores. You've heard me talk about the stores in the past, but now 80% of what we're delivering out of the DCs are done in under 24 hours, and that's an unparalleled or unmatched service proposition that we have to offer. And clearly, upwards of 95% of the grab-and-go items that are ordered out of our stores and delivered out of our stores are delivered in under 6 hours. And that's now consistent and a unique proposition that Reliance Digital has to offer. We are expanding our own brand portfolio. And these are brands that we have licensed BPL, Kelvinator, Disney. And then we have our own brands. Of course, you're familiar with Jio Phones, that's one big part of the portfolio, but there's Reconnect, which also participates in most of other categories. We're building up that portfolio. We're now falling into electricals, BPL, household name, many of us have grown up with BPL. That's got into; electricals. And we're now taking this across to general trade and working in partnership with a lot of general trade details as well. In Fashion & Lifestyle, it's been a buoyant quarter. And clearly, footfalls are much better than they were in the preceding quarters. Revenue was buoyant and clearly largely led by higher conversions. We don't have all the footfalls that existed pre-COVID cover, and that's going to take a while to come back because clearly and just the packing order of priorities from a consumer standpoint, fashion and apparel might trade much lower. And very conscious of that. What we've done is to drive conversion in stores. So as customers come into store, how do you really drive conversion? How do you drive them to really cut bills? How do you drive more items? How do you drive bill values? And that's what has been the driver of business in our Trends network. Small towns have done exceptionally well. In fact, small town stores are now 2x of what they were same time last year. And this gives you a sense of the buoyancy of that part of the business. It's now contributing over half of the Trends' sales. And we've continued to integrate our Trends store network, which by far is the largest fashion and lifestyle network in this country on to JioMart. Now Trends merchandise and items is available on JioMart as well and orders have continued to grow 2x during this period of time. On Ajio, the momentum has continued in the last quarter, 4x over same time last year revenues. We've continued to grow the entire catalog, the entire range of offerings on Ajio. Options have moved up 2x over the same time last year. Number of sellers, the number of brands are all significantly up as this business positions itself as the leading fashion and lifestyle destination, offering a breadth of categories to consumers. And we've now launched a whole host of gamification elements, sales, impactful activation to really be able to consistently draw traffic onto this part of the business. And that's really, in many ways, helping us maintain the momentum on the entirety of the Fashion & Lifestyle and the apparel and footwear portfolio. On new commerce, we've expanded a geographic reach. Some of you would remember last time I presented, I spoke about the fact that we are at about 1,900-odd cities, we've expanded that to a little under 2,300. That's continuing to grow. Catalog size is up. We're looking to offer much -- many more alternatives to merchants. But what we're also doing is addressing both sides of the spectrum. So not only are we growing merchant partnerships and -- from a demand side, are we addressing that part, but we are also building the supply side with many more sellers being onboarded. And so therefore, this is a business which is being built up well for scale right across the country. And of course, we are starting to activate and use local events as the route to be able to onboard many more merchant partnerships across the country. The next business of Reliance Jewels, and Jewels has had a fantastic quarter. In fact, Jewels has had a fantastic quarter for a few quarters now. And what is buoyed the performance this time around is the fact that gold rates have come off, and that's led to a very, very buoyant consumer demand. Business was up 1.8x over the same time last year, so gives you a sense of how buoyant the business was. We've continued to leverage the design capabilities that we've been putting in this business for some time now. It's been a very conscious effort that's going behind, really building best-in-class, very contemporary design capabilities and that benefit is now coming to the fore. We're now activating, and we're ensuring we're getting in new collections, far more regularly, far more thematic, far more contemporary, occasion-wear very focused assortments, which the entire capability is now allowing us to lend. And that's becoming a contributor clearly to the very consistent performance that this business has been demonstrating. And we will now -- we were also awarded the Most Admired Emerging Retail Brand of the Year. I think to come to recognition in many ways a testament to the fact that Reliance Jewels is now emerging as clearly a leading player in the jewelry retailing space. On our partner brands, this is the luxury business. Clearly, the growth of Digital Commerce has continued. And I think we've taken a step forward. You've heard me talk about how we've built monobrand sites as those have -- this is a part of the business where stores were clearly impacted. A lot of them were malls. So clearly, the need of the hour was to really create alternative routes of engaging with customers. And you've heard me speak about distinct selling, creating Digital Commerce options, building monobrand sites for each of our brands, and we've continued to do that. What we also did in the quarter was to launch Ajio Luxe, which is a curated section on the Ajio app, where we've listed about 60 -- a curative selection of 60 premium, luxury and rich luxury brands. The intent, of course, is to scale this up with given the number of partnerships that we have, but that now completes another addition to the Ajio portfolio, which is the very luxury and the very niche offerings that it had missed so far with the launch of Ajio Luxe that place gets filled. We continue to build monobrand sites and really tighten the functionality on those that exist. So Hamleys U.K. site was relaunched with significantly improved functionality; Brooks Brothers has come in. And this business has continued to really build up its position as a preferred partner to global brands. The latest one that would now come in and opened a store in Delhi is Tory Burch. So that's a new addition to the portfolio in the course of the quarter. Coming into Grocery. This is a business where the revenues were at no time high in the quarter, clearly as it continues to serve customers far and wide. Footfalls haven't recovered as yet, as you would imagine. And that's really the role that JioMart is now starting to play. And so higher bill values continue to be a big driver of the performance of this business. I think the business has hit a landmark, and you'd be able to appreciate the magnitude of that. But I tell you that on the 26th Jan Day Sale that we had, between our store network and JioMart, we were -- we served over 1 million customers, and that's happened for the very first time. So clearly, a new benchmark and tend to give you a sense of the strong momentum across our Grocery network and as bolstered by the existence of JioMart. JioMart has continued to scale up: more orders, more traffic, creating more customers. The assortment is 3x more than it was when we launched it, and clearly, that's continuing to grow. It's a very strong emphasis that we have to continue growing JioMart's assortment offer, the widest possible selection to customers. And just to give you a sense of JioMart, 80% of the orders that we received in JioMart are from repeat customers, a very high level of repeats. And order frequency, and we slice and dice this, just to give you a sense of what has been the behavioral pattern with customers who've been on JioMart, and we've seen that for those who've been with us for about 6 months, they order 1.5x more than some of the new customers who've gotten on. And their bill values are clearly higher, 20% higher than some of the newer customers who joined on to JioMart. So it gives you a sense that with retention, customers are seeing the proposition and the value proposition that JioMart offers, and that's really leading to higher order frequencies and higher businesses coming in through higher bill values. On the Kirana program, we've now extended the coverage to 10 more cities. We're now active in 33 cities, and of course, with some catchments that we're servicing in the vicinity. And clearly, this is a function of how fast we are ramping up our supply chain network, but we're now in 33 cities. Merchant bases continue to expand 3x of where it was last quarter. Orders have continued to grow. And this, again, is where we just a took and saw that for those who've been with us for about 6 months, their ordering frequency is 3x. So again, it gives you a sense that the proposition on JioMart Kirana's with the Kirana program is landing well because it's clearly translating to higher frequency and higher purchase. We've initiated the JioMart exclusive Kirana program. This is the transformation that we do for kirana stores to move out of close store formats into open store formats. That has now started across 13 cities and was poised for ramp-up in the course of the current quarter, but we'll wait and see where that goes. And of course, I think there are a whole host of functionalities, which are being deployed across JioMart, whether it's on the B2C part or on the Kirana program to really drive customer experience Okay. And on pharma, I think this is a business which we're in the process of establishing with -- as we start up our stores, we have 114 pharmacies, which were operationalized in the quarter. That poised for ramp-up because these pharmacy sections are embedded within our smart points at pharmacies. So therefore, that would ramp up as we open up our stores. We're engaging customers through impactful activation, letting them know that we have now got pharmacies embedded within the smart point stores. And really a whole host of activities that have been taken. We're activating Netmeds, which we had acquired in September last year and a whole round of impactful activation and campaigns, which have gone behind it to really build mine measures. And I think for all of us who've been seeing IPL would see Netmeds has been very salient in this period, and we're continuing to see the benefits of that translate into higher orders and traffic onto the Netmeds site as well. We continue to grow the catalog, and we're testing hyperlocal just as we have that capability existing across the rest of the business, of where we are able to service Digital Commerce orders through our store network. We're looking to do the same thing over here now as the store network comes online. So looking at route to being able to service Netmeds orders through stores. That's a pilot, which is currently underway and has poised to scale up as the rest of the store network comes online. So looking ahead, and this is really where we thought the rhythm in the market was starting to come back. Like I said, quarter 4 was distinctly better over the preceding quarters. And then, of course, this unfortunate development from March onwards that came along, making the current context very, very volatile and uncertain. I'm sure each of you relates to that from all that's currently happening. But it started to adversely impact business starting later March, lockdowns, operating limitations that were imposed over time across states. And business, including Digital Commerce was limited to -- only to essential items, something that we've seen back last year as well when clearly it was only essentials that allowed to function on nonessential part of the portfolio was restricted; same issue across states.And therefore, when you look at what's happening? Our stores are down to 40%, 50% in Electronics and Fashion & Lifestyle. Very erratic, obviously, because various states are going through various stages, but that's ballpark of where it has been in recent times. Grocery stores, even though essentials, have operated at anywhere between 80%, 90% because there have been geographies where this have been constrained. And this was considering the fact that it was operating at 90%-plus in the last quarter. But even where we are operating, we are operating for restricted hours. Many of you are familiar, either at 6 to 10, at 7 to 11. It's 4 hours in a day. It's a few hours with restricted portfolio, very clearly. So much limitations. And I'd say that we're operating at just about half at the very best in terms of the efficiency of these stores. Footfalls are down. Footfalls have down -- come down quite dramatically. We started to see it ebb from March itself, later March itself, the latter part of March. They currently at anywhere between 30% to 40% thereabouts of pre-COVID levels. And this was when we were just about hitting 90% in quarter 4. So it gives you a sense of the concern of how the business is now -- of how the market conditions have kind of dropped. Vendor supply chains are starting to get impacted, and expectedly so, obviously, as the impact is far fared. And I think consumer sentiment this time around, I think the big change from what it was last time. And if I just use our experience of Digital Commerce as one of those indicators, I think consumer sentiment has taken a bit of a nosedive, has dipped quite significantly in recent quarters. And I think as consumers have made choices to really focus on just the essential purchases. Of course, it's also been impacted by the fact that clearly some states have restricted explicitly nonessential items. But I think when I look at some of our Digital Commerce and just to give you a sense, when I look at some of our Digital Commerce orders in recent times compared to maybe the same time when we've had restrictions in the past, you can tell that sentiment to this time around is actually quite subdued. So that's a little bit of the context that we are currently faced with. Looking ahead -- Hemen, if you can go to the next slide, please? So looking ahead, I just want to give you a sense of what's in it for the year in terms of our strategic agenda. And I'm saying this for the year because given how fluid the current context is, the pace of execution, the pace of implementation, we will need to wait and watch. We need to see how it evolves, and how this entire thing pans out. But I just want to leave you with a sense of what our big strategic thrust in the course of this year. We're looking to continue to step up the pace of new store openings. And this is particularly in the space of Grocery and Fashion & Lifestyle. We're looking to accelerate Digital Commerce, you've heard me say that before, expand the category play on JioMart and really make JioMart the horizontal play that I've spoken about in the past. Growing new commerce merchant partnerships across businesses and across geographies. We are making significant progress. Run rates are clearly much higher. And therefore, this is clearly a big part of the agenda for the current year. Launch and scale up our own brands and new businesses. And we've made a few acquisitions. You're familiar with the acquisitions that we made in Urban Ladder and Zivame. We're doing a whole bunch of stuff within the business across our Grocery business, across the Brands business, I spoke to you about in Electronics. We have a large branded business in Fashion & Lifestyle. So clearly launching where we have wide spaces and scaling up where we already have a business is an integral part of the end of the year. And really building the back end a very strong foundation for the next wave of exponential growth for this business, expanding design centers, developing the vendor ecosystem for the aspirations that we have for the retail business and really fast tracking supply chain infrastructure across the breadth of our businesses because that's such an important enabler for our business. Like I said, these are the strategic thrust for the year. In terms of how the pace of expansion and implementation and execution plays out in the next couple of months and quarters, we'll need to wait and watch just given how uncertain volatile the current context, but I just want to leave you with this. I think as we look at the immediate term, there is absolutely no doubt of the fact that our foremost priority is to ensure the safety of our people and the security of our operations, that's unequivocally our foremost priority and business is a very second one after that, and that's really some of the decisive actions that we're currently taking and engaging on within the business. Most of the conversations are about how do we really secure people and secure operations. And that really is the need of the hour. So this really, in a sense, is the retail story for the quarter with the roundup of the full year. Before I hand over, let me wish you well, stay safe and hang in there. With that, let me hand over the session to Sanjay for the next part. Sanjay, over to you. Thank you.

S
Sanjay Roy

Thank you, Dinesh. A very good evening to everyone attending the call. Just to let you know, this was -- this has been a strong quarter in terms of both the production as well as the completion of the Sat-Cluster field -- our cluster field that was commissioned in December of '20, we've reached peak production ahead of schedule by almost a couple of months. We are at about 12.8 million standard cubic meters per day. Meanwhile, the Sat-Cluster field, which was -- which we had envisaged would be commissioned by the middle of the year was commissioned in April, the later part of April. And the field is smoothly ramping up, and we expect the overall production to be at about 18 million standard cubic meters in the next couple of months or so, which is around 20% of India's current gas production. So KG-D6 production very much ahead of plans, as of now. So we are continuing to focus on now developing the MJ field, which we expect will be commissioned in second half of next year. In terms of the gas sales, as you're aware, we've conducted 3 rounds of bidding and one of these rounds included CBM and 2 rounds were for KG-D6. We did witness quite a lot of competitive bidding with the participation from various industries and eventually 19 successful bidders emerged. Now in terms of gas prices, although there is a ceiling price that is applicable to the deepwater and that kind of constrains the price realization. But as you may be aware, prices have been far stronger. If you look back almost a year back, 12 to 14 months back, prices had dipped below $2 per MMBtu, and we are now seeing it consistently high and at about $8 million -- $8 per million BTU. Now we expect that this will have an effect on the overall ceiling and therefore, the effect of the ceiling should wear off, and we should probably see at least around 60% rise in the prices -- price realizations in the second half of the year. Like I mentioned, MJ, it's on track. We're making good progress there, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a subsequent slide. And just as you may be aware, we have successfully divested our interest in the U.S. shale Marcellus assets to Northern Oil & Gas. The transaction was closed in early April. In terms of revenue, as you can see, there has been the turnaround is mainly because of the production from KG-D6, the R-Cluster. And the trajectory will continue. Our EBITDA margins will continue to improve as we -- as revenues -- as production and revenues increase. As you can see, even in the price realizations, they're higher than what we had expected. And this is expecting -- and the price -- overall gas prices are expected to strengthen through the course of the year. Next slide, please. FY '21, if you look at the overall performance, largely our focus had been on delivery of the capital projects, which we success -- despite the challenges of the COVID and so on and all the challenges that we face globally in mobilizing the necessary resources, we've managed to commission the R-Cluster field and now the Sat-Cluster feel ahead of schedule. So what you see is more of a reflection of the operational performance through that year. But now from this year onwards, we expect this to -- the revenues to be coming in based on the production and also improving prices to be more stronger. So that's the outlook for FY '22. Just a few pictures. As you can see, the installation campaign, the first installation campaign was undertaken, and we are now gearing up for the second installation campaign wherein the subsea production system as well as at a later juncture, the FPSO will be mobilized and all of this will be connected together. Meanwhile, wells are being drilled even as we speak, and we expect to have those ready. And overall, we expect by the fourth quarter of FY '23, we should commission the field. Meanwhile, our efforts continue to look at potential opportunities in approximately to the existing infrastructure, the gas -- deepwater gas infrastructure. A part of that in the KG-UDW1, which is contiguous to the KG-D6 block. We've done the seismic acquisition campaign, and we are working on maturing some prospects. In case of success, we'll be able to tie back these discoveries into the existing infrastructure, and that should augment the production. So overall, we are all focused on the production from the assets. But more importantly, sustainability and business continuity is a prime focus. And above all the health and safety of our people and assets. We have commissioned bubble operations to protect our people, and we're taking all the message measures. These are difficult times, difficult times to undertake operations to conduct projects, but we're doing everything we can, particularly our heart goes out and prayers to the frontline workers. And also, I just wish you all to take care and stay safe. Thank you.

S
Srikanth Venkatachari
Joint Chief Financial Officer

Yes. So moving over to the last section on O2C. Let me just start off with what are we doing for securing employees. And just to carry forward from what Sanjay said on the whole bio-bubble concept across all our manufacturing sites, we're providing accommodation for facilities for all our business partners. Our work from home is 53% of our people or work from home, and this includes technical and nontechnical. We've very aggressive testing protocols in place. We're using CCTV and also AI for monitoring COVID hygiene behavior. Scaled up vaccinations a lot. 80% of our eligible people have been vaccinated, and we are expanding it to family members and also other contract employees. From a business continuity point of view, clear focus on raw materials, catalysts, chemicals, product dispatches, use of multimodal logistics, even hiring external storage, all of that from the context of business continuity. We have been able to complete our planned turnarounds in Hazira, Dahej and Nagothane. Also, a lot of focus on lead shift operation, which means that by virtue of which we have been able to reduce the asset-facing employee by almost 33%. Here, just a slide -- 2 slides on just the environment. Clearly, O2C business has benefited from the economic revival coming again on the back of rising consumer confidence with the whole vaccination drive, the U.S. fiscal stimulus. If you see overall demand for oil definitely has risen from the lows. So on Q-on-Q, I would say slightly lower in terms of demand. But otherwise, when you see even domestic oil product, again, demand year-on-year growth of 2.5%, flattish to slightly lower on a Q-on-Q basis. Again, within that, if you see gasoline, diesel up about 10% and 4%, respectively, on year-on-year. But ATF, you saw almost 16% Q-on-Q growth. But when you see it in the broader context of the year, it is down 29%. Polymer and polyester demand up 12% than 21%, respectively, though on a quarter-on-quarter, I would say, it has remained stable. Just carrying forward, the macro trends. But when you see the price, you saw the big jump in terms of price, oil went up 38% to $61. Naphtha prices were up. And along with demand, the fact that there has been a significant OPEC-led cut, and that continuation has helped that combined with the whole fiscal side -- stimulus side, has kept oil prices higher. Though the higher prices didn't really translate in terms of either an impact on the demand side. Also, the big trend was that in the previous quarter, we saw large-scale supply disruptions and logistical constraints. All of them, in some sense, benefiting margins, the whole historic Arctic freeze in U.S. led to shutdowns in refineries and crackers. In fact, global refinery cracking rates, if you see is about 75% versus almost 86% in the previous quarter. And the container shortage continued right through. And in that sense, it supported the whole margin environment. So if you look at specifically on polymers, I mentioned about the 12% year-on-year growth. PPE, yes, up 14% on really led by e-commerce packaging. Polypropylene, up 18% on demand from non-urban segment, automobiles. PVC is more to do with inventory destocking because when you look at the price environment has been pretty sharp move upwards. But overall, when you look at polymer, both prices and margins are really in some way multiyear high. Again, as I mentioned, this did benefit from the weather-related dislocation. 75% of U.S. strikers -- crackers were affected because of this Arctic freeze. And also, as I mentioned, that gave opportunities for regional -- or for Asian producers to look at opportunities to the best. And also, the whole container point that I mentioned did help to keep margins high. On the polyester side, again, demand growth, strong 21% and across, if you were to see, and benefiting really from higher cotton prices. Further downstream operating rates were good, declining inventories -- demand has actually come back to the pre-COVID levels. But when you see sector-wise, beverages, textiles, all of them between 14% and 20% higher, the whole -- when you look at the chain deltas at $541 really, it's 18% higher, again, coming on the back of strong demand and overall realizations has been good. Specifically, the PTY and FDY had firm margins. When you look at transportation fuels, quarter-on-quarter, as I mentioned, slightly lower, if you look at gas oil as well as gasoline, which I will cover. But having said that, margins recover, again, to $5.8 that you are seeing, right, coming from the U.S. outages and resulting in cargoes moving from Asia. Overall, when you look at ATF, overall mobility was actually slightly lower, 54% versus 56%. But you did see domestic travel in many countries starting to normalize, and that also in terms -- that explains the move -- upward move in terms of the cracks from 2.4 to 3.3. On gasoline side, as I mentioned, slightly lower. But again, for the quarter, the sharp jump again coming because of the U.S. Arctic freeze. Also, U.S. starting to benefit from healthy road mobility indices, which are looking up. But yes, it must be noted that the demand did decline for the second consecutive quarter. And yes, the onset of the second wave is expected to put some pressure on gasoline cracks. So when you look at overall throughput, 2.7% higher. We have maximized ethane and SRFO in view of the attractive economics. Also, from a crude sourcing point of view, we've looked at arbitrage barrels coming from the Black Sea as well as the North American crude. We were able to run our manufacturing facilities at full capacity. Crackers were at full throughput. And we did rebalance both naphtha and ethane cracking based on the optimization economics. The increase in transportation fuel at 9.9% versus 9.7%, that's really more of jet fuel production that you are seeing. Otherwise, in polymer, fiber intermediates and polyester, it was absolutely the same level as what it was in the third quarter. So when you put all these together in terms of numbers, INR 11,407 crores of EBITDA, which is up 17% that I saw -- that I mentioned. Revenue is also up about 21%. Again, when you look at it, the EBITDA is explained by volume growth. It is also explained by the cracks improving across transportation fuels and also the, I would say, multiyear highs for margins in key polymer products. If you look at polypropylene up 43% cracks, PX 38%, MEG 33%. So you've seen that kind of sharp move up in terms of margins. Also, the fact that we are able to push a lot more of the products on the domestic side are really leveraging our multimodal India distribution hub. So when you look at the numbers in aggregate, overall revenues unexpectedly, I mean, it is lower on the back of both the first half being what it was in terms of both demand contraction and also the whole margin side. Second half did bounce back and our operating model and the -- our agility is what helped to protect a lot more of the EBITDA. We were able to run our facilities at 100%. The switch from domestic to export and back to domestic, our ability to optimize feedstock health. And if you look at it from demand side, except maybe the jet fuel side, almost every product was -- had reached the pre-COVID level and just before the second wave we're talking about. So here the point I wanted to make was that what has helped us is the business model where the focus is on high asset utilization without compromising on safety and reliability of operations. The optimization of feedstock product deals, the integration; the focus now on specialty component so that we push for more niche and higher-margin grades; the whole supply chain management, including the whole broader focus on customer ownership, both through trading as well as the distribution, I talked about; the ability to price differently for the product portfolio all this has really helped mitigate what would have otherwise been a very big impact in terms of earnings. Otherwise, therefore, if you see our own growth the last 3 quarters, it has been a series of sequential improvements in all the 3 quarters, but the strong first half because of COVID did pull the overall performance down. So here, I just wanted to say that oil demand recovery in 2021, it will still be, even by all the estimates, is expected to be still lower than what we saw in '19. Yes, there is the broader cracker capacity additions that we saw in 2020 as well as what we expect to see in '21. But overall margin, I think the whole easing of lockdowns outside India, the U.S. driving season as well as an aspect of travel recovery, can support fuel cracks. We think polyester chain deltas has continued to do well, especially if you're an integrated player. The container shortages in the near term could be generally supportive of margins and any delays in the CapEx side could also be a short-term tailwind for broader margin. Overall, demand drivers continue to be vaccination-led -- vaccination, the impact of the fiscal side. But also from an India standpoint, some of the longer-term demand drivers, including the scrappage policy, the investments for the downstream, especially in this whole flexible containers and geosynthetic spikes, et cetera, and hygiene, of course, will -- are long-term catalyst for growth. But clearly, the near term clearly is about the second wave in India in terms of lockdowns. I know a lot has been said about it, but that is where it is, yes.With this, I just wanted to come to the summary. And here, I did want to highlight the fact that when I look at all the businesses, O2C, Digital, Retail, standout has been the strong operating performance. It has been unprecedented business environment. We all know that. But on the ground, it has been extraordinarily difficult. But in that environment, the performance, I would just characterize as being very strong. Our Consumer business is now almost 49% of our EBITDA. Retail and Jio has been providing both physical and digital lifeline to customers and the continuing focus on creating capabilities across our consumer and technology-led growth. Clearly, the focus on agile operations, the -- delivering on our operating model potential as well as our competitive cost position has helped us deliver that kind of performance. Sanjay talked about the revival in upstream business with the commencement of R series and the satellite fields and ahead of plan, that, I think, will be potential drivers for growth going into FY '22. And then finally, our balance sheet is very strong, highly liquid, which really supports the next phase of growth. With this, I would like to thank you all for being on the call and request you to all be safe. Thank you so much.

B
B. Srinivasan

Thank you, everyone.

S
Srikanth Venkatachari
Joint Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.