Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India’s largest company has opened the earnings season with its biggest quarter yet. Reliance Industries reported first-quarter FY27 revenue from operations of ₹3,11,850 crore — up about 25% from a year earlier and the first time the group has crossed ₹3 lakh crore in a single quarter — alongside a record quarterly EBITDA of ₹51,403 crore that ran ahead of market expectations. Reported after Friday’s market close, the numbers set a confident tone for the heavy fortnight of corporate results now under way.
A headline profit figure needs its context. Net profit attributable to shareholders came in at ₹20,946 crore, about 22% lower than the same quarter last year — but that comparison is against a one-off: the year-ago quarter carried an exceptional gain of ₹8,924 crore from the sale of a listed investment. Strip that out, and the underlying trend is up, not down; sequentially, profit actually rose roughly 23% over the March quarter. The operating businesses — energy, telecom and retail — each pulled their weight.
Read past the one line that fell and the picture flips: record revenue, record operating profit, and a profit dip that is last year’s windfall, not this year’s business.
The digital story remains the standout. Jio ended June with 533.3 million subscribers, including 285 million on 5G — now more than half its base — after adding 8.9 million users in the quarter, with average revenue per user rising to ₹208.8. Retail kept growing, with gross revenue of about ₹90,408 crore, while the oil-to-chemicals arm rode a firmer refining and petrochemical cycle. It is the picture of a diversified giant compounding across very different markets at once.
The constructive read for the general reader is that a single quarter from one company is really a read on the whole economy’s breadth — energy demand, a deepening digital-consumption story and steady retail spending, all in one balance sheet. The way forward is the unglamorous discipline that builds durable value at this scale: capital spent well, new-energy and digital ventures ramped patiently, and cash generation reinvested. Earnings season has begun as it should — with the numbers, and the context that makes sense of them.
