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RIL India's most valuable company
Reliance Industries Ltd edges past ONGC to take the top slot in market capitalisation, reports Arun Kumar.
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) made history on Thursday, becoming number one in market capitalisation, displacing public-sector giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) from that position.
Registering a gain of 2.3 per cent, RIL’s market cap stood at Rs 1,62,971 crore ($35.5 billion) against ONGC’s market cap of Rs 1,61,535 crore.
ONGC, however, is still bringing home more money with an annual profit of Rs 14,430 crore against RIL’s Rs 9,069 crore.
In revenues, Indian Oil’s is the highest at Rs 176,339.74 crore, but its profit is a mere Rs 1,168 crore, because of the heavy losses it has faced in marketing petroleum products.
“The days are long gone when Reliance was perceived as a mere oil refining company. It is a corporate which is growing in consumption-related businesses like retail and real estate,” said R Sreeshankar, chief investment officer of IL&FS Investmart. However, he warned against making too much of a single day's movement in stock prices.
“RIL is among the few companies that generate sufficient surplus, to be able to invest in the future business that will fuel the growth,” Sreeshankar said.
An analyst said on condition of anonymity, “Usually, private-sector companies have better valuation because of perceived better managerial efficiencies.”
