Shares of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led company Reliance Industries rose as much as 2.13 to hit record high of Rs 2,776.40 on the BSE a day after its telecom arm Reliance Jio surpassed Bharti Airtel to become the country's second largest fixed-line service provider in February 2022, according to data published by the sector regulator Trai. The company's refining business is also doing well with a key benchmark of profitability surging to record highs.
Reliance Industries' Singapore gross refining margins, a key metric to assess how much it has earned by refining a barrel of crude oil, improved to $17 per barrel which is at multi-year highs, market participants told Outlook business.
With the surge in Reliance Industries share price, its market capitalisation topped Rs 18.78 lakh crore, data from stock exchanges showed.
Meanwhile, Reliance Jio wireline subscriber base reached over 58.85 lakh while Bharti Airtel recorded a customer base of more than 57.66 lakh in February, according to a subscriber report of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India released on Tuesday.
Reliance Jio led the wireline telephony growth by adding 2.44 lakh customers in February. Bharti Airtel came second in the segment by adding 91,243 new users.
Vodafone Idea added 24,948 customers, Quadrant 18,622 and Tata Teleservices 3,772. Reliance Jio is now behind only BSNL which has over 75.76 lakh wireline customers.
The government-owned BSNL and MTNL, which jointly have a 49.5 per cent share in the segment, lost 49,074 and 21,900 fixed-line customers, respectively.
The growth trend in the wireline subscriber base, which picked up after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, is gaining momentum with private telecom operators driving the growth in the segment.
