THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Recently Reliance Industries conducted its 43rd virtual Annual General Meeting on July 15, 2020 where more than a lakh shareholders from 500 different locations joined simultaneously. Reliance had so far held all in its annual general meeting (AGM) physically where shareholders outside Mumbai could never attend the annual event.
Oil-to-telecom giant added around 5.60 lakh crore to its market capitalization in last 11 months, making it the most valuable company in India with nearly market capital of 13 lakh crore, becoming the first listed Indian entity to achieve the milestone. Investors handsomely rewarded Ambani’s effort to reduce net debt to nil before schedule. In the meeting some key initiatives were announced which were resulted in the next day trade.
The 14th investment of Rs 33,737 crore(7.77% stake) by Google has taken the total stake that Reliance sold in Jio Platforms to 32.7%. For Google, this is the “first and biggest investment” from the recently announced $10-billion India fund, CEO Sundar Pichai said. The two companies will jointly develop an operating system for an entry-level smartphone that will support 5G and target India’s 350 million feature-phone users. Mukesh Ambani announced launching an affordable android-like device and having an Android-like OS may enable other device makers to launch affordable smartphones before before India’s 5G story begins. Shifting 350 million feature-phone users to affordable smartphone is an ambitious plan, but there may be challenges.
RIL is still keen to get the world’s biggest oil producer Saudi Aramco on board in its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business although there has been a delay. Due to unforeseen circumstances in the energy market and the Covid-19 situation, the deal has not progressed as per the original timeline, RIL’s shares fell 6% after the Aramco comment, but recovered to close 3.7% lower at Rs 1845.60 in a flat market. Ambani further said “Our equity requirements have already been met. Nevertheless, we at Reliance value our over two-decade long relationship with Saudi Aramco and are committed to a long-term partnership, we expect to complete this process by early 2021.”
Jio Glass is at the cutting edge of technology that provides best-in-class mixed reality service to give users a truly meaningful immersive experience. Kiran Thomas, President RIL gave a demo of Jio Glass by making a call to Aakash and Isha Ambani, where Aakash was shown as a 3D avatar and Isha joined using 2D video call interface. The Jio Glass will be connected to a smartphone and a cable to power it. It is as light as 75 grams with 25 in-built apps. Not much was disclosed about the pricing and availability of the product.
For decades, TV content has been largely broadcast-dependent without any interactivity. JioFiber will reimagine this experience and bring interactivity to TV. Through the Jio App Store on the Set Top Box, one can access internet applications across multiple genres. Jio TV+ user interface brings 12 leading global OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Videos, Disney Hotstar and many more, it will require a single login instead of logging in different apps separately.
The 5G spectrum auctions are yet to take place in India. India has delayed a planned 5G spectrum auction until 2021 due to the poor financial health of telecom industry. Jio has created a complete 5G solution from scratch, that will enable us to launch a world-class 5G service in India, using 100 per cent homegrown technology and solutions. It will be ready for trials as soon as the 5G spectrum is available and can be ready for field deployment next year.
On 15th of July 2020, the market opened at 1937.95 and created 52 weak high of 1978.80 which showed bullishness of the investors towards the announcement. The announcement of delay in deal with Saudi Aramco hurted the investor sentiments and resulted a 7% drop in the price reaching 1798.00, but somehow managed to close at 1844.00. Even on the very next day the price of the share didn’t fluctuate much. Lets see how in 2021 the cards are turned into RIL favor.
Written by Shavin Bohara
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