Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries is planning major investments, totaling up to $30 billion over next five years in its various businesses, including energy and telecom sectors.These investments of $25-30 billion will be mainly targeted at petrochemicals, exploration and production and telecom businesses of the corporate conglomerate.
The bullish investment outlook was disclosed by RIL at an investor conference hosted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The company expects its five main businesses in the next 5-10 years to be petrochemicals, refining, E&P, retail and telecom.
As per the proposed capex (capital expenditure) investment plan, RIL will invest $10-12 billion in petrochemicals, while spending another $10 billion on exploration and development of oil and gas discoveries already made in shale gas in India and US.
Besides, RIL will invest $4.5-$4.7 billion in telecom over the next five years, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch said in a research note about its investor conference.
RIL has already spent $2.8 billion on acquiring 4G (fourth-generation) licenses and spectrum, which it got last year through acquisition of Infotel Broadband Services.
Infotel was the only entity to get pan-India license in the auction of Broadband Wireless Access spectrum conducted by the government last year.
RIL is currently in the process of finalising arrangement with leading global technology players, service providers, infrastructure providers, application developers, device manufacturers and others for its 4G telecom service offerings.
BofA-ML also said that RIL has indicated a surge in its EBTDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) to $15 billion by FY15, from about $6.4 billion in the last fiscal ended March 2010.
Last month, RIL reported a 28.14 per cent rise in its third-quarter net profit at Rs. 5,136 crore (Rs. 51.36 billion), helped by robust performance in its refining and petrochemicals businesses.
The turnover rose by about six per cent to Rs. 62,399 crore (Rs. 623.99 billion) for the quarter ended December 31, 2010, from Rs. 58,848 crore (Rs. 588.48 billion) in the year-ago period.
Commenting on the results, RIL chief Mukesh Ambani had said: "Reliance had another record quarter as both refining and petrochemical margins continued to improve and certain products recorded historic levels.
"Robust demand growth in home markets and highly competitive assets enabled Reliance to have industry leading operating rates and margins."
