Reliance Industries Becomes First Indian Firm To Hit Rs 10 Lakh Crore M-Cap Mark

Reliance Industries on Thursday became the first Indian company to hit the Rs 10 lakh crore market valuation level. The oil-to-telecom conglomerate's market capitalisation (m-cap) zoomed to Rs 10.02 lakh crore during morning trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The company's stock rose 0.73 per cent to a record peak of Rs 1,581.25 (intra-day) on the index. Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on November 20 achieved another milestone, becoming the first Indian firm to hit a market valuation of Rs 9.5 lakh crore. Last month, RIL became the first Indian firm to hit the Rs 9 lakh crore market valuation mark in intra-day trade.

In August 2018, RIL became the first domestic firm to cross the Rs 8 lakh crore mark in terms of market valuation. TCS is the country's second most valued firm with a market valuation of Rs 7,91,753.17 crore followed by HDFC Bank with a market cap of Rs 6,98,309.14 crore, Hindustan Unilever (Rs 4,41,480.95 crore) and HDFC (Rs 3,82,429.40 crore). The market capitalisation (m-cap) figures of companies change daily with stock price movement.

Meanwhile, Reliance Industries Ltd has said that it is on track to start production from a new gas field in the flagging KG-D6 block in the Bay of Bengal from mid-2020 even as output from its existing fields continued to fall. Reliance and its partner BP Plc of the UK had in June 2017 announced an investment of Rs 40,000 crore in the three sets of discoveries to reverse the flagging production in KG-D6 block.

These finds were expected to bring a total 30-35 million cubic metres (1 billion cubic feet) of gas a day onstream, phased over 2020-22. The three sets of discoveries are R-Cluster, Satellite Cluster and MJ field. R-Cluster will be first to come on stream.

"On track for gas from R-Cluster in mid-2020," Reliance said in an investor presentation post announcing its second quarter earnings.

The company has already drilled all the six wells on the field and "second campaign for installation of subsea production system (SPS)" was progressing, it said.

Drilling of three out of the five wells on Satellite Cluster has been completed and engineering and fabrication for SPS was on track, it said.

Satellite Cluster is to begin production in 2021. For MJ, first phase of drilling will commence in January-March 2021, it said.

Reliance has so far made 19 gas discoveries in the KG-D6 block. Of these, D-1 and D-3 -- the largest among the lot -- were brought into production from April 2009 and MA, the only oilfield in the block, was put to production in September 2008. The output from D-1 and D-3 has fallen sharply from 54 million standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) in March 2010 to 1.68 mmscmd in the July-September, the presentation said.

The fields had produced an average of 1.76 mmscmd of gas in April-June 2019. MA field ceased to produce last year.