ET Intelligence Group: Reliance Industries’ plans to become a zero-net debt<\/a> company<\/a> by March 2021 got a major boost on Wednesday with the announcement of the deal to sell a 9.9 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for ₹43,574 crore.
RIL<\/a>’s net debt, after the deal completion, could fall by as much as 28 per cent to ₹1.1lakh crore, estimates by ETIG show. The deal is the first major transaction to partially sell assets after RIL announced a major restructuring exercise last year to become a zero net debt company by 2021.
RIL’s talks with Saudi Aramco to sell 20 per cent in the oil and gas business have not progressed well and is likely to face headwinds due to oil’s historic collapse. A deal to sell Reliance Jio’s tower assets to Brookfield in a deal worth about $8 billion has also been held up nine months after it was first signed. But Wednesday’s announcement comes a few months after RIL’s deal with BP, where it formed a 51:49 joint venture for the retail fuel and aviation turbine fuel businesses. Under that agreement, BP would pay ₹7,000 crore to RIL.
ET Intelligence Group: Reliance Industries’ plans to become a zero-net debt<\/a> company<\/a> by March 2021 got a major boost on Wednesday with the announcement of the deal to sell a 9.9 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for ₹43,574 crore.
RIL<\/a>’s net debt, after the deal completion, could fall by as much as 28 per cent to ₹1.1lakh crore, estimates by ETIG show. The deal is the first major transaction to partially sell assets after RIL announced a major restructuring exercise last year to become a zero net debt company by 2021.
RIL’s talks with Saudi Aramco to sell 20 per cent in the oil and gas business have not progressed well and is likely to face headwinds due to oil’s historic collapse. A deal to sell Reliance Jio’s tower assets to Brookfield in a deal worth about $8 billion has also been held up nine months after it was first signed. But Wednesday’s announcement comes a few months after RIL’s deal with BP, where it formed a 51:49 joint venture for the retail fuel and aviation turbine fuel businesses. Under that agreement, BP would pay ₹7,000 crore to RIL.
Zero net debt refers to the status of the company where cash equals the debt on its books.
Analysts applauded the Facebook transaction and the stock market responded with a 9.83 per cent gain for the RIL stock. Morgan Stanley said that the stake sale will increase earnings by 1.5 per cent and debt could be lowered by $39 billion if all asset sale transactions are concluded.
Credit Suisse said the transaction will help in deleveraging and achieving zero net debt status by March 2021.
Facebook’s investment will be partially utilised by Jio Platforms for its investments (₹15,000 crore) while the remaining will be used to redeem optionally convertible preference shares issued to RIL, thereby reducing the parent company’s debt.
Before this transaction, RIL had consolidated net debt of ₹1.53 lakh crore. The repayment of loans worth ₹28,000 crore and the infusion of cash of ₹15,000 crore into Jio Platforms would reduce that number to about ₹1.1 lakh crore, ETIG estimates show. Reliance has consolidated cash and cash equivalents of about ₹1.5 lakh crore.
In December 2019, the company generated cash profit of ₹18,511 crore, which was higher than its capital expenditure of ₹14,015 crore. This suggests that the capex intensity of the company has peaked out after it deployed the largest amount of capex in the last five years by any Indian corporate.
Facebook’s stake buy of 9.9 per cent values Jio Platforms at $66 billion which is around 10-15 per cent superior than street’s expectation and values the company at 1.8 times of its invested capital. This is likely to revise upwards the fair value for digital services. The digital services segment contributed nearly 35-40 per cent to the sum-of-the-parts value of RIL, according to analysts.
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