Reliance Industries’ share price made the market higher in early trading today after social media giant Facebook Facebook bought a minority stake in Reliance Jio, a telecommunications company operated by Mukesh Ambani, for $ 5.7 billion (rupees $ 43,574 billion) had announced. The investment makes Facebook the largest minority shareholder in Jio Platforms Limited.
Reliance Industries’ share price rose to 103 points, or 8.33%, to Rs 1339 from the previous closing price of Rs 1,236. On the other hand, Sensex traded 131 points higher at 30,758 points. Reliance Industries’ share price was also the top winner at Nifty. The index heavyweight on NSE rose by over 8% to Rs 1,339.
Facebook-Reliance Jio-Deal: Social media giant pumps in Rs 43,574 crore in Mukesh Ambanis Telekommunikation.A total of 4.11 Lakh shares changed hands with BSE, which corresponds to a turnover of 55.73 billion rupees. The company’s market capitalization rose to 8.32 billion rupees at BSE.
RIL shares are trading higher than the 5, 20 and 50 day moving averages, but lower than the 100 and 200 day moving averages. The RIL share price rose 13.57% in one week and 28.03% in one month. It opened with a profit of 6.79% at Rs 1,320 at BSE.
Facebook said it will focus on collaborating its messaging platform WhatsApp with Reliance’s e-commerce company JioMart to give people the opportunity to connect with small businesses.Facebook’s investment will result in a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms with full dilution, Jio said.
Jio Platforms will use ? 28,000 crore from the ? 43,574 crore deal with Facebook to redeem optionally convertible preference shares (OCPS) of its parent Reliance Industries and retain ? 15,000 crore in its books, a top company official of the Mukesh Ambani company said in a conference call on Wednesday.
“? 15,000 crore will be retained in the books of the company. The rest will go into redeeming OCPS of RIL. The entire amount goes into reducing the debt of the group, “Anshuman Thakur, head of strategy at Reliance Jio Infocomm, said in the conference call that also had vice president and managing director of Facebook’s India unit Ajit Mohan joining it. Reliance Jio Infocomm, India’s largest mobile services provider with 388 million subscribers, is a fully-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms.
The debt in Jio Platform books is around ? 40,000 crore, Thakur said.
When asked about the plans of the group to list Reliance Jio, Thakur said, “We do intend to take the company public medium-term but nothing beyond that today.”
Facebook will invest ? 43,574 crore ($ 5.7 billion) to buy a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms. The social media giant will get a seat on the board of the company as well as an observer seat in the mobile-to-ecommerce giant.
The deal gives the mobile communications, entertainment and e-commerce platform a pre-enterprise value of ? 4.62 trillion, assuming a conversion rate of ? 70. The rupee is currently hovering between 76 and 77 against the US dollar. Facebook will become the largest minority shareholder of Jio after the deal has got its regulatory approvals.
India with its over one billion mobile user base is also the largest market for Facebook and its messaging app Whatsapp, that has over 400 million subscribers in the country.
Jio was launched in September 2016 and in just over three years, became India’s largest mobile services company by subscriber base. It is the only Indian telecom company that has its entire network built on 4G VoLTE (voice over long-term evolution) technology. All other companies have a blend of 2G, 3G and 4G technologies.
LIVE stock market: Sensex opens 180 points higher, Nifty at 9,020; RIL increases by over 5%