RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani had to face a barrage of questions from the shareholders today, mainly on the plunging price of the bellwether stock and on the loss-making media business, among others.
The shareholders were equally upset with Reliance Industries' increasing focus on non-core areas (media, retail, telecom that have been cash guzzlers for the past three years with no operations) and its reluctance to pay dividends even as it sits over Rs 2.14 trillion in cash reserves, according to one shareholder.
Besides, the company has Rs 84,000 crore in cash piles, which is over 60 times its paid-up equity capital.Meanwhile, the 41st annual general meeting of the country's largest private sector corporate here today also marked the formal presence of Nita Ambani, the wife of Mukesh Ambani and chairperson of Reliance Foundation, as she was recently inducted into the company's board as an independent director to meet the regulatory demand.
The AGM was also conspicuous by the absence of Ambani's mother Kokilaben Ambani.
Most of the nearly 50 shareholders who spoke at the AGM were worried over the steep fall in the price of RIL share, which closed 1.4% up today at Rs 889.15, against the benchmark Sensex gaining 0.21%.
But this is a whopping over 25% down from the 52-week high of Rs 1,112.95 on this day last year.
Even on a day when the Sensex hit the life-time closing high of 30,024.74 points on March 4, 2015, the RIL counter plunged 1.6% to Rs 886.95.
It can be noted that the RIL counter, which for many years had the highest market capitalisation at over Rs 4 trillion, is way below that peak for many years, and is far behind the newbie TCS, which has been maintaining over Rs 5 trillion in m-cap for more than a year now.
As on today, RIL's m-cap stood at Rs 2,87,768 crore which is the second highest, while that of leader TCS was Rs 4,92,042.3 crore as the scrip shed 2.3% today on the BSE.
Many investors also complained that the company has not been not offering any bonus shares or dividends for many years now, citing large capex.
During his address, Ambani said the board will take a call on share buyback/issuing bonus shares or paying large dividend as the company is nearing its capex cycle of over Rs 3 trillion in the petrochemical and telecom businesses.
Source - DNA
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