Business News: Reliance Q1 Revenue Surge; Microsoft Outage; Jio Profit; New Fuel Prices; Forex Record; Budget 2024; AI Law; PVR Inox Loss

Reliance Industries Ltd. on Friday announced strong first-quarter revenues of Rs 2.58 lakh crore, 11.5 per cent higher from a year ago, riding on stellar performance across segments. Consolidated EBITDA rose 2 per cent to Rs 42,748 crore. Bottom line in the form of net profit dropped by 4.5 per cent to Rs 17,445 crore over higher depreciation expenses. Key highlights were a 30 per cent increase in EBITDA from its oil and gas business, growth for both Jio Platforms Ltd as well as Reliance Retail Ltd operating profits. EBITDA in RIL's retail arm rose to Rs 5,664 crore with rapid store count expansion.

A global Microsoft outage Friday left banks in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Israel, some of the world's largest lenders, offline, according to Downdetector. Banks in India, though, by and large escaped the mayhem. The Reserve Bank of India said that some banks and NBFCs did report minor issues, though these were sorted out "instantly". In its aftermath, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank have clarified that their operations were not touched at all by the attack, while National Payments Corporation of India has said that all its systems, including Unified Payments Interface, are safe.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, has posted a net profit at Rs 5,445 crore for Q1 FY 2024-25, as against Rs 5,337 crore in the previous quarter and Rs 4,863 crore a year ago. Revenue from operations was at Rs 26,478 crore, compared with Rs 25,959 crore in the previous quarter, on an operating margin of 52.6 per cent sequential increase.

Oil marketing companies in India announce petrol and diesel prices every day at 6 am. These were held constant across most regions since a government cut in March 2024. In fact, since May 2022, with reduced fuel taxes, the rates were steady. Today, the prices of petrol and diesel are at Rs 94.72 a liter and Rs 87.62, respectively, in Delhi. Therefore, "fluctuation caused by crude oil prices, currency exchange rates, taxes, refining costs, and demand" is operative.

Foreign exchange reserves jumped $9.699 billion to an all-time high of $666.854 billion for the week to July 12, RBI data showed. It increased $5.158 billion in the previous week and crossed the earlier peak of $655.817 billion. Gold reserves also rose $1.231 billion to $58.663 billion and special drawing rights by $76 million to $18.111 billion. Within the same period, major reserves components—foreign currency assets—rose by $8.361 billion to $585.47 billion.

The Union Budget 2024-25 of India is going to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 5 at 11 am. It will be her seventh budget in a row. There are several expectations of people regarding the presentation of the Union Budget, ranging from more allocations toward education, health, and R&D to probable tax reliefs and augmentation of capital expenditure for accelerated economic growth. This expectation sits and waits at the threshold in the stock market about probable alterations to capital gains taxes. The interim budget earlier this year zeroed in on the themes of 'Viksit Bharat', therefore proposing such measures as increase in tax exemption limits. Visit the Ministry of Finance website for live updates and detailed allocations.

MeitY is working on an AI-specific legislation, which is considering stipulating that social media companies watermark AI-generated content. The Bill, which could come out as a stand-alone legislation, will not have penal provisions for the violations, highlighting the optimism of the benefits of Artificial Intelligence to outweigh its negative impact, The Indian Express has learnt.

PVR Inox, formed by the merger of PVR and Inox in early 2023, posted a massive rise in consolidated net loss to 1.79 billion rupees ($21.4 million) in the first quarter, as movie releases fell by 13%, affected by things like national elections and the Indian Premier League. Besides, at the box office, films that have already been released, such as "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan" and "Maidaan", have also posted poor results, dropping nearly 9% to ₹11.91 bln in total.