Why this $3.6 billion fund turned long on RIL after 4 years

Equirus Securities (a Mumbai-based broking firm with about $3.6 billion in assets at the end of March 2026) wasn’t excited about Reliance Industries (RIL) for nearly 4 years, then turned ‘long’ on India’s largest stock by market capitalisation about a month earlier.”One of the reasons was the underperformance…. we are saying that earnings have made the bottom in terms of refining. Plus, you have some momentum related to the Jio IPO. We believe the stock will outperform. We have a target price of close to around ₹1,537,” the Mumbai-based broking firm’s head of research, Maulik Patel—who is also an expert in analysing the oil and gas sector—said on July 20.

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That call proved right. The consolidated revenue crossed ₹3 lakh crore for the first time in its history, in the June quarter. The growth was a significant 26.6% year over year, driven by robust expansion in its oil-to-chemicals (O2C), upstream, and digital services businesses.Read more: The significance of Reliance Industries’ ₹3 lakh crore revenue in Q1 explained

Although O2C volumes declined year-on-year in the June quarter, the product spreads (the pricing difference between a barrel of raw crude oil and the refined petroleum products) were much wider than expected. The margin in the transportation sector (driven by demand from airlines, for instance) was up by 2.5 to 4.5 times.It helped lift RIL’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) from the segment to the highest in four years. Patel, along with some other analysts, believes the favourable conditions are likely to persist.

“Given that the still the middle distillate spreads are at around $60-65, we believe that Q2 will also be strong in the O2C segment, like what Q4 was,” Patel explained.

The stock was up a modest 0.3% on the first trading day after the latest quarterly earnings, while the blue-chip index Nifty 50 was down 0.45% as of 11 am July 20.

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