Did Mukesh Ambani just lose hefty money? Reliance Industries drops over Rs 41k cr in market cap; should you buy?

The negative trend in today's market trading session can be attributed to the exit polls on the state elections, whose results are being announced today - exit polls presented a confused picture in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. Almost every stock was crumbling on benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty. In fact, the selling pressure was such today, that even Sensex lost its 35,000-mark and tumbled even below 34,500 levels. But it was quite interesting to see which stocks lost investors' faith. Shockingly, among those stocks that lost hefty amounts of money today was one that belongs to the largest company Reliance Industries. The bloodbath in Reliance Industries was such that it even lost market valuation massively, taking a big chunk out of Mukesh Ambani's and other investors' wealth. 

Reliance Industries share price was trading at Rs 1068.50 down by Rs 20 or 1.84% on BSE. However, so far the company has nosedived to an intraday low of Rs 1055.35 per piece resulting in over 3% loss today. 

There is not much clarity as to why Reliance Industries stock dropped, however, a Mint report has mentioned that, RIL, which bought a stake in Den and Hathway cable networks in October, has created seven subsidiaries to handle its fast-growing telecom and content businesses. 

Reportedly, these subsidiaries are Jio Content Distribution Holdings, Jio Internet Distribution Holdings, Jio Television Distribution Holdings, Jio Cable and Broadband Holdings, Jio Futuristic Digital Holdings, Jio Digital Distribution Holdings and Jio Digital Cableco Pvt. Ltd, the official said on condition of anonymity.

It needs to be noted that, RIL has not responded to queries on this issue when asked. 

However, for now RIL seems to be least favorite of investors, so much so, that it has lost market valuation of over Rs 41,042 crore. Currently, market cap of RIL is at Rs 6,77,275.33 crore compared to previous day of Rs 7,18,317.52 crore.  

Such decline in RIL will also be witnessed in Ambani's wealth who currently stands as the 16th richest man on earth, as per Bloomberg Billionaire Index - Ambani has a wealth of $43.7 billion. The Bloomberg index shows that the last change in wealth of Ambani was a decline by $115 million on December 10. However,so far this year, Ambani has seen a rise of $3.41 billion. 

Should you invest? 
 

Talking about RIL post Q2FY19 result, HDFC Securities earlier stated that, GRMs will remain under pressure owing to lower global demand for petroleum products, and lower light-heavy differential. US-China trade war, depreciating currencies in emerging markets and higher oil prices could result in lower petroleum product demand globally.

Analysts at HDFC added, "Petchem business will continue to show strong performance in ensuing quarters with ramp up in Px plant and stabilization of Petcoke gasifiers (by Mar-19)."

Considering this they said, "Our SOTP-based target for RIL is Rs 1,303/sh based on Sep-20 earnings (6.5x EV/e for standalone refining, 8x EV/e for petchem, Rs 30/sh for domestic E&P, 1x EV/invested capital for Shale, 20x EV/e for Retail and 10x EV/e for Telecom. Maintain BUY."