Reliance Industries stock hits all-time high, enters $100 bn market-cap club again

Reliance Industries stock soared today to enter the $100 billion market-cap club again. This is for the first time in a decade. Reliance Industries stock hit all-time high on Thursday. RIL had first crossed the $100-billion market value in October 2007 when the rupee was at 39.5 to a dollar. 

The Mukesh Ambani-owned oil-to-telecom conglomerate achieved this feat 3 months after Tata Consultancy Services became India’s first information technology (IT) major to breach the $100-billion mark in market capitalisation.  

The stupendous rally in Reliance Industries stock increased Mukesh Ambani's wealth to over $42 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. India’s richest man holds nearly 47 per cent stake in RIL. 

RIL share price gained as much as 5.27 per cent to clock its fresh high of Rs 1091 on the BSE with its market cap in rupee terms crossing 6.8 lakh crore. The stock has rallied over 12 per cent just in the last week, and 18 per cent on a year-to-date basis. 

Credit Suisse sees Rs 1180 per share target price on the stock. "There is significant potential in consumer businesses, while Reliance Jio has potential to create significant value too. Jio is much more than a telecom business. Lastly, petcoke gasification should help growth in refining margin of Reliance Industries," said Credit Suisse.

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Macquarie, earlier this week, brought out a report on Indian refiners and upgraded Reliance Industries to Outperform from Underperform. The global brokerage hiked target price on Reliance Industries stock to Rs 1,240 from Rs 830 earlier. 

However, Jefferies continued with its underperform rating on RIL. "Refining headwinds may offset another smart petchem performance in Q1, retail may boost consolidated earnings enough to leave it 1 per cent higher quarter-on-quarter at Rs 9570 crore," said Jefferies.

"We keep our underperform rating, noting that refining/petchem margins have weakened. We maintain underperform with a target price of Rs 790," it added.