RIL shares also took a hit after the Supreme Court halted the Reliance Retail deal to acquire Future Group assets. Interestingly, the deal size at Rs 24,713 crore was similar to Ambani’s wealth loss on Monday.
The equity wealth of Ambani and his family, which is largely concentrated in RIL, declined to Rs 6,47,421 crore from Rs 6,71,292 crore on Friday. This included his wealth held in the form of partly paid shares of the company.
Ordinary shares of RIL closed 3.52 per cent lower at Rs 2,007. The partly paid shares crashed 4.52 per cent to Rs 1,133. The Ambani family owns 50.54 per cent in the company.
After hitting the recent low on January 29, the stock had been on an uptrend, and had risen about 13 per cent since then till Monday’s crash.
Reports last week said the company was finalising the contours of demerging its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business into a wholly-owned subsidiary to help it attract global investors like Saudi Aramco.
“There are multiple drivers (for the stock). There is a lot of talk on the Street about a possible demerger of its verticals with some kind of holding company structure and retail, e-commerce, Jio and the legacy petchem and refinery business and exploration getting clubbed into three verticals. Any news on that would be value accretive, because the faster growing parts will get much higher valuations and not as a refining-cum-petrochem major,” said Ajay Bagga, independent market analyst.
Brokerages mostly have a neutral rating on the stock, with 12-month price targets in the Rs 1,900-2,450 range. The only outlier is Macquarie, with a price target of Rs 1,350.
