Reliance Group

I was just doing some research on my Janus IRA and noticed that the top holding of one of my funds was Reliance Group. This is the top holding in the Janus Contrarian Fund which has been one of Janus' top performing funds lately, and is comprised mostly of energy stocks. So I wondered what Reliance does that makes them such a big performer lately. Here's what their web site has to say:

The Reliance Group, founded by Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002), is India's largest business house with total revenues of over Rs 99,000 crore (US$ 22.6 billion), cash profit of Rs 12,500 crore (US$ 2.8 billion), net profit of Rs 6,200 crore (US$ 1.4 billion) and exports of Rs 15,900 crore (US$ 3.6 billion).

The Group's activities span exploration and production (E&P) of oil and gas, refining and marketing, petrochemicals (polyester, polymers, and intermediates), textiles, financial services and insurance, power, telecom and infocom initiatives. The Group exports its products to more than 100 countries the world over. Reliance emerged as India's Most Admired Business House, for the fourth successive year in a TNS Mode survey for 2004.

Reliance Group revenue is equivalent to about 3.5% of India's GDP. The Group contributes nearly 10% of the country's indirect tax revenues and over 6% of India's exports. Reliance is trusted by an investor family of over 3.1 million - India's largest.

The Reliance Group Companies include: Reliance Industries Limited, Reliance Capital Limited, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Limited, Reliance Telecom Limited, Reliance Infocomm Limited, Reliance General Insurance Company Limited, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd. and Reliance Energy Limited.

You may recognize Reliance Energy as the company that was recently in the spotlight as the provider of electricity to the region ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. But the thing on their site that really caught my eye was the flow chart which shows how all their myriad of products, from kerosene to PVC to polyester textiles, comes from oil and gets fed from one industrial plant to another, each making products derived from the previous plant's products. Check out this chart...

Kinda makes you wonder what's going to happen when the oil runs out.