There is a particular ritual that grips Dalal Street roughly once a year, and it has nothing to do with balance sheets. It is the pilgrimage of expectation toward a Reliance Industries AGM, that strange annual liturgy where a company’s stock rallies on the promise of news rather than the news itself.
RIL shares have gained over 5% in three trading sessions ahead of the June 19 meeting, which is impressive for a company that has, on a year-to-date basis, behaved like a man walking briskly in the wrong direction. The stock is down nearly 15% for the calendar year, against an 8% dip in the Nifty 50. Hope, it turns out, trades at a premium.
The meeting itself convenes at 2 PM on Friday, conducted virtually through video conferencing, and the agenda reads like a list of things the market has been waiting for so long it has begun to suspect they may be mythological.
RIL AGM: Key Expectations
Chief among them is the Jio Platforms IPO, the perennial value-unlocking story that has been imminent for roughly the duration of a small child’s entire education. The meeting is officially labelled the “49th Annual General Meeting (Post-IPO)” in company filings, a phrase the market has been squinting at for weeks. Multiple reports suggest Jio could file draft papers for a roughly $4 billion IPO within days, and a firm timeline from Mukesh Ambani would be the re-rating trigger everyone is praying for.
Close behind sits New Energy, the business Reliance has been feeding for half a decade with the patience of a man fattening a goose. At the 2025 AGM, Anant Ambani announced the battery gigafactory would begin production in 2026 at 40 GWh, scalable to 100 GWh, with the electrolyser facility operational by end-2026. The street wants commissioning timelines and proof the goose can, eventually, lay.
Then there is Retail, last seen guided to double alongside Jio over five years, now nursing an FY26 slowdown, though its annual profit still neared ₹14,000 crore, up 11.7%. And the oils to chemicals (O2C) business, which had a difficult year, now finds itself operating in a somewhat friendlier commodity environment as geopolitical tensions ease.
And then AI, the new altar. On June 10, Reliance announced a 168 MW AI-focused data centre project at Jamnagar with reports linking Meta as the anchor customer. Suddenly the refinery town is a hyperscaler’s address, though Morgan Stanley cautions that AI monetisation remains ‘a show-me story for investors.’
The truth is that AGMs like this sell a feeling, that everything is one announcement away from making sense. Sometimes it even is.
Disclaimer: The author owns RIL shares, which means he has skin in the game, no objectivity to speak of, and a vested interest in you not noticing either.
