Mukesh Ambani’s Promise to Investors on Jio IPO Will Be Tested This Week

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd. Photo by Dhiraj Singh /Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloom

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(Bloomberg) — The long-running saga over the listing of Reliance Industries Ltd.’s digital unit comes to a head this week, as investors watch whether its billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani can walk the talk from last year.

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Shareholders of the energy-to-entertainment conglomerate will hear updates from Ambani on Friday at the company’s 49th annual general meeting —  a video address that has drawn comparisons to Warren Buffett’s yearly letters to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. investors. It was at last year’s shareholder meeting that Ambani spoke of Reliance looking to list its subsidiary Jio Platforms Ltd. by June 2026, capping a years-long wait for the digital and telecommunications company to go public. 

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The tycoon has unveiled some of Reliance’s most ambitious initiatives in the past decade from this platform, making it a highly anticipated corporate event in India. Investors hang on to every word Ambani says and analysts pore over his speech for clues on Reliance’s strategy across businesses.

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But the Jio-listing pledge has been beset by internal wrangling and discussions in recent months over how to pull off what could be India’s biggest share sale — if it hits its $4 billion target — amid tumultuous market conditions that have been exacerbated by the Iran war. India’s stock market has also been pummeled by record foreign outflows. 

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With the US-Iran deal this week to end the war and equity markets starting to claw back some of this year’s losses, investors will closely watch if Ambani will help revive India’s IPO market with the Jio listing. The company, which has around 525 million subscribers and reported net income of 300.5 billion rupees ($3.2 billion) for its last fiscal year, is hoping to attain a market valuation of more than $100 billion.

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Bankers On Standby

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Bankers overseeing the Jio IPO have been asked to be ready to file a draft red herring prospectus as early as Thursday — barely 24 hours before Ambani faces Reliance shareholders, according to people familiar with the internal discussions who asked not to be identified sharing private information.

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The bankers are on standby to file the papers within 30 minutes of getting a go-ahead from Reliance’s management, the people said, while also cautioning that there could be last-minute changes to the plan. 

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A Reliance Industries representative did not respond to a request for comment on the IPO timeline.

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“A strong IPO valuation and solid post-listing performance could provide a meaningful boost to sentiment around Reliance’s stock, which has lagged peers in recent months,” said Sandip Sabharwal, founder of research house Asksandipsabharwal.com in Mumbai.

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Reliance is taking “deliberate steps” to strengthen Jio Platforms’s governance, Ambani wrote in the company’s annual report that was released at the end of May, but shed no light on the IPO preparations or timing.