Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has become the first Indian company to enter the exclusive club of $150 billion in market capitalisation among the worlds most valuable companies, and is now ranked 58 on the list.
RIL now has a market capitalisation of $151.2 billion and this is the highest ever valuation of an Indian company.
The major milestone comes on a day when RIL announced it has become a net debt-free company. Shares of Reliance Industries continued its bull run on Friday afternoon to cross the Rs 1,700-mark for the first time. The stock hit a fresh all-time high of Rs 1,706.55 and its market capitalisation crossed Rs 10.81 lakh crore.
In the exclusive club of $150 billion mcap companies, RIL is now ahead of global leaders like Vanguard, Unilever, China Mobile, McDonalds, AstraZeneca, T Mobile, Amgen, Costco, Bank of China, Sanofi, Accenture, Royal Dutch Shell, Bristol Myer Squibb, Philip Morris, BHP group, Texas Instruments, Invesco, American Tower, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and IBM, among others.
The list of the world's most valuable companies is topped by Saudi Aramco with a market capitalisation of $1.7 trillion, followed by Apple at $1.5 trillion, Microsoft at $1.4 trillion and Amazon at $1.3 trillion. These four companies are in the trillion dollar club.
They are followed in the top 10 by Alphabet, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Berkshire Hathway and Johnson & Johnson.
Shares of oil-to-telecom major RIL surged after the company on Friday morning announced that it has become a net debt-free company on the back of the recent investments by global investors into Jio Platforms and the rights issue.
RIL has raised over Rs 1.68 lakh crore in just 58 days. Its net-debt stood at Rs 1.61 lakh crore as on March 31, 2020.
In a statement, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said: "I have fulfilled my promise to the shareholders by making Reliance net debt-free much before our original schedule of March 31, 2021. Over the past few weeks, we have been overwhelmed by the phenomenal interest of the global financial investor community in partnering with Jio."
( With inputs from IANS )