India's Largest Public Company Is Charting All-Time Highs And Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Analyst See More Upside

The stock of Reliance Industries — India's largest public company — is already trading near the 52-week high and the analysts believe there's a lot more in its kitty that can shoot the share price up.

Outperforming India's Nifty 50 Index, the shares of the Mukesh Ambani-owned company, have given more than 45% to its investors in the past year. Moreover, the stock had fetched a whopping 153% return — jumping from INR 1094 on March 13 when the U.N. World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic to INR 2,778 on Friday (local time).

While the company is a market leader from telecom to eCommerce, with its subsidiary Jio Platforms backed by the likes of Meta Inc. FB, Alphabet Inc GOOGL and Intel Corp. INTC. The rally in its stocks came amid hopes of the company's hydrogen energy segment minting more money for the business and thus generating great returns for its investors.

In a recent move, multinational investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley raised their target price for the company by almost 15%. 

RIL's new energy plans: The Morgan Stanley report highlighted that RIL's new energy plans would put it among "the most integrated green hydrogen players globally." The company has already made strides by acquiring REC solar — for growing inhouse solar panel manufacturing — and got capabilities in energy storage in India with ownership in Ambri (liquid metal technology), Lithium Werks (LFP), and Faradion (Sodium-Ion technology), the report added.

India's net-zero carbon emissions by 2070: RIL will also benefit from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.

"India's 2030 hydrogen production target would absorb the entire 100GW cumulative panel capacity that RIL plans to achieve," Morgan Stanley analysts said.

Rising Market Share in Retail and E-commerce: Goldman Sachs, in its analysis, said it expects market share wins to compound the rising penetration of the organized retail and e-commerce business of RIL.

"We believe RIL's existing dominance in telecom and offline retail, combined with its partnership and the online traffic dominance of Facebook, can create the fastest-growing internet platform in India," it added.

It is worth noting that RIL's retail arm is currently in a regulatory tussle with Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN to acquire the stores of Indian retailer Future Retail (FRL).

Photo: Courtesy of World Economic Forum via Flickr