Singapore Telecommunications has reported earnings of $3.4 billion for its 1HFY2026 ended Sept, up 176% y-o-y, lifted partly by one-off gains including divestment of some of its Bharti Airtel shares.
If exceptional items are excluded, Singtel's underlying net profit is up 14% y-o-y to $1.35 billion, with operational improvements from across its various associates and subsidiaries including regional enterprise services arm NCS.
If reported at constant currency terms, the gain would have been slightly higher at 22% y-o-y.
The company plans to pay a higher interim dividend of 8.2 cents, up from 7 cents paid for the year earlier's 1HFY2025.
The 1HFY2026 payout consists of a core dividend of 6.4 cents and a value realisation dividend of 1.8 cents - which refers to excess proceeds raised from an ongoing multi-year asset monetisation plan minus capex for new growth.
Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel group CEO, calls the first half results a reflection of the positive momentum across the company's diversified portfolio of businesses across the region.
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He warns that Optus, its subsidiary in Australia faces "uncertainty" with a series of incidents in recent years.
Nonetheless, Singtel's business and geographical diversity is lending stability to its performance and that the new growth to change the complexion of the business in the mid term as they continue to scale.
For example, data centre venture Nxera expects its ebitda to achieve a more than 20% compound annual growth rate over the next four years as it progressively adds new operational data centre capacity.
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Yuen sees NCS keeping up its business momentum on robust bookings as well.
The 1HFY2026 bottomline included $1.5 billion in proceeds raised after Singtel trimmed its stake in Bharti Airtel with a sale of 0.8% in the India-listed operator.
Following the sale, Singtel remains the largest shareholder with a stake of 27.5%.
The latest sale of its shares in Bharti has helped bring the total amount divested to $5.6 billion, which is more than half of its $9 billion mid-term asset recycling target which will be used to fund growth opportunities and returns to shareholders.
Going forward, the company is slightly guiding for better operating numbers, with EBIT for the full year ended March 2026 to grow at between "high single digits and low double digits" - up from its earlier guidance of "high single-digit" growth.
Singtel is also expecting to collect $1.1 billion in dividends from its regional associates, up from $1.0 billion guided earlier.
It is reiterating earlier guidance given at its full year results announcement in May that it will generate cost savings of around $200 million in Singtel Singapore and Optus.
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Singtel expects total capex to be around $2.5 billion with core capex at around $1.7 billion, comprising A$1.3 billion ($1.1 billion) for Optus and $0.6 billion for the rest of the group.
The company expects to invest another $0.8 billion in data centres, AI, digitalisation and satellites including a satellite to replace ST-2 by 2028.
Singtel had earlier confirmed reports that it is part of a party in talks to buy over remaining equity in data centre operator STT GDC that is now majority held by ST Telemedia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek, which is also the controlling shareholder of Singtel.
Singtel shares closed at $4.62, up 0.43% for the day and up 49.51% year to date.
