Singapore Exchange (SGX Group) shares surged $1.28, or 10.1% up, to close at $13.99 on Feb 7, a day after it released record first-half revenue and net profit for 1HFY2025 ended Dec 31, 2024.
This is above SGX’s previous 52-week high of $12.85, and brings the counter closer to its highest close of $16.40, notched on Oct 8, 2007.
SGX was also the top counter by value of shares traded on Feb 7, beating blue-chips like DBS Group Holdings and United Overseas Bank . In total, some 12.6 million SGX shares changed hands on Friday, worth some $171.6 million.
SGX shares moved early Friday morning, climbing 79 cents, or 6.22%, prior to the midday break on Feb 7.
SGX is one of The Edge Singapore’s 10 local stock picks for 2025.
SGX shares began climbing as early as August 2024, when the Monetary Authority of Singapore set up an equities market review group to explore ways to improve liquidity on the local bourse.
See also: SGX posts record first-half revenue, net profit; CEO Loh fields succession questions
SGX shares surged further after a team of Morgan Stanley analysts upgraded the stock to “overweight” in a Nov 17, 2024 report with a higher target price of $14.31 from just $10.01 previously.
From under $10 per share at the start of 2024, SGX shares ended the year at $12.74.
SGX shares retreated to $12 in late-January, but began climbing again in anticipation of its 1HFY2025 results on Feb 6.
See also: Our 2025 picks: Singapore Exchange — Uplift in valuation multiples?
SGX posted adjusted net profit of $320.1 million for 1HFY2025, up 27.3% y-o-y; while adjusted ebitda was up 23.9% y-o-y at $426.9 million. Adjusted earnings per share was 29.9 cents, up from 23.5 cents this time last year.
SGX also declared an interim quarterly dividend of 9.0 cents per share, up from 8.5 cents this time last year and unchanged h-o-h.
A handful of analysts subsequently upgraded the bourse operator’s stock. Maybank Securities analyst Thilan Wickramasinghe upgraded SGX to “buy” from “hold”, with a significantly higher target price of $14.16 from $10.12 previously.
Others were more measured. RHB Bank Singapore analyst Shekhar Jaiswal, who had just issued a report on Jan 15 prior to SGX’s results, chose to stay “neutral” on SGX with an unchanged $12.80 target price.
This target price is unchanged from Jaiswal’s prior report from Nov 20, 2024. Jaiswal’s target price includes a 4% ESG premium based on RHB’s proprietary methodology.
In a Feb 7 note, Jaiswal says SGX’s core profit — which beat many analysts’ dated reports from the fourth quarter of 2024 — was just “in line” with RHB’s estimates.
Jaiswal continues to think SGX faces “growth challenges and unexciting yield”. “We maintain that a material improvement in SGX’s moderating earnings growth outlook remains dependent on elevated local equity market sentiment, an increase in the number of new IPO listings, successful new product launches, earnings-accretive acquisitions and a favourable outcome of the ongoing market review exercise — all of which are a bit difficult to pencil into our estimates right now,” he adds.
Despite factoring in SGX’s dividend growth, which is in line with guidance, SGX’s forward yield of 3% is “unexciting” and “well below” the Singapore equity market’s yield, says Jaiswal.
