Singtel Q3 profit jumps 43.5% to $1.89 billion after one-off gain from Airtel stake sale
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Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said the telco “remains under competitive pressure despite potential industry consolidation”.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
SINGAPORE - Singtel posted a 43.5 per cent jump in net profit to $1.89 billion for its third quarter ended December, from $1.32 billion in the year-ago period.
The increase in earnings was attributed to a higher one-off gain from Singtel’s partial sale of its stake in Airtel. The telco booked a $1.15 billion net exceptional gain primarily from the sale, according to its third-quarter business update on Feb 12.
Operating revenue for the quarter inched up 0.9 per cent to $3.66 billion from $3.63 billion in the year-ago period. Underlying net profit for the three-month period climbed 9.5 per cent on the year to $744 million from $680 million, amid strong results from its regional associates Airtel and AIS.
Mr Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel group chief executive, said the telco “remains under competitive pressure despite potential industry consolidation”. He said the group’s third-quarter underlying net profit “reflects the good performance” of its regional associates Airtel and AIS, as well as the focused execution of its Singtel28 plan.
Singtel’s Australian subsidiary Optus “is continuing to invest in strengthening resilience following the independent review into the Triple Zero outage”, Mr Yuen said, referring to the emergency hotline outage incident on Sept 18, 2025, that led to at least two deaths.
On Singtel’s purchase of data centre provider ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) via a consortium led by private equity giant KKR, Mr Yuen said: “Our recent acquisition of STT GDC with KKR significantly advances our strategy to scale our digital infrastructure growth engine, enhancing our ability to capture opportunities from increasing digitalisation and AI (artificial intelligence) growth, and create sustainable long-term value.”
For the nine months to December, the group recorded a net profit of $5.3 billion, 107.6 per cent up from $2.55 billion in the first nine months of financial year 2025.
The improvements came about despite operating revenue for the nine months falling 0.5 per cent to $10.57 billion from $10.62 billion in the year-ago period.
Underlying net profit for the period rose 12.2 per cent on the year to $2.1 billion from $1.87 billion.
Shares of Singtel, which have rallied in the past two days, rose two cents, or 0.4 per cent, to close at an all-time high of $5 on Feb 12. THE BUSINESS TIMES
