Singtel shares sink as much as 5.2% amid Australian unit’s network outage

SINGAPORE – Singtel shares fell on Wednesday after

a nationwide network outage

that lasted almost 14 hours hit its Australian unit Optus.

The stock fell by as much as 5.2 per cent to hit a low of $2.35 at 10am, down 13 cents from Tuesday’s close of $2.48.

The counter then climbed back to close at $2.36, down 4.84 per cent, after a day of heavy trading, with more than 62 million shares changing hands, making it the second most heavily traded stock on Wednesday.

Investors took flight after the Optus outage that affected around 10 million Australian customers, around 40 per cent of the country’s population. It is Australia’s second-largest telecoms provider.

The outage was first reported around 4am Australian time and

followed a devastating cyber attack in 2022.

The attack exposed the details of millions of customers, including their home addresses and passport numbers.

In response to media queries on the outage, a Singtel spokesman said: “This is a very unfortunate incident that we take very seriously.”

The company acknowledged that it is “”extremely disruptive” to have mobile and broadband services down.

“Since the start of the outage, Optus’ engineers worked non-stop to restore services progressively. Optus is conducting further investigations into the technical network fault to ascertain the root cause of the event to prevent any recurrence,” said its spokesman.

“We know how important connectivity is to our customers, and network resilience and investment remain a top priority in all the markets we operate in.”

Singtel will announce its financial results on Thursday for the half-year that ended on Sept 30.

It had reported in August that first-quarter net profit dropped 23.1 per cent from the same period a year earlier.

This was mainly attributed to its associate Bharti Airtel, which recorded foreign exchange losses as the Nigerian naira fell against the US dollar.