Singtel (SGX: Z74) After a 50% Rally: Latest News, Earnings, Analyst Targets and Risks as of 5 December 2025

Singapore Telecommunications Limited – better known as Singtel – is ending 2025 in rare form. After years of being treated as a sleepy dividend telco, the stock has ripped roughly 50% year‑to‑date and now trades close to record highs, powered by asset sales, a big share‑buyback plan and a serious push into data centres and AI infrastructure. ^[1]

As of the close on 5 December 2025, Singtel shares finished around S$4.60, down slightly from last week’s peak of about S$4.73 but still up about 50% YTD and roughly 48% over the past 12 months. That values the group at around S$78 billion, with a trailing P/E near 12.7x and an indicated dividend yield just under 4%. ^[2]

The obvious question now: with the “easy” re‑rating move seemingly done, what does the risk‑reward look like heading into 2026?

Where Singtel’s share price stands now

Market data as of 5 December 2025 paints a picture of a blue chip that’s gone from unloved to market darling in under two years:

Share price: ~S$4.60 at the 5 Dec close, after trading between S$4.58 and S$4.63 intraday. ^[3]
Recent high: About S$4.73 on 12 November, an all‑time high according to Growbeansprout’s analysis of the stock. ^[4]
Performance: Up ~50.5% year‑to‑date and ~48% over one year, vastly outperforming the Straits Times Index (STI). ^[5]
Market cap: ~S$78 billion. ^[6]
Valuation:
- Trailing P/E ~12.7x.
- Trailing twelve‑month revenue about S$14.1 billion and net income roughly S$4.0 billion, inflated by one‑off divestment gains. ^[7]
Dividend yield: Indicated yield ~3.9% based on recent dividends and share price, below its long‑term average of just over 5%. ^[8]

In November alone, Singtel delivered about 12.4% total return, far ahead of the STI’s roughly 2.2% for the month. ^[9]

So the market has clearly rediscovered Singtel. To see whether that enthusiasm still has legs, we need to look at the guts of the business.

Earnings momentum: FY2025 and H1 FY2026

FY2025: big profit jump, but driven by one‑offs

For the financial year ended 31 March 2025, Singtel reported:

Net profit: about S$4.02 billion, more than five times the prior year, largely due to one‑off gains such as the partial sale of its Comcentre headquarters and the absence of a S$1.47 billion Optus impairment taken previously. ^[10]
Underlying net profit: around S$2.47 billion, up about 9% year‑on‑year – a better measure of actual business momentum. ^[11]
Operating earnings (excluding regional associates): EBIT rose about 20%, and management guided for high single‑digit EBIT growth in FY2026. ^[12]
Dividends: Final core dividend lifted to 10 cents per share, bringing total FY2025 dividends to 17 cents (including value‑realisation payouts). ^[13]

Crucially, management also raised its medium‑term asset‑recycling target from S$6 billion to S$9 billion and launched its first‑ever share‑buyback programme of up to S$2 billion over three years, signalling strong confidence in the balance sheet and divestment pipeline. ^[14]

H1 FY2026: underlying growth accelerates

The half‑year to 30 September 2025 (H1 FY2026) continued that trend – and is really what lit the rocket under the stock:

Underlying net profit: up 14% to about S$1.35 billion, driven by stronger results from Optus, enterprise IT arm NCS, and regional associates like Bharti Airtel and AIS. ^[15]
Operating company (OpCo) EBIT: up about 13%, excluding associate contributions. ^[16]
Associates’ post‑tax profit: around S$915 million, with Airtel’s contribution surging as Indian tariffs rose and higher‑ARPU 4G/5G users grew. ^[17]
Optus: delivered roughly 2–3% revenue growth and about 27% EBIT growth, at least on the financial side of the story. ^[18]

On the shareholder‑return front, Singtel declared an interim dividend of 8.2 cents per share for FY2026 – a 17% increase versus last year – split into 6.4 cents core and 1.8 cents “value realisation” dividend funded by asset sales. The payout is scheduled for 9 December 2025. ^[19]

The group reiterated its dividend policy of paying out 70–90% of underlying net profit, plus occasional extra dividends when large disposals allow. ^[20]

Strategic pivot: from legacy telco to digital infrastructure and AI

The real narrative shift came from Singtel’s Investor Day 2025, where management set out its ST28 long‑term plan to 2028. ^[21]

Strengthening the Singapore core

At home, Singtel wants its Singapore business – which already boasts EBITDA margins of about 39% – to:

Return to both revenue and EBITDA growth by 2028.
Maintain EBITDA margins above 35%.
Achieve roughly 20% revenue CAGR for its “growth engines” over the mid‑term. ^[22]

AI is central to this plan. The company is targeting hyper‑personalised offers and “AI agentic care” capable of handling around 95% of customer interactions, with software‑defined platforms sitting on top of dual‑stack global infrastructure. ^[23]

Optus: Australia’s consumer engine

In Australia, Optus remains the #2 operator and is being positioned as a growth lever rather than a perpetual headache:

In Q1 FY2026, revenue grew 4% year‑on‑year to about A$2 billion, while operating profit jumped 36%. ^[24]
Optus has rolled out price increases on prepaid and postpaid plans and struck a partnership with Perplexity AI to differentiate its offerings. ^[25]

All of this, on paper, supports Singtel’s goal of high single‑digit operating profit growth in FY2026 and low‑double‑digit returns on invested capital (ROIC) in the mid‑term. ^[26]

NCS: an AI‑heavy enterprise IT growth engine

NCS, Singtel’s enterprise tech arm, is quietly becoming a key driver:

Revenue CAGR of ~9% from FY2022 to FY2025, with “new business” growing about 18% per year.
Q1 FY2026 operating profit up roughly 22%, with bookings of S$732 million. ^[27]

NCS is leaning heavily into AI across three themes – “intelligentisation”, “internationalisation” and “inspiration” – essentially embedding AI into government and enterprise workflows across the region. ^[28]

Nxera and the data‑centre / AI story

Singtel’s Digital InfraCo / Nxera unit is the flashy part of the transformation:

In February 2025, Singtel secured a S$643 million green loan to finance DC Tuas, a 58MW “AI‑ready” data centre in Singapore that’s expected to go live in 2026. ^[29]
Investor‑day materials outline plans to boost data‑centre capacity to >200MW by end‑2026 and >400MW by 2028, with the regional colocation market expected to grow around 14% CAGR between 2025 and 2028. ^[30]
Management is targeting >20% revenue CAGR for Nxera from FY2026–FY2029 and >S$300 million of EBITDA by 2028. ^[31]

On top of organic growth, Reuters has reported that Singtel and KKR are in advanced talks to acquire more than 80% of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) in a deal valued at over S$5 billion, which would give them full control of one of Asia’s largest data‑centre platforms if it completes. TechStock²+1

That would turbo‑charge Singtel’s exposure to AI‑driven compute demand – and also crank up execution and balance‑sheet risk.

Capital recycling, Airtel stake sales and buybacks

Singtel’s rally hasn’t just been about story‑telling; a lot of cash has actually moved.

Airtel stake sales and asset recycling

In 2025 alone, Singtel has twice trimmed its stake in India’s Bharti Airtel:

May 2025: Sold a 1.2% stake for roughly S$2 billion via private placement. ^[32]
November 2025: Sold another 0.8% stake for about S$1.5 billion, via a block deal at a small discount to Airtel’s market price. ^[33]

Growbeansprout notes that, across Airtel and other assets, Singtel has already raised around S$5.6 billion toward its S$9 billion capital‑recycling target, with the remaining stake in Airtel still valued at roughly S$51 billion. ^[34]

That cash is earmarked for three things:

Growth capex, particularly data centres and digital infrastructure.
Value‑realisation dividends (like the 1.8‑cent top‑up in the latest interim).
Share buybacks. ^[35]

Active share buybacks

The S$2 billion buyback programme announced in May is not theoretical.

SGX filings show almost daily share buy‑back notices through November and early December 2025, with Singtel repurchasing shares in the S$4.70–4.80 range. One recent compilation suggested roughly 10.9 million shares were bought in late November alone, around 0.1% of outstanding shares. ^[36]

At the 5 December price around S$4.60, a continued buyback at meaningful scale offers some downside cushioning, though investors should remember that buybacks only create value if future returns on capital exceed the implied buyback yield.

Optus: financial bright spot, regulatory headache

Optus has been doing two contradictory things at once in 2025: improving its financial performance and generating political uproar in Australia.

Earnings: improving trends

Optus contributed strongly to Singtel’s results:

For Q3 FY2025, Optus revenue grew around 3% and helped lift group underlying net profit 22% year‑on‑year. ^[37]
In H1 FY2026, Optus delivered about 2% revenue growth and 27% operating‑earnings growth, driven by mobile growth and network‑sharing income. ^[38]

So purely on numbers, Optus is no longer the basket case it looked like during the 2023 cyber‑incident.

Outages and emergency‑call fallout

But the network‑reliability story is ugly:

In September 2025, a 13‑hour Optus outage prevented hundreds of Australian “triple‑0” emergency calls from getting through. Authorities later linked at least three deaths to failed emergency calls, with a potential fourth under investigation. ^[39]
A second outage about ten days later affected emergency calls south of Sydney, prompting Australia’s communications minister to label it a “shocking failure” and order investigations. ^[40]
Singtel’s Group CEO issued a public statement saying the company was “deeply sorry” and pledged cooperation with regulators and an independent board‑level review. ^[41]

Then, just as the dust started to settle:

On 3 December 2025, Optus suffered another major outage, this time hitting nbn broadband and home‑phone services for around 95,000 customers across Brisbane and parts of Queensland due to a server failure at its Rochedale exchange. Mobile and triple‑0 services largely remained up, though some older VoIP setups may have been affected. ^[42]

Taken together, these incidents mean:

Regulatory risk: tougher rules around emergency‑call handling, possible fines, and forced investment in network resilience.
Reputational risk: customers may churn to rivals after repeated outages.
Political risk: being owned by a foreign, state‑linked entity (Singtel is majority‑owned by Singapore’s Temasek) makes Optus an easy political target. ^[43]

For Singtel shareholders, the Australian unit is both a profit engine and an ongoing source of headline risk.

Valuation and analyst forecasts as of 5 December 2025

Here’s how the analyst landscape looks right now.

Street targets: modest upside from here

Different platforms are surprisingly aligned:

Investing.com:
- 17 analysts covering Singtel.
- Overall rating: “Buy” (15 Buy, 1 Hold, 1 Sell).
- Average 12‑month target: ~S$5.14.
- Target range:S$4.36–S$6.20. TechStock²+1
TradingView analyst consensus:
- Average target about S$5.21, with a high near S$6.20 and a low around S$4.40. ^[44]
Growbeansprout (aggregated Singapore broker estimates):
- Consensus target S$5.21, implying roughly 10–12% upside from prices around S$4.60–4.70.
- Implied forward dividend yield about 4.0%, below Singtel’s long‑term average of ~5.1%. ^[45]
SGinvestors’ target‑price aggregator (recent reports):
- Targets between S$4.86 and S$5.75, with a median around S$5.14 and average S$5.22. TechStock²+1

In other words, the “average” broker sees mid‑single to low‑double‑digit upside from current levels – nice, but nothing like the 2025 fireworks.

Individual broker views

Some notable voices:

Phillip Securities / POEMS (17 Nov 2025):
- Rating: ACCUMULATE.
- Target price:S$5.35 (up from S$4.86).
- Thesis: stronger contributions from associates (especially Airtel), improving mobile pricing in Thailand, and further potential monetisation of stakes in Gulf Energy and Bharti Airtel. ^[46]
UBS (1 Dec 2025):
- Downgraded Singtel from “Buy” to “Neutral” with a target of S$4.40.
- Argument (summarised in recent analysis): the ~50% YTD rally already reflects optimism on asset recycling, dividend growth and the data‑centre story; forecast dividend yields of roughly 3.9–4.2% are below ASEAN telco peers (around 5%), leaving less yield support if sentiment cools. TechStock²
Morningstar:
- Recently raised its fair value estimate to about S$4.36, citing improving fundamentals but still sees the stock as slightly overvalued at current levels. TechStock²+1

So while the consensus is net bullish, there’s a clear sub‑plot: valuation is no longer a screaming bargain, and future returns lean more on execution than on multiple expansion.

Dividend profile: still attractive, but not a “high‑yield” telco anymore

Singtel’s dividend story has changed shape:

Total dividends have increased from about 7.5 cents in FY2021 (before its strategic reset) to 17 cents in FY2025, helped by value‑realisation payouts. ^[47]
For FY2026 so far, the 8.2‑cent interim dividend alone roughly matches half of last year’s total. ^[48]
Based on consensus dividends of ~18.6 cents for FY2026, Growbeansprout estimates a forward yield of around 4.0% at S$4.62, which is lower than Singtel’s historical average (~5.1%) and also below yields for some ASEAN telcos. ^[49]

Add the S$2 billion buyback on top, and Singtel now looks like a hybrid “total‑return” stock – moderate yield, plus buybacks, plus growth – rather than a pure income play.

Bull vs bear case heading into 2026

Let’s synthesise the various research notes, forecasts and news flow into two big buckets.

The optimistic case

Supporters of the stock highlight:

Improving core earnings
- Underlying profit is growing in the high single to low double digits.
- OpCo EBIT guidance for FY2026 is healthy, and NCS plus Nxera provide new growth engines rather than just cost‑cut telco margin. ^[50]
Capital‑light associate earnings plus optionality from asset sales
- Bharti Airtel, AIS and other stakes are throwing off higher dividends and equity‑accounted profits, while still being partially monetisable when the market is favourable. ^[51]
Data‑centre / AI upside through Nxera and potential STT GDC deal
- Data‑centre demand linked to AI and cloud computing is booming, and Singtel has both organic capacity growth (DC Tuas and regional builds) and a possible transformational acquisition in STT GDC on the table. ^[52]
Shareholder‑friendly capital management
- A clear dividend framework, a large, ongoing buyback, and visible asset‑recycling pipeline all contribute to potential mid‑single‑digit yield plus some buyback‑driven EPS accretion. ^[53]

Put bluntly, the bull case is that Singtel has graduated from “boring telco” to “regional digital‑infra platform”, and the valuation still doesn’t fully capture that shift.

The cautious case

The skeptics – including UBS and Morningstar – focus on four main risks:

Valuation and “lower margin of safety”
- After a ~50% rally, Singtel trades above some fair‑value estimates (e.g. Morningstar’s S$4.36), with a yield below its history and its regional peers. TechStock²+1
Optus regulatory and reputational overhang
- Multiple emergency‑services outages with tragic consequences have invited intense regulatory and political scrutiny. Tougher rules, mandated capex or fines could pressure Optus’ improving economics. ^[54]
Big‑ticket M&A risk in data centres
- Buying >80% of STT GDC for over S$5 billion (if it closes) would materially increase leverage and execution risk just as investors have gotten comfortable with Singtel’s de‑risked balance sheet. TechStock²+1
Structural telco headwinds
- Core mobile and broadband markets remain competitive and capital‑intensive, with limited pricing power in Singapore and intense rivalry in Australia and other markets. ^[55]

From this perspective, Singtel is a higher‑quality company than it was a few years ago, but the easy upside may have already been harvested by those who bought below S$3.50–3.80.

Bottom line: how Singtel stock looks on 5 December 2025

Taking all the current news, forecasts and analyses together:

Business quality: clearly stronger – underlying profit is rising, the balance sheet is cleaner after Airtel and other asset sales, and growth is less dependent on vanilla mobile ARPUs. ^[56]
Growth drivers: Nxera (data centres), NCS (enterprise IT/AI) and regional associates give Singtel a credible path to mid‑single‑digit or better earnings growth, a big step up from the low‑growth telco stereotype. ^[57]
Shareholder returns: investors currently get a ~3.6–4.0% dividend yield plus ongoing buybacks and occasional special/value‑realisation dividends – a solid total‑return package for a large‑cap telco. ^[58]
Valuation: consensus targets in the S$5.1–5.3 range suggest single‑digit to low‑teens upside from ~S$4.60, but some reputable houses (UBS, Morningstar) see limited or no upside at current levels. Morningstar+3TechStock²+3Investing.com+3
Key risks: Optus outages and regulatory backlash, execution risk on data‑centre expansion and potential STT GDC deal, and the perennial reality that telecoms is a capital‑heavy, regulated business with constrained pricing power. ^[59]

This isn’t personalised financial advice – whether Singtel is attractive for you depends on your risk tolerance, time horizon and income needs. But as of 5 December 2025, the market’s message is fairly clear:

Story: upgraded from “ex‑growth telco” to “AI‑powered digital infrastructure + telco hybrid”.
Price: no longer cheap, but not obviously in bubble territory.
Outcome: 2026’s returns are likely to depend less on multiple expansion and more on whether Singtel actually delivers on Nxera, NCS and its promises to regulators in Australia.