DBS Group Holdings (SGX: D05) Stock Outlook 2026: Share Price, Dividend Yield and Forecast After Record Q3 2025

Updated: 9 December 2025

DBS Group Holdings Ltd (SGX: D05, OTC: DBSDY / DBSDF) goes into the end of 2025 as one of the strongest large-bank stories in Asia. The Singapore lender has just posted record third‑quarter income, continues to return excess capital aggressively to shareholders, and is trading close to its all‑time high — even as management and analysts warn that net interest margins will likely soften in 2026. ^[1]

Below is a deep dive into DBS’s latest numbers, its 2026 stock forecast narrative, and the key risks investors are watching as of 9 December 2025.

DBS share price on 9 December 2025: near record highs

On the Singapore Exchange, DBS Group Holdings is trading at S$54.04, up about 0.13% in early trading on 9 December 2025. ^[2]

That puts DBS:

Very close to its recent closing high above S$55 in early November, when the stock jumped on Q3 results. ^[3]
Roughly 24% higher than a year ago, outpacing both the Singapore banks sector (≈19.8%) and the wider Singapore market (≈20%). ^[4]

Based on current prices, Simply Wall St estimates DBS’s market capitalisation at around S$154 billion, with trailing 12‑month earnings of about S$11.1 billion and revenue of about S$22.3 billion. ^[5]

For international investors, the U.S. OTC line DBSDY last closed at US$166.03 on 8 December 2025. ^[6]

Valuation: premium multiples for a premium franchise

Current fundamental metrics (TTM, as compiled by Simply Wall St) imply: ^[7]

P/E ratio: ~13.8×
P/B ratio: ~2.2×
Base dividend yield: ~4.4% (on ordinary dividends only)
Trailing yield including capital‑return dividends: ≈5–5.5% (Smart Investor estimates about 5.43%, richer than OCBC and slightly above UOB).

In other words, DBS trades at a premium to most regional bank peers on price‑to‑book, but that premium is underpinned by:

High profitability: Net profit margin near 50% on a trailing basis and return on equity above 17%. ^[8]
Leading franchise quality: dominant retail deposits, a top‑three wealth manager in Asia (ex‑China), and strong corporate transaction banking. ^[9]
Robust capital position: a fully‑phased‑in CET1 ratio around 15.1%, comfortably above regulatory minimums. ^[10]

For investors who care about both yield and growth, local commentary already frames DBS as a rare combination of high payout + structural growth, not just a “bond proxy”. ^[11]

Q3 2025 results: record income, slight profit dip on tax

DBS’s Q3 2025 trading update and subsequent commentary from management and the sell‑side are the backbone of today’s investment narrative. ^[12]

Headline numbers

For Q3 2025 (three months to 30 September):

Total income: S$5.93 billion, a new record and up roughly 3% year‑on‑year.
Profit before tax: S$3.48 billion, also a record, up ~1% year‑on‑year.
Net profit: S$2.95 billion, down about 2% year‑on‑year, largely due to the impact of the global minimum tax on effective tax rates.
ROE: 17.1% (ROTE 18.9%).
Net interest margin (NIM): 1.96%, down from 2.11% a year earlier as rates drift lower.

These figures are consistent across DBS’s own trading update, WealthBriefing’s recap and Reuters’ earnings report; crucially, net profit beat the Street’s expectation of S$2.72 billion, lifting the share price to an intraday record of S$55.30 on results day. ^[13]

Net interest income vs fee income

Net interest income (NII) is stabilising, but the real story is the shift towards fee income:

Group NII: broadly flat year‑on‑year as lower reference rates were offset by deposit growth and hedging. ^[14]
Commercial‑book NII: down as margins compressed, reflecting the early stages of a lower‑rate cycle. ^[15]
Commercial‑book net fee income: up ~22% to a record level, driven especially by wealth management and loan‑related fees. ^[16]

Within fees, wealth management is the standout:

Wealth management fees rose about 30–31% year‑on‑year in Q3, to roughly S$0.8 billion (Hubbis converts this to about US$336 million), now making up just over half of fee income. ^[17]

This pivot matters because as interest‑rate tailwinds fade, fee‑based and trading income are increasingly the incremental earnings driver.

Asset quality and balance sheet

Despite macro uncertainty, DBS’s asset quality metrics remained solid: ^[18]

Non‑performing loan (NPL) ratio: steady at 1.0%.
Specific allowances: around 15 basis points of loans in Q3.
Loan growth: ~4% year‑on‑year to about S$437 billion, broad‑based in corporate lending.
Deposit growth: ~9% year‑on‑year to about S$596 billion, providing a low‑cost funding base and enabling deployment into liquid assets.

This combination – high ROE, benign credit costs and strong deposit momentum – is why DBS can afford both generous dividends and ongoing growth investments.

Dividend and capital‑return story: up‑sized payouts through 2027

DBS is now very clearly a capital‑return story as well as a growth story.

Q3 2025 dividend

For Q3 2025, the board declared a total dividend of S$0.75 per share, split into: ^[19]

S$0.60 ordinary dividend (up around 11% versus Q3 2024), and
S$0.15 capital‑return dividend.

For the first nine months of 2025, that brings total dividends to S$2.25 per share, combining ordinary and capital‑return components. ^[20]

Depending on whether investors count only the recurring ordinary dividend or include capital‑return payouts:

The base yield screens around 4.4%. ^[21]
The trailing yield including capital‑return dividends is closer to the mid‑5% range (Smart Investor calculates roughly 5.43% at recent prices). ^[22]

S$8 billion multi‑year capital return plan

DBS has reaffirmed an S$8 billion capital‑return plan that runs through 2027, comprising: ^[23]

Around S$3 billion in share buybacks, and
Around S$5 billion in capital‑return dividends on top of ordinary payouts.

Reuters reports that roughly 15% of this programme has already been executed, and management continues to frame excess capital as something to be “given back” to shareholders provided regulatory buffers remain comfortable. ^[24]

In short: DBS is behaving like a high‑ROE, mature compounder that is prepared to shrink its equity base to sustain attractive returns, so long as credit quality and regulation stay on side.

Strategic growth drivers: wealth, digital and tokenisation

Beneath the quarterly numbers, several strategic themes stand out in 2025.

1. Wealth management as a core engine

Multiple sources emphasise that DBS has become a regional wealth‑management powerhouse:

It is cited as the third‑largest wealth manager in Asia outside mainland China, and it recorded roughly S$21 billion of net new money in 2024 – its third consecutive year above S$20 billion. ^[25]
Q3 2025 wealth fees hit record levels and now contribute a little over half of fee income, cementing wealth as a core profit driver rather than a side business. ^[26]

This is why many analyses – from Hubbis to local investor‑education sites – frame DBS as an “income plus growth” story anchored on structural Asian wealth creation rather than on rate cycles alone. ^[27]

2. Digital leadership and Gen‑AI push

DBS has long branded itself as a digital leader, and 2025 has reinforced that narrative:

Fortune and other outlets report DBS rolling out a generative AI chatbot for employees, embedding AI into workflows to improve productivity and decision‑making. ^[28]
Finimize highlights DBS’s “rich dividends, strong digital growth and still‑reasonable valuation”, arguing that its scale in digital banking and transaction services gives it a cost and distribution advantage over rivals OCBC and UOB. ^[29]

Digital capabilities are also critical to keeping funding costs low and cross‑selling wealth and investment products to a broad retail base.

3. Tokenisation, payments and cross‑border rails

DBS is increasingly visible in tokenisation and next‑generation payment infrastructure:

DBS and Ant International deepened their partnership in November 2025 to expand cross‑border payments and fintech solutions across Asia, leveraging both parties’ digital networks. ^[30]
Franklin Templeton and DBS are working together on Singapore’s first tokenised retail fund, a landmark move for mainstream adoption of tokenised securities in a tightly regulated market. ^[31]
DBS has also been involved in industry discussions and pilots around deposit tokens – tokenised bank deposits as an alternative to stablecoins for wholesale payments. ^[32]

These initiatives don’t move near‑term earnings in a dramatic way yet, but they reinforce the narrative that DBS is leaning into digital infrastructure where its balance sheet and regulatory credibility matter.

Leadership transition: from Gupta to Tan Su Shan

2025 has also been a year of leadership transition at DBS:

Long‑time CEO Piyush Gupta stepped down in March 2025 after 15 years at the helm. ^[33]
Tan Su Shan, previously head of Consumer Banking and Wealth Management, took over as CEO. Business Times and others note that she used her first earnings call to emphasise capturing value from supply‑chain shifts and growing FX‑hedging demand. ^[34]
Gupta, meanwhile, has been appointed India chairman at Singapore’s Temasek, effective 1 December 2025, maintaining his influence within Singapore’s broader financial ecosystem. ^[35]

So far, markets appear to have taken the transition in stride, partly because Tan Su Shan was already a key architect of DBS’s wealth and digital strategy.

Digital outages and regulatory overhang: the key risk shadow

The main blemish on DBS’s otherwise clean story remains its history of digital outages and the resulting regulatory actions.

After a major outage in November 2021, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) imposed an additional S$930 million of regulatory capital, requiring DBS to apply a 1.5× multiplier to operational risk‑weighted assets. ^[36]
Further disruptions in 2023 and 2024 led MAS to impose a six‑month ban on non‑essential digital features, and Bloomberg has reported that cumulative additional capital requirements for outages since 2021 have reached around S$1.6 billion. ^[37]
On 8 March 2025, DBS again experienced a significant disruption affecting digital channels, ATMs and some payment services before full restoration, prompting renewed scrutiny, though MAS has noted “substantive progress” in remediation efforts. ^[38]

From an equity perspective, the outages matter for three reasons:

Capital drag: extra capital requirements reduce the bank’s ability to lever its balance sheet.
Reputational risk: prolonged or repeated incidents could erode the “World’s Best Digital Bank” branding and push customers to competitors. ^[39]
Regulatory uncertainty: if outages recur, MAS could extend or intensify restrictions, which may limit the pace of digital‑business growth and capital returns.

So far, though, earnings and capital generation have been strong enough that the market has treated outages as a manageable, not existential, problem – but it remains the risk most frequently cited by cautious investors.

Analyst forecasts and DBS stock outlook for 2026

Street consensus: modest upside from current levels

Different data providers show slightly different consensus target prices, but the picture is consistent:

Beansprout (SGX consensus): average target price S$60.43, implying about 11.8% upside from S$54.04 as of 9 December 2025. ^[40]
MarketScreener (global coverage): 16 analysts, mean rating “OUTPERFORM”, with an average target price of S$56.17, around 4% above the last close of S$53.97 captured in their dataset. ^[41]

Individual brokers have been progressively raising targets over 2024–2025 as DBS delivered record earnings and formalised the S$8 billion capital‑return plan. For example, CGS International recently raised its target to about S$60.50 with an “Add” recommendation, while earlier 2025 notes from Maybank, OCBC, RHB and others clustered in the mid‑40s to low‑50s. ^[42]

Management guidance: 2026 profit slightly below 2025

Reuters’ Q3 write‑up highlights that DBS expects: ^[43]

Total income in 2025 to remain strong, with NII in 2025 slightly exceeding 2024’s level, helped by fewer assumed U.S. rate cuts than earlier expected. ^[44]
2026 net profit to be “slightly below” 2025, reflecting further NIM compression as rates normalise and the full effect of lower‑for‑longer funding costs flows through.

In practice, that suggests:

Street models generally bake in mid‑single‑digit earnings decline in 2026, followed by a return to growth as fee income and loan volumes continue to grow.
Dividend per share is expected to be at least maintained, with scope for special dividends or incremental buybacks if credit costs remain benign and MAS is comfortable with capital levels. ^[45]

Independent analysis: strong bank, reasonable valuation

Independent platforms like Finimize and Simply Wall St frame DBS as: ^[46]

A best‑in‑class Southeast Asian bank that has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last year, once dividends and FX are considered.
Running at mid‑teens to high‑teens ROE with a roughly 4–5% yield and a valuation that is not cheap, but still reasonable relative to quality and growth.
Benefiting from structural tailwinds (Asian wealth, trade flows, digital adoption) that can offset cyclical headwinds from lower interest rates.

In other words, the consensus is not screaming “deep value”, but it does see some upside plus an attractive income stream if execution stays on track.

Key drivers to watch in 2026

For investors monitoring DBS over the next 12–18 months, several variables will likely drive the share price more than day‑to‑day noise:

Interest‑rate path and NIM compression
DBS itself is guiding to lower margins in 2026. The precise speed and depth of global and regional rate cuts will determine how quickly NIM compresses and whether deposit repricing can offset part of that headwind. ^[47]
Wealth‑management momentum
If net new money and wealth fees continue to grow at high teens or better, fee income can meaningfully cushion NII pressure and sustain high ROE. Q3’s 31% jump in wealth fees is a positive sign, but 2026 will test whether that pace is sustainable. ^[48]
Credit costs and macro environment
Thus far, specific allowances have been low, and the NPL ratio is stable at 1%. A sharp slowdown in China or regional real estate stress could change that quickly. ^[49]
Regulatory stance on technology risk
Any fresh major outage could trigger more punitive capital add‑ons or restrictions. Conversely, clear MAS recognition that DBS’s remediation has been successful would reduce the “regulatory overhang” discount. ^[50]
Execution in tokenisation and digital infrastructure
Collaborations with Ant International, Franklin Templeton and other partners in tokenisation and payments are long‑dated options on future fee income and ecosystem relevance. Investor sentiment will tilt positive if these ventures begin to show measurable financial contribution or defensible competitive advantage. ^[51]

Bottom line: how DBS stock looks today

As of 9 December 2025, DBS Group Holdings sits at an interesting intersection:

Quality: One of Asia’s most profitable and best‑capitalised banks, with a proven management bench and leadership in both traditional and digital banking. ^[52]
Income: A base yield of ~4–5% with additional capital‑return dividends and buybacks under a multi‑year S$8 billion plan. ^[53]
Growth: Structural upside in Asian wealth management, transaction banking, and digital infrastructure, even if earnings dip slightly in 2026 as margins normalise. ^[54]
Risks: Technology outages, regulatory capital surcharges, and macro‑driven credit cycles all remain real, not theoretical, risks. ^[55]

For long‑term, income‑oriented investors comfortable with bank‑specific and regulatory risk, DBS currently screens as a high‑quality compounder at a fair – not bargain – price, with moderate upside to consensus targets plus a substantial cash yield.