Singapore, Jan 8, 2026, 14:58 SGT — Regular session
- Singtel shares rose about 0.9% in afternoon trade, clawing back part of Wednesday’s slide
- Investors weighed a leadership transition at Australian unit Optus, still under scrutiny after a 2025 outage
- Traders are watching whether the stock can hold above S$4.40 ahead of the next results update
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd shares rose 0.9% to S$4.43 by 2:48 p.m. in Singapore, after sliding 3.3% a day earlier. The stock traded between S$4.40 and S$4.46 on Thursday, with about 17 million shares changing hands.
The bounce matters because Singtel is a heavyweight on Singapore’s Straits Times Index, which has been running hot this week even as trading turned choppy by Wednesday’s close. “Wall Street closed up at record highs,” said Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Markets, in comments carried by The Straits Times. The Straits Times
The STI hit a record above 4,700 points on Jan. 6, helped by fund-flow and policy tailwinds, and some strategists have argued pullbacks are still being bought. UOB Kay Hian analyst Adrian Loh said in a Jan. 2 note cited by The Straits Times that Singapore’s telecoms sector could see earnings growth of 9.6% in 2026.
There has been little fresh company disclosure to trade off in the past week. A list of Singtel filings compiled by SGinvestors showed the company’s last posted announcement was dated Jan. 2.
Instead, some investors kept an eye on Optus, the Australian unit that has been working to rebuild trust after an emergency-calling disruption last year. Optus’ chief technology officer Tony Baird will leave after a transition period and will be replaced by Telstra veteran Sri Amirthalingam, iTnews reported, citing an Optus spokesperson.
Traders said the near-term test is whether Singtel can stay above S$4.40, a level that marks the bottom of the past two sessions’ range. Resistance sits around S$4.56, where the stock topped out on Wednesday; those “support” and “resistance” levels are simply prices where buyers or sellers have tended to show up.
But the Optus overhang has not gone away, and any new findings or regulatory action tied to last year’s network failure could pressure sentiment again. Singtel’s shares fell in September after the Optus network failure was linked to emergency-call disruptions and deaths, Reuters reported at the time.
