Singapore, Jan 13, 2026, 14:52 SGT — Regular session
- Singtel shares climbed 0.9% to S$4.50 in afternoon trading, bouncing back from Monday’s flat finish.
- Nxera, the data centre division, locked in a multi-year power deal with Tenaga Nasional through a Malaysian joint venture. The supply will fuel a Johor campus designed specifically for AI workloads.
- Investors are focused on the project economics and Singtel’s upcoming earnings report, set for Feb. 18.
Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) shares climbed 0.9% to S$4.50 on Tuesday following updates that its regional data centre arm advanced plans for a new campus in southern Malaysia.
This deal is crucial since the real constraint for Southeast Asia’s data centres has shifted from physical space to electricity supply. As cloud and AI workloads soar, developers are rushing to secure long-term power contracts.
Telekom Malaysia and Nxera’s joint venture, TM Nxera, inked a multi-year deal with Tenaga Nasional to lock in 280 megawatts for a campus in Iskandar Puteri, Johor. The companies said they plan to kick off the project’s initial commercial phase in 2026, local media reported.
TM Nxera chief executive Mahathir Said described the agreement as “a critical step” for advancing its green digital infrastructure, emphasizing that reliable power is essential to Malaysia’s digital economy and AI goals.
The campus is built to handle massive AI workloads, with plans to scale beyond 200MW, the same source said. This Tier 3 facility includes redundancy—backup systems—to keep downtime to a minimum. “Hyperscalers” refers to major cloud players that either rent or develop infrastructure on a large scale.
Johor is drawing these projects in, thanks to its capacity to offer longer-term power contracts than space-strapped Singapore. Tenaga has inked several major supply deals with data center developers and promoted expedited connection options to speed up delivery.
Singtel’s Malaysia campus is housed within Nxera, its regional data centre unit that the company is promoting as a key growth area alongside its established telecom business. The Malaysian disclosures also highlighted subsea cable connectivity from Telekom Malaysia and Singtel’s Digital InfraCo—an advantage for clients needing low-latency connections.
Numbers crucial to equity investors remained sparse. Financial details of the power deal were undisclosed, while one report pegged the overall campus investment at over RM1 billion.
The downside is clear: if demand falters or if delays hit permitting, equipment, or grid schedules, returns on new capacity could tighten fast—especially as several operators rush into Johor simultaneously.
Investors are gearing up for Singtel’s earnings report on Feb. 18, eager to catch any insights on Nxera’s project pipeline, capital expenditures, and the schedule for the Johor development.
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