Singtel Q3 net profit up 43.5% at S$1.9 billion on exceptional gain from Airtel stake sale

[SINGAPORE] Singtel posted a 43.5 per cent surge in net profit to S$1.9 billion for its third quarter ended Dec 31, 2025, from S$1.3 billion in the year-ago period.

The increase in earnings was attributed to a higher exceptional gain from Singtel’s partial sale of its stake in Airtel. The telco booked a S$1.15 billion net exceptional gain primarily from the sale, the telco said in a Q3 business update on Thursday (Feb 12).

For Q3, its operating revenue inched up 0.9 per cent to S$3.7 billion from S$3.6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Underlying net profit for the three-month period climbed 9.5 per cent to S$744 million from S$680 million, amid strong results from its regional associates, Airtel and AIS.

Earnings before interest and tax grew 5.3 per cent, driven by NCS and Optus offsetting weakness in Singtel Singapore.

Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel group chief executive, said that the telco “remains under competitive pressure despite potential industry consolidation”.

Yuen noted that the group’s Q3 underlying net profit “reflects the good performance” of its regional associates Airtel and AIS, as well as the focused execution of its Singtel28 plan.

Singtel28 is a three-year strategic growth plan launched in May 2024, designed to build on the telco’s previous strategic reset by enhancing customer experiences and delivering sustained value for shareholders. 

Singtel’s Australian subsidiary Optus “is continuing to invest in strengthening resilience following the independent review into the Triple Zero outage”, Yuen said, referring to the emergency hotline outage incident in Australia on Sep 18, 2025, that led to at least two deaths.

On Singtel’s purchase of data centre operator ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) via a consortium led by private equity giant KKR, Yuen said: “Our recent acquisition of STT GDC with KKR significantly advances our strategy to scale our digital infrastructure growth engine, enhancing our ability to capture opportunities from increasing digitalisation and AI (artificial intelligence) growth, and create sustainable long-term value.”

Q3 net finance expenses climbed 16.6 per cent on the year to S$92 million, from S$79 million in the same period a year ago.

For the nine months ended December 2025, the group recorded a net profit of S$5.3 billion, 107.6 per cent up from S$2.6 billion in the previous corresponding period.

The improvements came about despite operating revenue for the nine months falling 0.5 per cent to S$10.57 billion from S$10.62 billion in the year-ago period.

Underlying net profit for the period rose 12.2 per cent on the year to S$2.1 billion from S$1.9 billion; net finance expenses rose 1.5 per cent to S$258 million from S$254 million.

Shares of Singtel ended 0.4 per cent or S$0.02 higher at S$5 on Thursday.