Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) has reported a net profit of $465 million for the 3QFY2024 ended Dec 31, 2023, 12.5% lower y-o-y due to a higher exceptional loss mainly from Optus and Airtel.
Underlying net profit, however, stood stable at $559 million for the quarter as the growth in NCS and Optus offset Singtel Singapore’s weaker performance.
Meanwhile, Singtel’s net profit for the 9MFY2024 grew by 52.9% y-o-y to $2.60 billion while underlying net profit rose by 7.4% y-o-y to $1.22 billion.
“Our underlying financial results in the third quarter were stable despite a tough macroeconomic environment and persistent currency headwinds. NCS kept up its positive momentum with strong bookings while Optus was supported by growth in the mobile segment. However, Singtel Singapore continues to face business pressures and scaling our Nxera regional data centre business has required investment costs. While Airtel delivered a solid performance in India, currency depreciation from its African operations affected its contribution,” says Yuen Kuan Moon, Singtel’s group CEO.
3QFY2023 operating revenue fell by 3.2% y-o-y to $3.59 billion with the absence of contributions from Trustwave as well as a 4% depreciation in the Australian dollar (AUD) for the period.
Ebitda rose by 2.6% y-o-y to $935 million without the consolidation of Trustwave’s losses.
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9MFY2023 operating revenue also fell by 3.2% y-o-y to $10.62 billion while ebitda for the period fell by 2.4% y-o-y to $2.72 billion.
Following the nation-wide outage in November, Yuen says the Optus team has “taken steps” to increase the resilience of its network.
“We are confident that our strong balance sheet and our priorities to improve the operational efficiencies of our core business and scale our growth engines will drive long-term value and returns,” he adds.
As at 9.09am, shares in Singtel are trading 2 cents lower or 0.84% down at $2.37.
