H1 FY2026 Financial Results Briefing

Good morning everybody. Welcome to Singtel's results briefing for the half year ended 30th September 2025. I'm Lian, I'm VP of Group Corporate Affairs and IR here at Singtel. A warm welcome to everyone joining us in person as well as online.

Let me begin by introducing our management present here today. We have of course Mr. Yuen Kuan Moon - Group CEO, Mr. Arthur Lang - Group CFO, Mr. Bill Chang - CEO Digital Infraco, Mr. Ng Tien Chong - CEO Singtel Singapore, Mr. Ng Kuo Pin - CEO NCS, and Mr. Michael Venter - CFO Optus.

We will start today's briefing with a short presentation by Moon before opening up for Q&A. I'll now invite Moon to share some highlights of the results and how we are delivering to our Singtel28 growth plan.

Thank you, Lian. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Let me begin by taking you through the key takeaways from our first half performance.

We continue to execute to our Singtel28 growth plan, delivering a 14% increase in underlying net profit, from which our core dividend is based, in the first half year.

Underlying net profit will have grown a stronger 22% if we exclude forex fluctuations and Intouch, whose contribution ceased after its merger with Gulf Energy. This was built on OpCo EBIT growth of 13%, with NCS and Optus the key drivers.

Our regional associates also delivered solid results led by Airtel in India and AIS in Thailand.

In May, we unlocked S$2 billion from a partial stake sale in Airtel. With the improved performance, we have announced an interim dividend of 8.2 cents and increase of 17% over last year.

Most of these key financial highlights were covered earlier. Let me just zoom in on net profit, which jumped 176%. This was mainly driven by an exceptional gain from the sale of a partial stake in Airtel and the Intouch-Gulf Energy merger.

Now for a closer look at the performances of our various OpCos. Optus saw better mobile service revenue, which helped maintain its positive EBITDA and EBIT trajectory. That said, we are expecting operating cost pressures in the second half as we respond to September's Triple Zero outage, which I'll elaborate on in a while.

Singtel Singapore revenue remained resilient in the face of intense competition in the consumer space as growth in SME and enterprise connectivity helped blunt most of the impact. Overall, EBIT was stable from cost discipline and lower depreciation.

As you know, in September, Optus experienced a serious outage that impacted emergency services and investigations into the outage are currently ongoing. Australians rightly expect to be able to connect to emergency services when they most need them, and we are deeply sorry for the outage.

We will continue to fully support the Optus board and management as they work through this incident and accelerate the changes needed to strengthen Optus operational resilience and improve the reliability of critical services.

Let me update you on the steps taken so far. Firstly Dr. Kerry Schott’s independent review into the outage is progressing well and expected to conclude by year end. With the findings shared, with the regulators and publicly, subsequently.

Kearney has also been appointed to bring independent oversight and quality assurance of processes. At the same time, Optus is accelerating its transformation with an emphasis on risk management, resilience and process excellence. We are also strengthening capabilities by adding 300 call centre roles in Australia, and repatriating network support services back to Australia.

Secondly, we have been reinforcing Optus financial standing. Optus has invested over A$30 billion in capex and spectrum since 2001, and will continue to invest to improve network resilience and coverage for customers. This, despite the fact that Optus has the lowest ROIC amongst our various businesses. Optus also benefits from a credit rating uplift from being part of the Singtel Group, allowing it to issue bonds at a more preferential rate and achieve tangible reduction in interest costs.

Moving on to our growth engines, NCS maintained its positive revenue trajectory. EBIT increased by 29% due to balanced contributions across all three Strategic Business Groups, excluding a one- off credit from a subcontractor. This momentum is set to continue with a strong book-to-bill ratio of 1.2.

Digital InfraCo's EBIT was up 6% year-on-year driven by Nxera's healthy customer demand and renewals, as well as contributions from RE:AI, our GPU-as-a-service. Excluding a non-recurring reservation fee recorded in the previous year, EBIT would have been up 68%. Revenue was down a marginal 2%, also mainly due to the absence of this reservation fee.

Let's turn to our business highlights. Singtel Singapore deepened its leadership position through priority network access, which offers faster speeds and better reliability during peak periods, as well as new offerings like the global-first 5G latency slicing for Tencent game.

Optus further rationalised its business assigning the rights of Premier League and FA cup to Stan, and selling towers to Waveconn. It also progressing well with its plans to strengthen customer focus.

As for growth engines, Nxera DC Tuas has pre-sold 54% of capacity, ahead of the expected commencement in early 2026. Nxera is also preparing to build its second 38MW data centre in Thailand, which is already more than 25% pre-sold. NCS delivered a broad-based EBIT growth of 41% and recorded S$1.8 billion in bookings.