If you own Singtel shares through a CDP account or your SRS, the Singtel annual report is the one document that tells you whether the dividend cheque is safe. For the year ended 31 March 2026, the headline numbers were a record reported net profit of S$5.61 billion, underlying net profit of S$2.77 billion (up 12%), and the highest ordinary dividend Singtel has ever paid: 18.5 cents a share. Operating revenue was roughly flat at S$14.26 billion. Below, we pull out the figures that actually matter to a retail shareholder, where the money came from, and the one number that explains why the share price still fell after the result.
Singtel is Singapore Telecommunications Limited, ticker Z74 on the SGX. Its financial year runs to 31 March, so the FY2026 report covers April 2025 to March 2026 and was released on 21 May 2026. People often confuse three separate documents, and only one of them is the full annual report.
The full PDF and the half-yearly results live on Singtel's investor relations site. The annual report itself is the long, audited book with the full accounts; the results announcement is the shorter press release with the headline figures; and the investor slides are the CEO's summary deck. For dividends and yields, the numbers below come from Singtel's own filings rather than a third-party screener, because aggregator sites sometimes split Singtel's payments across calendar years and get the per-financial-year total wrong.
Two profit figures appear in every Singtel annual report and they tell different stories. Reported (or statutory) net profit includes one-off items such as gains from selling stakes in associates. Underlying net profit strips those out and is the number Singtel uses to set the dividend, so it is the one income investors should anchor on.
For FY2026, reported net profit jumped to S$5.61 billion, up about 40%, flattered by a net exceptional gain of around S$2.84 billion that came mainly from partial sales of its Bharti Airtel stake. Underlying net profit, the cleaner figure, rose 12% to S$2.77 billion. Revenue barely moved, so the profit growth came from cost discipline and stronger contributions from regional associates rather than from selling more connectivity at home. If you want to understand why a flat-revenue telco can still grow earnings, our explainer on how dividends are funded sets out the link between profit and payout.
| Metric | FY2025 | FY2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating revenue | S$14.15b | S$14.26b | ~flat |
| Underlying net profit | S$2.47b | S$2.77b | +12% |
| Reported net profit | S$4.02b | S$5.61b | +40% |
| Total ordinary dividend | 17.0 cents | 18.5 cents | +9% |
| ROIC | ~11% | 11.1% | target met |
The reason most retail holders open the annual report is the dividend, and FY2026 delivered the largest in Singtel's history at 18.5 cents a share. That total has two parts under the Singtel28 dividend policy: a core dividend set at 70% to 90% of underlying net profit, and a value realisation dividend (VRD) funded by the cash Singtel raises from selling assets.
For FY2026 the core dividend was 13.4 cents (an 80% payout of underlying profit, split as a 6.4-cent interim and a 7.0-cent final), and the VRD was 5.1 cents. The VRD is the headline-grabber but also the part that depends on Singtel keeping its asset-recycling programme going, so treat it as a bonus on top of the core rather than a permanent base. Because Singapore uses a one-tier system, neither portion is taxed in the shareholder's hands. To see what a given yield does to a long holding, run the figures through our compound interest calculator.
| Component | FY2025 | FY2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Interim core | 5.6 | 6.4 |
| Final core | 6.7 | 7.0 |
| Value realisation dividend | 4.7 | 5.1 |
| Total ordinary dividend | 17.0 | 18.5 |
The old story that Singtel is just a Singapore phone company has not been true for years, and the segment pages of the annual report make that obvious. The home mobile and broadband business is now the smaller part of the engine; the growth comes from Australia, technology services and a clutch of regional associates.
Singtel Singapore, the domestic telco, actually shrank in FY2026 with revenue down about 3% as legacy voice and roaming kept fading, though enterprise now makes up more than half of its revenue. The bright spots were elsewhere.
Singtel28 is the multi-year plan management keeps referencing, and it rests on two ideas: lift the profitability of the operating businesses, and recycle capital out of low-returning assets into higher-returning ones or back to shareholders. The clearest scorecard for the first part is return on invested capital (ROIC), which measures how much profit the company squeezes from the money tied up in the business.
Singtel set a medium-term goal of low double-digit ROIC and reached 11.1% in FY2026, hitting the target ahead of schedule. On the capital side, it generated S$3.9 billion of asset-recycling proceeds during the year (mostly from trimming the Airtel stake) and around S$5.8 billion cumulatively toward a S$9 billion goal. Some of that cash is what funds the value realisation dividend. The new growth bet is RE:AI, a GPU-as-a-service offering that earned S$25 million in its first year with capacity already largely contracted.
Here is the part the headline numbers hide. Despite the record dividend and the ROIC milestone, Singtel's share price dropped about 9.6% to S$4.54 in the days after the 21 May 2026 result. A strong report and a falling price look contradictory until you remember that markets price the future, not the past.
The pullback reflected guidance, not the result. Management flagged that Singtel Singapore EBIT growth would only be low-to-mid single digits, planned capital expenditure was rising to around S$3.0 billion, and a previously expected Singapore mobile-market consolidation was on hold. A chunk of FY2026 profit also came from one-off stake sales that will not repeat at the same scale. At roughly S$4.5, the ordinary dividend implies a yield of about 4%, which sits below Singtel's longer-run average and below what the big three local banks pay. None of that breaks the investment case, but it is why a record annual report did not translate into a higher price.
If you only have ten minutes with the next Singtel annual report, work through it in this order. The aim is to separate the durable income from the one-off sugar rush so you can judge whether the dividend is sustainable rather than just large.
The full audited annual report, the results announcement and the investor slides are all on Singtel's investor relations website and are also filed to the SGX. For the latest financial year, look under the FY2026 annual report section; the report covers the year to 31 March 2026.
Singtel paid a record total ordinary dividend of 18.5 cents per share for FY2026, made up of a 13.4-cent core dividend (an 80% payout of underlying net profit) and a 5.1-cent value realisation dividend funded by asset sales. Singapore's one-tier system means it is not taxed for shareholders.
Markets price the future. Despite the record FY2026 dividend, the share price fell about 10% after the result because guidance was cautious: modest Singapore telco growth, higher planned capex, a shelved local consolidation, and the fact that a large slice of the profit came from one-off stake sales that will not repeat.
Reported (statutory) net profit includes one-off items such as gains from selling stakes, so it can swing sharply year to year. Underlying net profit strips those out to show the recurring earnings of the businesses. Singtel sets its core dividend off underlying profit, so that is the figure income investors should track.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.