SingTel benefits from being one of the most diversified telcos in Asia Pacific, both in terms of regions of presence as well as portfolio of services. 2021 was unfortunately a tough year all around for several of the businesses. Weak performances from Australia, India and intense competition in the domestic Singapore market resulted in tough FY21.

Key highlights

1. Australia
   • Improvement in Australia numbers, also benefitted from currency change.
   • Optus increased mobile ARPU & service revenue
   • Higher penetration of the Optus choice plans and Optus family plans
   • NBN migration revenue almost near completion
2. Amobee delivers good revenue growth as the advertising spend increases again after the significant cut back in 2020 due to the pandemic
3. NCS and Trustwave show good growth
4. Singapore – Increased mobile service revenue (increase in postpaid customer revenue, higher ARPU 5G plans)
   1. Mobile service revenue – 2.95 percent change (QoQ)
   2. ARPU: Prepaid- 7.69 percent change (QoQ), 16.67 percent (YoY)
5. Airtel rebounds from net loss to net profit (due to strong operating momentum in India as well as Africa). Airtel is clearly on the rebound and making progress as an integrated Super App in India.

Things we like

1. A fresh perspective to the business as a result of the new leadership, an opportunity to optimize businesses and unlock value
2. The focus on building NCS is clear and being acted on. The CEO’s interest and passion in growing this very evident. This will play an important role as it looks to unlock and monetize 5G. The potential for becoming an Asian champion is immense. The following initiatives are encouraging.
   • taking Trustwave further into Asia
   • investment in key talent
   • the growth in cloud, cyber and digital businesses
3. Unlocking of value in data center and towers
4. Providing insights into growing digital sales ~ 43% of all transactions for Singapore
5. SingTel Dash achieved S$1 billion transaction value annualized is an interesting data point.
   1. Dash- allows simplified payments instore and remittances overseas.
   2. Over 1 million registered users (approx. 25 percent of the total subscribers of Singtel)
   3. Expanding beyond from just a wallet application to providing:
      1. Life-style services – restaurant booking
      2. Financial services- insurance savings plan (with a huge amount of Asset under management), personalized investment solutions (through robo-advisory using data analytics and algorithms in partnership with UOB asset management.)

What we would like to see

As SingTel transitions to become a digital company, it should be emphasizing more into growing and reporting its success as a digital company. There is a huge opportunity both in cost savings as well as improving customer experience. It will be valuable to see consistent sharing of:

• digital sales as a percentage of total sales (improve from 43% in Singapore and last reported 20% in Australia in September 2020)
• measures on digital interactions and engagement
• impact of digital sales on cost

(DBS Bank excels in sharing its digital measures of success in its quarterly and annual reports. Will be good to see something equivalent from SingTel)

As an integrated full-service telco, SingTel has the opportunity to position itself as a Super App integrating the multitude of its offerings under one umbrella.

Read our report on Asia Pacific telcos Q1 2021, and stay tuned for the Q2 update!