SingTel, Southeast Asia's largest phone firm, said it was on the lookout for acquisitions even as it posted a 16 percent drop in quarterly profits on a strong Singapore dollar that pinched overseas earnings.
Singapore Telecommunications, which earns 70 percent of its earnings from overseas, faces increasing competition in Australia and India, and its recent acquisitions in frontier markets such as Pakistan are still not bearing fruit. "We continue to look for good acquisitions," CEO Chua Sock Koong told journalists.
"Clearly, we are not in a big rush, given the global uncertainties." She added that SingTel was keen to increase its stake in its associate companies if the price was attractive. SingTel, 55 percent-held by state investor Temasek, said fiscal third-quarter net profit fell to S$799 million ($536 million) from S$952 million a year earlier, mainly because of the Singapore dollar's strength against currencies in countries where it operates.
The results were above an average S$770 million forecast by four analysts polled by Reuters. Deutsche Bank said the result was stronger than expected, although loss-making mobile associates in Bangladesh and Pakistan showed "no particular sign of progress." "Growth in Australia and Singapore remains more robust than we had expected," Deutsche said in a research report. "We remain buyers, particularly as these results demonstrated continued strong operational growth."
The Singapore dollar rose 23 percent against the Australian dollar at the end of December from a year earlier, was up 21 percent versus the Indian rupee and climbed 14 percent against the Indonesian rupiah, SingTel said.
Singapore's largest listed firm said its October-December underlying net profit, or net profit excluding exceptional items, fell to S$838 million from S$931 million a year earlier, broadly in line with market expectations. SingTel shares were down 2 percent in Australian trade, but gained 0.4 percent in early Singapore trade, laggit 22 percent in October-December, just beating a 25 percent drop on the Straits Times Index.
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