Singapore shares fell on Thursday, snapping a two-day rise as Singapore Telecommunications dropped, despite unveiling strong results and a big dividend for shareholders.
Concerns about rising interest rates ahead of US jobs data on Friday and a cooling of China's economy dampened sentiment, analysts said.
"There's a lot of people who are still making up their minds as to what impact these are going to have at the macro level," said Christopher Gee, Singapore strategist at J.P. Morgan.
The key Straits Times index lost 0.68 percent, or 12.83 points, to 1,866.61, after rising 2.2 percent in the previous two days.
Losers outgunned gainers 202 to 123 as volume dropped to 649 million shares from 710 million on Wednesday.
SingTel shed 2.1 percent to S$2.39, after having been up as much as 1.6 percent initially.
It was the second heaviest traded stock, with a volume of 39.4 million shares.
Southeast Asia's largest phone company and the city state's largest listed firm, with a market capitalisation of around S$43 billion ($25.35 billion), earned a record S$1.96 billion in its fourth quarter to end-March, driven by an asset sale, more mobile users and strong Australian operations.
Majority government-owned SingTel also set a S$4.1 billion shareholder payout involving a plan to cancel one share for every 14 held, and pay the shareholder S$2.36 cash for each cancelled share. The company also increased its final gross dividend for the year by 16 percent to 6.4 Singapore cents per share.
"It was so widely heralded. Sell on news, buy on anticipation," said J.P. Morgan's Gee.
Some dealers said the complicated structure of the payout had encouraged investors to lock in profits.
SingTel shares have jumped 22 percent since the start of the year, outperforming the broader Straits Times Index, which has risen about six percent.
The stock's fall contributed about 40 percent to the STI's decline on Thursday.
United Overseas Bank (UOB) dipped 1.4 percent to S$13.80 after going ex-dividend but peer DBS Group rose 1.4 percent to S$14.70 as investors were encouraged by its positive results posted last week and by a belief that any rise in interest rates would benefit it the most.
Property group United Overseas Land, which had surged nearly 20 percent over the two previous days, following an unsolicited bid, added another 2.4 percent to S$2.18.