Noting that the incidents indicate heightened near-term financial risks, Maybank Securities’ analyst Hussaini Saifee lowers his target price to $4.62 from $4.75 previously. He flags the potential for customer churn and weaker pricing power, higher operating expenditure and capital expenditure (capex) to boost redundancy, and additional provisions.
Analysts are reiterating their “buy” calls on Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) despite the recent Optus incidents.
Singtel’s Australian subsidiary Optus experienced two emergency call outages on Sept 18 and Sept 28. The first was caused by human error and tragically led to three casualties. Both incidents were confined to emergency services and did not disrupt broader mobile and internet connectivity. They follow a cyberattack in 2022 and a nationwide outage in 2023 that already tested Optus’ resilience.
