With Only Digital Business Growing, SingTel Sets Aside $1.6B For Startup Acquisitions

The newest earnings report from SingTel (SGX:T48) makes for painful reading. The giant Singapore-based telco, which has over 420 million subscribers on numerous networks across Asia-Pacific, saw its first full year drop in revenues for 14 years in today’s stats for Q4 and FY 2012. The only ray of light comes from SingTel’s digital business, which saw a 156 percent rise in revenues. Perhaps inspired by this, SingTel will set aside US$1.6 billion for startup acquisitions so as to find “next-generation growth engines in the digital space”.

That $1.6 billion investment will be spread over the next three years, and will be largely ploughed into strategic acquisitions in the online space that can tie in with SingTel’s phone services across the region.

Indeed, we’ve already seen SingTel doing this over the past couple of years, having acquired the mobile ad company Amobee for $321 million, snapped up the food recommendation startup HungryGoWhere, and made investments in things like TheMobileGamer. Plus the telco has a VC arm called SingTel Innov8 that has made lots of significant investments across the region. The most recent one was in the China-based mobile game developer and publisher Yodo1.

Profits down

Getting back to SingTel’s latest numbers, net profit fell 12 percent year-on-year to s$3.51 billion ($2.83 billion) at the end of March 2013. Group revenue fell 3.4 percent to S$18.18 billion ($14.66 billion) for the full year.

SingTel wholly owns Australia’s Optus, and has significant stakes in telcos like India’s Bharti, Philippines’ Globe, and several others.

See more financial data on the SingTel IR homepage or on ZDnet.

(Hat-tip to ZDnet for spotting this)