In 2026, the Singapore market has attracted investor interest after a strong rally in 2025, when the Straits Times Index gained more than 20%. While Singapore continues to serve as a regional safe haven, performance across major sectors is diverging as global interest rates stabilize and trade dynamics evolve.
Broadly speaking, Singapore’s market is being supported by several shifting sector drivers.
- Financials (Banks & Market Infrastructure): Banks like DBS Group Holdings Ltd and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited remain foundational, with growth shifting from net interest income toward wealth management and fee-based businesses, supporting dividends even as profit growth moderates.
- Industrials / Energy / Infrastructure: Companies such as Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd, Sembcorp Industries Ltd., Keppel Ltd., and Seatrium Limited are strong performers, backed by record order books and investor re-rating as they pivot toward energy transition, renewables, and data centers.
We’ve screened through Singapore’s blue chips and have found the top 10 have garnered growth of almost 10% YTD. These businesses have done well as they are benefactors from geopolitical arbitrage, resource scarcity or recovering from an industry downturn.
- Geopolitical benefactors: Singapore Technologies Engineering – S63 (Aerospace & defence), Yangzijiang Shipbuilding – BS6 (Shipping & Marine), Seatrium – 5E2 (Marine engineering), Wilmar – F34 (Agribusiness)
- Renewable energy and Infrastructure: Sembcorp Industries – U96 (Renewable energy), Keppel – BN4 (Infrastructure), UOL Group – U14 (Property developer), Hongkong Land – H78 (Property Investments)
- Financials: OCBC – O39 (Banking), SGX – S68 (Exchange & Capital Market)
Structural trends remain for these. However, as some of them have moved a considerable amount in the past 4 months, we will shift our focus on the laggards to see if there are any opportunities.
The Laggards
The 5 that we will highlight are as follows:
With an expected elevated input cost for businesses due to higher fuel prices, many services businesses will be affected. While most of them have resilient earnings, the market is pricing in a disruption in the medium term which we feel is reasonable.
Firstly, SATS is a company that may be affected as it caters to gateway services like cargo handling, airport services. Materially, airlines may cut flights, consumers may reduce travel frequency, this will squeeze intermediaries like SATS which will prove strong headwind in the medium term.
For the REITs, they are mainly commercial and warehouse REITs. One of the key accounting items to watch for commercial REITs is rent reversions and this has been largely restrained for the past year. Moreover, with a strain in supply chain across the world, logistics REITs are weathering a difficult situation as lesser merchants are able to continue leasing the space if they are unable to source for raw materials in time. Cash flow will prove a key deterrent for merchants to continue leasing REIT space.
Lastly, alcohol has been in a downtrend for a while now. Thai beverage’s earnings continue to show that consumption is not up to speed in the region.
In addition, earnings across the 5 were generally mixed in 2025. SATS Ltd. delivered the strongest growth, with revenue rising 13.0% to $5.8 billion and PATMI surging to $243.8 million, supporting higher dividends.
CapitaLand Ascendas REIT remained stable, with gross revenue up 1.0% and NPI increasing 1.7%, allowing continued but slightly pressured distributions.
Mapletree Logistics Trust showed resilient operations with 96.2% occupancy and +2.1% rental reversion, though earnings dipped slightly due to FX headwinds, keeping dividends intact but under pressure.
Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust saw weaker performance with gross revenue down 5.1% and NPI falling 6.1%, resulting in softer distributions.
Meanwhile, Thai Beverage Public Company Limited recorded a 2.1% revenue decline and 11.7% drop in net profit, which tightens the payout.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the market is pricing in recent events fast. There seems to still be headline pressures on the laggards which we would remain cautious about. Finding opportunities that sit in line with structural trends have been beneficial thus far. With that, we believe some of the top performing blue chips still are opportunistic ideas especially with continual disruption in global supply chain and higher fuel prices. In the current context, cost push inflation is a key theme in business operations decision making. This fundamentally affects demand from the top and bottom supply chain, leaving intermediaries squeezed. Owning businesses that produce real assets and at the top of the value chain seems like a steadfast option. Moreover, a dividend play would also help tide through volatility from market beta.
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