Daily Brief Singapore: NTT DC REIT, Aspial Lifestyle, Doctor Anywhere, Attika Group, Kredivo Group, Rubber Future SGX TSR20, Keppel DC, Keppel Infrastructure Trust and more

• NTT DC REIT (NTTDCR SP) will be added to a global sector index at the close on 18 September while Samty Residential Investment (3459 JP) will be deleted.
• We estimate passive trackers will need to buy over 12x ADV in the add and sell nearly 5x ADV in the delete.
• Positioning in NTT DC REIT (NTTDCR SP) could continue to build near-term and that could take the stock higher. Positioning in Samty Residential Investment (3459 JP) appears to be larger.

• Aspial Lifestyle delivered a strong set of 1H2026 results, with revenue rising 26.4% YoY to a record S$464.2 million, while net profit surging 88.7% to S$55.0 million, demonstrating that earnings continued to grow materially faster than the top line.
• The earnings improvement was broad-based across pawnbroking, retail and secured lending, with retail delivering the strongest operating leverage.
• Retail emerges as the biggest earnings driver, while pawnbroking remains resilient. 

Executive Summary

• Regional Omnichannel Healthcare Platform: Doctor Anywhere operates a hybrid medical model across five Southeast Asian markets, integrating a digital telemedicine application with a physical network of clinics and specialist centres. The company serves over three million registered users, providing a single touchpoint that bridges virtual consultations with in-person diagnostic care.
• Strong Institutional Capital Support: The company has secured approximately US$176.0m in total funding from top-tier strategic and financial investors, including a US$40.8m Series C extension in late 2023. This capital supports a closed-loop business model that leverages corporate and insurance partnerships for efficient user acquisition while cross-selling higher-margin physical medical services.
• Profitability Inflection From Cost Discipline, Not Growth: FY2025 delivered the company’s first operating profit in four years, at a margin of roughly 1%, achieved through the Vietnam exit, the wind-down of underperforming units and headcount reduction rather than volume expansion. The company remains net loss-making, the physical clinic network continues to carry material fixed costs, and no new primary capital has been raised since December 2023. The central question is whether a margin bought through rationalisation can be sustained and widened once the one-off cost actions are exhausted.

• Over 70 SGX primary-listed companies repurchased S$2.09 billion in shares in 8M26, up from S$1.57 billion in 8M25.
• Singtel led with S$948.6 million in buybacks, aiming for a 3% EPS accretion through its S$2 billion programme.
• Seatrium’s buybacks reached S$99.7 million, nearing full deployment of its S$100 million programme since 2024.

• Regional Neobanking Transition: Kredivo Group has evolved from a standalone digital credit provider into a diversified Southeast Asian financial services conglomerate, anchored by its acquisitions of Krom Bank and Timo. This strategic expansion allows the company to integrate deposit-taking capabilities with its established point-of-sale checkout infrastructure.
• Proprietary Credit Decisioning Engine: The core value driver is an alternative data scoring model that enables instant underwriting for consumers without formal credit histories. Separately, the group is well funded relative to its stage, having raised approximately US$400m in equity through the March 2023 Series D and secured committed debt facilities approaching US$1.0b to fund the loan book, with a further round reported in December 2025.
• Third-Party Licence Dependency: The May 2026 acquisition of Timo gives Kredivo the brand, technology stack, and customer relationships, but not the banking licence, which remains with BVBank under a cooperation agreement. Termination or adverse modification would suspend deposit-taking in Vietnam and require migration to an alternative licensed partner, feasible in principle given Kredivo owns the front end, but disruptive and unproven in practice.

Highlights

• NR June production surged 31.5% month-on-month to 26,553 tonnes

• NR exports jumped 35.2% to 38,862 tonnes, led by China.

• Q2 production fell 4.7% year-on-year to 65,266 tonnes.

• Imports remain substantial, indicating that the country’s processing and manufacturing industries continue to rely heavily on external supplies

• Power Grid Bottlenecks are the defining constraints of the current data centre cycle. In Greater Tokyo (Inzai City), connection queues have stretched to 5-10 years, exacerbated by Tokyo Gas freezing high-voltage contracts on March 6, 2026. In Singapore, the regulatory limit of 200MW under the recent DC-CFA2 allocation demonstrates that grid capacity, rather than developer appetite, dictates speed-to-market.
• The Tokyo acquisition (TY12x and TY13x) announced on September 1, 2026, represents a calculated shift to fully-fitted colocation assets to capture high rental reversions in an under-rented market (estimated at least 30% below prevailing market rents). Sourcing this deal from a GIC-Equinix JV with Equinix retaining a 10% operating interest preserves operational execution while shifting the heavy capital expenditure off Equinix’s balance sheet.
• Capital allocation metrics on the S$1.37 billion Tokyo transaction reveal a tight financing tightrope. While immediately accretive to DPU by 2.6% on a pro forma basis, it elevates Keppel DC REIT’s aggregate leverage from 34% to 38% (and 39% including consumption tax debt), pushing the REIT closer to its maximum historic comfort threshold and necessitating the S$625 million private placement closed on September 2, 2026.

• Keppel Infrastructure Trust (KIT) shifted from stable, bond-like assets to an active management model for growth potential.
• KIT’s portfolio includes essential infrastructure assets, providing resilience and steady distributions through economic cycles.
• KIT achieved total returns of approximately 13% in the first half of 2026, demonstrating value creation across market cycles.