Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications company had a stellar first quarter – could it benefit Singapore’s exchange traded fund (ETF) down the road?

Singapore Telecommunications is 15.2% of the iShares MSCI Singapore (EWS), and is by far the fund’s largest holding. SingTel beat expectations with a 4.8% rise in the first quarter. The growth is not expected to continue into the year, however, because of  the uncertain global slowdown, reports Thomson Financial on Forbes.

The fund didn’t see much benefit from the telecom company’s performance, as it was down 7.4% in the first quarter. For the current financial year, the company is expecting single-digit revenue growth for its Singapore operations – hopefully the slowed growth won’t hurt the fund too much, either.

Meanwhile, EWS is down just slightly year-to-date by 0.2% and it’s 3.3% above its trendline.

For full disclosure, Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of EWS.

Tags: Asia, Singapore, Telecommunications