At Investment Moats, we have profile telecom shares and list out the fundamental reasons why they make good dividend shares (read article here) The current dividend yields of the 3 telecom are (daily yield tracked here):

1. Starhub: 7.1%
2. M1: 7.3%
3. Singtel: 4.7%

It may seem that there is no reason to buy Singtel since the yield is 2.3% lower than the other 2. If we are talking about

• how sustainable are the dividends
• whether there are room for dividend increase

we have to look at free cash flow.

Free Cash Flow

Free Cash Flow (FCF) (Detail explanation here) tracks how much the telco earned in hard cash for that year minus off the capital expenditure spent on investments and existing asset touch up I find that for dividend stocks, FCF is a much better figure to use than net income because ......