A dividend cheque is not just a dividend cheque. Part of it comes back next year. Part of it does not. If you live off your shares, telling them apart is important. Three Singapore blue chips just made the point for us. Singtel (SGX: Z74), ST Engineering (SGX: S63) and Singapore Airlines (SGX: C6L) each added a special or value-realisation dividend on top of their ordinary payout this cycle. The headline yields look generous. The real question is which part of each one repeats.

Singtel: A Core You Can Plan Around

Singtel declared a total ordinary dividend of S$0.185 per share for FY2026, up 9% year on year (YoY). That splits into a core dividend of S$0.134 and a value-realisation dividend of S$0.051. The split is the point. The core is pinned to a policy which commits a payout of 70% to 90% of underlying net profit. Underlying net profit rose 12% YoY to S$2.8 billion....