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2025 was a year of strong progress for Keppel. Despite a turbulent and uncertain world, we pressed ahead with and are seeing the results of our transformation as a global asset manager and operator — delivering strong returns to our investors, while creating real assets and solutions that meet the world’s pressing needs.
At our annual townhall, the Global Keppelites Forum, in February 2025, I shared three ideas on how we can accelerate our transformation and unlock the full potential of Keppel. First, we must continue to work as OneKeppel, harnessing the strength of our integrated ecosystem to create differentiated solutions and build wider moats. Second, we must fully internalise the change in our business model, embedding an LP-first mindset across the Company, and upholding engineering and execution excellence, which are hallmarks of Keppel’s DNA. Third, even as we dream big and seize the day, we must maintain a healthy unease about risks, stay agile and disciplined. We must be ready to capture needle-moving opportunities.
I am heartened to see that these principles have been integrated into the way Keppelites work and contributed to the progress we have achieved.
Amidst a challenging global environment, the New Keppel delivered strong results in the first nine months of 2025, with earnings growing considerably year-on-year (yoy), and all three business segments recording higher profits.
Over the past year, Keppel has been progressively re-rated as the investment community increasingly appreciates our unique strengths and growth potential. The bifurcation in our reporting of the New Keppel and the S$14.4 billion Non-Core Portfolio, unveiled during our 1H 2025 results announcement, has provided greater transparency on the Company’s performance.
We also made significant progress in unlocking and redeploying capital. With a sharpened focus, we formed the Accelerating Asset Monetisation Taskforce in early-2025, optimising both the speed and exit value of our divestments. In 9M 2025, we announced about S$2.4 billion in monetisation, bringing the total since October 2020, when our monetisation programme was first announced, to about S$14 billion, including the divestment of Keppel Offshore & Marine and the proposed sale of M1’s telco business.
Building on this momentum, we will work towards substantially monetising our Non-Core Portfolio by 2030, freeing up significant capital to fund growth, reduce debt and reward shareholders. I would like to commend Keppelites for pushing ahead with asset monetisation, even in markets currently facing headwinds, such as China’s real estate sector, where we were able to unlock value from one of our landbanks at a good profit.
Our Funds Under Management (FUM) reached S$91 billion by mid-2025, driven by strong traction with global LPs (Limited Partners), and we are on track to surpass our S$100 billion target by end-2026. We are also seeing more LPs initiate conversations with us, reflecting growing recognition of Keppel’s track record and differentiated capabilities. The larger pension and sovereign wealth funds value Keppel’s ability as a solutions provider to offer tailored investment solutions at scale across the digital, real estate and infrastructure segments.
In 2025, we continued to expand our offerings and capabilities to meet the world’s evolving needs.
AI and digitalisation are powerful trends rapidly reshaping economies, businesses and lives. At Keppel, we are embedding AI and cloud-enabled technologies in our operations to drive efficiency, accelerate decision-making and strengthen investment processes, harnessing digitalisation and automation to do more with less. We are also building an ecosystem of leading technology partners, including AWS and Dell, that give us access to the latest digital innovations to develop new solutions. Besides productivity and efficiency gains, we see AI, coupled with our deep operating and investing know-how, giving us valuable insights and competitive advantage that will drive long term value growth for Keppel and for our investors.
Beyond AI adoption, we are enabling the growth of AI through providing supporting solutions such as cleaner energy, data centres, and subsea cable connectivity, as well as investment solutions. During the year, we expanded our portfolio of AI-ready data centres and completed the world’s first subsea cable system directly linking Singapore to the west coast of the USA via Indonesia. We also continued to advance our innovative floating data centre project, which we hope to commence construction shortly. There has been much talk about whether there is an AI bubble. Putting aside the valuation of AI-themed stocks, we believe AI is still in the early innings of adoption and value creation. Keppel has a tremendous opportunity to ride the AI mega wave through the enabling solutions we provide.
We are also contributing to the energy transition, which continues to gain momentum, despite the backsliding on ESG seen in some markets. According to the International Energy Agency, global energy investment in 2025 was likely to exceed US$3.3 trillion, with US$2.2 trillion flowing into clean energy, compared to US$2 trillion in the preceding year.
In 2025, we made strong progress on Singapore’s first hydrogen-compatible power plant, which is scheduled to commence operations in 1H 2026, continued work on renewable energy imports, and deepened our exploration of new energy vectors including hydrogen, ammonia and biomethane. Our latest collaboration with JTC to advance low-carbon energy infrastructure on Jurong Island, alongside our role as consortium leader for the front-end engineering and design study of an ammonia power plant on the Island, gives Keppel an early position in shaping low-carbon pathways that underpin future digital and industrial growth.
Investing in the energy transition and scaling AI adoption would require massive amounts of capital. This is where Keppel can make a significant contribution by leveraging our integrated ecosystem, which combines fund management and investment expertise with deep operational capabilities. This allows us to offer attractive opportunities to our LPs, and also undertake such capital-intensive projects, beyond what our balance sheet could otherwise have been able to support.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to Keppelites for your contributions, without which the Company’s transformation and achievements would not have been possible. Our 2025 Employee Engagement Survey recorded a strong engagement score of 88%, four percentage points higher yoy, with 91% of Keppelites indicating that they are proud to work for Keppel and support our transformation. This is a powerful testament to the culture we are building.
Our sustainability leadership also continues to be recognised internationally. Keppel retained its MSCI AAA ESG rating, remained included in the Dow Jones Best-in-Class World and Asia-Pacific Indices, and was named for the second consecutive year as one of the World’s Most Sustainable Companies by TIME and Statista in 2025.
We expect to continue seeing market volatility and a challenging geopolitical environment in 2026. At the same time, inflation, which is here to stay, is expected to reinforce institutional demand for real assets with resilient, inflation-hedged cash flows. These trends favour asset managers who can originate, develop and operate such assets with discipline, particularly across secular themes such as energy transition, AI and digitalisation, as well as sustainable urbanisation.
Keppel today has built strong foundations - an asset-light model built for scale, a deepening reputation with global investors, and talented people who embody our Core Values, think like owners and act in the best interests of our LPs and customers.
We are still early in our growth journey as a global asset manager and operator but the trajectory is clear. I am excited about what lies ahead, and confident that together, we can entrench our right to play and to win in providing digital and low carbon solutions that contribute to a more sustainable and connected world, while delivering strong risk-adjusted returns to our investors.
I wish everyone a happy, healthy and fulfilling new year.
Yours sincerely,
