The One SGX Stock I've Never Let Go — OCBC

Why It's Still Here

Over the years I've cycled through quite a few SGX-listed names. Some I sold and never looked back, good riddance. Others, like Hafary, I regret letting go of. But there's exactly one stock I bought years ago and have simply held through all of it: OCBC.

I got in at around $12 a share. I didn't have a grand thesis, it was affinity as much as analysis. I use the OCBC banking app daily and it's genuinely one of the better-designed banking UIs in Singapore, clean, fast, doesn't feel like it was built in 2009 and never touched since. My insurance is with Great Eastern, which turns out to be OCBC's own insurance arm. So in a roundabout way, I was already a "customer" of the group before I was ever a shareholder. That familiarity is part of why I never felt the urge to trade in and out of it the way I did with other names.

Where the Stock Is Now

That patience has paid off. OCBC last traded around S$30.92–31.00, and touched a fresh record high of S$31.86 within the past year, a long way from the $12 entry price, even before counting dividends collected along the way. The 52-week range has been S$16.19 to S$31.86, which gives a sense of just how strong the run has been.

The business itself has been firing. Q2 2026 net profit rose 22% year-on-year to a record S$2.2 billion, driven by strong wealth management fees, trading income, and a resilient insurance contribution (that's Great Eastern doing its part), enough to offset softer net interest income as rates have come off their highs. Off the back of that, OCBC raised its 2026 loan growth outlook. The bank declared an interim dividend of S$0.47/share for the quarter; on a trailing basis the stock yields somewhere in the 3.4–3.6% range at current prices, with a payout ratio that's historically sat comfortably in the 80s (percent), high enough to reward shareholders generously, without obviously starving the balance sheet.

Structurally, OCBC is Southeast Asia's second-largest bank by assets (around S$625 billion as at end-2024), with a footprint across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Greater China and beyond, operating over 400 branches and offices in 19 countries. Alongside core banking, it owns Bank of Singapore (private banking/wealth) and the majority stake in Great Eastern Holdings (insurance), the same GE policies sitting in my own drawer. That combination of banking, wealth management, and insurance under one roof is a big part of why the earnings held up even when one segment (net interest income) was under pressure.

What Keeps Me Holding

There's no clever reason I've held this one longer than everything else I've bought and sold on SGX. It's a mix of: entering at a price that's now been well and truly vindicated, a business that keeps compounding earnings and dividends, and a day-to-day relationship with the brand, through the app, through the insurance, that I don't have with most of the other counters that have passed through my portfolio. 

Sometimes the stock you understand best isn't the one with the most exciting growth story; it's the one you actually use.

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