Hanwoo Park, Kia Motors President: "Business Disruptions Due to COVID-19 Unavoidable... Efforts for Early Management Stabilization"

The 76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders Held on the 24th at Kia Motors Headquarters in Yangjae-dong

Kia Motors held the 76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders on March 24 at its headquarters building in Yangjae-dong. (Photo by Kia Motors)

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Ji-hee] "Although Kia Motors will inevitably face business disruptions due to the global spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), we will strive to achieve early management stability through various contingency plans."

On the 24th, at the 76th regular shareholders' meeting held at Kia Motors headquarters in Yangjae-dong, Seoul, Kia Motors President Park Han-woo stated, "This year, the global automobile market was expected to slightly increase due to recovery in emerging markets such as China and India despite a slowdown in demand in advanced markets like the U.S. and Europe. However, the spread of COVID-19 is likely to revise the existing forecast."

Regarding the future outlook of the automobile industry, he diagnosed, "The trend of increasing the proportion of sport utility vehicles (SUVs), the rise in new electric vehicle (EV) model launches by major companies, strengthened carbon dioxide regulations in Europe, and growth in the mobility market size will intensify competition among companies." He emphasized measures to respond to these environmental changes, including ▲ full-scale implementation of the future and mid-to-long-term strategy 'Plan S' ▲ improving profitability to secure future resources ▲ establishing an agile management system.

Plan S is a future mid-to-long-term strategy announced by Kia Motors in January this year, consisting of two core strategies: proactive EV transition and providing optimal mobility solutions. Kia Motors plans to have a full lineup of 11 EV models across all vehicle types by 2025 and aims to make 25% of total sales eco-friendly vehicles. Notably, half of these will be launched as pure electric vehicles.

At the shareholders' meeting, Kia Motors also added "various vehicle charging businesses including electrified vehicles and other related businesses" to its business objectives through amendments to its articles of incorporation.

President Park explained, "The mobility solution strategy largely involves expanding eco-friendly MaaS (Mobility as a Service) business using EVs and entering the purpose-built vehicle (PBV) business to expand the business-to-business (B2B) customer base. We plan to provide EV-based mobility services and secure bases for mobility business development in the upcoming autonomous driving era in the mid-to-long term."

He added, "Focusing on vehicles for car sharing and logistics services, we will respond to diverse B2B customer needs in the mid-to-long term with flexible customized vehicles based on the skateboard platform."

Furthermore, he expressed ambitions to maximize profitability through the successful launch of volume-class new models such as the Sorento and Carnival. President Park said, "We will strengthen the fundamentals of key markets such as North America and Europe and actively expand sales in emerging markets to optimize our market portfolio. We will also enhance cost competitiveness through rationalization of fixed costs and minimization of quality expenses."

He reiterated the importance of organizational culture improvement, which has been a focus since last year. He stated, "To change the way we work, we will improve the company-wide organizational structure and processes and create an innovative organizational culture befitting Kia Motors' young and dynamic image." Additionally, he conveyed plans to promote the establishment of an ESG-based sustainable responsible management system to strengthen social responsibility management.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.