[Concall] KT "Collective Decision-Making by Emergency Management Committee... No Issues Despite CEO Vacancy"

KT is facing difficulties in appointing a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), resulting in a management vacuum, but it dismissed concerns by stating that business operations are proceeding normally through collective decision-making by key executives.

KT made this announcement on the 11th during a conference call following its first-quarter earnings release.

KT Building Exterior
Photo by KT

Since the term of former CEO Koo Hyun-mo ended in March, KT has been without a CEO. Regarding concerns arising from this, Kim Young-jin, KT’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), said, "To overcome the current situation and restore the management system early, we have formed an emergency management committee composed of the acting CEO and key executives to make collective decisions on company-wide management and business issues." He added, "Decisions regarding customer service, marketing, and network investment are proceeding normally within the emergency management committee. Apart from governance issues, there are no abnormalities in the fundamentals of management and business, and business and strategies are continuously being pursued according to the existing management plans." He further noted, "There were concerns externally that capital attraction for KT Cloud would be difficult to approve without a CEO, but the emergency management committee successfully pushed it forward as an example."

KT reported consolidated first-quarter sales of 6.4437 trillion KRW and operating profit of 486.1 billion KRW. Sales grew 2.6% compared to last year, but operating profit decreased by 22.4%. CFO Kim said, "Profitability may be somewhat affected by changes in the macroeconomic environment, but both on a standalone and consolidated basis, KT is balancing growth and profitability, and we will strive to improve annual profits compared to the previous year based on this." He added, "We will continue qualitative growth in mobile and Internet TV (IPTV) businesses to strengthen their role as cash cows. Regarding the DigiCo B2B sector, we plan to enhance growth through orders in the second half of the year. We will continue structural cost improvement efforts through work automation and efficiency."

Regarding dividend plans, he stated, "If performance improves, the resources available for dividends are likely to increase accordingly," and added, "Once a new board is formed and a CEO is appointed, we plan to continue the existing shareholder return policy."

On the same day, KT Cloud received an investment of 600 billion KRW, valuing the company at 4.6 trillion KRW. Regarding the use of investment funds and future growth strategies, CFO Kim said, "The investment will be used as resources to expand market dominance and sustain growth." Specifically, KT plans to secure 100 MW capacity within five years by building new IDCs and pursuing acquisitions. It is also considering entering the global IDC market in Southeast Asia and plans to improve operational efficiency through AI remote systems. In the cloud business sector, KT aims to strengthen its ecosystem by building AI full-stack business capabilities to capture the rapidly growing AI cloud market. CFO Kim said, "With this strengthened growth momentum from the recent investment, we aim for 2 trillion KRW in sales by 2026 and will continue to maintain strong leadership as the top digital transformation (DX) company in Korea."

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