KTF's Ambitious Plan
The telecommunication firm to be market leader with new services including WCDMA
President Cho Young-joo of KTF said he plans to bring a drastic change to KTF to build a base for sustainable growth in the next three years by overcoming several risk factors. The top KTF official said KTF will lead the market in an environment created by the WCDMA, the next generation network and try to find a service that will create a new value. In order to achieve the objective, he said, the company will be an operator of convergence and mobile communication, taking a step up from its existing network base service by providing such new services as F-M mobile convergence service, integrated settlement system using UICC chips, ubiquitous service on a RFID base, and broadcasting link service, among others.
In addition to the existing service, KTF will strengthen mobile e-book, mobile e-learning and other special picture service and continue to expand its investment in joint funds with KT and intensively foster the growth of the contents business sector in a bid to explore new growth engines. The company is also set to fortify its global business model and expand its chances for investments in joint ventures with global business firms and foster the WCDMA global roaming whose sales have been rising lately rapidly. KTF will provide various services with wireless and fixed line integrated network as a base and multimedia and individual and corporation solutions, which are on a different level from the existing services. The company will be able to provide faster and diversified services and also become a 'mobile business enabler' giving the most appropriate business base to partners in industry. This will make the company compete better in the communication market, fueling competition in the wireless Internet market, also, which is tasked with sustainable growth.
In order to make the targets, the company will also intensify its internal reform so that it will be face the market focused on customer life style changes including their tastes for design and sensitivity in a market approach based on new developments.
The company recently launched the Change & Innovation Committee made of 50 officials and staff to play a leading role in making reform inside the company.
The KTF president said the company will be a first-class enterprise through the settlement of a dynamic organizational culture and management results. It will also upgrade its position in the new market by transforming competitive formation and realizing successfully both challenges and changes.
KTF, in the meantime, recorded 1.26 trillion won in sales during the third quarter, operating profit of 198 billion won, and net profit of 130.1 billion won, up 8.4 percent, 28.2 percent, and 41.8 percent respectively compared to the same period last year. The sales are up 2 percent, operating profit down 10.9 percent, and net profit down 13.6 percent from the preceding quarter. The marketing expenses in the third quarter increased 8.8 percent from the previous quarter due to rises in new subscribers and equipment changes by the subscribers. The figure showed a 12.4 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. The company said EBITDA margin in the third quarter recorded 37.5 percent, showing that this year? guidelines of 39 to 41 percent would be met.
The service sales increased 8.4 percent from the preceding quarter owing to a rise in the number of new subscribers and ARPU, amounting to 1.26 trillion won. The figure for the year to the third quarter rose 9 percent, well above the 5-6 percent guideline for this year. The number of subscribers for the year to the third quarter totaled 12.3 million, accounting for 32.4 percent of the market with the number of new subscribers in the third quarter totaling 114,000, bringing the total number of new subscribers up to the third quarter this year to 550,000. KTF had 268,000 new subscribers for the year to the third quarter, indicating that this year? target of 300,000 new subscribers would be met without trouble.
The KTF? top manager said the company will retire 13.9 billion won worth of its stocks and plans to pay 50 percent dividends in cash next year and continue to retire its stocks next year also to raise the price of its stock. nw

President Cho Young-joo of KTF