KT CEO Signals Massive
Management Innovation

Calls for changes for growth during the fifth anniversary of privatization

KT President and CEO Nam Joong-soo has indicated a massive management innovation as he called for his staff to discard things lacking the value for customers and accept all for growth.
KT President Nam made the remarks in a speech celebrating the fifth anniversary of privatizing KT over its in-house broadcasting network KBN broadcast on Aug. 20.
He said, "What we need is to keep KT growing. We are required to discontinue what we have done customarily and innovate the way we think and carry out our work."KT President Nam said what KT has to do first is to eliminate non-essential things. He called for his executives and staff to carry out jobs according to successful programs and in a customer-oriented manner and eliminate mismanagement and non-essential practices.
He called for his staff to accept all for the purpose of growth and accommodate all changes for innovating decision-making process and conduct aggressive and extraordinary business strategies with flexible institutional and decision-making systems.
In the long-term perspective, he said, KT aims to transform itself an attractive one by pursing a robust growth and make efforts to raise KT to the top three company respected by people by 2010.
He also emphasized that KT will explore new business models to raise the value for customers and build up a cooperative mechanism for ensuring co-prosperity with business partners. He said KT will do its utmost to establish momentum for growth at the earliest possible date in order to make shareholders confident of future values.
Mr. Nam said, "Whether KT is a public organization or a privatized one is not important, but we have to focus on raising its corporate value."Currently, KT is facing with difficulties in an initial stage of privatization, but KT will make itself attractive through a steady growth, he said.
Industrial analysts share the view that KT is poised to make a second take-off after suffering from the pain from the privatization for the past five years.
In reality, KT has suffered a setback due to a decline of its mainstay business sector, telephone services, and a delay in the inauguration of such new growth engine businesses as mobile Internet service WiBro and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television).
KT posted 223.4 billion won in net profit during the second quarter of 2007, a reduction of about 120 billion won from the same period of last year due to a decline of revenues in such businesses as telephone and broadband Internet services.
However, KT has been building up foundation for making a second leap by revamping new growth engine businesses and improving constitutional health.
The demand for high-speed mobile Internet service WiBro had been sluggish until the early 2007 since commercialization of the latest service in the late June of 2006. However, KT augurs well lately. The number of WiBro subscribers has surged to more than 30,000. On an overseas front, NTC, KT's subsidiary in specializing in mobile telecommunication in Russia, has made a strong showing with the number of subscribers surpassing the 1 million mark and its dividend of more than $2 million for the second straight year.
Besides, KT's efforts to innovate itself for the past five years following privatization have yielded a considerable results. For example, KT has become Korea's representative public company to sweep all telecommunication categories of the National Customer Survey Index (NCSI). nw

KT President and CEO Nam Joong-soo