Good morning and good evening. Thank you all for joining this conference call. We will begin the conference call of 2023 second quarter earnings results by KT. We would like to have welcoming remarks from Mr. Seung-Hoon Chi, KT IRO, and then Mr. Young-Jin Kim, the CFO, will present earnings results and entertain your questions. This conference will start with the presentation, followed by a Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star 1, that is star and 1 on your phone during the Q&A. Now, we'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Seung-Hoon Chi, KT IRO. Good afternoon, I am Seung-Hoon Chi, KT's IRO. Let's begin KT's second quarter 2023 earnings presentation. For your information, this earnings release call is being webcast live on our website, and you can follow the slides as you listen in on the call. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation includes financial statements and operating results under the K-IFRS standards that have not yet been reviewed by an outside auditor. As we cannot ensure accuracy and completeness of financial and business data aside from the historical performance, please be reminded that these figures may be subject to change. With that, I will now invite our CFO, Young-Jin Kim, for his remarks and presentation on the second quarter earnings results. Good afternoon, I'm Young-Jin Kim, KT CFO. I will begin with key earnings highlights for the second quarter of 2023. Supported by KT's solid fundamentals in B2C and B2B, and robust growth from KT Group's core portfolio, including finance, real estate, media content, and DX businesses, second quarter consolidated and standalone operating profits both recorded a double-digit growth. Despite rise in business expenses on higher inflation, earnings outperformed market expectations on the back of cost efficiency gains from improvement in business implementation, such as strengthening of distribution and improving outsourcing structure, which bolstered profitability. Second quarter standalone service revenue, hence, was KRW 4,018.6 billion, and operating profit recorded KRW 407.5 billion. Each posted a growth of 2.1% and 34.2% year-over-year, respectively. Since 2010, for the first time in 13 years, quarterly service revenue reached KRW 4 trillion level. Consolidated revenue recorded KRW 6,547.5 billion, while operating profit was KRW 576.1 billion, up 3.7% and 25.5% year-over-year, respectively. KT's BOD made the decision to appoint Kim Young-shub as the new CEO of the company on August 4th. The incoming CEO will be officially appointed after the approval of shareholders during the 2nd extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held on August 30th. By removing governance related uncertainties and based on solid fundamentals, KT will continue to strive towards corporate value enhancement in the second half of the year. I will now move on to earnings for second quarter of 2023. [foreign language] 25.5% [foreign language] KRW 5,761 [foreign language]. Operating revenue was KRW 6,547.5 billion, up 3.7% year-over-year. Operating profit came in at KRW 576.1 billion, up 25.5% year-over-year, on the back of stronger profitability, which is an outcome of better cost efficiencies following improvement on structure for business implementation. [foreign language] Net profit was up 19% year-on-year, recording KRW 432.5 billion, while EBITDA increased 8.5% on year, reaching KRW 1,505.3 billion won. [foreign language] To the next page. Let's take a look at operating expense. [foreign language] 2.0% [foreign language] KRW 5,971.4 billion [foreign language]. On the back of business expansion related spendings and rise in inflation, operating expense was up 2.0% year-over-year to KRW 5,971.4 billion. [foreign language]. Financial statement. [foreign language] Debt to equity ratio as of June, end 2023, reported 115.4%, down 6.1 percentage points Q-on-Q. Net debt to equity ratio was also down 2 percentage points Q-over-Q to 44.6%. [foreign language] CapEx. [foreign language] IDC, [foreign language] CapEx [foreign language]. Cumulative CapEx for KT Group as of Q2 was KRW 1,383.8 billion, while on a KT standalone basis, Q2 cumulative CapEx recorded KRW 998.5 billion. Group subsidiary CapEx, which includes core growth businesses of finance, media and content, cloud and IDC, real estate, recorded KRW 385.3 billion, in line with our annual CapEx plan. [foreign language]. Business breakdown. [foreign language] B2C [foreign language] 0.8% [foreign language] KRW 2,390.2 billion [foreign language]. Telco B2C business posted a growth of 0.8% on-year, reporting KRW 2,390.2 billion, on the back of expanded customer base, centering on premium services. [foreign language] 5G [foreign language] 0.8% [foreign language] KRW 1,562 billion [foreign language]. 5G [foreign language] 9.28 million [foreign language] 68% [foreign language] [foreign language] Supported by growth in 5G subscribers and higher domestic roaming demand seen from inbound visitors, wireless revenue was up 0.8% on year to KRW 1,562 billion. We now have 9,280,000 5G subscribers, accounting for 68% of total base of subscribers. [foreign language] Broadband Internet revenue saw 2.7% on-year growth, reaching KRW 612.4 billion, driven mostly by GiGA Internet subscriber growth. [foreign language] 4.2% [foreign language] KRW 215.8 billion [foreign language]. Fix Line revenue was down 4.2% year-on-year to KRW 215.8 billion. [foreign language] DIGICO B2C [foreign language]. Next is on DIGICO B2C business. [foreign language]. An evenly spread out growth coming from media and mobile platform, DIGICO B2C business was up 3.8% year-over-year, reporting KRW 575.6 billion. IPTV [foreign language] RPU [foreign language] 1.2% [foreign language]. IPTV business reported 1.2% year-over-year growth, underpinned by growth and high RPU subscriber base. Next is the telco B2B business. Next is on Telco B2B. [foreign language]. Telco B2B business was up 7.6% year-on-year, reporting KRW 546.9 billion, on the back of growth of both B2B internet and data and enterprise voice call businesses. ... [foreign language] CCTV [foreign language] CP [foreign language] B2B internet and data business was up 5.2% year-over-year, on the back of higher demand for lease lines for CCTVs and increase in orders booked from small to mid CPs. [foreign language] MVNO [foreign language]. Enterprise telephony business posted 12.3% year-over-year growth on sustained growth of MVNO's typical product, which is the deferred payment scheme. Next is DIGICO B2B business. Next is on DIGICO B2B business. DIGICO B2B [foreign language] 0.6% [foreign language] KRW 505.9 billion [foreign language], National Defense Broadband Integrated Network [foreign language], 2022년 November [foreign language] Le Méridien & Moxy Seoul, Myeongdong [foreign language] 5 [foreign language] DIGICO B2B was up 0.6% on year, reaching KRW 505.9 billion. There was some impact from business rationalization, but it's mostly been driven by revenue stream from projects that we've already booked, such as the project on National Defense Broadband Integrated Network, as well as an uptrend from five hotels, including Myeongdong's Le Méridien Moxy Hotel, which was newly opened in November 2022. [foreign language]. Next is on subsidiary highlights. BC [foreign language] On higher credit card acquiring volume and sustained new business growth, including issuance of BC Card branded cards and lending business, BC Card revenue was up 5.9% on year to KRW 1,049.2 billion. KT Skylife [foreign language] 2.8% [foreign language] KRW 261.3 billion [foreign language]. Skylife revenue was up 2.8% on year to KRW 261.3 billion on growth from MVNO and internet resale businesses. KT [foreign language] OTT [foreign language]. KT Studio Genie and skyTV released 7 original dramas and 5 original entertainment programs during the first half of the year, and is leading at the forefront of media and content market. Original contents help enhance our competitiveness in the channel, and distribution through global OTTs and channels support popularity streak of these titles. Due to economic slump in the ad market, commerce market showed contraction, and so the revenue from the content subsidiary was down 5.8% on year, coming in at KRW 268.9 billion. KT Cloud, in just one year since its launch, has proven its value as Korea's best DX company, with its enterprise value recognized at KRW 4 trillion, and succeeded in attracting KRW 600 billion in investment. With the full-fledged launch of the AI Cloud business and the solid growth of the IDC business, revenue increased 18.5% year-over-year to KRW 153.8 billion. KT Cloud, in just one year since its launch, has proven its value as Korea's top DX company. Based on KRW 4 trillion valuation that it received, we successfully closed, raising KRW 600 billion of investment. Thanks to solid growth of our IDC business, as AI cloud business took off in full scale, revenue was up 18.5% year-over-year, recording KRW 153.8 billion. [foreign language] KT 2023 2Q [foreign language]. This has been a brief update on KT's financial performance of Q2 of 2023. [foreign language] B2C [foreign language] B2B [foreign language]. Despite macro headwinds of inflationary pressures and recession, KT's B2C and B2B businesses have all shown robust growth, supported by its fundamentals, and we yet again witnessed growth potential of group's portfolio of businesses. [foreign language] ICT [foreign language] CEO [foreign language]. In the second half, under the leadership of newly appointed CEO, who is equipped with business caliber and ICT expertise, we will continue our endeavor to enhance KT's corporate value. [foreign language] Once again, I extend my deep gratitude to our investors and analysts, and we ask for your continued interest and support. Thank you. [foreign language]. [foreign language]. For more information, please refer to the previously circulated presentation material. We will now move into Q&A session. Due to the time constraint, I would like to ask that you limit your questions to 2 per person. [foreign language]. Q&A session will begin. Please press star 1, star and 1 if you have any questions. If you want to cancel your questions, please press star 2, star and 2. In order to allow as many Q&A chances as possible within the restricted time, we'd appreciate only 2 questions per participant. The first question will be presented by Hyeji Kim from Daishin Securities. Please go ahead with your question. Securities Hyeji Kim [foreign language]. Thank you. I am Kim Hyeji from Daishin Securities. I have two questions I want to ask regarding your earnings results. First has to do with your top line revenue and second question relates to your cost. First, if we look at your second quarter earnings performance, it really outperformed market expectations. Is there any key drivers, maybe two or three key elements that you wish to highlight with regards to the background to this earnings result? Also, if you could provide some color as to what the second half outlook is from the perspective of the company, that would be helpful. Second question is on cost. High level of inflationary pressure seems to work as a burden on many companies, but it seems KT was able to really control its cost quite well. Would like to understand as to what were the efforts that you put in to control such cost controls. That would be helpful if you could shed light on that aspect. Thank you, Mr. Kim, for asking 2 questions. [foreign language]. You asked about the key performance regarding the revenue, top line revenue, what were the key drivers and what our outlook is for the second half of the year as well as cost. Why don't I combine all of that and provide you with an answer? [foreign language] On the revenue side, I think we could highlight 3 key elements. [foreign language] B2C [foreign language] The first element has to do with B2C business. We were able to drive quite steady performance because we focused on improving the qualities aspect, especially quality sales activities, with regards to our mobile, internet and TV business. [foreign language] B2B [foreign language] B2B [foreign language]. The second element has to do with our B2B business. The projects that we have already won in the past, we are starting to see monetization. We see revenue stream coming through, and in the first half of the year, we also saw growth in the number of orders that we were able to book. The new order expansion also was a key driver behind our B2B business growth. [foreign language] IDC [foreign language] Third key driver behind the performance was from our subsidiaries. Our core portfolio of businesses, which includes finance, real estate, media and content, cloud, and IDC. These areas have been able to bring about growth. [foreign language] B2C [foreign language] B2B [foreign language]. In the same light, we will endeavor to continue to bring on growth from our B2C and B2B businesses, as well as from the businesses that's part of our core group portfolio of businesses. Based upon these endeavors, we want to be able to bring about additional growth from the KT Group perspective. [foreign language]. KT [foreign language]. Now, as you've pointed out, I believe inflationary pressure does work as a cost burden for most of the companies. KT is not an exception to that. The increases in the inflations did impact our electricity cost as well as different commissions paid items. KT [foreign language] AI [foreign language]. However, within KT, we've been continuously placing momentum behind making our processes more efficient by making use of AI and other digital transformation technology, and also bringing about improvement in the way we do business, the business implementation process, that is. Thanks to all of these efforts, to a certain extent, these activities helped us offset some of the cost, cost increases, the pressures that we were exposed to. [foreign language] AS [foreign language] AI [foreign language]. To provide you with a bit of a more detail, what we did was, by expanding customer self-activation, we were able to optimize the entire activation related dispatch workflow, and we applied AI across all of the call center related workflows. As a result, we were able to improve efficiency as well as per person productivity. [foreign language] At the same time, in consideration of the market changes and the changes in the customer's purchase patterns and the usage patterns when it comes to the services that we offer, we have been able to further upgrade or make more sophisticated our overall structure in terms of distribution, which is helping us further improve efficiency. [foreign language]. Regarding in profit outlook or the earnings outlook for the second half of the year, we believe that there will still persist to be inflationary pressures as well as increases in the cost basis. However, we will continue to endeavor to further improve our top line revenue and profitability, and our plan, hence, is to bring about an year-over-year OP growth. [foreign language]. We'll take the next question, please. [foreign language] Citigroup [foreign language]. The next question will be presented by Sean Lee from Citigroup. Please go ahead with your question. [foreign language] CEO [foreign language] CEO [foreign language] Thank you for taking my question. I would also like to ask 2 questions. You announced last Friday that you, the company, has selected the final candidate for the new incoming CEO. Can you shed some light as to the background of appointing the, this, the new CEO? Does the company have a plan to have a communication session with the investors so that he, the new incoming CEO, can explain and elaborate on the business plan that he is currently envisioning? If so, when will that timing be? Second question has to do with your dividend plan. Your first half net profit is quite good, attractive. Would like to understand, under the new executives of the company, would you be able to continue on with the dividend plan that KT was able to stick to over the years? [foreign language] Thank you, Mr. Lee, for your question. [foreign language] CEO [foreign language] Yes, allow me to first tackle your first question regarding the CEO candidates, the background under which he was appointed, the business plan that he would be envisioning, and also any plans that we have to hold a session with him and the investors. KT Director Candidate Committee is now, [foreign language] 1 [foreign language] CEO [foreign language] LG CNS [foreign language], August 말 [foreign language]. As you would already appreciate, KT's Director Candidate Recommendation Committee has selected total of 3 potential candidates and went through a very in-depth interview and have decided and selected the 1 final candidate to be the CEO of the company. Hence the BOD on the 4th of August, have decided on Young-shub Kim, the former LG CNS president, to be the new incoming president, CEO of KT. We will go through an EGM at the end of August to gain approval from our shareholders. [foreign language] ICT [foreign language] KT [foreign language]. Just to elaborate a little more, the BOD has determined that he would be the best fit and the right person to make KT into a global digital platform-based company, in light of his extensive corporate business management experiences and his expertise in ICT and digital transformation, and his focus on fundamental centric growth and innovation. [foreign language] LG CNS [foreign language] LG Uplus [foreign language] CFO [foreign language] LG CNS [foreign language] ICT [foreign language]. Also to note, the incoming CEO, Young-shub Kim, is a finance expert. He served as a CFO of LG U+ and LG CNS, and he was a CEO that served as the CEO of LG CNS for the longest term, and he is a person that is well equipped with ICT and business management expertise. [foreign language] LG CNS [foreign language] ICT [foreign language] Also, the incoming CEO, when he was serving as the CEO of LG CNS and he was also the director of business unit, I think BOD, through the very in-depth interviews, was able to identify that he was capable as a person equipped with ICT expertise, as a person who would be able to lead the digital innovation ecosystem. He had an experience of building out an infrastructure that is on par with what is expected of a digital ICT powerhouse, he had really shared his vision and plan with regards to service offerings. [foreign language] ICT [foreign language] He also had shared, his vision that through scaling up of ICT, ICT infrastructure investment as well as the telecom business, he provided his views as to how he's going to drive very solid growth, which is underpinned by trust, both internally and externally. uh, [foreign language] DX [foreign language], KT [foreign language], KT [foreign language] KT [foreign language]. Because of his strong commitment in bringing improvements into the corporate culture and the way a company is managed, supported by his DX capabilities and his growth strategies, that is strongly pivoted on the very fundamentals, BOD considered him to be a very right fit, the right person to be driving innovation and growth. Basically, this is the background under which the BOD has selected him. As he would be a person who would be able to really contribute to further enhancing corporate value and bringing about sustainable growth. [foreign language]. We are going to try to set up an opportunity for the market to meet our incoming CEO, so that he could share his vision and strategy in regards to running this company. In terms of the timing, we will come back to you and communicate to you once we have that detail. [foreign language] Regarding the dividend plan, once we formally appoint our CEO and once the BOD is formed, based on the views and feedback that we get from our shareholders, we will come up with the dividend plan, and we'll communicate that with, to you. KT KT BOD has a track record of basing its decision on shareholder return policies upon the feedback that it received from its shareholders. That was the principle that we have kept to, and the new incoming BOD, I believe, will do the same. Yeah, next question, please. The next question will be presented by Aram Kim from Shinhan Securities. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you for taking my question. I also would like to ask you two questions. First, for this quarter, I see that your subsidiary contribution has been quite significant. Can you elaborate a little more on the background to this? Was it the case that during first quarter, the revenue profile wasn't as good, and then in Q2, you've seen an improvement? Is that what would explain this high level of contribution? Or what do you think is the just a business as usual or normal level of profit contribution coming in from your group of subsidiaries? Second question is a question on your AI business. What is the direction that the company is envisioning for this business? Do you have specific services where you are actually generating revenue from such AI services? If so, can you tell me, tell us as to what they are? Yeah, Kim. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Kim Aram, for your questions. I will first respond to your question about our subsidiary's contribution. Regarding the subsidiary contribution, on top of a very well-balanced growth that we are seeing from B2C and B2B business areas on a KT standalone basis, we have seen additional growth engine and momentum being formed from KT Group's other businesses or subsidiary businesses, including finance, content, DX, and real estate. Out of all the subsidiaries, our 2 subsidiaries, namely BC Card and KT Estate, had made the biggest profit contribution. If you first take a look at our BC Card business, it is our core and key subsidiary out of KT's Group Financial business, and especially the acquiring business, which is a cash cow, where was able to really bring about steady income revenue stream. Through the lending business, we were able to expand on our financial assets. As such, the company's been putting in efforts to diversify the revenue source. Yep, also through branded BC Cards, we are able to drive transaction volume increase coming from B2C customers, and also on the B2B segment as well, by extending merchant loans and corporate loans, we are able to further broaden our basis for growth. Our plan is to through BC Card, be able to strike a very good balance between the existing business as well as new business forays so that we can continue to grow the revenue as well as profit contribution. Moving on to KT Estate. It's in the business of hotels, offices, rental housings, and out of this business, there was a revenue stream coming in from apartment sales project that was ongoing at the Wonju City. This year, with the end of the COVID pandemic, we have seen a rebound and recovery in domestic as well as overseas travels and more leisure activities, which is leading to more spending. We now see our hotel business really uptrend in a steep manner, and that has also made profit contribution. You asked a question about what will be the normal level of profit contribution from our group subsidiaries. Yes, for last year, it was around $500 billion in size. For this year, we're projecting quite similar to that of previous year, quite flat or a little more. Now responding to your AI question. Recently, we've seen heightened interest on hyperscale artificial intelligence, and KT also was no exception in making preparations for laying out an AI ecosystem starting 2020. We've been making preparations to commercialize our hyperscale AI, dubbed Mi:dum. So what we are doing within KT is different divisions, namely AI DX, Convergence Business Unit, and Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology, and kt cloud. They're all strengthening their collaboration so that we can actually scale up KT's hyperscale AI that is supported by GPU-based AI cloud infrastructure. The hyperscale AI that KT is envisioning is an AI that thinks about the customer, that understands the emotions, remembers, and empathizes, and expresses. That is the AI that is envisioned by KT. Also, we are seeking to develop a language model that can be customized so that customer-specific and personalized services can be provided in the B2B domain. The hyperscale AI business that KT is seeking to achieve has three major business models involved. Now the first one is, and you also asked about a specific business that is currently generating revenue. The first business model is bringing AI and adopting that into our cloud business, and that's one of the key representative example is AI Contact Center, AICC. For AICC, there are three different customer segments that we actually target. One is for large customers, in which case we'll provide system infrastructure. For mid-sized customers, it will be cloud-based AICC, and we call that A'Cen Cloud. Also for smaller businesses, we will be providing AI integrated secretary or AI assistant, excuse me, service. For AICC revenue, our objective is to achieve more than KRW 100 billion by the end of the year, and eventually, by year 2025, we're envisioning to attain about KRW 300 billion to, so that, by becoming a community platform business provider for B2B and B2C as well. Second revenue model that we are currently thinking about is to open up the API so that our customers can make use of the hyperscale AI platform, the Mi:dum platform, and pay for the usage of that platform. That is the second revenue model that we're thinking of. Last but not least, is to bring about AI capabilities that KT has to KT and KT subsidiary products and services, so that we further strengthen the competitiveness of our B2C products. Are there any questions? Currently, there are no participants with questions. We will wait for a second until there is another question. With no further questions, we would now like to close our Q&A session. Thank you very much for all the questions that you asked, as well as the interest that you've shown us. Once again, thank you for joining us, despite your very busy schedules. This brings us to the end of KT's second quarter 2023 earnings presentation. Thank you.