SKT가 2024년 1분기 성적표를 내놨다. SKT는 연결 기준 2024년 1분기 매출 4조4,746억원, 영업이익 4,985억원, 당기순이익 3,619억원을 기록했다.
▲SKT data
Sales of 4.4746 trillion won, net profit of 361.9 billion won
15.93 million 5G subscribers… 70% of 5G customers reached
Data center ↑26% YoY, enterprise AI ↑10% YoY
Telco LLM to be commercialized in June… Also promoting GTTA and Global Telco LLM
SKT released its report card for the first quarter of 2024. SKT recorded sales of KRW 4.4746 trillion, operating profit of KRW 498.5 billion, and net profit of KRW 361.9 billion for the first quarter of 2024 on a consolidated basis.
According to the sales announced by SKT on the 8th, the sales increased by 2.3% year-on-year due to the balanced growth of SKT and SK Broadband's wired and wireless businesses, and operating profit increased by 0.8%, maintaining a similar level to the same period last year. Net income for the period increased by 19.6% due to an increase in non-operating income related to investment assets. Separate sales recorded KRW 3,188.7 billion, up 2.3% year-on-year, and operating profit and net income recorded KRW 436.4 billion and KRW 492.1 billion, respectively.
SKT has recently been focusing on non-telecommunication businesses, but it is also leading continuous net growth in the mobile business. As of the first quarter of 2024, the number of 5G subscribers reached 15.93 million, meaning that the proportion of 5G customers reached 70%. SKT Broadband secured 9.59 million paid broadcast subscribers and 6.99 million ultra-high-speed internet subscribers. SKT said, “We will continue our efforts to discover new markets in our already mature wired and wireless businesses and actively introduce AI technology to improve OpEx/CapEx efficiency.”
The most notable part of SKT's first quarter performance is the AI infrastructure sector. It recorded a 26% sales growth in the data center business compared to the same period last year. SKT has announced global collaborations with 'Supermicro' and 'Lambda', and is continuing collaborations with SK Group companies. It is collaborating with SK Enmove to commercialize immersion cooling technology, and is preparing an AI data center solution package by combining SK Hynix, HBM, and Sapion with AI semiconductors for data centers, and SK Broadband with know-how in data center operation.
In the enterprise business, sales also increased by more than 10% year-on-year. The cloud business recorded sales growth of about 40% year-on-year, centered on recurring sales. In the enterprise AI area, including big data, AICC, and vision AI, sales increased by more than 10% year-on-year.
In a conference call held that afternoon, SKT announced, “We plan to discover AI products such as the recently launched AI simultaneous interpretation solution ‘Transtalker’ and grow enterprise AI into a central axis of our B2B business in the future.”
SKT will complete the development of the Korean version of Telco LLM in June and pursue commercialization. SKT said, “We expect to see an overall improvement in quality by applying the Telco LLM to customer contact work such as customer center, infrastructure operation, marketing and distribution networks, as well as internal work such as legal affairs and HR.”
In addition, GTAA members Deutsche Telekom, E&N, Singtel, and Softbank are also promoting the development and commercialization of global telco LLM. They plan to improve performance by learning multilingual telco data and provide regionally specialized services. Meanwhile, GTAA members have 1.3 billion subscribers in about 50 countries around the world.
In the AI service area, SKT has been providing the call recording and summary, real-time call interpretation service that 'Adot' applied to iPhone to Android devices since April. SKT said, "We will continue to evolve into an AI agent (secretary) by adding Adot's killer service in the future, and in the long term, we will secure a new business model (BM) by successfully achieving Global PAA with GTAA member companies."
Meanwhile, SKT recently announced that it will return more than 50% of its consolidated adjusted net income to shareholders as a shareholder return policy for the three years from this year to 2026. Compared to the previous policy, it is notable that it has abolished the upper limit of the guideline for determining the scope of shareholder return resources and improved it so that subsidiary performance is also shared with shareholders based on consolidated performance rather than separate performance. The dividend per share for the first quarter was set at 830 won, the same as the first quarter of last year.
SKT CFO Kim Yang-seop said, “We have reflected the company’s will to provide greater shareholder returns in line with the performance improvement trend in the new shareholder return policy,” adding, “We will further solidify our solid wired and wireless foundation, improve our corporate structure such as profitability and efficiency, and fully implement the AI pyramid strategy to focus on creating AI company performance and enhancing corporate value.”