Status Update

Jun 17, 2013

Welcome conference with Telia Sonra. And the reason we're here is the fact that Johan Dennerlin has been appointed Chief Executive Officer and President of this company. My name is Solomon Beckler. I'm Head of Media Relations and will moderate this telephone conferencewebcastpress conference. And with me here on the stand will be Maria Allyn Taran Blumkriest and our newly appointed CEO, Johan Denner Lind. We will have microphones available for those of you who wants to ask questions. And I ask you to not start asking your questions until you have a microphone so that everyone can hear. I will alternate and take calls from the teleconference as well as from the stand here in the room. We will start with a brief introduction by the Chairman, Marie Arling. And after some comments from Johan Denen Linde, we will open up the floor for questions answers. And afterwards, there will be a time for one on one interviews for those of you who want to do that. And please, my colleagues over there, Youssef Lin Arneson and Ilja and Kuhn are available to take notes of those who are interested in comments. But now, Maria Helling, welcome. And Jo Anne Dannelly and Harana Blunquist, please. Good morning, everyone. And once again, most welcome to this press meeting and webcasted conference. Well, I'm very pleased today to inform that we have in place a strong executive management team of Telia Sonoran. I'm delighted that Johan Denner Linde will join the company already in two weeks from now, July 1, but you will take over as CEO September 1. And as from that day, Perrone Blankhist will continue as Executive Vice President and CFO of Telia Sonraan. We have conducted a rigorous recruitment process over the last two months. It's been actually the most prioritized item that we have had on the Board's agenda since April, and the work has been led by myself and my two colleagues in the Remuneration Committee, Olipekka Kalafu and Mats Jansson. We believe that Jovan, Dan, Lind actually lives up to our main search criteria. And the criteria that we have looked for is, of course, strong and extensive leadership skills. And for me, think this is actually the most important item to be able to be a strong leader. And we think that Johan really personalized that and personalized good leadership and good values, which is very important. Experience of developing international corporations, including proven record of leading companies in change processes. And of course, Johan also has a broad knowledge of the telecom industry, almost twenty years behind you. It's also good to know that you have been working in very complicated and demanding markets such as Africa, for example. You will come back to that in your own comments. And on top of that, I think it's a bonus that you also have been working from Telia, Abir, back in the 1990s and started as a management trainee 1995 here at Telia. And that is good as well to have that experience. I know I will get a lot of questions about remuneration, so I think I take it upfront. Telia Sonra is a company that has a difference or at least difference if you compare to most large cap companies at the Swedish Stock Exchange. We have a system with a fixed salary and a pension scheme with defined contribution pension. And the yearly salary that Jurgen one will get is SEK 13,600,000.0. And on top of that, you will get 30% defined contribution. And that's the remuneration. It's very simple and it's very transparent. So that's clearly us on around. I am convinced that Johan in Johan, we have signed the right person. And I know that you are very devoted and committed to lead Telia Sonra into the future. So please, Johan. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted and excited and thrilled to have been given this vote of confidence of leading Telia Sonra into the future. Also very humble towards the task ahead but there's also some challenges that are facing us in the industry. On a personal note, I think it's also great to be coming back to Telia Sonra, where I actually started my career, back in the 1990s, as the Chairman just said. So Telia Sonra has always had a special place in my heart through my career, hopefully, I can now pay back to the great start that I got in life. Telia Sonra is a great company from the outside and for me, and I'm really looking forward to take part of the opportunities and challenges that face us. I think Telios Konrad is extremely well placed for the future in the sweet spot of the industry. And the industry is very fast changing as you know. And if we are not fast changing with the industry or actually leading the change in the industry, we have we are at great risk. Therefore, I see innovation as the crucial factor for us as telecom operators to survive in the future. We as an industry also have now a great responsibility of acting as good corporate citizens everywhere we operate, partly because our customers and consumers now demand our services so greatly, but also because societies are demanding responsible actions from us as operators. And of course, we are here to do that. Me personally, as the Chairman just said, I've been in the telecom industry for twenty years. I've been across continents. I've been in three of the largest telcos in the industry, both Telia, Telenor and VodafoneVodacom. And I'm fascinated by the industry's current challenges and opportunities. So I'm really looking forward to joining. Hopefully, can bring passion and energy that I can promise. Hopefully, I can also bring some new ideas and bring focus on people and culture because those are things that I'm really passionate about. I think I also should mention a little bit about the recent history because I've gotten some questions on that. We made a recent family decision to move back to Malaysia to head up the largest telco in the country, and that was back in December. During the spring, we have had personal family circumstances that have changed, which led us to reevaluate our decision, which we then made in the late spring. And that has nothing to do with this process, and I just want to reiterate that. And I'm not going to go into the personal circumstances around my family. But again, I'm really excited about getting this opportunity. So thank you for the confidence and support. And I'm keen to get started. I think I'm going to stop there because I know there's going to be a lot of questions. So back to you, gentlemen. Thank you. And now it's time for questions. And as Solomon said, we will take from the follow-up. We will take by phone. And this press conference is primarily held in English, but I know there is some requests for asking questions in Swedish, so we can do a couple of those as well. Upfront? Sam Schrold from Swedbank. I'm just wondering if you have an opinion about the footprint of Telia Sonra and how do you see that in the coming years? I'm thinking about duration. Do you think of expansion or scaling down? Or how do you look at the footprint five years from now? Well, thank you for the question. I think it's a little bit early to get into specifics about TeliaSonra's current strategy and footprint, but I certainly will over the next couple of months. Generally speaking, I think a telecom operator of Telia's nature with a mix of mature markets and emerging markets is positive And also with a mix of portfolios in terms of segments and industry, I think Telia is well placed, as I said. So looking good. Another question from the podium here. Liana Stobbe from Carnegie. Well, welcome, I guess we should say. And I think you have a very great track record from emerging market operations, which will come in handy. And you come from a genuine growth background. So I was wondering a little bit on how you view the part of Telia, which is not growing, how you'll take on that challenge in transforming the mature bits of Telia scenario? It's a good question. And again, I think we need to give me some time to get into the existing operations. But generally speaking, we have the same challenges across the industry regardless of emerging or mature markets. It's about finding the right model for the future to face the challenges of the very fast changing industry. And that goes regardless of emerging or mature markets, slightly different focus in the two extremes, but you can use the same business model. Are there any questions from the telephone conference operator? Nothing? And your first question comes from the line of Peter Nielsen. Please ask your question. Thanks very much. Congratulations and welcome to Thelios on Air firstly. I appreciate it's too early for you I'm sure to sort of discuss any policy statements or strategic initiatives or anything. But in your discussions with the Chairman and the rest of the Board sort of any indications now as what you will see as your key priorities and challenges for Telesen Air going forward? Well, thank you. My first challenge and my first priority is to make sure that I get the shareholders well informed and well into the business before I comment any further on priorities or strategy or anything. I think the current management and the Farrona Blunke can comment on the existing operations. Any other question operator from the telephone conference? Your next question comes from the line of Ulrik Raff. Please ask your question. Yeah. Thanks. Questions are related to what Lina started to debate. I mean your answer was that ultimately the challenges are very similar. But I suppose there is a sense out there that in the more mature markets and regulation, the deflationary top line you get from regulation in Europe and the cost management it requires is sort of a very fundamentally sort of different job description compared to grabbing market share in growing markets. I was just wondering what is your sort of interest especially because you originally planned to actually move on into emerging markets growth areas. What your sense is where your priorities in Sweden are going to be? And how are you going to focus on these more boring parts of the European side of things? Well, thank you Ulrik. Tend to disagree with you. There's nothing boring within our industry, I have to say. And I also agree with you that or I agree with you rather that there are different approaches in the different value chains on the state of the business. But there is something in common and it's about culture and people. And if you get that right, you can execute in various scenarios and various circumstances. So again, I will come back to that once I have a more informed view of the company. So that's really a question for later. Any questions from the room? We have one back there. Thank you. Thomas Heath here with Handelsbanken. Welcome to Telefonica, of course, from us as well. You bring with you experience from two groups, Telenor and Vodafone, that have often been more integrated as operations between countries than at least in the past Telefonica has been. Could you say something about how you view the integration between countries in a large telco like Telefonica? Do you see a trend towards integration? Or would you say that operations are better off handled individually and separately? Any thoughts on that would be appreciated. Thank you, Thomas. Again, I'm not going to specifically comment on Telia Sonra, but as you rightly point out, the industry is changing and the importance of various presence in both mobile and fixed is increasingly important. And I think as I said initially, Telia Sonra is well placed with a mixed portfolio and a balanced portfolio of assets. So I think it looks good from that perspective. But again, we have to come back to what it means specifically for Telia Sonra. We have a question in Swedish here from ERCOT. Our audience is mainly Swedish speaking, Swedish radio. Thank you very much. So we'll go back to English. Are there any other questions here in the room? No questions? Telephone conference? There are no questions from the phone lines. In that case, I suggest that we pause here, and then there will be time and a chance to do one on one interviews with the people on the podium here. And as I said before, Jozsefina Arneson over there, my colleague, and Irijn Krun have control of the list, we'll take it from there. So approach them, and thank you for taking your time and joining us at this press conference. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating.