SK Square Han Myung-jin "TVING-Wavve merger under Fair Trade Commission's corporate merger review"

Lee Heon, SK Square MD, Appointed as New CEO of Wavve

Han Myung-jin, President of SK Square, stated on the 27th that "the Fair Trade Commission's 'executive concurrent corporate merger review' related to the merger of TVING and Wavve is currently underway," and added, "I understand that there are no procedural issues."

President Han made these remarks at the 4th regular shareholders' meeting held at the SUPEX Hall in the T Tower, SK Square headquarters. He said, "All shareholders of both companies must agree on the merger," and added, "We will do our best to complete the approval process through smooth discussions among shareholders and to proceed with the merger quickly."

SK Square, the largest shareholder of Wavve, and CJ ENM, the largest shareholder of TVING, are jointly investing a total of 250 billion KRW in Wavve to promote the merger of TVING and Wavve. If the merger is successful, the combined company's domestic online video service (OTT) market share is expected to reach 32-35%, enabling competition on par with Netflix's 38-40%. However, KT Studio Genie, which holds about 13% of TVING's shares, has yet to express its position, causing discussions to stall.

To expedite the merger, SK Square appointed Lee Heon, SK Square's Portfolio Management Managing Director (MD), as the new CEO of Wavve at Wavve's shareholders' meeting the day before. With the corporate merger review underway and the appointment of a suitable candidate for the merger, the merger between TVING and Wavve is expected to gain momentum.

On the same day, SK Square resolved at the board meeting immediately following the shareholders' meeting to purchase an additional 100 billion KRW worth of treasury shares. This amount exceeds 30% of last year's ordinary dividend income of 176.8 billion KRW.

Additionally, to strengthen board-centered management, SK Square appointed one more outside director, bringing the total number of outside directors to four. The newly appointed outside director, Hong Ji-hoon, is a global legal and financial expert who has worked as a partner at a U.S. law firm for many years. The new non-executive director appointed is Jeong Jae-heon, current Chairman (President) of the SK SUPEX Council Governance Committee, who previously served as head of SK Square's Investment Support Center.

Furthermore, to enhance corporate value, SK Square decided to set the 'net asset value discount rate' as a key performance indicator (KPI) for management and link it to compensation.

SK Square plans to achieve qualitative growth this year by focusing on portfolio value-up and non-core asset liquidation. In particular, it is preparing for new investments in AI and semiconductors. The company has strengthened its dedicated investment organization by recruiting investment experts in these fields and is expanding its domestic and international co-investment networks.

SK Square aims to maintain its current debt-free management to enable large-scale new investments in the future and has set a goal to secure approximately 3 trillion KRW in investment funds by 2027 through dividend income and portfolio liquidation.