ktis

KTis was established in 2001 when KT spun off its 114 directory assistance business, and it listed on the KOSPI in 2010 as KT group's customer service subsidiary.

Its operations consist of running the KT customer center for the parent's product and service inquiries, operating outsourced contact centers (BPO) for external clients across finance, healthcare, public sector and retail, plus a retail distribution business and the 114 directory assistance service.

Based on the most recent disclosed breakdown, the KT customer center accounts for 44.6% of revenue, general (third-party) contact center operations 32.4%, the retail business 18.7%, while directory assistance has fallen to just 3.1%.

KTis operates contact centers for more than 120 institutions and is combining its operational experience with KT group's AI technology to pursue a transition toward becoming an 'AX Contact Platform Company.' Notably, it has embedded KT's cloud-based AICC solution, the A'Cen Cloud consulting application, into its own contact center operations, commercializing AI call summarization and chatbot/voicebot features.

Its former digital advertising business (including elevator advertising) was spun off and sold during 2025 and is no longer part of current operations.

On the competitive front, Ubase Group, the country's largest BPO operator, along with fellow KT group affiliate KTcs and Hyosung ITX, compete in the domestic contact center and AICC market.

The KT customer center business provides a stable revenue base rooted in a captive contract structure with the parent, but this also comes with a structurally high degree of dependence on KT.

KTis's consolidated revenue rose for three straight years, from KRW 535.78 billion in 2022 to KRW 592.96 billion in 2023 and KRW 603.90 billion in 2024, before slipping slightly to KRW 588.76 billion in 2025.

Operating profit, however, climbed steadily from KRW 19.54 billion in 2022 to KRW 24.74 billion in 2025, with operating margin improving from 3.6% to 4.2% over the same period.

Net income attributable to owners declined from KRW 15.92 billion in 2022 to KRW 11.86 billion in 2024 before surging to KRW 36.37 billion in 2025, a jump attributable to a non-operating gain from spinning off and selling the digital advertising business during the year.

This one-off effect pulled the officially disclosed 2025 dividend payout ratio down to 11.8%, though the normalized payout ratio excluding that gain is estimated at 33.9%. The debt ratio improved markedly as well, falling from 125.8% in 2024 to 88.6% in 2025.

Operating cash flow, however, declined to KRW 36.21 billion in 2025 from KRW 61.27 billion in 2024, suggesting much of the net income increase came from a disposal gain with limited cash impact.

On a quarterly basis, revenue was KRW 127.07 billion with operating profit of KRW 7.62 billion and owner net income of KRW 5.48 billion in Q2 2025; by Q1 2026, revenue had grown to KRW 154.90 billion but operating profit eased to KRW 5.22 billion and owner net income to KRW 4.77 billion.

Q2 2026 then showed a recovery, with revenue of KRW 155.36 billion, operating profit of KRW 7.13 billion and owner net income of KRW 5.79 billion, both profit lines rebounding from the prior quarter.

Korea's contact center and BPO industry is being rapidly reshaped by generative AI adoption.

According to an industry column, the domestic contact center workforce has fallen 6.05% over two years to roughly 106,725 people, as AI absorbs simple repetitive inquiries while specialized counseling skills and AI utilization capability become the new competitive benchmark.

Field experts, however, argue that AI is moving toward collaboration with human agents rather than wholesale replacement.

In practice, even when AI handles simple inquiries upfront, completion rates remain only 20-30%, with the remaining cases still routed to human agents, and the total number of domestic call center workers, around 200,000, has not meaningfully declined.

Ubase Group, the country's largest BPO operator, has pursued a "hybrid AICC" strategy that clearly divides roles between AI and human agents while building its own small language model (sLM) to internalize the technology.

Against this backdrop, BPO companies are shifting from an "OEM-style" model centered on staffing supply toward an "ODM-style" model that co-designs AI systems alongside operations.

As a KT group affiliate, KTis is pursuing its AICC transition on the back of stable parent-company volume, positioning it somewhat differently from purely private-sector BPO operators such as Ubase Group.

KTis's board approved its first mid-term shareholder return policy for the 2026-2028 fiscal years at its September 23 meeting. The policy sets 40% of adjusted net income as the return funding base, ten percentage points above the roughly 30% level the company had customarily applied in the past.

The return method prioritizes cash dividends first, with any remaining funds used to buy back and cancel treasury shares, and starting in 2027 the company plans to move to a semi-annual dividend system paying out twice a year alongside the regular year-end dividend.

At the same board meeting, the company decided to cancel 3,397,048 of its 4,229,048 treasury shares (9.76% of total shares outstanding, 80.4% of treasury holdings) on October 30, a move that reduces total shares outstanding without reducing paid-in capital.

The remaining 832,000 treasury shares are earmarked for employee compensation purposes. The company plans to calculate and execute specific shareholder return amounts every February from 2027 through 2029, with details to be finalized through future board resolutions and shareholder meeting approvals.

On the operating side, KTis continues to pursue efficiency gains by upgrading its AICC solutions to shorten post-call processing time, and management has framed AI as an "opportunity, not a crisis" for the contact center business, outlining a roadmap evolving from AICC to an AI-transformation (AX) contact center and, longer term, toward autonomous ("agentic") AICC.