台灣大 寡占市場贏的策略

■ 張孝威/Mr. Harvey Chang Prior to Taiwan Cellular Corporation (TCC), I had worked for quite a few companies throughout my career. When Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) approached me for the position as President and CEO for TCC, the first thing I did was to analyze and learn about the company. Since its inception, TCC has always been the pioneer in Taiwan's telecommunication market. In January of 1997, with the highest scoring bid, TCC received a nationwide GSM 1800 license. And by December of the same year, it became the first operator to possess GSM 1800 network operating license. In the beginning of the Taiwan cellular era, there were high demands of mobile phones, constituting a great market demand over supply. The government faced tremendous pressure to finally deregulate restrictions and many players soon entered the business, drawing an end to the monopoly era of Chunghwa Telecom. The astonishing growth in cellular-phone penetration rate had caught every telecom-operator by surprise. TCC originally estimated three to five years for penetration rate to reach 50%, but in actuality, it only took a little over a year. Currently in Taiwan, the penetration rate well exceeds 100 percent, presenting a saturated market. Not many firms can withstand such competition and by 2003, only three major players remained in the industry : Chunghwa Telecom., Far Eastone Telecom., and TCC. In the second quarter of 2003, upon careful assessment, we soon discovered a major issue at our company : our ARPU(average revenue per user) and ARPM(average revenue per minute) were both lower than those of our competitors'. This is a critical issue that chewed away our profits. We sensed that drastic actions needed to be taken in order to strengthen TCC's competitiveness in such an oligopolistic market. To secure our profits, we attempted to locate where the problems were. One of the issues that were deteriorating our efficiency was that TCC had the highest debt-to-equity ratio among competitors. It was then discovered that our company's investment in Chunghwa Telecom contributed to the most of the non-core business debt. Thus, in the past two years, TCC had progressively sold a large number of these non-core investments in open markets, to reduce our debt ratio. Finally we successfully decreased our net debt-to-equity ratio from 90% down to 50%, lowering interests paid. While restructuring our balance sheet, we also started to put more emphasis on our investment management. To deal with issues such as transfer price problems and redundant investments, we simplified the investment structure by consolidating subsidiaries and core business processes while outsourcing non-core activities. In order to support a long-term sustainability, independence and transparency are the key elements. I am extremely pleased that we have a very supportive chairman who greatly encouraged our new corporate governance reformation initiative: a more conservative accounting policy and auditing measures were placed to improve the internal control thereby minimizing agency problems; company's monthly performances were made available to the investors monthly, in accordance to the best industrial practices ; finally, a board of directors with greater expertise and independence was assembled. Lastly, up until 2001, our company strategy had always been market-share driven; we knew that under the changing business landscape, we needed to adjust our business model to survive and compete. Now, TCC has turned to a customer-value and shareholder-value driven business model. With all of the above actions taken, TCC has significantly improved its efficiency and has brought greater values for its customers, employees, and shareholders. 在為台灣大哥大服務之前，我已經在幾家公司服務過。當蔡明忠董事長邀請我擔任台灣大哥大的總經理及CEO時，我做的第一件事，就是去分析並且認識這家公司。 台灣大哥大一直以來都扮演著台灣通訊市場的先驅，在1997年1月以最高價標得全國GSM 1800的執照，同年12月成為台灣第一家擁有GSM 1800網路營運執照的經營者。 ◆發現問題 在台灣無線通訊時代初期，手機的需求量很高，造成市場需求遠高於供給，同時政府面臨了巨大的壓力，最後不得不放寬限制，促使許多業者紛紛進入該產業搶食中華電信一直以來的獨占市場。手機使用率的驚人成長讓電信業者感到訝異，台灣大哥大原先預估三到五年手機使用率才會達到50％，但事實上，只花了一年多的時間就達成了。目前台灣手機使用率已超過100％，達到飽和的狀態，許多業者因為無法承受競爭而退出市場，到2003年只剩下三家主要的業者：中華電信、遠傳電信和台灣大哥大。 經過仔細評估後，我們立刻發現公司主要的問題在於：我們的ARPU（每人平均收費）和ARPM（每分鐘平均收費）皆低於同業競爭對手，這個問題嚴重侵蝕公司的獲利，因此我們意識到必須採取積極的策略，以強化台灣大哥大在這寡占市場的競爭力。 為了保護我們的獲利，我們嘗試找出問題的癥結點。其中一個問題在於台灣大哥大相較於競爭對手，負債比率（負債／權益）最高，使得我們的營運效率大打折扣。隨後我們也發現對中華電信的業外投資使得負債急遽上升，因此過去兩年，台灣大哥大積極在公開市場出售大量非核心事業的持股以減少負債比率，終於成功的將淨負債比率從90％降低到50％，減少了利息支出。 ◆顧客導向 在改善資產負債表後，我們也開始將重心放在投資管理上，為了處理諸如移轉價格和不必要投資等問題，我們將子公司和核心事業合併以簡化投資流程，同時將非核心事業外包出去，如此一來，即可達到我們對長期穩定、獨立和透明化的訴求。我很高興有位非常支持我們的董事長，他對我們所提的公司治理改造計劃給予高度的支持：採用較保守的會計政策和查核指標以改善內部控制，進而降低代理問題；投資人可以取得公司每個月績效表現的資料，和產業最佳的慣例趨於一致；最後，董事會將由具有專業且獨立的人士所組成。 最後一點，直到2001年，我們公司的策略都是以市場占有率為考量，然而在產業環境快速變動的情況下，必須調整營運模式以利生存和競爭，現在台灣大哥大已經轉變成以顧客價值和股東價值為導向的營運模式。在力行以上所有的策略後，台灣大哥大顯然已改善它的效率，並為顧客、員工和股東創造出更高的價值。 （作者是台灣大哥大總經理） 【2004/12/19 經濟日報】