Robert Yi

In addition to already high uncertainties caused by prolonged global trade conflicts, the external environment regarding our component business has recently come under significant new challenges, as a result, we no longer believe it is possible to reasonably predict or forecast our free cash flow for 2018 through 2020.

This announcement may not remove all the rumours and hearsayers in the market but I hope it conveys the management's thoughts on this issue.

Dividends and other forms of shareholder returns are responsibilities that the company has for shareholders, so we will make efforts to meet them. But our primary objective is growth and that is what we are communicating to our shareholders.

We are primarily focused on M&A deals for companies that would be good fits to Samsung's current businesses, and we believe that know-how and experience accrued from such transactions will make bigger M&A deals possible going forward.

Their main interest is to increase long-term value through shareholder returns policies, so they have been calling for more dividends and share buybacks.

We acknowledge the sentimental effect of a stock split, but how big an effect such an action can have on the company's long-term value needs to be considered from a variety of angles.