Key Point of President's Regular Press Conference
Key Point of President's Regular Press Conference
Jun 2020 Regular Press Conference : President Hayashi's Message
June 25, 2020
Chubu Electric Power Co.,Inc.
Following today’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and subsequent meeting of the Board of Directors, I have been appointed as the President and Director of the company.
- I will be discussing the following matters today:
- The 96th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders
- Newly-appointed corporate officers
- The impact of COVID-19
About the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders
- Firstly, I’d like to talk about the 96th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders.
- I am happy to report the successful conclusion of the AGM.
- This year’s AGM used the company’s website for enhanced advance disclosure of information from the perspectives of protecting the health of shareholders and preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus. Other measures included taking all attendees’ temperature upon admission to the venue, and considering social distancing in seating arrangement.
- In order to minimize the duration of time when shareholders were gathered together, we simplified deliberations of some of the items on the agenda.
- As a result, this year’s AGM finished in one hour and 34 minutes, some 50 minutes quicker than last year’s AGM, which went for two hours and 20 minutes. This year was also the third shortest AGM since 1988. It was attended by 118 shareholders, which was 826 fewer than last year (944 attendees) and the smallest turnout since we began recording attendance statistics in 1988.
- The AGM heard the company’s business status report for FY2019, and deliberated on nine items on the agenda, including 4 items presented by the company and 5 items submitted by shareholders. The four company-presented agenda items were approved.
- Shareholders offered invaluable opinions and asked questions about a variety of issues including:
- Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station
- Nuclear Fuel Cycle program
- Supply stability under COVID-19 outbreak
- Dividend policy
- Approach to the development of Mega Solar power plants by an affiliate
- In today’s AGM, shareholders approved agenda items on future business deployment in new areas of strong growth potential, such as adding “bank agency services” and “non-life insurance agency services” to the company’s business purposes listed in the Articles of Incorporation. Accordingly, we will further accelerate our efforts to develop and provide new services in the future.
Introduction of new corporate officers
- Moving on, let me introduce three directors and two auditors newly elected in today’s AGM.
- Firstly, our new directors. This is the Director Hitoshi Mizutani.
- This is Shinya Otani.
- Our new auditor is the full-time auditor Akinori Kataoka.
- We also welcome Mitsue Kurihara, who is a full-time auditor of the Development Bank of Japan Inc., as our new external director, and Hiroshi Takada, who was a former senior managing director of Toyota Motor Corp. and the current director of the All Japan Confederation of Creativity, as our new external auditor.
- Under the new management team, we will continue to fulfill our mission of supplying environmentally-considerate premium-quality energy in a safe, affordable and stable manner, while striving to take on creating new values that reflect changes of the times.
Impact of COVID-19
- Finally, let me describe the impact of COVID-19.
- In May, electricity demand in the Chubu area dropped 12.9% year-on-year according to actual figures released yesterday. The demand for high-voltage and extra-high voltage electricity tumbled as much as 17.4% year-on-year after Japan issued an emergency declaration, forcing the service and retail sectors to suspend business or reduce business hours and driving some factories to suspend production lines or reduce their capacity factor in the manufacturing sector.
- Since June, the year-on-year demand has tumbled at the rate of around 5.4% up to June 24, although this is a bulletin figure on the transmission-end basis.
- Future spread of COVID-19 could affect Japanese industries and economy even further. We will continue to closely monitor COVID developments with a grave sense of crisis.
- Japan has lifted its emergency declaration, allowing gradual resumption of social and economic activities, yet our society and economy remain in severe turmoil, as evident in some 14,000 queries received about payment arrangement for electricity and gas charges amidst the aforementioned decline in power demand.
- We are slowly learning to “live with” the novel coronavirus. Our social / economic structures are changing, and so are customers’ sense of values and patterns of behavior. These trends will soon spawn market needs and social challenges we did not see before.
- Addressing such needs and social challenges is the mission of the Chuden Group, which has grown together with people of our local communities. We are committed to delivering new values and services by connecting people to people and people to society, as stated in our management vision.
- The Chuden Group will further accelerate efforts to develop services that go one step ahead of customer needs, and deliver them in combination with energy services, thereby pioneering the future and fresh potential of our customers and society at large.
- This ends my presentation.