The Goodyear Rubber & Tire Co. continues to look at whether and to whom to sell its chemicals business as part of a restructuring plan, company executives said Friday.
The Akron-based company has already closed a $905 million deal to sell its off-the-road tire company to The Yokohama Rubber Co. And it announced last month a $701 million sale and transition deal to offload the Dunlop tire brand to Sumimoto Rubber Industries. The deal is expected to close later this year.
Both deals are part of the Goodyear Forward plan, announced in November of 2023. The plan aimed to reduce costs by more than $1 billion by the end of this year while optimizing Goodyear’s portfolio and increasing margins on all of its businesses — consumer tires, commercial tires and aviation.
So far, the plan is working better than expected, Goodyear CEO and President Mark Stewart said. In 2024, it helped the company to the tune of $480 million.
In a call with investors, Stewart said the company exceeded its targets throughout the year, leading to the first year since 2015 — excluding the pandemic recovery period — that all three of its business margins experienced growth.
“It’s a truly remarkable outcome,” he said.
Restructuring plan continues to leadership structure
The future of the chemicals business has yet to be determined, said Christina Zamarro, Goodyear’s executive vice president and CFO. She said the review of that business started later than the off-the-road tire and Dunlop reviews had but remains in process. Private equity firms and strategic buyers are both being considered.
As that review goes on, the company is enjoying success in other parts of its restructuring plan. It’s optimizing plants, changing purchasing, analyzing its supply chain and making other adjustments to continue to save money and reshape the company.
Additionally, Goodyear is restructuring its leadership team to be more global — instead of regional. Stewart said now, each of the company’s regions manages its own product development, sourcing and manufacturing. But a global realignment will allow Goodyear to quickly innovate, optimize and standardize its products, he said — meaning lower costs and better service.
The company named a new global head of manufacturing and supply chain last month; other shifts to a more global structure will occur throughout the year, a spokesperson for the company said.
Tariffs will affect Goodyear, but how remains to be seen
Goodyear is watching the effects of tariffs on its businesses, Stewart said. There has been an increase in low-cost tire imports from Southeast Asia that compete with Goodyear’s higher-end tires; Stewart said over the past two years, the increase has been “unprecedented.”
He said the effect of new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump against several countries, including Mexico and Canada, remains to be seen. The company sources materials from the United States, Mexico and Canada, Stewart said, and has been “quite active in our discussions with government officials,” emphasizing that Goodyear has the largest manufacturing footprint in the country.
In the meantime, he said, Goodyear is working to mitigate the effects of tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico — a situation he expects to be fluid. Zamarro said the impacts of tariffs are “difficult to predict,” but the benefits of the Goodyear Forward cost-saving program will help offset those effects.
The company made $76 million for the last three months of 2024, as compared to a loss of $291 million for the same period in 2023. For all of 2024, it had a $70 million profit as compared to losses of $689 million in 2023.