Bayman leaves Goodyear EMEA consumer presidency, Anckaert promoted
3-and-a-half years after joining Goodyear EMEA, the company’s President Consumer Europe, Hakan Bayman, has left the company.
3-and-a-half years after joining Goodyear EMEA, the company’s President Consumer Europe, Hakan Bayman, has left the company.
Yesterday Goodyear shared initial details of how the firm plans to restructure its Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business. Consultation is ongoing, but “around 1,200” jobs will be cut in the region.
Goodyear is significantly restructuring its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations in measures that will result in 1200 job cuts across the salaried workforce, the creation of 500 new positions and therefore a net job reduction of 15%. Tyres & Accessories understands that the “business transformation programme” centres on Goodyear EMEA’s salaried workforce. Furthermore, it does not impact the company’s manufacturing workforce, which has been addressed separately.
Goodyear lost $19 million in the EMEA region in the second quarter of 2023, with segment operating income down $71 million or 136.5 per cent compared with the $52 million operating income achieved at the same point in 2022.
Despite a first-quarter 2023 net loss of $101 million, down $197 million compared with $96 million of positive income 12 months ago, Goodyear executives tried to shine a positive light on the US-based tyremaker’s latest financial results. Volumes may have been 3.2 million units lower than the same period last year at 41.8 million units, but net sales grew 1 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2022 and 4 per cent excluding foreign currency effects. And Goodyear EMEA is back to breakeven, but that wasn’t enough to avoid talk of accelerated cost-cutting measures.
Goodyear reported that fourth-quarter 2022 tyre production levels were 3.5 million units below 2021 when executives published the firm’s full-year 2022 figures in February. That move was enacted in order to “control working capital given the weaker volume environment.” Now officials have confirmed that they decided to extend the pre-planned winter production shutdown into the first quarter of 2023 in the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region in order to rebalance inventories.
“Sustainability” is not new, but it has really stepped into the foreground in the last couple of years. Furthermore, while “sustainability” is often used synonymously with terms like “green” and “ecological”. It is increasingly used in a much more strategic and philosophical manner to refer to areas across the gamut of environmental as well as corporate and social responsibility domains. At the same time, others have accused businesses of using such language as a means of jumping on the bandwagon and even “greenwashing” their companies to make them appear more sustainable than they are. March’s Tyres & Accessories takes a look at all these points and asks how they relate to the tyre business, beginning with this preview of an interview with Xavier Fraipont, Goodyear VP product development EMEA that will be published in the March edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine.
This article is a preview of the full interview that will be published in the March edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine. Not a subscriber? No problem, click here to become one.
Goodyear has appointed Hamzeh Afaneh as director of its commercial tyre business in the Middle East & Africa (MEA). Afaneh has spent almost sixteen years in the tyre business, occupying a series of sales and business development roles based in Jordan and the UAE with Bridgestone, Continental and most recently Goodyear as commercial regional manager in early 2021. He led Goodyear’s team for the Gulf Cooperations Council (GCC) and near East regions, growing commercial tyre sales and delivering tailored digital solutions to customers. He was the recipient of Goodyear’s Chairman’s Award in 2022. Announcing his appointment, the company notes his experience of brand marketing, sales and business development across the region.
The news that Goodyear lost $104 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 won’t be welcome in the company’s Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The official figures also confirmed projections a fortnight earlier that EMEA’s own fourth-quarter 2022 loss of $80 million would make up the lion’s share of the red numbers. Back then, Goodyear’s Ohio-based global executives announced plans to cut 5 per cent of the firm’s global salaried workforce and official statements featured implicit references to the underperformance of the EMEA region, raising questions about how many jobs would be cut in Europe.
Goodyear reported net losses of $104 million (£85.81 million; 96.71 million euros) in its fourth-quarter 2022 results. By comparison, the same period of 2021 saw $553 million of income. Meanwhile, net sales grew six per cent to $5.374 billion in the period despite 3 per cent lower unit volumes compared with the same period in 2021.
Toyo Tire Corporation has appointed Masaomi Kono division general manager of its Europe, Africa & Middle East sales division and also, confusingly, general manager of said division, as well as general manager of the Europe, Africa & Middle East sales department. Kono begins in these roles, and presumably will receive slightly larger business cards, on 1 April 2023.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is planning “rationalization and workforce reorganization” actions that would result in a 5 per cent reduction in salaried staff globally, or about 500 positions. According to executives, the move has been prompted by the “challenging industry environment and cost pressure driven by inflation.” However it is also attributed to weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter results:
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has reported full-year 2021 net sales of $17.5 billion, a 42 per cent increase on 2020. According to Goodyear, this was primarily due to “the Cooper Tire merger, higher volume, improvements in price/mix and increased sales from other tyre-related businesses.”
The completion of Goodyear’s takeover of Cooper on 7 June this year brought with it the first indications of the scale of Cooper’s sales in the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market. Before that point, Cooper only reported sales figures for their “International Tire Operations”, which includes sales generated worldwide outside EMEA.
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has published figures that show its third-quarter 2021 sales were $4.9 billion, up 42 per cent compared with a year ago. Of course, much of this increase was driven by the company’s acquisition of Cooper Tire, but growth still came in at 16 per cent with the benefits of the Cooper merger excluded. At the same time, Goodyear executives also reported that the company now expects circa 50 per cent greater Cooper merger-related synergies than before. Specifically, this means a benefit of $250 million in run-rate synergies by mid-2023 up from an initial forecast of $165 million. And what’s more, the company expects to realize approximately $20 million of these savings in 2021. No estimates for 2022 synergies are being released until at least the end of 2021 and more likely February 2022 when full-year 2021 data has been processed.
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