Goodyear at TD Cowen Conference: Strategic Growth and Innovation

On Wednesday, 04 June 2025, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (NASDAQ:GT) presented at the TD Cowen 9th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference. The discussion, led by CEO Mark Stewart and CFO Christina Zamaro, highlighted Goodyear’s strategic initiatives, financial performance, and future outlook. While the company emphasized its commitment to becoming a leader in tire and service markets, it also addressed challenges such as debt reduction and operational restructuring.

Key Takeaways

• Goodyear is focusing on premium tire capacity, targeting a 10 million unit increase over the next two years.
• The company generated $2.3 billion from strategic divestitures, using the proceeds to reduce debt.
• Innovation in tire technology for electric vehicles (EVs) and strong partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are pivotal to Goodyear’s strategy.
• The company is investing $1 billion globally to modernize facilities and streamline operations.
• Goodyear is leveraging AI and automation to enhance R&D and sales efficiency.

Financial Results

• Strategic Divestitures: Goodyear generated $2.3 billion from selling its mining, Dunlop, and chemical businesses, using these funds to pay down debt and improve financial health.
• Debt Leverage: The company aims for a debt leverage ratio in the twos, aligning with its Goodyear Forward goals, which could further decrease to match competitive peers.
• Interest Expense: Anticipated reduction in interest expenses by $130-140 million annually due to debt reduction, enhancing profitability and investment capacity.
• Tariffs: Price increases based on tire manufacturing locations are expected to yield benefits as inventory clears by late Q2 or early Q3.
• Raw Materials: Expected easing of raw material pressures in the second half of the year is anticipated to provide a financial tailwind.

Operational Updates

• Goodyear Forward Plan: The company has consistently met or exceeded targets for six quarters, embedding cost efficiency into its operations.
• Capacity Expansion: Plans to increase premium tire capacity by 10 million units through the conversion of its Allotin, Oklahoma facility, focusing on higher rim sizes.
• Manufacturing Modernization: Goodyear is allocating $1 billion in capital expenditures to modernize factories and streamline operations worldwide.
• Product Development: The transition to global product development aims to reduce the time to market for new tires, utilizing virtual engineering to decrease development cycles.
• Restructuring: Goodyear is restructuring its EMEA operations, including plant closures, to shift its footprint to Eastern Europe by 2027.
• AI and Automation: Partnering with Salesforce, Goodyear is enhancing customer support and sales efficiency through digital tools and real-time market data.

Future Outlook

• Goodyear Forward Beyond: The company is embedding discipline and operational fundamentals into its DNA, streamlining processes and reducing bureaucracy.
• Earnings Power: Focused on higher rim size, higher profit pool markets, and leveraging global engineering resources.
• EMEA Strategy: Emphasizing upper-tier products in EMEA, Goodyear is restructuring to compete more effectively.
• Investment Opportunities: Exploring opportunities in original equipment to replacement cycle integration, chemistry investments, and marketing to leverage the iconic Goodyear brand.

Q&A Highlights

• Tariffs: Goodyear expects tariff benefits to materialize late Q2 or early Q3 once pre-buy inventories are cleared.
• EV Market: The company boasts a significant win rate in the EV market, particularly in Asia Pacific, due to its expertise in tire compounding and technology.
• Asia Strategy: A focused business model in Asia emphasizes close customer relationships and localized product development.
• Distribution: Goodyear is moving towards a direct-to-retail model in Asia, providing real-time access for retail centers.

For further details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - TD Cowen 9th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference:

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you this morning. We are delighted to have Goodyear Tire with us at the Future of the Consumer conference to talk about many interesting and exciting trends for the company and for the industry itself. I’m Itay McKelly, the auto analyst at TD Cowen. I’m very, very pleased to have Mark Stewart with us, Goodyear’s CEO and President.

We also have Christina Zamaro, the CFO, with us as well. So we’ll keep this to a fireside chat session. If you do have any questions throughout the session, feel free to raise your hands. We’ll get you a mic, and yeah, looking forward to the conversation. Mark, great to see you.

Thanks so much for being here.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: You too, Tay. Thanks for having us.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Great. So I thought we could start with some of your reflections on both the company and the industry since taking on the CEO role, about one and a half years ago, I think, at this point.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yep. No, that’s it. It’s a blink of an eye literally and a year and a half has passed, right? But we take a step back for a minute and just kind of reflect on it, you know, in joining the company, first and foremost, you know, Goodyear is one of the most iconic brand names when you think about talking about a consumer conference, right? It’s literally one of the most recognizable names around the world.

What we’ve been working on is taking that iconic name and bringing it back to the forefront, right? And so, we’ve really changed our mission, if you will, to be very simplistic, very focused, number one in tires, number one in service, and we’re like, well, that’s basic. It’s yeah, but that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to get back to the basics. But part of that is harnessing the power of our people. We’ve got unbelievable skill sets, great teams are all around the world and harnessing the power of those teams, of our performance, of our product, getting it back out into the marketplace in a meaningful way, right, and doing that and continuing to move up in the, what we call the upper tiers or the upper segments of the performance, whether it’s the SUVs, the Lux, the EVs and high performance tires.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. What would you say are Goodyear’s key competitive advantages and how does the brand kind of compare by your major regions?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, it really, for sure, is about our people, right? We’ve got some of the best chemists and compounders in the industry, I would say we have the best, right? It’s one of our key IP features, key areas of what makes us who we are, but it’s our tire intelligence, just the IP going into building those tires, but we are winning awards, you know, at the top of the charts all around the world in each of the categories that we’re in and we’re really focusing of really the fundamentals of the business, which is the Goodyear4 plan, again, what we’re so proud of over this last year and a half, getting closer to two years now of just changing the trajectory of the business, getting the balance sheet healthy where it needs to be, getting us into the right competitive positions, filling in blank spaces in the marketplace. And, you know, one of the things we’re excited as well is we’ve had so much great success in the OE world and winning more fitments in the OE and as you know, right, importance as SARs come back and us winning on the right platforms and it gives us a really strong ticket into 65, 70 percent of pull through in that first and second replacement.

Interesting.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: What would you say, right now, some of the key innovations that you’re working on at the company and for the industry? I do get this question often, particularly on EVs over time, and as that mix starts to increase even more in the installed base, kind of what does that mean for the company as well?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, we’ve got several different areas that we’re working when it comes to innovation, whether it’s our tire intelligence that goes not only into EVs, but also just into all of the car park, if you will, with our OE partnerships to where we we can take our tire sensing that’s built in, ties into the connected vehicle. So, wet roads, dry roads, the snow, you name it, dynamics changing, tire wear changing, and we can make that vehicle perform at its very best. We can help to stop faster, we can help make sure of avoidance of accidents. So, that’s a key part of it. On our commercial side or our trucking side of the world, it’s really about tires as a service and it’s taking a classic fleet subscription of helping them, but it’s really about total cost of ownership for our fleet customers of us really overarchingly owning that for them.

So, we will do that, but auto inflation, deflation, telling when something’s happening within the tire through that sensing. When we look at the on the EV space as well, and it’s why we’re having such great success, you know, to your earlier question, in Asia Pacific on the EVs, we’re winning with the right EV customers, the right OEMs and the pull through is following strongly, but the same thing in Europe, with the German OEs in particular, with other classics like employer as well as Atlantis and we feel very good about the road handling, the wear which is very important, our compounding helps that immensely and the noise vibration aspects of

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely, and maybe double clicking on the vehicle intelligence and of course the EV, over time, what does that do to OE tire margins? I think historically, it’s always thought of OE is low margin, aftermarket of course higher margin. Is there a long term mix shift, particularly when you also layer in autonomy and presumably the need for if a vehicle is at level three, four eyes off or driver out, presumably you would need, you know, a lot more vehicle intelligence on tires. Is that a long term opportunity for the company?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: No, it absolutely is and I would say it’s more of a mid term opportunity as well when you think about it because it’s, as we go through that, you know, it’s typically about a 30% faster wear on an EV, just the battery packs are so heavy with the current technology battery packs based on the range that you’re looking for in your vehicle, the SUVs, the trucks, everything is pretty heavy, right? So, from that, our prowess in compounding and the chemistry is absolutely a key enabler for our success in that space.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. Maybe shifting gears to some near term topics, you had, of course, some news recently with the announced sale of a part of the chemical business. Maybe just give us a couple of details on that, how we should think about the pro formas and kind of what that does to the company’s pro form a leverage as well within the targets you’ve shared previously.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Well, as go back to, you know, probably a year and three quarters, right, in November of ’twenty three, it really has been It’s a quick journey but it’s been a really fundamental change in our businesses as we look at launching through all the Goodyear Forward practices, the accountability, the ownership of really getting our day by day cost fundamentals, our SG and A, everything in place, the plant efficiencies, etcetera. You couple that with some of the strategic reviews that happened and ultimately the divestitures, whether it was our mining business with the OTR, the Dunlop sale that is now transacted and now, just in the last couple of weeks, the chem business. So, we’re very pleased with the value and huge shout out to Christina Zamaro and the BizDev team of getting the right value for those businesses. So, in total, we’re about $2,300,000,000 of proceeds from that that we’ve used on the first two to pay down debts and to do all the right things with that money and getting leverage to a healthy business. And it’s something that has been in the eyesight for a long time and we’re very pleased to have the company in the right spot of health on a go forward.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah, congrats on all that progress. And of course, we’re sitting here, I guess, in early June. Any thoughts about just how the quarter is going and any updated thoughts maybe on the year as well? Anything you can kind of call out from some of the assumptions you laid out on the Q1 call?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, again, we’re very pleased with six quarters six quarters of continued, you know, doing what we said we were going to do and actually doing better and better when it comes to the Good Year Forward of that, that all getting embedded into the cost DNA and really our DNA profile for each one of us. But looking forward as well, know, the question around tariffs, I’m sure, right? That’s probably coming on stage. My next one, my next It is what does that mean for us? And ultimately, we see where it lands but we do believe particularly in this marketplace, we’re in a much healthier spot than the competitive set simply because we’ve got the largest US footprint and it’s another area for us that we’re looking to leverage those opportunities as those come about as well.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Could we maybe, like, kind of deep dive the tariff impact and different scenarios that you’re running? Are you seeing any impact already in the quarter or how we think about the rest of the year, but maybe even just more broadly, some of the top, maybe a couple of scenarios that could play out and how that might affect Goodyear?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, I mean, there was, you know, we believe, I’d say there was a tremendous opportunity for folks to do pre buys, right, particularly in the lower end of the tiers, anticipating the tariffs coming. So, I think things are pretty cluttered when it comes to inventory and shelf space, if you will, of that. So, we really believe that probably late quarter two, start of quarter ’3 is the most likely scenario of that getting cleared out and those opportunities really starting to come to fruition at that point. As well from the raw material side of it, for us, as we shared in the call, you know, we feel very good about the fact that the raw material pressure coming off into the year on year comparisons, right, gives us some tailwind in the second half of the year as well.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely. And how could tariffs potentially impact the premium tire market in The US?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: So, I think that it’s a little bit more elastic in that space with the just at that price point and that segmentation of the tiering of the tires. So, we’ve already So, we announced on our earnings call, we’ve already put price increases in the marketplace. We did different price increases based on the tiering and based on the location, obviously, where those tires are made. But we’ve led with that, we’ve seen others follow in that marketplace in the marketplace and we feel very good about the future set for that.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. And then, sticking with tariffs, any implications to EMEA from tariffs? There’s been some developments there as well recently

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, the last over the last couple of weeks for sure. There’s the investigation has started there as well into looking at the Asian imported tires into that marketplace, probably six, seven month type of period before that comes into an announcement, but we believe that’s got some opportunities as well.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Great. You mentioned this before, Mark, I think it’s a really important topic, just want to revisit, is the first replacement sale. We’ve always felt that that was a really important transaction within the aftermarket for good year, just given you a very strong OEM share. Hoping you what are you seeing there? Are you more optimistic in the next couple of years that channel could improve, just given that we’ve now seen the SAAR improve the last couple of years?

And maybe just give us as much detail as you can on kind of your positioning there and what you see in terms of loyalty and kind of those types of things.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: No, absolutely, and I think that’s absolutely true in each of the regions we operate, right? So, from the maybe if we start with Europe in that case, again, Europe has a lot more of the marked tires through the OEM. So, it’s on the OE, it’s got a marking, going back to the car dealer on that first and second replacement cycle is a very high pull rate, roughly 70% on that first pull. We’ve had some really strong wins there with the German OEs, with Daimler, with BMW, and so, we feel very good about that space. Same thing when it comes to Asia Pacific and the EV wins there and we’ve got really healthy business with BYD that’s winning all over the world as well as with Tesla, with others and so, from that standpoint, again, feel very good about it.

And then, right here in the home base, right, we again, winning on the right platforms. We’ve really changed our process as a company and coming in as well though, just looking at what are OEM by OEM strategies, you know, who’s winning in the marketplace, looking the, we call it the IHS, it’s a little bit dated, right, they change names irregularly. Yes, as we look into the SAAR predictions, what is coming out and us making sure we’re timing OE and then the molds we’ve got set up for replacement cycle as well into that marketplace. But we feel really good about those wins that we’ve had, winning with the right players, winning in the right spaces, you know, we’re very strong in all terrain, we’re very strong in the light truck, in the SUV and in the EV space which are really the money makers in this market.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. But, Mark, hoping you could talk a little bit more about the actions you took recently to increase premium tire capacity, I think, 10,000,000 units this year and next year. What drove that decision, and how should we think about kind of Goodyear share the premium replacement tire market in the next couple

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: of years? It’s been on the list for Goodyear for a long time, but when we talk about actually the governance and the cadence of making sure we’re doing what we said we were going to do, it’s one of the things in coming into the company is we’ve really got a robust governance process around making sure we are participating in the higher RIM segment, which is the higher profit pools and so, we want a clear need for that and this started pre me, right, of our Allotin, Oklahoma facility. I guess, it’s just one to highlight of a conversion for 10,000,000 of incremental capacity in those higher rim sizes, in the higher profit pools to make sure that our equipment, our capacities are lined up with profit pools in the marketplace. And it’s not only there, right? We’re doing the same activities across Texarkana, Tupelo and many of our other facilities, not only here in The US but around the world.

So, it’s about changing the way we’re applying CapEx. We’re being very regimented in our CapEx plans, we’re making sure we got the right CapEx at the right, you know, kind of a CapEx or asset light approach to make sure we’ve got best cost, best performance capital that’s going to convert those assets where we can generate the most returns. And we’re simplifying, we’re streamlining and reducing the complexity of some of the older SKUs that we’ve relied on for many many years, right, for volume. But this is number one in tires doesn’t mean a volume play, it really is about us standing on the podium in terms of overall value for a customer and value for shareholders in terms of profitability.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely, and sticking with mix, the over 18 kind of rim diameter is obviously very important for you. Where do you see that market going in the next couple of years, and maybe talk about the competitive set in that kind of category?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, no, definitely, the OEMs are It is very rare to see other than occasionally, you’ll see a Japanese or Korean OEM with something in less than that space, which we do participate on a focused way with the right OEMs, but by far and large, it’s definitively 18 and above, in a lot of cases, it’s nineteen and twenty above for this space. So, our engineering teams are set up in centers of excellence to be able to develop those. We’ve also changed our development process, it’s ongoing at the moment to move into global product development so that we’re going with common platforming and then tweaking those tires in terms of tread and development for that and compounding for the OEs for the performance that they need. And I think one of the things that the team’s done a great job of is the number of cycles or iterations required to bring a tire into the marketplace, it used to be eight or 10 different cycles, right? We can do that in three or less now and a lot of that is virtual.

So, not a lot of prototyping that is taking so many people, resources, money to do and they always are very appreciative of that because we can bring things to market for them much faster at a much better cost structure.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. And maybe related to that, and maybe kind of back to EVs, what has been your EV win rate of the OEMs in the next two, three, four years? Kind of what do you see your market position there? Because it seems like you’re winning pretty significant business the last couple of years with a lot of different OEMs. I’m just curious, and maybe to that point, Mark, what’s been the driver of that success for Goodyear?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah. So, absolutely are. If you think about Asia Pacific, it’s approaching nearly 80% win rate because that is the market, right? So, we need it to be at that number, but we’re very pleased with that also with customers we’ve targeted or the OEs we’ve targeted, we’re winning with those folks and we’re looking at it in terms of not only a local but on a global play as well. Same thing in EMEA, it’s about a fiftyfifty or sixtyforty mix and that’s the same in terms of the sell in into the marketplace and sell out in the marketplace of the OEs of Europe.

Here, it’s about 25%, thirty %, which is the same thing, it’s based on what’s happening in the market, we’re a little bit stronger than the market in that space because people are really finding the value in our tire technology for that, sensing, quietness in terms of, as I mentioned before, right, for quiet road handling. But we really think it’s a definite competitive advantage for us on the go forward. What is nice is though, we’ve got purpose tires for each consumer based on what they’re looking for on an end consumer.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Terrific. Asia, a very competitive market, a lot of different other auto suppliers, not entirely necessarily, have struggled with competition there. It seems like you’re actually winning quite a bit of business. Sort of what’s the success driver there in sort of what is just a very competitive market?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: I think we’ve got a very focused business model there, Nat Mettering, that runs the business for us there, does an excellent job with the team. They’re in the field, they’re in very close with the customers, not only the transplanted OEMs if you will, that’s kind of an antiquated phrase, but they’re with the Chinese OEMs we’re listening, we develop products that they want and we’re listening to consumer base.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: That’s great. Mark, Goodyear Forward’s been successful, you’ve been executing very well since you joined. What do you see beyond Goodyear Forward, as you begin to think about the next two or three years for the company? What do you see the biggest opportunity? Is it on more cost efficiency?

Is it to drive more growth? How do you prioritize the next kind of two or three years for the company?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, it’s making sure the discipline and the fundamentals we put in place, that we continue that, that it really and truly is embedded into our DNA, right? So, as I mentioned, we’ve changed our governance and our cadence of meetings to make sure that we have the right checks and balances in place. We’re updating our business processes accordingly to try to streamline less bureaucracy, less less hands in the pie, if you will, in terms of making decisions so we can be speedier. But it really is about us focusing on this higher rim size, the higher profit pool markets that we’re bringing things to market faster through our virtual engineering and really being able to harness our engineering resources all around the world and developing products three times over, one for each region, but one that can be developed all around the world. In principle, it gives us two x plus times the engineering resources, right?

We’ve set up another tech center as well in Asia to help us with speed to market there. It’s gonna We’re gonna be able to refresh our products faster, we’re gonna have newer products in and we’ll be able to take on more OE wins. But the biggest thing as well, you know, it is about complexity and not not over cluttering the plant. So, we gotta have the discipline, we got the governance for it, new things come in, old products must come out, that’s the way it goes.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Interesting. So, is that another kind of incremental cost opportunity that also accrues to better, faster product?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Absolutely, it is, right? As we continue to modernize the factory, we’re be very disciplined and we’re protecting for about a billion of CapEx at the right negotiated price points obviously, but a billion around the world for that and a regular cadence of restructuring money so that we can keep up and not get behind, right? So, we can modernize where we need to modernize and do the activities we need to do.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Interesting. On that point, Mark, to what extent are automation and AI kind of being used as tools to drive that incremental R and D and product efficiency?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: No, it’s huge for us. So, right now, we’re in a partnership with Salesforce where we’re actually doing digital enabled customer help, if you will, from customer agents and helping our frontline sales force to be able to go to the market with the right portfolio of products or the right screen, we call it, to help our retailers, help our customers to go to the end consumer with the right products and having Always having the right things in stock. With tires, you’ve got it or you don’t, right? It’s a sale or it’s not and so, we feel very good. We’ve got drops scheduled basically every ninety days with the work that we’re doing with Salesforce.

We’re starting here in The US and but the teams around the world are part of that so that we’re able to to expand that around the globe. So, that’s that’s a key part of it of bolting the AI on into our It’s not just the classic CRM or CDP or the customer data platforms, but it really is about cloud and a consumer cloud, so that we’ve got that data so that we can help and make sure that we know what’s happening in the market real time. Excellent.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: And just love to touch on distribution in the aftermarket. Obviously, it’s been a topic for the industry and for Goodyear for a number of years. I do get the question about, you know, what are the preferred distribution channels? How are you feeling about overall distribution? Maybe talk a little bit about that and kind of what you’re seeing and whether that is any kind of opportunity there over the next couple of years as Sure.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, you know, we’ve got different ways of going to market around the world, so, in terms of our line distribution, but here in The US market, it’s more of a two set distribution process, you know, to a distributor than to a retailer or to our own retail stores. In Asia, it’s more of a direct to retail through an app where the retail centers can get on or sub distributor if you will and it’s real time. That’s really a benchmarking model that we strive for, right, so that folks have ease of access on their phone at all times, boom, I just put a set of tires on, boom, I’m boarded another one, right? So, when we look at it, it’s, you know, it’s important that we have the right relationships with distribution and with the retailers. So, sometimes we go direct to a retail if it’s a large retailer or we do a middle step so that we’ve got the right amount of deliveries per day to our customers.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely. Hopefully, we can touch on EMEA. Obviously, it’s one of the lowest margin region, you’ve been making progress. How are you thinking about that region long term, the strategy?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, you know, it’s a very tough region operationally for the tire industry just with so much of the low end of the market place, having the Asian imports coming into the market. Country by country, we still do very well in the upper tiers, we’re doing very well as I mentioned of winning with the right fitments in the OE which we feel very good about that in the car dealer channel. Christina has been there running that for some months now and that’s been absolutely invaluable to have Christina’s expertise there and working with the team. But as we look to it, you know, we’ve gone through a big restructuring activity there really over the last year and a half and we’ve got another year and a half of in flight, if you will, we’re restructuring two plants that needed to be closed, unfortunately, in the Western European marketplace, but we’re fundamentally changing our footprint of the landscape there as opposed to Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, it’s inverted as we go forward into ’27 that we can compete in that market space, but again, we are focused very much on the upper tier products, not in the lower tier zones.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely. And continue to kind of think ahead beyond Goodyear Forward, at a high level, how should investors contextualize what do you see kind of Goodyear’s long term earnings power, whether it’s SOI margin? How do you think about at least the opportunity for growth margin expansion directionally over the next few years? It sounds like there’s still a lot of initiatives you’re working on internally to improve efficiency. There’s, of course, volume considerations, share considerations, first replacement, tariffs, how do you kind of think, I don’t know, of course, lot in there, but overall, the next two or three years of what that means for Goodyear’s earnings and margin power?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: We’ve really restructured ourselves as such to be able to harness that and make sure we are leveraging it. Also, making sure that we stay very focused and we don’t have 250 things you’re working on a day, right, because you know how that goes. So, really making sure that by global functions, we’ve aligned as opposed to a regional function. So, all of manufacturing is under one umbrella. We’ve got process owners around the world, so a best practice, a best process is being able to be rolled out instantly around the world as, oh, hey, here’s a great cost opportunity, here’s a great OEE or efficiency opportunity or here is a best in class asset light CapEx program, right?

So, we can do that and we’re already seeing the benefit to that in terms of just It’s a cost base, it’s efficiency base and it’s making sure that we’re really harnessing the power of one, one global team is what we’re really shooting for. And as we look to that as well, same thing on the engineering base of having one global team working global products so that we can bring things to market faster, it’s moving more efficient, cheaper to bring it to the marketplace and we can refresh things faster so that we can be number one in terms of performance that on an ongoing basis. So, we feel very good about that and, again, we’ve got our debt leverage where it needs to be, we’ll continue to work that on down, but, you know, as we’ve shared in the market, just shedding a lot of that debt gives us upside of, you know, 130, 1 hundred and 40 million a year of less interest expense Yeah. Of money that can can go to fuel fuel more profits, fuel the right the right investments and just keep us in a healthy shape. So, it really is though about it’s about the business fundamentals.

Absolutely. Maybe on debt leverage, Mark, as you kind

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: of reach your goals and get the asset sales done, next? Would you like to get leverage a little bit lower over time, is your preference or maybe allocate elsewhere?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Yeah, you know, for the Goodyear Forward, we just we set that in the twos kind of range and we’re well within that. We’ll we would likely continue to look at it where we probably come down a little bit more as we look at the competitive peer set, if you will, to make sure that on a peer benchmarking basis, that’s what’s next after Goodyear Forward, right? It’s taking the other elements of peer benchmarking to again put our sights on being number one and that would include taking a look at that debt leveraging as well.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely. We’ve got a minute left, one other kind of question on reflecting that I wanted to ask you is, a year and a half or so in, what do you see, if any, of the dislocations and perception of Goodyear as sort of the investment story, and the industry as a whole, having kind of been out in the industry executing and meeting with investors, are there any dislocations in perception that you’re seeing out there?

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: You know, coming in from the OE side, right, it’s like, okay, here’s all the tire vendors, right, it’s a tire. There’s a heck of a lot going on in that tire, you that you’re like, you take it for granted, right? But that’s what is truly keeping you safe every time you get behind a wheel, right? It’s at the very fundamental level of it. But as we as we look at the industry in total, it you know, there is there is so much opportunity and when we look at at what we’ve been able to harness in the Good Year Forward Plan to get the company to health in such a short amount of time, to improve our retail operations in a short amount of time and really have our best years in more than twenty years in terms of our retail performance and focusing on service, not just on pushing tires, but on service.

You know, it’s something from an investment standpoint, it’s actually a very interesting space because there are opportunities there when we think about the the OE to the replacement cycle and the the inter place between that, making sure as well that the right investments are being put into the chemistry upfront so that that we can do leaps. And you think about white spaces, you know, it’s it’s not only the larger rim sizes or blank spaces for Goodyear, it definitely is for the coming year because, again, you know, an iconic brand, iconic name, but we we’ve not been out there in the marketplace a marketing way, in a meaningful way in a number of years and I encourage everybody, if you’ve not seen our new marketing advertising space of still, it’s pretty powerful. It can be emotional. I’m an emotional guy, I I love, you know, I love to laugh and tear up. So, me, it’s it it just really brings back the when you look through the decades of the advancements in tech that that Goodyear has brought to the to the table, to the country, to the industry and that we’re still doing that.

And it goes back into as well what we’re doing on the go forward in the EV space, in the last mile development space, and the work we’re doing with last mile fleets that we all know and get from on a daily basis that we’ve been able to partner with those folks to service their vehicles on a daily basis, right, to the tune of six, seven hundred appointments a day just in this marketplace is pretty powerful when you think about the upside opportunities.

Itay McKelly, Auto Analyst, TD Cowen: Absolutely. I think we’ll have to leave it there, but Mark, thank you so much. Great conversation, learned a lot as always. Thanks for taking the time. You.

Mark Stewart, CEO and President, Goodyear Tire: Thank you.

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