The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company - Q3 2023
November 7, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning. My name is Nikki, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Goodyear's third quarter 2023 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After some opening remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. You may raise your hand to ask questions over the phone by pressing the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question from the queue by pressing star two. Today on the call, we have Rich Kramer, Goodyear's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Christina Zamarro, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, Goodyear will refer to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements involve risks, assumptions, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
For more information on the most significant factors that could affect future results, please refer to the Important Disclosures section of Goodyear's third quarter 2023 investor letter and their filings with the SEC, which can be found on their website at investor.goodyear.com, where a replay of this call will also be available. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures that may be discussed on today's call to the comparable GAAP measures is also included in the investor letter. I will now turn the call over to Rich Kramer, Chairman and CEO.
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Great. Thank you, Nikki. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today. By now, you've seen our investor letter covering Q3 results, and also an announcement that we'll be with you again next Wednesday, November 15th, with an update on the results coming out of our strategic and operating review. Now, with that in mind, we're happy to take questions on the quarter this morning, but I'd ask that you hold any questions related to the review until next week, when we'll be able to say more. So thank you for that. And Nikki, with that, let's go ahead and take the first question.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing star two. Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I will take our first question from Rod Lache with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Rod Lache (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Good morning. Was hoping to ask two questions, maybe just higher level. I know you don't want to get into any details on the strategic and operational review, but just first of all, at a high level, maybe you could talk a little bit about the Europe business, which is still quite weak with a 1.5% margin. And just at a high level there, there's the worry that it's a very structurally challenging market that would require a lot of investment. Right now, your restructuring typically take $3-$4 of restructuring cash for every $1 of savings. So could you maybe just talk to us a little bit about the changes that are being made there, and whether some of the...
You see some structural changes that make this more fixable? And on the strategic side, I expect that you'll give us more specifics over the next couple of weeks, but any at a high level, any indications of interest that you're assessing on businesses within Goodyear?
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Yeah, yeah, Rod, first of all, you know, I think we would agree with you relative to the performance, you know, of EMEA. You may recall, we said our near-term goal was to get back to the, you know, sort of the $50 million pre-COVID $50 million per quarter run rate. Q3, while a little bit better than Q2, certainly is well below that run rate, and that's the issue that needs to be addressed, to your point. You know, I point out, again, as you know, the industry is still really challenged relative to 2019.
You know, if you've seen in our investor letter, we included the 2019 numbers, where you see, you know, the consumer business is down, let's call it, still 15%, and the truck business, 22% versus 2019. So look, it's not back to normal. But having said that, you know, to your point, we've been and are evaluating EMEA and looking at, you know, looking at all options to generate value in the near-term and continuing to assess sort of the long-term solutions as well, given the macro environment of what's going on over there. And particularly, I think we've all seen sort of the recent sort of number of articles talking about the ICE to EV conversion, the competitive challenges, the high cost of, you know, doing business there, and the like.
I think that's the tough environment that you've referred to. So I'd say, Rod, you know, near-term, like we're acting now, and I'd say more to come. What we're doing now is, as you've pointed out, we've announced already some manufacturing and some plant actions there, and some SAG actions as well over the last two quarters. You've also seen some competitors do some similar things like that. And also, in the near-term, what we're looking to do is make sure that we stabilize those earnings in the near-term and not lose the benefit of those cost savings that we've done, as we know that's happened in the past as well.
So I'm gonna go back to my opening statement and say, look, we are continuing to actively assess this, including with our Review Committee, and I would just say more comments to come next week as we look at this. But it is certainly a challenging area, Rod. I would agree with you.
Rod Lache (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
And on the IOIs, just at a very high level, are you receiving any indications of interest from other players in your businesses? Just as it's pretty well known that you're going through the strategic review, and you'll have more detail to come, but can you just offer any kind of high-level comments on that?
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Yeah, Rod, again, I'd have to say, we'll be back to you next Wednesday on a separate call. You know, the committee is doing an all-inclusive, including EMEA, a comprehensive review, evaluating all the options, again, with the idea of maximizing shareholder value. So we'll come back to you on Wednesday.
Rod Lache (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. Then just maybe one thing that you may be able to answer is just, you've had a pretty nice improvement in raw materials versus net pricing again this quarter. But obviously, oil prices are starting to move in an adverse direction. Any thoughts on how things are kind of shaping up into early 2024?
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Yeah, I mean, Rod, maybe I'll let Christina jump in. I would just maybe add to your point, you know, we're still seeing a very stable pricing environment in Q3. You know, we continue to see that in October as well. And, you know, our business this quarter really focused on those areas where we can drive value, again, which is that premium part of the market, where our value proposition holds up really well. And that's, you know, that's what we did, that's what we saw. And I would tell you, you know, that part of the market, even as we get into 2024, and Rod, you'll remember this, is we sort of bifurcate the market.
The premium part of the market still has the dynamics that are favorable to us. Certainly, in terms of segments, it's the profitable—that's the most profitable profit pool, if you will, of the market. It's where we have 18-inch above growing fairly significantly, I think about 7% in 2023. Our products, our brand, our technology, both Goodyear and Cooper, play really, really well there. And again, the demand-to-supply dynamics still work in our favor. And I think that's what you saw in Q3. That's what you'll see in Q4 as we move ahead. And look, maybe I'll turn it over to Christina.
We'll, we'll certainly still see some inflation coming at us, and you know, you'd be right to think that we're gonna, we're gonna go to, to offset that in the marketplace with the, the value of our products. But, but Christina, you might wanna jump in on it.
Christina Zamarro (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. Hi, Rod. So I'll just, you know, anchor us back to what we said on the second quarter call, and we had given some guidance for the first half of next year, indicating that we thought our raw material tailwind would be about $400 million over the first half. With the increase in spot rates across our base commodities, we would say that feedstocks are down about $120 million since then, so implying a benefit of about $280 million in the first half. I think we, right now, would still see a benefit in Q3, maybe a slight headwind in Q4. But we are continuing to assess all opportunities on non-feedstock savings as well. Some of those energy transportation costs are coming down.
So we'll continue to refine the assumptions and come back to you on our fourth quarter call, but that's how we're seeing it right now.
Rod Lache (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you very much.
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Thanks, Rod.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. And once again, it is star and one on your touchtone phone if you would like to join the queue, star and one. We will move next with James Picariello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Richard Kramer (Chairman, CEO, and President)
Good morning, James.
James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)
Just for the fourth quarter guidance framework, if we want to call it that, the only missing piece, and you know, thank you, you know. Of course, we continue to appreciate the color on the quarterly outlook roll-up. The only missing piece would be the other line, right? So in the third quarter, for instance, you had your chemicals business incur $21 million headwind, $32 million overall for others. How should we be thinking about that one line item in the 4Q guidance for SOI?
Christina Zamarro (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, James, so we've indicated a $15 million SOI impact from the fires that impacted our factory in Poland in the third quarter. That's a discrete item, and that is what will be shown in the other. We won't have a continuing impact from chemical sales like we saw earlier in the year. We're lapping that comp in Q4.
James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)
Okay, so excluding the fire impact, the other line should be something close to neutral, is what you're saying?
Christina Zamarro (EVP and CFO)
Correct. Yep.
James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)
Okay, understood. And then, as we think about restructuring spend and free cash flow for next year, and, you know, just focusing on, you know, the series of actions that you guys have announced, you know, throughout this year with detail on what the intended, you know, cash spend is for those actions, can you speak to what cash restructuring could look like for next year relative to the $100 million that you're guiding for this year?
Christina Zamarro (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, so we've announced programs, you know, in-flight programs so far this year, totaling $100 million in savings for 2024. And Rich mentioned earlier a couple of programs in EMEA, one that was a larger SG&A restructuring program, also a reduction in our production at a Poland factory. And then there's also been an announcement related to a change in our go-to-market model in the Asia Pacific, in Australia in particular. So, with those in-flight programs and what's been announced to date, restructuring cash next year would be around $300 million in 2024. Those programs also have a stub into 2025 of about $60 million.
James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)
Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Christina Zamarro (EVP and CFO)
Mm-hmm.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. This does conclude our Q&A session, as well as our conference call. Thank you all for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.