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spk02: Good morning.
spk00: My name is Nikki, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Goodyear's first quarter 2024 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 register to ask questions at any time by pressing the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. you may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Please note this call may be recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Greg Schenk, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you, Nikki. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Today on the call, we have Mark Stewart, our Chief Executive Officer and President, and Christina Zamora, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we 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 slide 20 of the supporting presentation for today's call and our filings with the SEC. These materials can be found on our website at investor.goodyear.com, where a replay of this call will also be available. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call to the comparable GAAP measure is also included in the appendix of that presentation. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mark.
spk08: Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Yesterday, after the market closed, we published our first quarter results. As you've seen, we've updated our quarterly ordinance format with the goal to enhance our process, provide information to the investors which they're most interested in. We are happy to take your feedback on our new format as we move forward. As we kick off with some reflections, I'd really like to begin today thanking the entire Goodyear team for delivering on our first quarter ahead of plan. We are fully engaged in executing the Goodyear Forward And it is this level of momentum that is going to help us drive toward stronger results, stronger segment operating margins, and stronger free cash flow over the next couple of years. I do want to point out that it's not just what our associates have accomplished. It's also about how they're doing it. We are focused on a very clear set of KPIs to deliver the good year forward, our operating plan, and we have the governance and accountability very clear through our chain. Through my first months here at Goodyear, it is clear our associates are committed to doing the right things and in the right way. This is why the company continues to be one of America's top trusted brands. Since I joined Goodyear just over 90 days ago, it's been inspiring to engage in discussions with our associates in our plants, at our retail centers, at our tech center and headquarters, and all of our stakeholders as well, as I've worked to dive deep, into understanding the business and making sure that I'm laser focused together with the team to execute our Goodyear Forward transformation as well as the annual operating plan we have in front of us. We turn to Q1 results as we look at our results for the first quarter. We delivered segment operating income of $247 million, ahead of expectations and nearly doubling our earnings from last year. This reflects a marked recovery in our America's business. with SOI up 100 million from the prior year. Our Asia-Pacific business also continued to see significant growth, both in volume as well as earnings. EMEA's results in the quarter were relatively stable, providing a good base for us to grow. All that said, as we see our overall volume softness in the quarter, partly driven by weaker industry members selling volumes, partly due to the very specific actions we're taking low margin, low value add products. This is a clear strategy of the Goodyear Forward Plan, something that will help us to increase our margins over the next couple of years. It's a focus by product line profitability and our product should cost analysis, which I'll cover more later. And at the end, it's always about our execution. Like we've seen over the past several quarters, global consumer replacement industry volumes continued to be influenced by growth in low-end imports in both the U.S. as well as Europe. This dynamic was captured as part of our first quarter outlook. As we look at what is happening at the retail level, industry sellout was up slightly in the U.S. and up about 3% in Europe. In our commercial truck business, and like we've seen over the last several quarters, a weak fleet industry condition continued to weigh on our business in the Americas as well as EMEA. For the Americas, while sell-out conditions are stabilizing, the industry did see some pre-buy as a result of potential new tariffs on imported tires coming from Thailand. With that said, we don't see this incremental import activity as a significant headwind to our plan. As we turn the good year forward, we delivered about $70 million in segment operating income improvements during the first quarter. In addition to what we captured in the P&L this quarter, we are executing a actions to drive towards our 1.3 billion planned earnings improvement as part of Goodyear Forward. In our footprint and plant optimization, we have put together very detailed plant-specific factory plans going to the work center level to drive factory efficiencies across our footprint. We are reviewing the details of these efficiency plans with our plant operating teams together with the leadership team on a weekly basis. In addition, I spent the last months visiting our manufacturing sites in the US to support both these initiatives, to get to know our teams, and to get to know the folks on our production floor. The work in our factories includes implementing improvements to drive increases in our operating equipment uptime, reliability, reducing the complexity in our factories, reducing the number of configurations, preparing to run several products on common product platforms, as well as rationalizing our materials. We are also working to reduce overtime and third-party contractor spend as we move forward. In addition, we've announced changes to our distribution strategy in Australia, three planned factory closures, two in Germany, one in Malaysia. In purchasing, we're negotiating with our suppliers using clean sheet and should cost methodologies and analytics which are aided by tech advancements. We are implementing enhanced spend control standards and control processes to get to a deeper level of visibility as well as very proactive management of our spend all the way down to the factory level. Given that procurement plays such an essential role in the success of Goodyear Forward, I have elevated the Chief Procurement Officer role to report directly to me on the leadership team. In our SAG areas, we previously announced a reduction of 1,200 positions in EMEA. It will deliver $100 million in savings by 2025. In addition, we've also taken actions on additional 135 positions in the U.S. and LATAM during the first quarter. While headcount reductions of any kind are always very difficult decisions that we can make as a management team, they are in fact required for us to right-size our cost structure and enable our long-term competitiveness as a company. In the supply chain and research and development, we continue to optimize for best cost. As I mentioned earlier with respect to margin enhancements, we took actions in the first quarter to increase our price mix on our lowest margin accounts. At the same time, we are also working to industrialize a number of new products to bring to market and the SKUs associated with that. In the quarters ahead, we're going to broaden our product portfolio with increased premium Goodyear fitments for the high-end market as we continue to rationalize our portfolio and SKU count where appropriate. We continue to be very focused on the Cooper brand as well and continuing to grow in that area. Our retail store network in the U.S. turned in their best first quarter in five years, driven by advancements in consumer insight and the actions we've taken to improve our price and our mix. Overall, as I reflect on the quarter, I am very encouraged with our execution. I'm excited about the improvements that we are driving for the future. And by now, I've been through the detailed makeup of the Goodyear Forward Plan, inside and out. and can confirm that we have the line of sight to the $1.3 billion run rate improvements and 10% segment operating income margin by the end of next year. We'll keep a close eye on the industry volume and price mix over the next quarters to ensure we're managing the external environment while we execute our plan to drive value for our shareholders. Now I'll ask Christina to take you through the first quarter financials in greater detail, and we'll move on to Q&A. Thank you. Christina?
spk01: Thank you, Mark. I'll start by echoing Mark's excitement about the execution we're seeing from our team on Goodyear Forward. With energy carrying throughout our organization, it's clear that the combination of this plan, our team's knowledge of the business, and their ability to drive results sets us up for success. I'll begin with our financial results, starting with the income statement on slide eight. Our sales totaled $4.5 billion, down 8% from last year, driven by lower tire volume and unfavorable price mix. The unfavorable price mix was due to the impact of two factors. First, a weak commercial truck industry on our mix, and second, contractual price adjustments as feedstock prices have remained low over the last several quarters. Unit volume was down 3% from last year. overall replacement volume declined 7%, partly offset by higher OE volume, which increased about 9%. Segment operating income for the quarter was $247 million, up $122 million from a year ago. After adjusting for significant items, our earnings per share was $0.10, up $0.39 versus last year. The year-over-year drivers of our earnings are shown on slide 9. The impact of lower tire unit volume was $28 million, reflecting a decline in shipments of 1.4 million units. Factory utilization was a slight benefit. Segment operating income benefited from favorable net price mix versus raw material costs of $127 million. Raw materials were a benefit of $261 million, and price mix was negative for the quarter due to commercial truck mix and contractual pricing adjustments. The negative impact of price mix was $134 million. Having said all that, sequential pricing from the fourth quarter was stable. Goodyear Forward initiatives contributed $72 million in the quarter, with benefits driven by plan optimization and purchasing. Inflation in the quarter was $58 million, or about 3%, which was partly offset by favorable other costs of $25 million, driven by lower transportation rates. Other SOI primarily consists of the impact from the fire in our Poland facility that occurred in August of last year. Turning to slide 10, net debt totaled $7.4 billion at the end of the first quarter, down just over $550 million from the same time last year. Cash flow from operating activities is typically negative in the first quarter as activity ramps up following the holiday shutdown. Cash use decreased in the first quarter versus a year ago, given lower raw material costs in our inventory and increased earnings. Moving to our SBU results and starting on slide 12, America's first quarter unit volume decreased 7%, or 1.5 million units driven by replacement volume. These results are in contrast to the relatively strong U.S. industry in the first quarter, which was driven by an increase in low-end imports. Industry member volume, primarily representing large branded tire companies, was lower year over year. Segment operating income totaled $179 million, or nearly 7% of sales, reflecting an increase of $100 million year over year. America's earnings benefited from lower transportation rates, the execution of Goodyear Forward, and from net price mix versus raw materials. which more than offset inflation and volume headwinds. Moving to slide 13, EMEA's first quarter unit volume decreased 5%, or 700,000 units, driven by replacement. Like in the U.S., Europe's consumer replacement industry growth in the first quarter was driven by imports. Our premium segment share remained stable versus prior year. Segment operating income was $8 million and flat from a year ago. Favorable net price mix versus raw materials and Goodyear Forward actions were offset by volume declines and inflation. Turning to Asia Pacific on slide 14, first quarter unit volume increased 10%, or 800,000 units, driven by OE growth in China. Segment operating income totaled $60 million and 10% of sales with an increase of $22 million in SOI compared to the prior year. Asia's earnings benefited from favorable net price mix versus raw materials, volume, and Goodyear Forward initiatives. These benefits were partially offset by higher costs. Turning now to our second quarter outlook, on the left-hand side of page 16, we expect second quarter global unit volume to be about flat versus prior year. I'll note that this excludes the America's replacement unit volume recovery related to last year's tornado at our Tupelo facility, which I'll cover in SOI Other in just a moment. Additionally, we expect higher unabsorbed fixed costs of about $30 million driven by lower production volume during the first quarter. Lower raw materials will be a benefit of about $160 million partially offset by about $70 million of lower price mix, driven by raw material indexed agreements. We expect Goodyear Forward to deliver approximately $75 million of SOI benefits during the second quarter. Lower transportation rates will partly offset general inflation for a net headwind of about $10 million in costs. SOI other items to consider include a net benefit of the recovery from the 2023 storm at our Tupelo facility and the continuing impact from the fire at our Poland facility. The combination of these events reflects a net benefit of $35 million in the second quarter. On the right-hand side of the page, our full-year assumptions are relatively unchanged from our previous call, although I'll note we have increased our full-year outlook for Goodyear Forward given our first quarter performance and reflecting our confidence as we move through the execution of our plan. With that, we'll open the line for questions.
spk00: And at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing star 2. Once again, to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. I will take our first question from James Sicoriello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hi, everyone. This is Jake. I'm for James. Congrats on the great quarter, and congratulations, Mark. Could you guys just help me put a finer point on your full year volume assumptions for Goodyear? Because if I work through the SOI bridge items you laid out, I guess something at roughly $1.4 billion for the year. I just wanted to see if there's any update on that.
spk01: Yeah, hi, good morning. So our full year outlook on volume, as we laid out in the presentation, is to be slightly behind the industry in consumer replacement. That's all going to be driven by our first quarter experience. And so when you look at the remainder of the year, what I would say, broadly speaking, is that we should be more in line with the industry. As we look at what's happened over the past few quarters, we've seen a lot of destocking that we needed to sell through in Europe complete. And in the U.S. in the first quarter, we were cycling through a really easy comp on the import side of the house. But as we move into Q2, we've guided relatively flat volume. And in the back half of the year, Yeah, of course, depending on your assumptions for industry growth, but we see growth in volume just given that, you know, the consumer sellout has trended positively here in the U.S., VMT up a couple of points, and Europe also up about 3% on a sellout basis. And so hopefully that helps you with your modeling.
spk09: That's very helpful. Thank you. And it looks like most of the upside in the restructuring savings this year from $350 million to about $375 million was captured in the first quarter. Are there any other opportunities to potentially push that number higher through the rest of the year? Thank you.
spk01: Yeah, sure. So on our fourth quarter conference call, we had said that we should benefit from Goodyear Forward actions in 2024 before by about $350 million. And just given our experience, you're exactly right, in the first quarter, you know, we've increased that atlas to at least $375 million, which does mean that we have good reason to believe that we should be able to exceed that level, although we need to continue to execute on our workstreams real-time to be able to increase that amount publicly here. For now, we've increased both purchasing and supply chains, Based on savings, we do have line of sight, too, that was over and above that initial plan. I'd say supply chain is higher on better utilization and network optimization and purchasing. You know, we have added some new work streams since Mark came on board to deliver more value and indirect spend. This includes new MRO work streams, gray stock, and other spend control programs in our factory. So a lot of good successes there. What I would say is we'll give you an update in the next quarter. We should be pretty much locked in on knowing where we land on the savings by Q3, just given our FIFO accounting. But at least where we're comfortable right now is at that at least $375 million level.
spk08: And I would just add to it a little bit, James, in terms of we've got really strong momentum, some great energy with each of our functional teams and each of the forward teams. And as Christina mentioned, right, with this 72 million of total actions already in that are demonstrated results in the first quarter. But as we look through it, right, I'm personally, as well as Christina, we're meeting across the work streams on a weekly basis with each of the functions, be it purchasing, be it manufacturing, across our retail, et cetera. And as we look across each of the five, five areas tying into that 375 plus number Christina mentioned, right? It really involves, it's our footprint and plant optimization and the work that we're doing. We've, and we can talk a bit on it later, other questions, but we've been, Christina and I and the staff have been going out to each of our plants in the U.S., deep diving with our plant leadership teams and our manufacturing, engineering, and purchasing groups, meeting weekly with purchasing in terms of the diligence, and really we've tightened our KPIs across the organization, both at the staff level of what we're looking at on a monthly basis and diving, but within each of our teams with dedicated purchasing and manufacturing meetings weekly to ensure execution and also to add to those work streams. So I feel very good about that, along with, as we mentioned earlier, our SAG streams of getting getting that SIG out of the system around the world for better cost competitiveness for the future state. And then the supply chain and logistics cost savings are flowing through quite nicely, as well as the actions that we've taken around complexity reduction, commonality of platforms, and to enhance our margins, be it through repricing, be it through choosing not to run those other products that really don't fit into our portfolios.
spk10: Got it. Thank you.
spk00: Our next question comes from John Healy with North Coast Research. Please go ahead. John Healy, your line is open.
spk11: Thank you. I wanted to ask about the volume side in North America. You talked about the low margin product kind of going away a bit. Could you talk to what sort of volume impact that is maybe in terms of units, I assume on the replacement side, and maybe what areas of the market or retailers or brands that those are disappearing with?
spk01: Yeah, John. So I'll start here, and I'll just say we've certainly seen some volatility over the last several quarters with respect to low-end imports. And, you know, if you take a broad step back, what I'd say is that the import activity was suppressed, you know, for the period immediately following COVID. And then what we've seen is this, you know, several quarters of overcompensation, if you will, over the next, you know, over the last several quarters. You know, if I think about our share in 2023, I'd say, broadly speaking, we're about where we expected to be. If I look at non-member imports over 2023, you know, that low-end part of the market, about 20%, 21% in 2023, that's about where it was for all of the last five years. So I think what we're seeing is a whole lot of choppiness. In the first quarter in particular, though, the imports were 25% of the markets. And that represented a pretty significant increase. Non-member imports, if you will, John, were up 100%, which was about a million and a half more units than what we would normally see in a quarter. But again, really believe that is lumpiness. When we think about a question, maybe getting to the question on is the consumer really trading down, at least in the U.S., what I would say is we don't We don't have evidence of a consumer trade down, especially in branded Tier 1 tires. So this would be all of the Tier 1 tire companies, including Goodyear. That share of the market has been very consistent over the last five years. I'd say more recently, you know, over the last couple of quarters, we have seen some weakness in Tier 2 and Tier 3, accreting to Tier 4 in share. And I think... At this point, it's really not clear, John, whether that's weakness driven by consumer preference or whether that's something that's linked to distributor behavior. Because historically, what we have seen is distributors going long on low-end tires in an inflationary environment. So this is one that we will continue to watch. I think what's different is what's happening with imports in Europe. And I think if you look over the last five years, the low-end imports in the percentage of the market have grown from something like 20% to 27%. And so what that means is that our distributors are more willing to stock, our consumers are more willing to bolt on these opening price point tires. And I think that's really a reflection of the impact of the very high inflation on the consumers in Europe and also... You know, just the more recent macro events there. And so therein lies, you know, the rationale for a couple of the major restructurings we've announced in Europe. Hopefully that helps.
spk11: No, it's super helpful. And then just a finer point I wanted to ask just about the price mix outlook. I think you guys are saying price mix would be positive in the second half of the year. Just thinking through some of the moving parts globally now, with the destocking or maybe growth in the import brand, to me it seems like that, you know, has a little bit of a risk to it. Do you see that as an area with risk to the business? And how do you get confidence that price mix will be positive in the second half?
spk01: Well, I think a good question, John, I'd say by the end of the second quarter, we'll have lapsed the commercial truck mix drag. We've been seeing the last several quarters. Actually, that's mostly finished in the first quarter here. In Q2, we will lap the impact of RMI indexed agreements on price mix. And so I think we get a clean base, if you will, for Q3 and Q4. And then the volume, I'm looking at, in our back half of the year, in America, it's really strong growth in our consumer OE business. We should outperform the market on share, just given our mix of fitments. Obviously, you know, heavily geared to truck and SUV, which creates a lot of rich mix for us. And then we also expect, you know, winter inventories in Europe are down 40% year over year, so really low. And that sets us up for a really good sell-in season in Q3 and EMEA mix also. So I think, you know, a lot of good reasons to believe in price mix in the back half of the year.
spk08: I would just tack on one out on it, specifically around new products, John, and that's when we look at the premium products launching around the world. We've got some great products coming into the marketplace for season. And for the Americas, we've got Weather Ready 2 launching, and the fitment's filling out. The Electric Drive 2 as well, which is an all-season EV tire for us, and the Electric Drive 2. And on the AF side, we've got the Eagle F1 Asymmetric. We've got six sizes coming out, filling out that fitment. And then on the AP, we've got our version of the Goodyear electric drive there, and we're seeing some really positive success in both luxury premium performance markets in Asia Pacific and the continued strength of our wins on the EV segment. So all very positive trending news for us.
spk10: Great. Best of luck, guys.
spk00: Thanks, John. We will move next with Emmanuel Bresner with Dutch Bank. Please go ahead.
spk12: Thank you very much. Good morning. My first question is a follow-up on the volume question. So I think you've essentially identified two trends, right? Some of it is the lumpiness and this import dynamics in the U.S. and in Europe, and then some of it seems to be a little bit more deliberate as part of Goodyear's strategy. And you explained very, very well that lumpiness and the import dynamic and how that would move forward. I just want to focus on the second piece. I guess, how much more do you have to do in terms of amount of business or tire volume that you're not really interested in or that's not profitable and that will help your profitability from exiting? Just curious, when I'm looking at, I guess, your volume outlook for the rest of the year, will this be a meaningful factor of potential in a performance versus the industry, or are you mostly done with this?
spk08: Thanks for the question. I would start with your last statement, and that's we've taken the actions through the first quarter that we needed to do with that. We're really using a should cost and a profitability in conjunction obviously with the cost structure by tire basis and across our customer platforms. And so we've gone through to take a look at it. And it doesn't always mean that we're walking away, right? We're just working with those customers for the right price point for that product at that performance level. And so it's not a matter of everything totally going away. In some cases, it's just a reset of the price to the market based on the performance of those individual SKUs or tires. So we actually feel very positive on it, that we've taken the actions we needed to take with it. And as we move forward, you know, again, we've worked with some customers in terms of getting the price points reset, and that's actually been happening before my time, I think over really the last four or five months or so. But we took the final actions to that towards the first quarter and expect those things to be relatively stable on that, as Christina mentioned before.
spk12: Okay, that's great. That's great, Collar. Then I have a question about the Goodyear Forward plan. So it seems in the quarter it helped America's profitability quite a bit. I'm curious, when could we expect to start seeing it helping EMEA's profitability? Is this going to be still within this year, or is it a little bit more back and over there as a result of how things work in Europe?
spk08: Yeah, as we mentioned at the opening, really, the SAG actions have already been well implemented and we're on track to fully execute the 1,200 roles which were identified are coming out on plan, if you will. And if we look at year-to-year, as we said, with AMEA really being about flat in terms of the earnings, but with all of the give-your-forward restructuring activities done, as well as the two plans that were announced late last year in terms of Fulda and First of Alda going through. And that's also preceding two plans. So from that aspect of it, we are absolutely on track with the actions we've got in a man. Christina, anything else you'd like to add?
spk01: Well, Emmanuel, I'd just add that when we announced the plan in November, we did say that the majority of the actions would benefit our Americas business, it was a split of like 70% of the $1.3 billion was going to be accretive to the Americas and, you know, the rest split between EMEA and Asia-Pac. I think we should expect improving margins in EMEA over the course of the year. And then, as Mark mentioned, you know, with the factory restructuring coming more to bear next year, you know, then again another step up in 2025.
spk12: That's super helpful. Would you think that 70% holds also for the $375 million in benefit expected for this year?
spk01: Yes, I would use the same math.
spk12: Okay. And then one final quick one, if I may. I guess, what can you tell us about the process to divest the non-core assets and how that's actually going? Any new or updated timeline around that? potential future updates?
spk01: Yeah, so this is regarding the strategic review on our portfolio. And, Emmanuel, I'd say that the process for each one of these assets is well underway. It's exactly where we expect it to be at this point in time. And if you remember on our fourth quarter call, we said that we should be in a position to offer a more fulsome update on one or more of these processes by mid-year. So, you can think about that being our second quarter conference call. We are still working towards that timeline. So, no other update other than things are progressing and progressing well.
spk10: Great. Thank you.
spk00: Our next question comes from Ryan Brinkman with J.B. Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, Mark, it was great to hear in your introductory remarks that you were able to come in initially as an outsider and dug deeply into the Goodyear Forward Plan right from the start. that you were able to independently confirm for yourself the line of sight into the operating improvements that the rest of the management team had identified. At the same time, I recall you on the last call saying that while it was been extremely early days, and you're listening towards cetera, that you were hoping to also identify some quick and easy wins or low hanging fruit in terms of how the plan which you said, like good bones, you know, how it might be augmented or accelerated. And I'm just curious, you know, the last 90 days, you know, what incremental opportunities might you have found or are looking into that you think might have the most potential?
spk08: Sure. Thanks, Brian. And as you said, You know, many know I sometimes have a big mouth, but I definitely listened a lot the first five weeks. One of the things, though, in the first five weeks, which we did execute very quickly, was to put Sean Pace, our chief procurement officer, on the senior leadership team staff, you know, reporting directly to myself. It's very important that we have... real-time visibility and ability to help Sean and the purchasing team in terms of speed of execution. And so we absolutely have done that. We've identified some additional saving streams in that area, in quite a few. They've actually increased the speed of going through some of the global bid process, starting here in the Americas, but looking as well into both from the raw material stream, but as well into our MRO, which we've identified quite a few additional opportunities, MRO, contract employees, the way our contracts are set up. We're going through things, basic manufacturing one-on-ones, if you will, such as our overtime planning, our scheduling within our manufacturing facilities with our plant leadership teams. We've brought in all of our plant leaders across the Americas. We've had a had some sessions with those guys face-to-face as well as we do weekly sessions with them. And we've really got ourselves lined up slightly differently across process streams so that we can take our best-in-class performance benchmark and ensure that those are copied across the network in order to capture those savings, whether they were already in a plan, but maybe the timing was different. So we've been able to pull those in faster in terms of our execution within this year and next. as well as things that maybe weren't on the radar screen for a particular plant. We're also moving resources across plants, both engineering as well as our manufacturing resources, to speed those execution pieces as well, Ryan. So those are just a couple of highlights to what we've been doing with that. The other thing we're in the process now is more of a centralized manufacturing footprint for consistency and for us to be able to take in terms of OEE, reducing our scrap, commonality and complexity reduction, all tied in with our shed cost activities. So we've got ourselves lined up for that. We have reduced the number of KPIs that we're looking at into the top important ones for us that have the biggest lever for impact. And we're driving those on a week-by-week basis to make sure that we we have clarity with the teams, that we have ownership with the teams, and we have timing of when to do those things.
spk07: Okay, thanks. And then, you know, lastly for me, I think the focus in the plan on significantly increasing segment operating income that, you know, pre-cash flow will naturally follow and benefit also, of course, from the deleverage enabled by the non-operating or divestiture aspect of the plan, but I'm curious how you're thinking about, you know, other opportunities to improve pre-cash flow relative to EBITDA and how important that is or should be as a part of the plan. We've sometimes seen big inflections in cash flow after managements have changed the way in which their employees are incentivized. I'm thinking of LKQ as one example in this industry and I know there's rightly a ton of focus on driving margin and then getting those divestitures done to pay down the debt. But how large of an opportunity might there be around working capital efficiency, CapEx discipline, CapEx reusability, anything that you can, I think, to bring from your former employment, et cetera? And how are you thinking about the cadence of operating earnings versus the cash flow as you progress through the plan? Maybe that one's more for you, Steve.
spk08: Sure. Let me start on, Pristina, add on to it. When we think about the, you know, again, things kind of coming from my past, right, of also highly capital-intensive businesses as well. So we've got a very clear line of sight to the R&D that we have planned for as part of the good year forward and then in the years following as well, right? So a very disciplined approach on that. Another reason why we put purchasing to the leadership team of us working together with purchasing and in engineering, looking to what is our manufacturing equipment strategy, looking at the items, again, on a payback analysis on that best return on capital for the modernization activities. We have a tremendous amount of modernization going on this year, as an example, in our Lawton facility, but as well as many of the other facilities to get our cost basis to a very very competitive level, if you will, and then balancing our products across the network for looking at a best cost. So in terms of how to do that, right, all these things are tying into that working capital, as you mentioned, right? So investing in the right things at the right time, looking with purchasing in terms of how we're negotiating that, just the one, two, threes of our negotiation process, how we're bundling when we know we're going through a modernization period here across our equipment, If we know, for example, we're going to go from replacing 10 machines to possibly 30, 50, et cetera, but negotiating that in up front so that we can get best price on that. So we're setting up our depreciation schedule and conserving cash up front, but also making sure the cost structure is right. Also, where does that equipment be in place? The other thing is really working with our individual plant leadership teams around the world of looking at that cost efficiency level. And really, we're starting to talk to the plant leadership teams, not only on a cost center basis, but also on a P&L basis in their window, right? So things that they can impact. And it is things like MRO that ties up a lot of cash in a crib, if you will, around the world. So things such as shared shared spare part resources around the network and things like that that, again, more basic discipline items when it comes to our spending. We have a weekly spend control as well, quite frankly, that we've installed so that if anything triggers higher than that, it escalates. We talk through it. So it's about changing patterns and behavior while putting the system in discipline, which we already have the systems in place, but getting the robustness of that really, really strong. Christine, would you like to add on to that?
spk01: No, Mark, I think you've covered a lot of it. I think internally, to describe what it feels like, right, it is that behavioral change where, you know, what we're emphasizing to the teams is when we get to a target that we It's not that we've necessarily done the job. We're going to continue to look for what else we can do, and I think it's that never-satisfied mentality. And as we've put together this plan and as Mark has come in and added, you know, his experience and perspective to it, I think it's all about, you know, achieving that sustainability in cash flow, that sustainability in earnings. And when we look out... to the fourth quarter of 2025, we would see an annualized cash flow on adjusted free cash flow basis of like $600 or $700 million. And that's on an adjusted EBITDA of, say, about 2.7. So, you know, our goal is to not, you know, obviously to not have a good year or two, but we're really trying to structurally change, you know, the cash flow profile of the business.
spk10: That's very helpful. Thank you.
spk00: And as a reminder, it is star N1 on your telephone keypad if you would like to join the queue, star N1. We will move next with E.I. Michaeli with Citi. Please go ahead.
spk05: Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just two follow-up questions for me. First, on the inflation and other costs, can you just maybe walk through the puts and takes for second half of the year? I think first half is implied at just over $40 million. I think you've got over $200 million of a headwind for the full year. And then maybe going back to my second question on the assumptions for second half for volume and pricing, hoping you can just kind of review just the underlying assumptions for industry sellout trends, maybe your market share, and then maybe the impact from some of the new products, Mark, that you alluded to before. Thank you.
spk01: Yeah, I'll start on the inflation question, NT. You know, full year, you know, cost headwinds for us of about $215 million. You rightly point out this is weighted to the second half. Call base inflation every quarter about $50 or $55 million for us. In the first half, we had the benefit of some lower transportation rates, particularly in the U.S., pulling through. We lapped that in the second half of the year. And then we'll put on some additional costs because we've announced two factory closures in Europe, and we run that through our inefficiencies, if you will, as we scale those factories down and ready them for closure over the course of 2025 and 2026. We also have some insurance headwinds related to the tightness in the market, but also some of the claims activity that we've had over the last year. So that's the first half, second half story on costs. As I look at volume more broadly, and we talked through this a little bit earlier, I'd say we have good expectations for stability, I guess I would say, in Q2. We've got a volume about flat, and that's good growth in OE, still continuing, and maybe a little bit of weakness in replacements And then as we look to the back half of the year, and I guess I would also say channel inventories, you know, in the U.S. and Europe are healthy. I would say the U.S. is down about 4% compared to year-end. EMEA is down 8% on a year-over-year basis. Year-over-year comp, there's more important because we have these different seasonalities. And all of that time, you'd say that the consumer has been resilient. So sell-outs in Europe is up 3%, sell out in the U.S. is up, you know, it's been up kind of 1% or so the last several quarters. So expecting, you know, a decent market in the back half of the year, you know, even coming into the year, our thoughts were that we would see stronger growth in the back half than the first half, just knowing what we needed to move through as far as channel inventory, but we think the setup is good. Specifically, if I take you through a little bit of the regions, because that may be helpful too, the Americas should have really good OE growth in the back half. That's our Goodyear-specific mix of fitments. So we'll gain share. We talked about that earlier. And then in EMEA, I mentioned this earlier too, winter tire inventory is down 40%. and just very low levels. So it should indicate a good restocking for us in the third quarter. And Asia Pacific has just continued to see growth. We have some tougher comps in OE in the second half, but replacement should still be pretty positive for us. So feeling good about volume, price mix in the second half. And then Mark talked you through some of the new product introductions. And a lot of that's... kind of two things happening. One, we're releasing new products, sort of opening up the aperture on the SKU portfolio, the number of SKUs that we're offering at the more premium end of the market, and then rationalizing SKUs at the lower end, which is all really supportive of Mix as well.
spk05: Terrific. That's all very, very helpful. Thank you.
spk00: You're welcome. Thank you. And this will conclude our Q&A session as well as our conference call. Thank you all for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.
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