The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NASDAQ:GT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Emmanuel Rosner: And then one final one maybe speaking of the agreement with Elliott. So you announced last week that you’ve set up, not just operational review committee, but also strategic review within this hired I guess a number of investment banks as part of that process. Can you maybe directionally talk to us about what is or isn’t on the table in terms of strategic options for that review. Would you in terms of assets that may be for sale, is it on the sort of like some of the adjacent businesses or could it be regions of your core higher business work, what is or isn’t on the table as part of the strategic review?

Richard Kramer: Yes Emmanuel, maybe I’ll take one step back and just say that the discussions that we’ve had with the Elliott team that we’ve been speaking with have been, I would suggest very constructive and collaborative. And I think when they look at us they see an opportunity for improved margins – margin expansion, if you will, and a better balance sheet on reducing leverage. And I would tell you we agree for obvious reasons. So that’s where we stand. So as we, as we think about that special committee was in addition to adding some new very qualified directors, we put our special committee together to start looking at these things. And as you said, that’ll be both operational and it will be strategic. And maybe I’ll just talk a little bit about the strategic side for a moment and then Christina you can jump in on some of the things we’re thinking on from an operational side as we move ahead.

But I should also say, we’re not going to get ahead of the Committee here and lay things out, but the menu, to your question around assets, I think from our perspective and as long as I’ve been with the company, we’ve been very open to looking at where decisions to make sense to add value for the company. And I think if you go back and look at our track record, you’ll find that that’s true. Remember, we sold our EPD business. We sold a wire business, we sold essentially our farm business where we get a royalty back. We’ve done a lot of actions like this and I would suggest you without getting into any specific, it’s that attitude and mindset that we’re coming to look at the strategic analysis that we’re going to undertake and I think that makes sense to us.

We’ll make decisions that make sense for the business to achieve those goals. And as we do those, we will let you know and obviously strategic may take a little bit longer than the operational but will be back soon talking about these things. But Christina, maybe you want to just jump in on the – how you’re thinking about some of the operational areas that at least come under the umbrella that we in the community will be looking at.

Christina Zamarro: Yes, sure, thanks Rich. So Emmanuel, I think as we look at the operations side, we’re going to take a comprehensive review across the organization and it’s going to be multiple facets of the business, multiple areas of focus. And so, what I mean by that is we’re going to spend time in R&D looking at our portfolio work and understanding how to rationalize maybe R&D demand. Rich mentioned digital a little bit earlier, harnessing that capability and leveraging that to drive increases in engineering productivity as another example. We’ll also look at our brands and our SKUs in our product positioning and supply chain will spend some time making sure that we have the right skill placements for customer service levels.