Business: Goodyear is without doubt one of the world’s main producers of tires, partaking in operations in most areas of the world. The firm develops, manufactures, distributes and sells tires for many functions. It additionally manufactures and sells rubber-related chemical substances for numerous functions. Goodyear is without doubt one of the world’s largest operators of business truck service and tire retreading facilities.

Stock Market Value: $3.9B ($14.02 per share)

Percentage Ownership:  ~10.0%

Average Cost: n/a

Activist Commentary: Elliott is a very profitable and astute activist investor, significantly within the expertise sector. Their staff consists of analysts from main tech non-public fairness corporations, engineers, working companions – former expertise CEO and COOs. When evaluating an funding, additionally they rent specialty and basic administration consultants, skilled value analysts and business specialists. They usually watch firms for a few years earlier than investing and have an in depth steady of spectacular board candidates.

Goodyear is an iconic main international tire producer based 125 years in the past. It is the market chief in a enterprise that has steady progress, is non-cyclical and has sturdy pricing energy making it considerably immune to inflation. The firm sells tires to authentic tools producers (“OEM”) and within the substitute market, with 80% of its gross sales coming from the substitute market. Moreover, there’s a current development with their OEM purchasers towards dearer autos, which improves Goodyear’s mixture of autos from extra commodity-like autos with a lot of worldwide competitors to extra luxurious autos requiring higher-end tires — the place Goodyear excels. While the OEM market is barely 20% of the corporate’s enterprise, this development permeates their different 80% as a result of individuals typically exchange tires with the identical model. 

However, regardless of these benefits, the inventory has considerably underperformed friends, and relative to the mid-cap S&P 400, it has underperformed by 90% over the previous 5 years and 143% over the previous ten years. A variety of this underperformance is a results of (i) margin erosion –  regardless of main scale, its margins are the bottom within the tire business, trailing its closest friends, Michelin and Bridgestone, by about 700 foundation factors; (ii) underutilized retail platform – the corporate owns roughly 1,025 top-rated auto service retail shops, however have failed to leverage its shopper model into rising a high-value retail platform; and (iii) lack of investor confidence –  over the previous a number of years, it has failed to ship monetary targets and has constantly lowered and pushed out margin enchancment guarantees. As a consequence, the corporate is now capital-constrained and unable to pursue value-creating alternatives, reminiscent of high-ROIC investments to assist rising its retail retailer platform.

There are a number of alternatives right here for worth creation, which Elliott believes could lead on to a further $21 per share in worth. Goodyear has the prospect to monetize its company-owned retailer community via a sale of roughly 715 shops, the proceeds of which might be used to pay down debt, enhancing its steadiness sheet and monetary flexibility. These shops generate lower than 10% of the corporate’s income and promoting them may generate greater than $4 per share, whereas permitting the retail platform to develop below extra targeted and better-capitalized possession. Another alternative for the corporate is to give attention to an operational and margin enchancment plan. A complete evaluate of Goodyear’s promoting, basic and administrative bills may drive at the very least 114 foundation factors of margin enchancment, whereas a redesign of their go-to-market and model methods may drive an incremental 271 foundation factors of working margin enlargement, main to greater than $16 per share of worth. With friends Michelin and Bridgestone at 11.5% and 12.2% working margins, respectively, Goodyear has important room for enchancment with its 4.8% working margins.

In its letter, Elliott states that it “reached these conclusions after an exhaustive analysis and diligence course of … engaged in thorough due diligence with the assistance of top-tier consultants, authorized counsel and funding bankers, and carried out scores of interviews with former Company staff, fellow shareholders and business executives.” This just isn’t Elliott going the additional distance however customary working process for the agency. Elliott has a staff of analysts, consultants and business executives that it really works with in figuring out funding alternatives and growing plans to create shareholder worth. And that is evident in its letter and detailed presentation. The agency doesn’t suggest a short-term repair involving monetary engineering and layoffs (actually, Elliott particularly states it isn’t in favor of extra leverage and layoffs), however a long-term, nicely thought-out and complete governance, operational, strategic and monetary plan that won’t solely repair the corporate’s issues however put it on a long-term trajectory to profit shareholders for years to come. This is the kind of letter and plan that you really want to see from activists and infrequently see from skilled activists like Elliott.

To implement its plan, Elliott is recommending adding 5 new directors to the board. Elliott doesn’t state that it desires to exchange 5 present directors, however at presently 12 directors, there would want to be some attrition to keep away from having an unwieldy 17-person board. There are actually a number of directors who must be prepared to transfer on. Six members of the 12-person board (together with CEO Richard Kramer) have served on the board for 11+ years. During this time, the corporate has been a serial underperformer with the identical CEO who has additionally retained the titles of president and chairman. I’m not ideologically in favor of separating all CEO/chairman positions. For instance, I by no means had a drawback with Warren Buffett being chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. But when a firm underperforms so severely for 13 years, the board ought to in all probability search for a new CEO however on the very least, separate the roles of chairman and CEO. This, together with the underperformance and tenure of many directors makes for a compelling case for severe board reconstitution. This is a nice firm with an iconic model that simply wants recent eyes on the board to reinvigorate the enterprise, help administration in executing their enterprise plan and maintain them accountable in the event that they fail to. Elliott stated it has recognized 5 new unbiased director candidates who it believes may assist enhance governance, improve the tradition and assist restore investor confidence. The agency has not publicly disclosed the identification of those candidates. Based on its historical past, we’d count on this to be a diversified and certified group of business {and professional} directors with one Elliott government. Elliott proper now’s working amicably with administration and recommending potential directors as opposed to threatening to nominate their very own slate of directors. This rapport will proceed for a while because the 2024 director nomination deadline doesn’t open till Dec. 12. We would count on Elliott and the corporate to attain an settlement earlier than then.

Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional analysis service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio supervisor of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments.