With a few notable exceptions, major players in the global tire industry enjoyed growth in sales and earnings in fiscal 2022.
After all was said and done, the top of the ranking is very familiar: the top 11 companies hold the same position as the year before.
The 2023 Global Tire Report is available in the Data Store, where you'll find the ranking of the top 75 tire makers of 2023, sales and earnings comparisons, sales per employee, a list of global tire facilities and more.
Michelin retained the No. 1 ranking with tire-related revenue of $28.3 billion, comfortably ahead of No. 2 Bridgestone's estimated tire-centric total of $26.6 billion.
Goodyear—with a full year of revenue from the Cooper Tire & Rubber assets acquired in early 2021 now incorporated—and Continental A.G. are ensconced comfortably at Nos. 3 and 4, with revenue of $17.9 billion and $12.4 billion, respectively.
Goodyear's acquisition of Cooper has been central to the company's growth of nearly 43 percent since 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic took root.
The first change comes at No. 12, occupied this year by China's Sailun Group Co. Ltd., based on fiscal 2022 revenue of $3.29 billion.
The vast majority—22 of the 27—publicly held companies tracked for this report enjoyed double-digit growth in fiscal 2022 over 2021 as the world's major market economies continued to rebound from the depths of the COVID-19-induced economic malaise of 2020 and the recovery year of 2021.
Michelin and Kumho Tire Co. Inc. topped the growth charts with revenue improvements of 39.7 percent and 36.8 percent, respectively. Only the Taiwanese companies Cheng Shin Rubber Industries Ltd. and Nankang Rubber Tire Corp. reported lower sales last year versus 2021.
Exceptions to the strong growth trend were companies from China, the majority of which saw sales decline, dragged down by a sluggish domestic market and the continued existence of trade barriers in place by a growing number of international markets. Sailun Group was one of the few to report increased sales last year over 2021.
The scale and impact of the U.S.' import duties on Chinese products are well documented. More recently, South Africa imposed a package of antidumping duties on new pneumatic tires originating from China. On July 28, the International Trade Commission of South Africa (ITAC) announced duties ranging from 7.18 percent to 43.6 percent on passenger and truck/bus tires manufactured in China.
According to ITAC, the "dumped imports" gained market share while the domestic industry lost market share, and it is "unable to produce at full capacity."
At the same time, authorities in Mexico are evaluating potential import duties on tires from China in response to petitions from the domestic tire manufacturing industry there. Any potential action there is not expected before 2024, however, sources indicate.
Overall, the size of the global market, as expressed in U.S. dollars, grew only marginally as shifting currency exchange rates ate into sales gains many companies enjoyed in their home reporting currencies.
Rubber News translates the various tire makers' revenues into dollars using an average annual exchange rate, so as to avoid temporary swings in the values of various currencies.
Nevertheless, the averages for 2022 versus 2021 for most of the major currencies shifted measurably, by double-digits in many cases, as many other national economies fared worse than the U.S.
The value of the Japanese yen/U.S. dollar exchange rate, for example, shifted 20 percent year over year. The euro/dollar rate moved 12.4 percent.
That anomaly meant most of the revenue gains reported by the leading tire makers in their home reporting currencies were for the most part negated when being reported in dollars.
The retrenchment on the part of many Chinese companies and the currency-rate situation combined to leave the estimated world value of the tire industry only marginally better than that for 2021—$188.6 billion versus $188 billion.
For the annual Top 75 Tire Makers ranking, Rubber News looks at the tire makers' revenue generated from the sale of tires they've manufactured, in order to achieve a more equitable apples-to-apples comparison.
Excluded are items such as third-party sales of materials (steel cord, synthetic rubber, carbon black, etc.) as well as any non-tire-related revenue and non-tire revenue (auto service, e.g.) generated by a tire maker's company-owned retail or commercial tire sales networks.
Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear and Continental, for example, report hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars in such revenue from their respective auto- or truck-servicing networks.
Based on the various companies' performances through the first half of 2023, the ranking order of the top dozen or so companies isn't likely to change much for the full year.
The "wild card" in the deck is Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd., whose acquisition of Trelleborg Wheel Systems—concluded in May after more than a year of due diligence and other considerations—eventually will boost the Japanese tire maker's full-year revenue by $1 billion or more.
With that much additional revenue, YRC will be poised to challenge Pirelli & C. S.p.A. and Hankook Tire & Technology Co. Ltd. for the No. 6 spot on the ranking as all of them push toward $7 billion in annual tire-related sales. Depending on these three firms' growth, as well as that by Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd., this could evolve into a four-way scrap for No. 5.
For fiscal 2023, the impact will be a bit less, since the deal didn't close officially until May. Therefore YRC's accounts will include seven months of TWS-related sales.
This year's ranking includes four newcomers.
Companies ranked in the Top 75 this year are based in 18 nations, with China (31) having the most. Three Chinese companies, Zhongce Rubber Group Co. Ltd. (No. 9); Sailun Group (No. 12); and Linglong Group Co. Ltd. (No. 17), are ranked among the Top 20.
Other countries represented are: India with eight companies; Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the U.S. with four each; Italy and Turkey, three each; Pakistan, Russia and Vietnam, two each; and one each from Argentina, Belarus, Finland, France, Germany, Iran, Singapore and Thailand.
Collectively, the top 10 represent $115 billion in sales, or roughly 61 percent of the global total.
The average sales/employee for the top-ranked companies that publish employee numbers was $223,437, up 3.4 percent over the fiscal 2021 figure.
Nokian Tyres generated the most sales per employee, $377,906, ahead of Balkrishna Industries Ltd. ($360,017) and Toyo Tire Corp. ($358,124).
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