The Annual Meeting of Michelin Shareholders will take place on Friday 12 May, and amongst the plethora of information contained within the accompanying Notice of Meeting document, the company shares a few words on activities in Russia. Its message is largely unchanged since the previous update two months ago.
Drawing upon information from two anonymous sources, Russian newspaper Kommersant has named Moscow-based holding company S8 Capital as a potential purchaser of Continental’s assets in Russia, including its tyre plant in Kaluga. Kommersant shares that S8 Capital, owned by entrepreneur Armen Sargsyan, has already acquired a lift manufacturing facility in St. Petersburg from Otis Worldwide Corporation.
Three months after pausing operations in Russia, Michelin issued a press release on 28 June 2022 acknowledging the technical impossibility of resuming operations there. At the time it spoke of transferring control of its operations to local management, and Michelin tells us that the intention was to dispose of its operations in Russia by the end of last year.
The official Chinese website of Nokian Tyres states that the Finnish tyre manufacturer is withdrawing from business in the Chinese market due to its “limited production capacity”.
Many tyre makers have faced difficult decisions in the weeks and months since Russian troops first marched across Ukraine’s border on 24 February. Companies such as Nokian Tyres, Bridgestone, Continental, Michelin, Yokohama and Pirelli have needed to decide whether to continue operating their Russian plants. Four of these manufacturers are turning their backs on Russia or considering doing so, but two apparently are not.
The EU ban on tyre imports from Russia has hit one company particularly hard: Nokian Tyres. Prior to February 2022, the Finnish manufacturer produced 17 million tyres a year in a factory near St. Petersburg, 82 per cent of its global output. Ten million of these were exported, mainly to Europe. This has no longer been possible since 10 July, with consequences for Nokian Tyres’ Central Europe sales region.
German rubber industry association wdk is “sounding the alarm” as massive increases in the cost of energy, raw materials and logistics take their toll upon companies within the industry, draining their liquidity and straining earnings. The wdk warns of impending insolvencies, a concretisation of relocation plans and job cuts.
Even though ANO Rosgonki, organiser of the Russian Grand Prix, paid “better than good” to bring Formula 1 to the Sochi Autodrom, Stefano Domenicali stands by the decision to cancel this year’s event and to wipe it from future F1 calendars.
Bridgestone sales revenues shot up 24.9 per cent to 1,886 billion yen (£11.632 billion; 13.764 billion euros) in the first half of 2022. However, Bridgestone’s continuing operations figures also show that operating profit dropped 1.4 per cent to 173 billion yen, resulting in 117 billion yen of profit attributable to owners (down 10.5 per cent compared with the same period in 2022). As a result, Bridgestone revised up its full-year revenue forecasts, but revised down its comparable full-year earnings per share estimates by 10 per cent from 397.58 yen per share to 357.93 yen per share.
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