Toyo and Yokohama have improved their full-year forecast
Global tire manufacturers continue to release their financial reports for the second quarter and the first half of 2025, and two Japanese companies — Toyo Tires and Yokohama Rubber — have announced that they are improving their forecasts for the entire current year.
Toyo's sales from April to June 2025 amounted to $1.9 billion, which is 3.6% more than a year earlier, and operating profit increased by 1.3% to $320 million, and both indicators became record-breaking for the company, and they were improved, among other things, due to good demand for passenger car tires of a large diameter in the North American market.
According to Toyo's CEO, Takashi Shimizu, the company intends to compensate for additional costs associated with new import duties in the United States, estimated at $85.6 million (calculated for the entire 2025), by raising prices and changing the production strategy, which includes investing $200 million in expanding production in Georgia. In the previous year, about 66% of the tire manufacturer's revenue came from the North American market.
The American plant will increase the production of tires for SUVs and pickups, and the launch of new production is planned for 2027. "North America is our most important market, and we are working to expand our presence in the country," Shimizu said.
In June, Toyo began to raise prices for tires produced in Japan and Malaysia, which are supplied for export. The company is also seeking to increase its market share in Southeast Asia and Europe, including through investments in product development specifically for European consumers.
Following the results of the second quarter, Toyo raised its operating profit forecast from $570 to $610 million. "We could have achieved a profit of 95-97 billion yen ($640-650 million), but we adjusted the forecast taking into account the potential impact of inflation and the slowdown of the US economy," Shimizu said.
The forecasted annual sales volume remained unchanged — $3.94 billion (+3.5% compared to 2024).
Yokohama also received record revenue in the first half of 2025, amounting to $3.9 billion, but operating profit decreased by 2.5% to $240 million.
Yokohama notes that the sales of the company's tire division grew both in the primary equipment segment and in the secondary market. In the first case, this became possible due to the high demand for cars equipped with Yokohama tires in the Japanese market, as well as the expansion of tire supplies for vehicles on new energy sources (NEV) produced in China, and in the second case, the positive role was played, among other things, by the growth in sales of passenger car tires of a large size in Europe. The company adds that the efficiency of the company's structures made it possible to compensate for one-time costs associated with the purchase and integration of the Goodyear business in the segment of tires for specialized equipment.
At the beginning of the year, Yokohama TWS (the company's agricultural tire division) announced that it would close the production complex in Spartanburg (South Carolina, USA) by the end of April, and the other day the Tyrepress portal reported that the company is now considering the possibility of transferring at least part of the equipment from the closed enterprise to the plant being built in Mexico. Yokohama confirmed that such an option exists, but it is only one of several, and Tyrepress notes that perhaps now the transfer of production from the United States abroad is not as attractive an option as it was at the beginning of the year, due to new import duties. The Spartanburg plant produced agricultural tires under the Trelleborg brand.
Yokohama raised its sales forecast for 2025 to $8.3 billion (+12.8% compared to last year's figure), and the expected operating profit was increased to $950 million (+17.9%).