Can tire makers reverse share-price slide?

London: The world's largest tire makers will be under pressure from investors in 2019 to reverse a slide that has seen share prices decline by around 20-30% since the start of last year.

Goodyear suffered the biggest dip in its share price; down 36.6% on the NASDAQ in the 12 months to 7 Jan – though the rate of decline seems to have eased in the final two months of 2018.

This is not quite the case for Michelin’s share price, which has continued to steadily lose ground since the company downgraded its full-year financial forecasts in August.

The French group has, therefore, a big particularly big task on its hands to arrest a fall of almost a third in its share price since early 2018.

Likewise, Pirelli and Nokian (Nasdaq Helsinki; not in table) both posted year-on-year falls of around 28% in the value of their share prices, as of early January.

As well as uncertainty in world financial markets, the declines seem to reflect: global economic slowdown, particularly in China; increasing competition from lower-cost tire manufacturers; and recent rises in crude-oil related costs.

These factors have clouded out the potential contribution to earnings of investments in new technology, increasing regulatory requirements and solid long-term global tire-market fundamentals.