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Masataka Yamaishi Shinji Seimiya

Set new record highs for sales and profit in FY2024
Achieved sales revenue of more than ¥1 trillion for first time ever

The Yokohama Rubber Group faced a diverse and challenging operating environment in fiscal 2024. In Japan, we had to deal with the decline in automobile production volume and continued weakness in consumer spending. However, corporate business sentiment remained positive overall, thanks to strong demand for production-related machinery and equipment and for materials-related products, such as petroleum and coal products. In the United States, personal consumption was strong, but corporate activity, especially in the manufacturing industry, remained in a lengthy adjustment phase. In Europe, Germany's manufacturing industry remained in a long-term slump. In China industrial output and exports were strong but personal consumption was weak. In this diverse global economic environment, the Yokohama Rubber Group achieved record-high sales and profits, with sales revenue increasing 11.1% year on year to ¥1,094.7 billion, business profit expanding 35.6% to ¥134.4 billion, operating profit up 18.7% to ¥119.2 billion, and profit attributable to owners of the parent increasing 11.4% to ¥74.9 billion. Sales revenue exceeded ¥1 trillion for the first time in our history. These strong results boosted our business profit margin to 12.3%, while return on equity (ROE) was a solid 9.2%. On the basis of these strong results, we decided to raise our year-end dividend ¥2 per share, to ¥52, for a full-year dividend of ¥98 per share, an increase of ¥14 from our fiscal 2023 dividend. For fiscal 2025, we are targeting sales revenue of ¥1,220 billion (+11.4% YoY), business profit of ¥138 billion (+2.7%), operating profit of¥132 billion (+10.8%), and profit attributable to owners of the parent of ¥81.5 billion (+8.8%). We also plan to increase our annual dividend for a fifth straight year, raising it ¥4 per share to ¥102.

Pursuing further profit growth and enhanced capital efficiency under our corporate ethos of “Offense and Defense”

In fiscal 2024, we completed all measures that will serve as the foundation for achieving “Hockey Stick Growth” during our current medium-term management plant Yokohama Transformation 2026 (YX2026). In February this year, we completed the acquisition of the mining and construction machinery tire business of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. In addition, our construction of two new passenger car plants in China and Mexico and our investments to increase production and optimize product mix at existing plants are progressing steadily. Our effort to enhance capital efficiency included the sale of cross-shareholdings totaling ¥71.1 billion in fiscal 2024, realizing YX2026’s goal ahead of plan. Regarding shareholder returns, our successful strategy implementation has us on course to achieve our target ahead of plan, and we now aim to achieve the plan’s ultimate total return ratio of 30% in fiscal 2026. YX2026’s basic plan is a continuation of YX2023’s strategy mix of “Offense and Defense,” which refers to our use of “exploration” and “exploitation” strategies to simultaneously achieve growth and improvements. During fiscal 2025, we will continue to thoroughly implement this multi-faceted management strategy to promote profit growth and enhance capital efficiency. We look forward to the continued support of all of our stakeholders.

March 2025