Look, if you’ve been watching the ticker for The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (GT) lately, you’re probably either confused or a little frustrated. It’s one of those legacy American brands that feels like it should be a powerhouse, but the stock price has spent the last year acting like a car with a slow leak.
Honestly, it’s been a wild ride. As of mid-January 2026, the stock is hovering around $9.00 or $9.10. That's a far cry from the double digits people were hoping for when the massive "Goodyear Forward" transformation plan was first announced. But here’s the thing—the headline numbers rarely tell the full story with a turnaround play this complex.
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People see a "net loss" of $2 billion in a quarterly report and they panic. I get it. That's a scary number. But most of that was just accounting noise—non-cash charges like deferred tax assets and goodwill impairment. If you actually look under the hood at the "adjusted" numbers, the company is actually making money, and more importantly, they are finally cleaning up a balance sheet that has been a mess for a decade.
The Goodyear Tire Company Stock Reality Check
You can’t talk about goodyear tire company stock without talking about the debt. For years, this company was carrying around a backpack full of bricks. But 2025 was the year they finally started dumping them.
They sold off the Off-the-Road (OTR) business to Yokohama. They sold the Dunlop brand rights. They even offloaded their chemical business. All in, they’ve clawed back about $2.2 billion in gross proceeds. That is huge. They beat their own targets for asset sales, which is something you don't see every day in corporate turnarounds.
But why isn't the stock at $20?
Well, the world is kind of a mess right now. Raw material costs have been bouncy, and let’s be real, the competition from low-cost imports—mostly from Asia—is brutal. If you go to a tire shop, you’ll see Goodyear’s premium tires next to brands you’ve never heard of that cost 40% less. That squeezes margins.
What the "Goodyear Forward" Plan Actually Did
The CEO, Mark Stewart, has been banging the drum on this "Goodyear Forward" thing since 2023. The goal was simple: cut $1.5 billion in costs by the end of 2025.
- They’ve been closing old, expensive factories in places like Europe.
- They shifted focus to "high-margin" tires—think big rims (18-inch and up) and EV-specific tires.
- They streamlined the supply chain to stop wasting money on logistics.
By the end of Q3 2025, they had already realized about $580 million in year-to-date benefits from this plan. It’s working, but it’s a slog. It’s like trying to turn a battleship in a bathtub.
The 2026 Outlook: Is the Worst Over?
We are sitting here in January 2026, and the analyst community is split right down the middle. Some folks at JP Morgan have been staying "Overweight" (which is just fancy talk for "buy"), while Morgan Stanley has been more "Underweight."
The consensus price target is somewhere around $11.00. If you’re buying at $9.00, that’s a decent bit of upside, but you have to have the stomach for it.
The big catalyst for 2026 is going to be the "deleveraging." By finishing those asset sales, Goodyear is expected to drop its total debt to somewhere around $6.6 billion. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s way better than the $8 billion-plus they were lugging around recently.
Why EV Tires Are the Secret Weapon
You might think a tire is just a tire, but EVs change everything. They are heavier and they have instant torque, which shreds normal rubber. Goodyear has been winning "Original Equipment" (OE) spots on new EVs at a crazy rate.
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They’ve seen seven consecutive quarters of market share gains in the OE space. That doesn't always show up in the profits immediately because OE contracts aren't as lucrative as the "replacement" market (when you go to the shop because you hit a nail), but it locks customers into the brand for the future.
The Risks Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let’s get real for a second. There are three things that could still blow this up:
- The "Low-End" Invasion: If people keep opting for cheap, no-name tires because of inflation, Goodyear’s premium strategy will struggle.
- Raw Materials: Natural rubber and oil prices are the lifeblood of this business. If they spike, margins evaporate.
- The Debt-to-Equity Ratio: Even with the sales, their ratio is still around 3.0. In the tire world, that's considered high. Most of their peers are closer to 1.4.
How to Play This Right Now
If you're looking at goodyear tire company stock as a get-rich-quick thing, you’re probably in the wrong place. This is a classic "value" play. The company is trading at a massive discount to its intrinsic value—some estimates say it's nearly 40% undervalued based on future cash flows.
But that value only gets unlocked if they can keep those factory costs down and stop the "price/mix" from sliding.
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Watch the Q4 2025 earnings report, which should be dropping around February 12, 2026. That’s going to be the first time we see the full impact of the chemical business sale on the debt load. If they show a "meaningful sequential increase" in operating income like they promised, the stock might finally break out of that $9-10 range.
Your Move
Don't just look at the stock price. Watch the "Segment Operating Margin." If that number starts creeping toward 8% or 10%, Goodyear is officially back. Until then, it's a waiting game.
Next Steps for Investors:
- Check the net debt figure in the upcoming February earnings call to verify the $2.2 billion in asset proceeds were applied correctly.
- Monitor U.S. replacement tire volume data; if Goodyear continues to lose ground to low-cost imports, the "premium" strategy may need a pivot.
- Evaluate raw material trends for 1H 2026, specifically looking at synthetic rubber and carbon black pricing which could eat into the "Goodyear Forward" cost savings.