Pirelli reports growth in sales, net income; appoints new GM for industrial tyres' biz

Pirelli's 2015 fiscal's first-half financials are out and the company has reported higher operating and net income on the 6.4 per cent higher sales.

The pre-tax operating income of $498.4 million is 4.8 per cent higher as compared to the corresponding period of last year, while the net income of $235.9 million showed a increase of 10 per cent. Although the sales increased to $3.55 billion, the growth was uneven. The revenue from the consumer segment increased by 10.2 per cent, compensating for a 5.8 per cent drop in revenue collected from industrial business units.

The revenue collected from North America contributed 13.4 per cent to the global revenue and North American revenues increased by 21 per cent to approximately $475 million. According to Pirelli, the growth came primarily from the premium car tyre business. The company reported that most evident premium tyre growth was reported from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa, and Russia. This growth helped push the premium segment to 59.4 per cent of the consumer tyre division revenues, improvement of 3 percentage point compared to last year.

The premium tyre segment positively affected sales on the global level, which is evident from the 10.4 per cent volume growth, in line with 2015 guidance. Positive Price/Mix component was another factor that benefited the sales. Efficiency improvement also contributed $41 million to the company's earnings.

According to Pirelli, the drop in industrial segment sales was due to weakness in South American OE sector and low demand in Latin American and Chinese replacement markets.

In addition to this, the company also appointed Lorenzo Sistino as the General Manager for its industrial business. Previously, Sistino was President of commercial vehical producer Iveco S.p.A since 2008. At Pirelli, he will mainly focus on strengthening the organizational unit that focuses on the truck and agricultural tyres.

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