In the first quarter of 2026, the performance of domestic tire companies has diverged, and the growth momentum of some companies is significantly better than that of international giants.
However, affected by the sharp rise in the prices of core raw materials such as natural rubber and synthetic rubber, the industry has been under great cost pressure, coupled with factors such as poor transmission of terminal price increases and the impact of exchange rate fluctuations, the net profits of some companies have declined year-on-year.
Overall, market competition has shifted from scale expansion to competition in value and risk control capabilities.
In the first quarter of 2026, the domestic tire industry will present a typical pattern of “overall revenue growth and structural differentiation”.
Judging from the overall data, the revenue of domestic tire companies in the first quarter surged 27.7% year-on-year. However, the profit side was under obvious pressure, and net profit fell slightly by 3.7% year-on-year. Industry competition bid farewell to extensive scale expansion and turned to the competition of product value and cost control.
Specifically speaking of enterprises, the industry leader Zhongce Rubber’s first-quarter revenue reached 11.191 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.17%, and the net profit attributable to the parent company was 1.22 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.91%; Sailun Tire has outstanding growth momentum, achieving a revenue scale of 9.461 billion yuan with a growth rate of 12.48%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 1.05 billion yuan.
600 million yuan, a slight increase of 1.72% year-on-year. With the optimization of high-end product structure, it leads the industry with a gross profit margin of 26.9%; Triangle Tire also made steady progress, with first-quarter revenue of 2.47 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.04%, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 218 million yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 31.18%. The quality of profits continues to be optimized.
Small and medium-sized listed tire companies have become the core increment of industry profit growth in this round. Many companies relied on the advantage of low base last year to achieve doubled performance growth.
Data show that Guizhou Tire’s revenue in the first quarter was 2.687 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.32%, and its net profit attributable to the parent company was 180 million yuan, a year-on-year surge of 172.57%, setting a benchmark for net profit growth in the industry; Giti Tire and Fengshen Co., Ltd. simultaneously experienced a performance explosion, of which Giti Tire’s revenue was 1
103 million yuan, a slight decrease of 2.00% year-on-year. The net profit attributable to the parent company was 47.4333 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 100.51%. Aeolus’ revenue was 1.789 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.84%. The net profit attributable to the parent company was 50.9057 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.36%.
It is worth mentioning that the core of the high growth of the above three companies is due to the extremely low performance base in the same period of 2025. The total net profit of the three companies in the first quarter of last year was only about 65 million yuan.
In addition, Qingdao Doublestar relied on Kumho Tire’s restructuring and integration dividends. In the first quarter, its revenue was 6.629 billion yuan, and its net profit attributable to its parent company was 42.2865 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.76%; General Motors’ revenue was 2.137 billion yuan, a slight increase of 0.71% year-on-year, and its net profit attributable to its parent company was 127 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.24%.
However, there are also companies that perform poorly.
In the first quarter, Linglong Tire’s revenue grew steadily, achieving revenue of 6.057 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.33%. The business scale maintained an expansion trend. However, affected by severe exchange rate fluctuations, pre-tax exchange losses reached 267 million yuan, which directly devoured most of the company’s profits. In the end, it only achieved net profit attributable to the parent company of 16.8935 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 95.04%.
In the first quarter of 2026, leading international tire companies generally experienced revenue pressure and weak performance. Michelin’s sales fell by 5.4% year-on-year, Continental’s overall sales fell by 10.4% year-on-year, and Pirelli’s revenue fell slightly by 1.2% year-on-year.
Only Hankook Tire and Nexen Tire achieved revenue growth, with growth rates of 7% and 8.7% respectively, which were lower than the 27.7% year-on-year revenue growth of domestic tire companies. The production capacity, technology and cost advantages of domestic tire leading companies continued to be highlighted.
Under the pressure of generally rising raw material prices in the first quarter of 2026, the profitability resilience of domestic tire companies has clearly differentiated.
Faced with the rigid increase in raw material costs, leading companies mainly hedge against profit pressure through product structure optimization, industrial mergers and acquisitions integration, global production capacity layout, etc., and effectively resist the erosion of industry profits.
Sailun Tire focuses on industrial supporting categories such as off-highway giant tires. Such products have high technical thresholds, concentrated industry competition and stable profit margins.
Benefiting from the increase in the sales volume of high-end high-margin products, the company’s gross profit margin increased by 2.1 percentage points year-on-year in the first quarter, leading the industry in profitability restoration capabilities.
Qingdao Double Star has completed industrial upgrading and made up for its shortcomings through mergers and acquisitions, relying on the synergy of Kumho Tire’s integration and implementation.
After the reorganization is completed, the company’s resource advantages in centralized procurement, global logistics, customized production and other aspects will be gradually released, further opening up overseas channels and high-end production capacity.
High-end product upgrades are another effective way for the global tire industry to cope with rising costs. Most international giants rely on high value-added products to stabilize their performance.
Domestic leading companies generally adopt the strategy of “product upgrade + overseas expansion” to achieve brand improvement – Sailun’s bases in Vietnam and Cambodia continue to release production capacity, Linglong’s bases in Serbia and Brazil are steadily building, and they rely on overseas low-cost production capacity and high-end product matrix to participate in international market competition.
From the perspective of industry cycle characteristics, there is a quarter-level lag in cost transmission in the tire industry, and the pressure of raw material price increases in the current period will be realized in the next quarter.
At present, most companies in the industry have started to increase terminal prices. However, due to weak downstream demand and high channel inventory, the implementation of price increases is insufficient and the transmission is incomplete. Industry profits will still be under pressure.
The industry believes that with the start of the traditional peak sales season in the third quarter, coupled with factors such as a likely fall in raw material prices, the overall profitability of the industry is expected to recover.
At present, the leading domestic tire companies have completed the layout of overseas production capacity in multiple regions, and the speed of overseas production capacity expansion will become the core variable in the competition among tire companies in the next stage.
