Asked about his board's confidence in him, Stellantis's CEO Carlos Tavares didn't answer in the place of the other executives or its chairman, John Elkann, the representative of the Agnelli family. But at the end of a tour of the historic Sochaux plant near the French-Swiss border with French Industry Minister Marc Ferracci, on Thursday, October 3, he told the press that he had a contract running until January 2026 and that he would respect it, expecting the other party to do the same. "In 2026, the person you have in front of you will be 68. That's a reasonable age to retire, in every country in Europe (...) My wife will tell you that I should retire, and I'm a good husband."
Until now, he had tended to show a willingness to stay on for another term. The board of directors confirmed to Bloomberg that it had launched the search process for its next CEO, while making it clear that this did not rule out Tavares, who could be in the running.
In the meantime, he considers that the remainder of his tenure is "more than enough time to turn things around," following the brutal earnings warning announced by the company before the stock market opened on September 30. Stellantis, which until now had been promising a double-digit margin – unheard of for a generalist manufacturer – has revised its target for 2024 to between 5.5% and 7% due to significant difficulties on the US market and pressure from Chinese competition.
In Sochaux, accompanied by all the heads of the group's 12 French plants (including the Automative Cells Company battery plant), he was keen to demonstrate that each of them had been prepared for the transition to electrified vehicles. With a substantial investment: a total of €3 billion over the past five years. Sochaux, which is recruiting 450 temporary staff to set up a night shift, is producing 30% electric Peugeot 3008s and 70% hybrids, with the possibility of adapting the proportions for the Peugeot 3008 and 5008, which have just gone on sale, according to changes in.
While the share price has been halved since the start of the year, the CEO was keen to announce three items of positive news: a good start to sales of the 3008 and 5008, the beginning of a recovery in market share, which had collapsed in the United States (from 7.2% in July to 8.1% in September); and today's replacement of the 100,000th set of Takata airbags, which gives him hope that the problem will have been dealt with by the end of the year.