Over the last 19 months, the stock of Owens-Illinois Inc. has been on a downward slide, plummeting 58 percent.

Recognizing that things need to turn around, new company Chief Executive Andres Lopez and some key staffers hosted an investor day conference on Tuesday to outline initiatives O-I is implementing to move the Perrysburg glass-packaging manufacturer forward.

“We know we have a credibility gap,” Mr. Lopez said at the start of the three-hour presentation.

But the company is open for changes. “That’s the message we’ve been sharing with employees for the last few months,” he said.

Despite the most recent financial performance, which included a 2015 loss of $74 million and a fourth-quarter loss of $202 million, Mr. Lopez said the mood at O-I is optimistic. He said the right management team is in place, the strategy is right, and employees are working hard to turn the company around.

“I’m confident we we will deliver positive, sustainable results to improve shareholder value,” he said.

However, that will mean changing O-I’s corporate culture and correct some issues with legacy products that have hurt performance.

To do that, The CEO said it is critical for the firm to establish revenue and operating stability. Past instability has created poor results, he added.

The company must make significant improvements in its operational efficiencies and maximize Vitro S.A.B. de C.V., the Mexican food and beverage glass supplier it bought last fall, he said.

O-I also needs to focus on research and development and reorganize its operations to strengthen its global footprint of 80 plants across 20 countries, the CEO said.

“I can see the transformation beginning to take hold already. We have opened lines of communications in the company,” said Mr. Lopez, who was named CEO in October to replace Al Stroucken, O-I’s CEO since 2006.

Mr. Lopez said all of those planned changes might sound to analysts and investors like ideas in the past that delivered poor results. The ideas themselves were sound,  he said, just the execution might have been poor.

An example of that might have been the autonomy O-I gave some of its glass-making operations. That independence, said John Haudrich, O-I chief strategy and integration officer, enabled some operations to make their own capital investment decisions, which didn’t always benefit the company as a whole.

Mr. Lopez said O-I is becoming more reliant on income from its large, well-known customers and from a bevy of smaller customers who are selling premium products and have unusual needs and require more flexibility, such as glass packaging for craft brews, premium products, and super-premium products. That market is growing and already represents 40 percent of the North American market, he said.

The CEO said he also sees several trends for which O-I is well-positioned, such as in health products. “For health, there is no better packaging than glass,” he said, adding that recyclable glass can reduce plastic waste.

Another priority, the CEO said, is structuring compensation for top management so that it rewards bottom line results, including free cash flow and earnings growth.

Investors apparently were not overjoyed with his message; O-I’s stock on the New York Stock Exchange fell 42 cents a share Tuesday to close at $14.54.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published March 2, 2016, 5:00 a.m.