Bayer management is under pressure to make the group more profitable. Breaking up the company is not off the table either. There should be certainty by March.
At Bayer, it is expected to be clear by March how the group will be restructured. There is still a sense of destruction in the room. When the quarterly figures were presented on Wednesday, it was said that Bayer was continuing to look at various options, such as separating the division for over-the-counter medications, including aspirin, or the agricultural division. This accounts for around half of the group’s business.
What there will not be is a simultaneous split into three parts, said CEO Bill Anderson, according to the announcement. A tripartite split would require a two-step process. A complete disassembly is not off the table.
Some investors have been calling for Bayer to be split up for a long time because they see the legal problems in the USA surrounding the weed killer glyphosate as a burden and consider the individual parts to be more valuable than the company as a whole.
Lower glyphosate prices
Bayer gave shareholders little hope of a significant improvement in 2023 after a difficult year so far on Wednesday. The growth prospects remained rather weak. In the third quarter, the Leverkusen-based company once again felt the price of glyphosate fall. Compared to the same period last year, sales fell by just over eight percent to 10.3 billion euros. Currency effects also had a negative impact.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) fell by almost a third to 1.7 billion euros, more than experts expected. The bottom line was a loss of 4.57 billion euros – also due to renewed impairments in the agricultural business. A year ago, Bayer made a profit of 546 million euros.
Source: Stern
