Glyphosate
Bayer loses billions: shares fall to 20-year low
Anyone who bought Bayer shares in the middle of the last decade suffered enormous losses. The DAX group is struggling with weak agricultural business. The reaction on the stock market is clear.
The already low share price of the agricultural chemicals and pharmaceutical company Bayer has collapsed to its lowest level in 20 years following weak business figures and a forecast reduction. The shares on the stock exchange have now fallen by 14 percent to just over 21 euros. In the agricultural sector, market development is worse than expected, especially in Latin America, explained Bayer boss Bill Anderson. In addition, prices in the crop protection business remain under pressure. The outlook for the coming year is cautious.
The traditional Leverkusen company, which took over US rival Monsanto in 2018 and thus inherited a large number of glyphosate lawsuits, weakened expectations for the year as a whole. The legal disputes cost Bayer billions.
Monsanto purchase an expensive flop
The company has never really been able to free itself from Monsanto’s downward trend: Since the summer of 2018, Bayer’s market value has fallen from almost 92 billion euros to just around 21 billion euros. In 2015 – before the Monsanto takeover was initiated in 2016 – Bayer was now the most valuable company in Germany, at that time it was worth around 120 billion euros.
Group-wide sales in the third quarter fell by 3.6 percent year-on-year to 9.97 billion euros. Only the non-prescription medication division was able to increase revenue at least a little. Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda), adjusted for special effects, fell by almost 30 percent to 939 million euros. The bottom line was a loss of almost 4.2 billion euros – after a loss of 4.57 billion a year ago. The renewed loss is primarily due to depreciation on the agricultural division.
In the agricultural chemicals division, into which Monsanto was absorbed, Bayer wrote off goodwill amounting to almost 3.3 billion euros in the third quarter. According to Bayer, the amortization of goodwill in this division since the Monsanto takeover in 2018 has totaled 12.9 billion euros.
dpa
Source: Stern
