Bayer Ag S/Adr (BAYRY) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our media update for the first quarter of 2026. Many thanks for joining us today. We will keep today's remarks focused. We will comment on the overall business performance and report progress on our strategic priorities. Wolfgang will share some insights into the Q1 financials, the current geopolitical environment, and our outlook. After that, we'll have time for your questions. Now, before starting, I would like to briefly draw your attention to the cautionary language included in our safe harbor statement. And with that, over to you, Bill. Thanks, Michael. Hi, everyone. Two months ago, we presented our plan for 2026, and today we're reporting that our businesses are performing in line with our expectations. So I'll get started by going through the group numbers and then provide color on each of the businesses. As a group, we posted sales of about 13.4 billion euros. So that's 4% up on a currency and portfolio adjusted basis, which we'll refer to throughout the call today. Core EPS came in at 2 euros and 71 cents. That's also up from last year at this time. Our free cash flow in the first quarter is at negative 2.3 billion euros. That's in line with our outlook as a significant portion of our litigation-related payments fell in the first quarter. So on to our businesses. In crop science, sales grew nearly 7% year over year. This result was bolstered by roughly 450 million euros in additional soy licensing resolution revenue, as we communicated last quarter. Excluding this impact, our core business grew 1.4%, driven by strong growth in corn, offsetting declines that we expected in crop protection. EBITDA was up, with our margin coming in around 40%. Of course, the additional licensing resolution revenue helped. We also ma...