Bayer Ag S/Adr (BAYRY) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon and good morning everyone and welcome to our conference call to discuss Bayer's second quarter twenty twenty six results. Bill will begin by sharing his perspective on the key achievements of the past few weeks and our path forward And we are delighted today to have Judith with us for our first quarterly earnings call. She will offer her initial perspectives and provides further insights into business performance and the outlook. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q and A and our three divisional presidents will join Bill and Judith then to address your questions. Before we get started, I would also like to encourage you to join our Crop Science Field event on September 2 in Iowa. You have any questions regarding registration or logistics, please reach out to our Investor Relations team. As always, please note the cautionary language in our safe harbor statement. And with that, over to you, Bill. Hey, thanks, Jost and hi, everyone. And by the way, I think most of you know this is Jost's last time leading the call before he runs off to lead the radiology business, so we'll try to make it a good But the past ninety days have been really important for Bayer, and operationally, we're on track for the year. We've made decisive progress on our long term strategic priorities, and we're going to cover both of those things today. So let's start with the performance in the first half of twenty six. Across the group, our businesses are delivering what we committed. Sales are at €24,000,000,000 growing 3% on a currency and portfolio adjusted basis, which we'll refer to throughout the call today. Core EPS is at 3.66 which is also up 3% from our last year at this time. Our free cash flow in the first half is at negative €2,700,000,000 This com...