Merck Kgaa (MKGAF) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Merck Investor and Analyst Conference call on first quarter 2026. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I'm now handing over to Florian Schroeder, Head of Investor Relations, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Sarah. Highly appreciate everyone joining us for our Q1 26 earnings call. My name is Florian Schroeder, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Merck. I am delighted to be joined by Kai Beckmann, our Group CEO, and Helene von Roeder, Group CFO. Kai and Helene will walk us through the key slides and financial highlights of the past quarter. And Kai will also take the opportunity to provide an update on the company's strategic direction. For the Q&A part of the call, we will be further joined by Jean-Charles Dirth, CEO of LifeScience, Danny Basohar, CEO of Healthcare, and Benjamin Hein, CEO of Electronics. And with that long intro, I will turn it over to Kai to get us started. Thanks, Florian, for the introduction and welcome everybody to our Q1 earnings call. Let us move to slide five. So what to characterize this quarter, I would call it a solid start to 2026 despite global challenges. Organically, group sales increased by plus fell 2.9%, and EBITDA pre went up by plus 5.3%. Lifestyles and electronics showed robust organic sales growth at plus 8% and plus 4% respectively, overcompensating a moderate decline in healthcare. Now let me draw your attention to the remarkable performance in process solutions, delivering double-digit growth at plus 16% in the quarter. For the first time since Q1 2023, Oyster Solutions reported more than €1 billion of sales in a single quarter. Healthcare's organic decline of minus 3% was mainly driven by generic competition fo...