As of: January 30, 2024, 8:14 p.m
By: Amy Walker
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The agricultural and pharmaceutical company Bayer is in crisis waters.
The never-ending glyphosate disaster and expiring drug patents are putting a heavy burden on the company.
Leverkusen – In just under a month, on March 5, 2024, Bayer wants to present its business figures for the past year.
And even if the pharmaceutical giant's sales may be correct in the end, the mood in Leverkusen currently looks anything but rosy.
After a small recovery around the turn of the year, Bayer shares have been in free fall since mid-November.
With a price of 30.64 euros on Monday evening (January 29th), Bayer recorded a new low since the financial crisis.
Investors are frightened and there is even a risk of a stock market panic.
How could that happen?
Glyphosate is putting a heavy burden on Bayer
The reason for the new price drop is once again the issue of glyphosate.
The takeover of the US company Monsanto and with it the product Roundup, which contains glyphosate, is increasingly turning out to be a real disaster for the Leverkusen-based company.
Last week, Bayer lost another trial in the USA; the jury sentenced the pharmaceutical giant to pay a fine of 2.25 billion US dollars to a man who attributed his cancer to glyphosate.
This is the highest penalty that has been imposed on the company to date.
However, the amount is likely to be significantly reduced in the appeal process.
At the end of 2023, Bayer suffered five court defeats in the glyphosate case; in total, the company has won ten of the 16 lawsuits so far.
The Bayer plant in Leverkusen © Oliver Berg/dpa
But the debacle didn't start there.
Since the summer of 2023, investors have shown less and less trust in the group.
The share recorded its highest value last year in April, when it was still trading for 61.36 euros.
Since then, things have actually been steadily going downhill - which is why Bayer actually appointed a new board of directors to get the whole thing under control again.
Almost half a year later you have to realize that Bill Anderson didn't succeed.
Price collapse in November after canceled study
So 2023 wasn't a good year for the pharmaceutical giant - but things only started to get really bad from November, when the share price fell by almost 19 percent within one day.
The background at the time was two negative headlines at once: On the one hand, it was another lost glyphosate trial with billions in payments, and on the other hand, the termination of a drug study for the anticoagulant Asundexian led to a crash.
This has so far been seen as a source of hope for the group.
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The patents for several Bayer drugs will expire in the coming years, so supplies are urgently needed to secure profits.
The termination of a promising study sounded like a warning shot to many investors: What if Bayer has nothing new up its sleeve?
In addition, the Monsanto takeover is a huge problem - the company simply doesn't seem trustworthy at the moment.
Bayer has to restructure and cut staff
In recent months, Bayer has done a lot to counteract this impression.
The success of another drug, Elinzanetant, which is supposed to combat menopausal symptoms, was widely publicized.
The group expects the active ingredient to generate peak sales of more than one billion euros annually.
At the end of the year, Bill Anderson presented his restructuring plan, which envisages significant job cuts in Germany and promises a realignment.
Bayer plans to announce further details about the group restructuring at its Capital Markets Day on March 5th.
So far, however, all of these announcements have had little effect, and then came the new glyphosate condemnation.
It's completely understandable if investors are fed up with this: just get out of here.
Six months since his debut, Bill Anderson has nothing to show for his core task of winning back investors.
On the contrary: investors are more frightened than ever.
The pressure on Anderson could hardly be higher: he has to make the big splash at the beginning of March.