Because of the billions in costs from the legal disputes Glyphosate the pharmaceutical company has Bavarian recorded heavy losses last year. The bottom line was a loss of 3.62 billion euros in 2025 after a loss of 2.55 billion in the previous year, as the company in Leverkusen announced. The main reason for this was special expenses for legal cases amounting to a good six billion euros.
The operating result adjusted for special items fell by 4.5 percent to 9.67 billion euros. Analysts on average had expected 9.61 billion. Group sales fell by a good two percent to 45.58 billion euros, an increase of 1.1 percent after adjusting for currency effects.
In mid-February, Bayer announced the years-long legal disputes over its daughter’s weed killer Monsanto end with a large-scale comparison. According to the Bayer Group, the payments for the collective settlement will amount to up to 7.25 billion US dollars (6.13 billion euros) and will be paid out over a period of up to 21 years.
Numerous lawsuits since the Monsanto takeover
For the current year, Bayer expects currency-adjusted sales of 45 to 47 billion euros and an operating result before special items of 9.6 to 10.1 billion euros. However, the cash inflow is likely to be heavily impacted by around five billion euros due to payouts for the legal disputes and will be negative at minus 1.5 to minus 2.5 billion euros. For 2025, shareholders should once again only receive the statutory minimum dividend of eleven cents per share. “There are strong signs of progress, but we are still working on our comprehensive turnaround,” said Chief Executive Bill Anderson.
The chemical company owned the controversial US company Monsanto Acquired in 2018 for $66 billion (€56 billion).
The background to the dispute is the alleged cancer risks of the weed killer Roundup, a Monsanto product that contains the controversial active ingredient Glyphosate contains. Since the takeover of the US company Bavarian responsible for resolving the dispute. Monsanto has since paid $10 billion in settlements to tens of thousands of plaintiffs.