BAYZF - Bayer AG (BAYZF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-05-14 12:53:06 ET
Bayer AG [BAYZF]
Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call
May 14, 2024, 8:00 a.m. ET
Company Participants
Bill Anderson - Chairman & CEO
Wolfgang Nickl - CFO
Julio Triana - President, Consumer Health Division
Stefan Oelrich - President, Pharmaceuticals Division
Rodrigo Santos - President, Crop Science Division
Jost Reinhard - IR
Conference Call Participants
Emily Field - Barclays
Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley
Peter Verdult - Citibank
Richard Vosser - J.P. Morgan
Joel Jackson - BMO Capital Markets
Florent Cespedes - Bernstein
Sachin Jain - Bank of America
Presentation
Jost Reinhard
Good afternoon, good morning to everybody. Thank you very much for joining our earnings call for the first quarter of 2024. Bill will start the presentations today with his perspective on our business development and the progress made towards our strategic objectives. Wolfgang will then speak in more detail to the group and divisional performances and comment on the full year outlook. We'll then have our Q&A session together with the presidents of our three divisions. 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.
Bill Anderson
Thanks, Jost, and thanks to all of you for joining us today as we share our 2024 first quarter results. This call comes about 70 days after our comprehensive strategic update in March. So, today, I'll be focusing my remarks on our performance, on the progress that we've made in each of the focus areas that we shared at Capital Markets Day, and on our priorities going forward. And I think that should leave us plenty of time to take questions.
So, let me start with our Q1 financial performance. Our sales came in at €13.8 billion. And in currency and portfolio adjusted terms, which I'll be using throughout my remarks, that puts us slightly below Q1 of last year. We posted core earnings per share of €2.82, also slightly below prior year. Finally, our free cashflow came in at minus €2.6 billion. This is an improvement over Q1 of last year, and is largely driven by lower litigation payouts. Overall, this result is in line with our expectations, and we're re reaffirming our 2024 outlook at constant currencies. Wolfgang's going to go through the financial performance in more detail in a few minutes, but I'd like to share a few highlights and some headwinds that we saw in Q1. First, on the highlights, in Crop Science, we outperformed all our peers in terms of sales trajectory in a very challenging market environment. Our global corn platform grew 2%, despite declining acreage in North America and Latin America. This growth was bolstered by global price increases, driven by the performance of the 240 new corn hybrids that we deployed last year. In Pharmaceuticals, our launch medicines, Nubeqa and Kerendia, fueled our topline growth. Eylea also posted gains in all regions, and we registered the first sales of Eylea 8mgs following the initial approvals. In Consumer Health, our dermatology category continued its impressive growth trajectory. A lot of that growth can be traced to innovation and geo expansion. We're now taking that approach to our digestive health business as well. ...
Bayer AG (BAYZF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript