Bayer Ag S/Adr

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our media update for the first quarter of 2026. Many thanks for joining us today. We will keep today's remarks focused. We will comment on the overall business performance and report progress on our strategic priorities. Wolfgang will share some insights into the Q1 financials, the current geopolitical environment, and our outlook. After that, we'll have time for your questions. Now, 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.

Thanks, Michael. Hi, everyone. Two months ago, we presented our plan for 2026, and today we're reporting that our businesses are performing in line with our expectations. So I'll get started by going through the group numbers and then provide color on each of the businesses. As a group, we posted sales of about 13.4 billion euros. So that's 4% up on a currency and portfolio adjusted basis, which we'll refer to throughout the call today. Core EPS came in at 2 euros and 71 cents. That's also up from last year at this time. Our free cash flow in the first quarter is at negative 2.3 billion euros. That's in line with our outlook as a significant portion of our litigation-related payments fell in the first quarter. So on to our businesses. In crop science, sales grew nearly 7% year over year. This result was bolstered by roughly 450 million euros in additional soy licensing resolution revenue, as we communicated last quarter. Excluding this impact, our core business grew 1.4%, driven by strong growth in corn, offsetting declines that we expected in crop protection. EBITDA was up, with our margin coming in around 40%. Of course, the additional licensing resolution revenue helped. We also made underlying gains with higher margin sales and operational efficiencies. In pharma, sales were roughly flat. Nubeka and Corendia continued their momentum, compensating for declines in Xarelto and ILEA. Our EBITDA margin came in at 29.2%. This was positively affected by divestment incomes, coming in behind last year due to pricing pressures and investments in launches. Finally, consumer health grew 5%, with contributions from almost every category. Dermatology and nutritionals were in the double digits, with nutritionals benefiting from our growing e-commerce business. At 22.6%, our EBITDA margin is slightly trailing 2025. Overall, we're pleased with how our businesses started the year, and we're in a good position to confirm our 2026 outlook. At the same time, it's early. We know that the world around us is volatile, and we'll have to stay vigilant. So we're focused on hitting our goals and delivering for farmers, for patients, and for consumers. Now onto our strategic priorities. The first four months of 2026 have been eventful, and we have some big weeks ahead. You see the highlights captured on the slide. I'll start by focusing on litigation as we're in a crucial phase of our containment efforts. We continue to make progress with the class settlement agreement we announced with leading plaintiff firms in February. The settlement has passed several hurdles. In terms of upcoming milestones, objections and opt-outs are due by June 4th, and the court's final approval hearing is scheduled for July. Further, two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court heard our argument on why preemption is not only necessary for American agriculture, but consistent with the law. We appreciate the justices taking our case and seriously engaging with the legal theories that we put forward. We feel our arguments were well represented. Now it's in the court's hands to interpret the law and make a ruling, and we'll be ready for all outcomes. Our multi-pronged strategy continues. We continue to make the case for regulatory clarity for American farmers, and we've seen progress and setbacks for this cause, including the passage of legislation in Kentucky and a setback in the Farm Bill discussion. Why does this matter? Well, the stakes of this issue are bigger than scoring political points. Americans want a food system that is safe, bountiful, and sustainable. They want agriculture that keeps food affordable while keeping chemical inputs to only what's necessary, as well as preserving biodiversity. Farmers, particularly in times like this when farm economics are stretched, want new safe tools that secure their harvests. Last year, Bayer introduced Planexos, an innovative insecticide that protects yields by killing the insects that destroy harvests while preserving pollinators. It can be applied precisely getting rid of pests with doses as low as a few grams per acre. Now, when I say low dose, this is what I mean. Imagine a soybean field the size of the playing area in an American football stadium. You could treat it with around 11 grams of Planexus' active ingredient. By the way, that's the weight of two U.S. quarters. I brought a couple along here. Like, imagine that. The whole football field covered by that much Planexus. That's actually the kind of innovation we need. That's what people expect from progress. And it's already being applied in South America. But we want to be able to bring it to U.S. farmers as soon as possible. And they want it too. But there's a really big thing standing in its way. A system that gives trial lawyers the authority to undermine years of regulatory and scientific scrutiny. Why introduce new products, products that cost decades and billions of dollars to research and develop, if even after a rigorous approval process, you're subject to billions of dollars in legal costs? That's a question we'll have to ask more going forward. Now, outside of the litigation space, we continue to execute each of our priorities. Take pharma growth and the pipeline as an example. Earlier, I mentioned Corendia's strong growth, driven by its momentum in treating patients with chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as in heart failure. Now, in addition, we've presented data in chronic kidney disease and type 1 diabetes. And last month, we announced positive top-line data in treating non-diabetic patients. This means that once approved in these additional indications, Corendia has the potential to help patients both in heart failure and across a wide spectrum of chronic kidney disease, including in areas where there aren't many alternative options today. Now, a great example of how we're not just growing the reach of our medicines, but we're widening the pool of patients they can serve. In addition, we just announced an agreement to acquire Perfuse Therapeutics, and their first-in-class development asset in glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, which very nicely complements our established footprint and expertise in ophthalmology. We continue to advance our plan, and we're dialed in on delivering our commitments in 2026. Now I'd like to hand it over to Wolfgang, who will walk you through our numbers for the last time today. So over to you, Wolfgang. Wolfgang.

Thank you, Bill, and hello also from my side. As Bill said, this is the last time I get to share our quarterly results with you before handing over to Tudit in June. Before diving into the business, I would like to sincerely thank all of you for the collaboration of the past eight years. It's been an eventful time, turbulent at times. I'm deeply grateful to my team and the people I've gotten to work with across Bayer. And I'm confident we're setting the company up for a lot of success in the future. Let's now look at the group results for the first quarter. Q1 net sales grew 4% versus the prior year quarter, driven by crop science and consumer health, while pharma was in line with the prior year. EBITDA before special items came in at 4.5 billion euros, which is 9% or about 370 million euros above the prior year quarter, led by a higher crop science result. Profits in our pharmaceutical divisions declined and EBITDA before special items for consumer health and recon came in almost in line with the prior year. Across divisions, we experienced the anticipated significant FX headwinds in the first quarter, totaling about €890 million to our top line and about €320 million to the bottom line. The effects were mainly driven by the US dollar. Core earnings per share came in at 2 euros and 71 cents. The increase of 31 cents or 13% compared to the prior year is largely driven by about 40 cents of licensing resolution income and 10 cents from tail end divestment income in pharmaceuticals. These expected non-recurring effects were more than offset in foreign exchange headwinds of about 20 cents. Free cash flow of minus 2.3 billion euros was 800 million euros below the prior year quarter. As expected, this was driven by material payouts related to the previously announced settlement activities for both PCB and glyphosate, totaling about 2 billion euros in Q1. Operational cash contributions improved by about 1.2 billion euros, including the licensing resolution payments and Avalok's divestment incomes. Net financial debt increased to 32.5 billion euros since year end 25 due to the negative cash flows. Year on year, net financial debt was down by about 1.7 billion euros. Let's now take a look at the outlook for our divisions. With the Q1 results, we are on track to deliver our full year guidance at constant currencies for each one of our businesses. For the quarters to go, let me just highlight a few things. For crop science, we have a different distribution of the licensing resolution income, which was realized in Q1 this year compared to Q4 last year. For the second quarter in total, we expect top and bottom line results at constant currencies to be broadly stable year over year. Following a strong Q1, corn and soy sales are anticipated to moderate with a decline versus prior year. This is expected to be largely offset by growth in cotton, partial volume recovery in glyphosate, and core CP, as well as triax growth in North America. For pharmaceuticals, we are well on track to deliver our full-year outlook. As guided, we expect the second half of the year to come in stronger than the first half of the year in terms of top-line growth. While on margins, we anticipate increasing growth investments behind launches and the pipeline, in the coming quarters. For consumer health, the market environment in our two biggest markets, the US and China, remains challenging. In the US, market conditions weakened further in the first quarter, with expectations of an overall decline for the full year. Supported by a solid start to the year, we remain confident in delivering the full year outlook. Moving on to the group, we reiterate our outlook at constant currencies for the full year 26. while continuing to monitor geopolitical dynamics and foreign exchange movements. On geopolitics. Based on our latest assessments, we expect to cover potential impacts within the guidance ranges provided for 26. We continue to closely monitor the evolving situation, in particular in the following areas. For crop science, we expect some direct impacts on sales and incremental costs, most notably in fuel, transportation, and energy, which are manageable this year. However, we are closely monitoring rising energy prices and structural inflation across petrochemical supply chains. Resulting production cost increases will be largely captured in inventory, with higher COGS impacting the P&L in later periods. Timing and duration of these variables may also have indirect effects on acreage mix, farmer profitability, and the evolving crop protection landscape. For instance, favorable PRC prices could support glyphosate pricing opportunities should conditions remain supportive. Overall, it is harder to predict how these indirect effects will ultimately unfold and impact final planting and buying decisions. For pharma business, we do not expect any major impact from tariffs to our outlook this year, as they would only become effective at the end of September and should be capped at 15% as per the EU-US trade deal. And we are monitoring the latest developments. We will also continue to apply tariff mitigation measures. On truck pricing around the world, And MFN in particular, we continue to monitor the situation and continue to review our pricing and launch strategies. For consumer health, ongoing geopolitical tensions could primarily affect our business regarding consumer sentiment and demand, while higher oil prices may also affect supply and production costs. Following our latest assessments and continued focus on cost control, we anticipate staying within our 26 guidance range. And finally on FX, in line with our practice, we have updated the FX estimate based on the March month end spot rates. However, this is just a point in time analysis and we would still expect ongoing volatility around foreign exchange rate developments for the rest of this year. To illustrate this, we have also looked at the FX impact at five months forward rates as of April. Applying those, we would end up at around 1 billion euros headwind in net sales, approximately 400 million euros headwind in EBITDA before special items, and about 30 cents headwind in core EPS. This is more or less what we had in our previous estimates. And with that, I'll turn the call back to you, Michael, to facilitate the Q&A.

Thanks a lot, Wolfgang. Thanks a lot, Bill. Let's now start with the Q&A session. And here's what you need to do to ask a question. Make sure that Zoom is the only active chat program open on your computer and make sure your microphone is activated in Zoom. If that is the case, you can use the raise hand function. We will register your interest and when it's your turn, I will call your name. A pop-up window will then open on your screen. And when you see this pop-up window, please unmute yourself and ask your question. And your camera will remain off. Okay, now let's get started. And the first question comes from Jens Tönnesmann, Die Zeit, followed then by Antje Höning, Rheinische Post. Jens, over to you. Can you hear us, Jens? Maybe you work with the unmute button. That is the case. Okay, we're waiting a little bit. Shall we go on to the next one? Okay, I think I hear you. Jens, can you talk? Okay, can you hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you. Great. Okay.

Well, good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I actually got two of them. The first one is, Bill, you mentioned the setback with the Farm Bill. Surprisingly, the setback in the Congress was caused by a majority of Democratic and Republican representatives, some of them close to the Maha movement. So can you explain why you and the Farmers obviously have such difficulties to convince the Maha politicians and its followers with your thoughts about the Farm Bill and your aims of that. And the second question is, next Saturday marks the truly historic day for Bayer. It's the 10th anniversary of the day Bayer announced to take over Monsanto. With what thoughts are you looking at this anniversary and what do you think is the main lesson Bayer should draw from this takeover for its future?

Yeah, hi, Jens. Just first commenting on the farm bill. First off, Making legislation is a very complicated affair. I probably don't need to remind you that since I think you get to see how legislation is made in Berlin as well. And it's no different in states in the U.S. or in the U.S. Congress. That being said, I think the removal of the label uniformity language from the farm bill in the House of Representatives is really a big opportunity missed. for Congress to fix something that's broken. And unfortunately, this has been through a lot of misinformation and propaganda. It's been called pesticide immunity, which in no way it is. It simply says that there is a standard. for pesticide safety, that standard is carried by the federal agency that is actually responsible for that. And so, you know, in this case, Congress didn't do its job. It means that if you don't have this clarity, you have a patchwork of regulations where different states have different rules And not just rules for use of pesticides, but questions on matters of fact and matters of science. And surely that's no way forward. And I gave the example of Planexus, which is, again, something that everybody says we need. You know, very low dose, precise crop protection that protects pollinators but takes out the crop-killing insects. And so this is an advance. But it doesn't make sense to bring these kinds of things forward if you have no standard in a nation for what is considered safe. So I think, unfortunately, this is a political miss, and it's something that needs to be addressed. Otherwise, it has very negative implications for access to innovation for American farmers and American consumers. As to the 10th anniversary, I'm glad you told me that because I actually didn't know that. I would say we have a beautiful crop science business that is benefiting millions and millions, actually billions of people every day. And we benefit greatly from having this combination of high-tech seeds and cutting-edge crop protection tools available as well as digital farming. So I think we've learned a lot about that. And as I've said before, you know, I think the financial terms obviously didn't include litigation. And so from that standpoint, obviously there's lessons there as well.

Okay. Thank you. Next question comes from Antje Höning, Rheinische Post, followed then by Jonas Janssen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Antje, over to you.

Yes, thank you. I have a question that's on employees' minds. How many jobs have you have been cut so far as part of the GSO restructuring? And are you now ready with the organization and job cuts? And once again to Monsanto, given what we know today, would Bayer take over Monsanto again?

Hi, Anca. Yeah, so not a lot of update on the first question, but the number to date is about 14,000 jobs that have been reduced. By the way, a lot of this had to do with things like underutilized capacity and facilities. It doesn't have anything particular, you know, those kinds of things don't have anything to do with dynamic shared ownership. But that being said, we needed a lot fewer managers. And we have a system that basically takes managers out of a gatekeeping role that they play in most organizations. And if you think about it, if you have 12 layers of hierarchy, do you really want 12 layers of gatekeepers? And the people of Bayer have said no. And so we actually now have six to seven layers across the organization, but these managers are no longer primarily serving as gatekeepers. They're actually supporting the individual contributors of Bayer, which is, I don't know, 93% of the total population are now individual contributors, supporting them in getting more work done towards the mission and faster. So we actually are very proud of this accomplishment. We're moving faster than we've ever moved before towards our mission. And we're very, yeah, we're very satisfied with how things are going. You asked, you know, sort of, are we done? The work is never done of making a great organization. But we're done with sort of the big structural phase. And now we look forward to continued improvement over time. Let's see. Question, hypothetical about, yeah, I mean... I don't think there's really anything to say about that. The strategy of bringing seeds and crop protection and digital farming is alive and well, and it's benefiting consumers and farmers around the globe. Obviously, the financial terms, in hindsight, didn't work out very well.

Okay, so next question comes from Jonas Jansen, Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, followed then by Patricia Weiss from Reuters. Jonas, you're next.

Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. First, I also want to thank Wolfgang for the always constructive and competent dialogue. All the best to you. And just one quick question, because in the pre-sent speech, you spoke about less than 17 grams. I think in your speech, you said another number. Just want a clarification on that, please. And speaking about the Nexus, What's your strategy then now? Because, of course, the U.S. is a very important market for crop science. Is there like a, I don't know, a target that you say, I don't know, we need to be on the market by 2027 or we won't go on the market until it's solved? And what's the, I don't know, what's the idea behind that? And is there, I don't know, a timetable which you can expect to bring innovation to the U.S. as well? Thank you.

Yeah, so actually, it's funny. So I have these quarters here. So the last time I used this analogy, we were talking about a European soccer field, which is actually quite a bit larger than an American football field. And I think for the European field, you needed a little more, a few more grams. And so that was two Euro coins. And for the U.S. football field, we corrected it. So it's two U.S. quarters. So I'm sure that will come in handy for many of you today as you go through your daily work. And the question about, you know, bringing Planexus to America, yeah, we hope to bring Planexus to America very soon. All eyes are on the Supreme Court. We are expecting a verdict from them on this question of whether FIFRA provides federal preemption regarding labeling of pesticides, And we sure hope that they rule for preemption because without it, it would be essentially the equivalent of a pharmaceutical company launching a product in America but having no idea whether the FDA label is valid because it's Without preemption is the idea not only could any state create a separate label, but also any state jury in any state could just decide whether or not a product has certain attributes or not based on the opinion of the jurors as opposed to something that is based on the judgment of of hundreds of career staff scientists that are experts in the field of assessing the safety and effectiveness of pesticides. So that's what's at stake. We do hope to be able to bring Planexus to market in the U.S. soon, and we hope for a positive verdict from the Supreme Court.

Okay. Next question comes from Patricia Weiss from Reuters, followed by Florian Müller from the Financial Times. Patricia, over to you.

Hello, good morning. I hope you can hear me. Hello, good morning. I hope you can hear me.

Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you well.

Wonderful. Wonderful. You say the buyer is prepared for all outcomes regarding the Supreme Court ruling on cathesites. So if the court rules against federal preemption, what exactly should investors for immediate multi-billion dollar provisions and especially now that the route via the farm bill has suffered a setback. And at the ATM, investors also demanded margins instead of visions. So today we see falling farmer margins and just 1.4% growth in crop signs. But what is your plan going forward regarding those demands from investors and does this also force a structural break up back onto the table? Thank you very much.

Yeah. So, yeah, thanks, Patricia. So in terms of being prepared for all outcomes, as I said. We have a multi-pronged strategy. It includes legal approaches. You mentioned the Farm Bill. I mentioned earlier Kentucky legislation was passed by an overwhelming majority of the House and Senate in Kentucky, providing that clarification. Last year, that legislation, similar legislation, was passed in Georgia and in North Dakota. And so it shows that there's not – Yeah, there's definitely wrestling going on about this topic because it's very important for farmers. The other thing, obviously, that's really important is the class settlement because, as we've discussed before, the Supreme Court accomplishes certain things, but especially providing clarity for future products like Planexos, whereas the class settlement is a settlement for past and future claims in the case of glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So there are multiple approaches, and we have further ones that we discussed before that we could go to in a fallback in a worst-case scenario. So I think that's pretty clear. Wolfgang, do you want to comment on the margin question?

Yeah, Patricia, I can probably say a few things about the margin. It's probably worthwhile to go business by business. If you look at crop science, we were sub-20% last year. We have recognized that we have work to do in crop protection. We've announced a five-year plan. We said we would go to the mid-20s by 29. And this year, we're making progress. We go to 20 to 22%. And for next year, 27, 28, we will be supported by great product launches out of our pipeline. So we're confident there. In pharmaceuticals, we are just navigating through two LOEs. We've always said we will get to the mid-20s at that time. We're there right now. But we also said as next year grows, resumes to the mid-single digits, that we are targeting 30% over the next couple of years. Obviously, we are monitoring all the variables there on pricing, et cetera. And in consumer health, if you rewind the movie like a few years, we were significantly below 20% margins. Now we're around 23. We guided this year carefully at 22 to 24. And we have also said that we want to develop into the mid-20s here. We believe these are all leading in the industry, and that's our objective, and that's what we're committed to do, and that's what we're executing.

Okay. The next question comes from Florian Müller, Financial Times, followed by Sonja Wendt from Bloomberg. Florian, over to you.

Thank you so much for taking my question. I assume you can hear me. uh i'm wondering about um supply chains both with regards to the middle east but also with regards to the export restrictions in china you have shared some color on that before but maybe could you tell me um how confident you are in your supply chains at the moment if you foresee any shortages um and if so where and how you expect that going forward over the upcoming months

Yeah, thanks, Lorian. That's obviously something that we take great care to ensure, that we have adequate supply of all our raw materials and critical inputs. So far, we've not faced any shortfalls. We've had to navigate some things like export restrictions in the past year, but we've managed to do that. And at the moment, we have access to all the supplies we need to continue to provide our products to customers. As Wolfgang mentioned in his speech, obviously, if the price of oil stays highly elevated, that will affect raw material inputs. which particularly affects our costs in product supply and crop protection, but also if it affects things like transportation costs around the globe, that can, you know, kind of be a general tax on us. So these are things that we're staying on top of, but this is all incorporated into our guidance.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from from Bloomberg followed then by from Handelsblatt. Sonja, over to you.

Hello. Good morning. I also have a question on the litigation topic. Bill, you said that you are ready for all outcomes. Does that mean that even in the case of a Supreme Court ruling not in the favor of Bayer, you are confident that you can significantly contain litigation this year? Can you also give us some details on the current state of things with the opt-outs of the settlement proposal since the deadline is coming up? Do you think you will reach the necessary threshold? And then also on Kleenexos, so if I understand this correctly, if the Supreme Court should not rule in favor of AIA, that means that Kleenexos might not launch at all in the U.S., is this correct?

Yeah, thanks, Sonia. So, yes, for your first question, yes, we believe we still have the opportunity to significantly contain litigation this year with or without the Supreme Court ruling. That being said, as I said, the Supreme Court ruling is really a big sign for the future because, frankly, it just opens the question of, well, what is a pesticide label in the U.S.? ? If there's no federal preemption, then what is the point of a federally approved label? It's kind of a regulatory anarchy, and nobody's quite sure what that would look like. And that's something that's been caused by the litigation industry and their relentless attack on science. And it's something that we surely hope the Supreme Court will find the right answer on. Regarding opt-outs, and, yeah, we don't comment on the process. This is an important topic. We said before that the number of opt-outs needs to be, you know, essentially zero. That's the point of a class settlement is that you have an agreement with the plaintiffs to finalize it, and so we want to do that. So we're looking forward to the close of the process. And it's probably going to take us a little bit of time to sort through it because we'll have to evaluate whatever the result is. And so I say that because the opt-out deadline is June 4th, but nobody should expect they're going to hear something from the company, you know, on June 5th or something. This could take some weeks. in order to, you know, kind of figure out and go through the tallies and figure out, you know, what is the nature of the opt-outs and who are the parties and what are their claims. And so that's something. So I would encourage people not to hold their breaths on that. And then Planexus, you know, yeah, well, if we – How would I put this? I don't want to speculate on what the Supreme Court ruling could be. If the ruling was highly adverse to the interests of innovators like us in crop protection, then we'd have to consider what that means for the future and for products like Ponexus. But I think we remain confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law on this. FIFRA seems pretty clear because the alternative solution view that there is no federal preemption is sort of a nonsense. It doesn't make any sense. Why would you have a federal agency with thousands of staff scientists who are charged with approving a label if that label doesn't carry any weight? So I think we're confident that the court justices will see it that way and that we'll be able to bring Planexus on time and to farmers. Okay.

Can I maybe add a quick follow-up question, just for my understanding, because you said before that you have multiple strategies to fall back on in a worst-case scenario. Would that be measures beyond the ones you're currently using?

Yeah, well, we said before there's also structural options, and so these have to do with, you know, company structure questions. And so these are things that are potential fallback options. But as I said, we have no plans to proceed in that direction at this point because we have the class settlement, we have the Supreme Court that we hope will be ruling in the right direction, and we'll go from there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks. Next question comes from Bert Freundsdorf, Handelsblatt, followed then by Kevin Grogan from Scrip. Bert, you're next.

Yeah, good morning. I had the same question Bill has already answered, so I wish you a good day.

Thank you. Thank you, Bert. So next question then comes from Kevin Grogan from Scrip, followed then by Annette Becker-Bergenscheid from Kevin. Over to you.

Good morning, everybody. And Hi, it's Chris from Wolfgang. Thanks for everything. You've been very helpful and all the best for the future. All the best. Now, Bill, a couple of farmer questions, really. You just dipped into the M&A market for the first time for a while with a perfused deal. Do you think that'd be, is it fair to say that could be one of the first or a few bolt-ons to come on in the near future? And which particular areas are you keen on? Ophthalmology is obviously an area of expertise for Bayer. Can you see any more deals in that area? Also, you've got your gene therapies, which might be handy in that. And also, I noticed that the pharma earnings were down due to the expenses for Linquet, for the launch. Can you give me an idea of what expenses specifically that involves? And also a word on how that launch is going and also for Biontra as well, because I noticed that you said that you'll continue to review pricing and launch strategies. I guess maybe in Europe, given it's not the easiest place to get a decent price. Could you give me some color on that as well in a comment? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Kevin. So, yeah, your question about the Perfuse deal and whether that is sort of signaling interest in more of these kinds of product acquisitions, I would say for sure. This is an interest we've had in an ongoing way. We've been, you know, we've been on the lookout. You saw we did the, well, frankly, Linquet was that kind of a deal a few years back. Biantra was that kind of deal just a little over a year ago. We did the Perfuse deal just a couple weeks ago, and absolutely we're looking for more of those. But we're very disciplined about this, and we're not willing to pay more than we believe something is worth. And, frankly, that's kind of the temptation in the pharma industry that companies always face is, you know, they want new products, but they're, yeah, they pay more than they should. And, frankly, we don't want to be in that business. So we're going to be careful but also aggressive. And, by the way, that's why you see that we're not typically going out and buying, let's say, ready-to-launch worldwide medicines because the price of those relative to the value is just generally out of whack. So you see a product like Linquet where, you know, we bought it in an opportune stage with Biantra. It was a regional deal with Perfuse. Again, earlier stage, promising data. And it's a therapy area we know very well. We're certainly interested in products that are in therapy areas where we have a good understanding of the disease, especially understanding of the disease. Market synergy. It's useful, but I wouldn't overrate that because certainly in my career, I've been involved in launching a lot of therapies into new markets that my company had no history in and doing that very successfully. So we're not afraid to try a new therapy area if we believe the science is strong. But I think you'll see more of those in the months and years ahead. On Linquit and Bianca, we don't provide details on kind of our launch investments. But Linquit is a medicine that could benefit a broad array of women, and so it does need more promotion to make sure we get the word out, and we want to make sure we do that right. But we're pleased with how both Linquit and Biantra launches are going. You know, in both cases, 2026 will be their first launch, their first full year in the market. And also you have countries that are just now coming online reimbursement-wise. But we believe the performance so far looks quite good, and we look forward to important contributions from both of those medicines in the future.

Okay. Next question comes from Annette Becker, Wurden Zeitung, followed then by Bernhard Vetter, Agrarzeitung. Annette, you're next.

Good morning, hoping you can hear me.

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, I have just two short questions regarding the licensing agreement with Corteva. Do I get it right that it's a one-time effect in Q1? And then the follow-up, is it contained in the operating APTA from CropScience in Q1?

Yeah, good morning, Annette. Yes, it's It was two payments, one at the end of last year in Q4 and one in the first quarter of this year. It's important also when you look at year-over-year comparisons later on. And, yes, it's operating because it's basically a royalty on operating R&D expenses we had in the past. So the return on those R&D expenses should also be operating like the R&D expenses were in the first place. So, yes. Thank you.

You're welcome. Next question comes from Bernhard Vetter, Agrarzeitung, then followed by Andrew Noel, Chemical ESG. So, Bernhard, over to you. Let's see, maybe the unmute button. You see this? Would work. Yeah, now I hear you. You can go ahead. So, Bernard, I think we hear you. Maybe you just want to keep on talking. We'll try it.

We can hear you. I'm sorry. No problem. My question is about the 2 billion euros that are out of your bank accounts. I understand that PCBM does it, but is the money now in the bank account of the plaintiffs actually or how this is going?

Bernhard, you're right, the free cash flow impact in the first quarter was 2 billion out of the 5 billion we expect for the year. about three quarters of that actually went towards the plaintiff firms and about one quarter and that's related to the class actually went into a it's called a qualified settlement fund, think of it as an escrow account. So it is negatively impacting our free cash flow. But by the way, it hasn't reduced the provision yet. But so three quarters are on the other side and one quarter of the two billion is in an escrow account, basically.

Okay, so now next in line is Andrew Noel from Chemical ESG. And then the last question is coming from Aisha Sharma from Endpoint News. But, Andrew, you're next.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I've got two. The first one is, it sounds like there's a question to answer on whether it's worth innovating crop protection. I wondered, is it impacting your investment decisions already? Perhaps there's projects that you think will be riding the battle zone that you just want to hold off on for right now. And obviously, the context of that would be the danger of weaker prospects if you have a lot of patent exploration without a new flow of new innovation, like FMC is suffering. The second question is about You talk about the power of Monsanto and Bayer together, but there's strategies elsewhere. If I mention UPL and Corteva is going the other way, they're splitting off seeds. Could you tell me how physically integrated Monsanto is into Bayer and give me a sense of what the synergies would be if you kind of tore those apart? I realise it's probably not a priority right now.

Sure. Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that's been affecting investment decisions in crop protection in recent years is probably the, yeah, just the availability of sort of ever lower price generics coming from Asia and the effect that's having even on innovative pesticides because Yeah, you know, the farmer always has an alternative to buy, oh, the new branded product or an older generic. And if the generic prices are crashing because of oversupply, then that negatively affects even the innovator molecules. So I think that's meant that companies like ours that are, I think we're probably the leading innovator in crop protection chemicals, we've had to raise our bar significantly. and say, hey, we're only going to invest in things that are really breakthroughs. And Planexus would be an example of that. And so we've actually done that already. And if you look at our five-year plan that we announced for crop science for improving margins and profitability, as part of that five-year plan, we're getting out of a lot of active ingredients where the competition from generics is just, so high that it just doesn't make sense to be in them. And then on others in our R&D pipeline, we really raise the bar as to what works. So we think with that, that that provides for pretty good incentives to invest. The world does need these innovations. You simply can't feed 8 billion and growing population without these crop protection tools. And we think the new ones have the opportunity to be both better value for farmers, but also better for the planet. So we think there'll be that demand, but again, just at a very high bar. And by the way, I would remind folks that the U.S. is not the largest market for crop protection. In fact, Brazil is the largest market, and there are many other markets beyond the U.S. That being said, I mean, we think the U.S. will adopt good policies on this, and that's why we're certainly far from giving up on that, but we think that the Supreme Court decision is very important for that. On the question of synergy issues, I mean, you asked specifically how much is, you said Bayer and Monsanto integrated. I mean, we don't even think like that or talk like that. In fact, already when I arrived three years ago, nobody was talking like that. It was, you know, we basically have one team in crop science around the world. that is delivering these tools country by country, seeds, crop protection products, digital solutions, and, yeah, I think our people are very proud of that. I think the synergies are quite strong, and, yeah, it's more that we're able to come along with total solutions. So if you take Polinexos, which is our short-stature corn, sorry, Precyon, our short-stature corn, this is a combination of a really innovative seed, um, some important crop protection tools, and digital farming coming together in a powerful way to boost yields with less inputs, less carbon, yeah, less environmental impact. This is basically what the world needs, not only for food, but also for biofuels and other things. So I think it's quite compelling from a high-level strategy, and we would hope for better conditions and crop protection in the future.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. So the last question for the call today comes from Aisha Sharma from Endpoint News. Aisha, over to you.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just one question on Nubeka. I know that you experienced sort of continued growth for that in the quarter. Could you give me a bit more color on how that growth was impacted by the Inflation Reduction Act? Thank you.

Yeah, I'm not sure I've got a clear answer for you on that, Ayesha. I mean, I know our sales growth in the U.S. was quite strong. Go ahead, Wolfgang.

Yeah, I mean, we don't give out the numbers, but we achieved very remarkable growth in Q1 again, and you should assume that that growth covers already pricing reductions that were part of the IRA. So whatever you see in terms of growth from us is already covering the IRA impacts.

Right. And with that, thank you very much for your questions, for your time, for your interest today. This concludes our call, and we wish you all a very good day. Thank you very much.