FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German diversified group Bayer said its 2023 results would likely come in at the lower bound of its target range, hurt by cost inflation and the reversal of last year’s price boost for its glyphosate-based weedkillers.
“Overall, we expect target attainment to come in at the lower end of our guidance,” CEO Werner Baumann, who will be succeeded by former Roche executive Bill Anderson in June, said in a statement on Thursday.
The healthcare and agriculture group also said that first-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), declined 14.9% to 4.47 billion euros ($4.92 billion), falling short of the average analyst estimate of 4.63 billion euros in a consensus posted on the company’s website.
Adjusted EBITDA in 2023 would be near the lower bound of a previous target range of between 12.5 billion euros and 13 billion euros, a decline from the 13.5 billion reported for 2022, the company said.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Miranda Murray and Friederike Heine)
