Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to our press conference. Today, we are going to present the financial figures of BASF Group for the second quarter 2026. I would like to welcome our Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, Markus Kamieth, and Dirk Elvermann, our CFO. Before we begin, let me give you a few points of housekeeping. The conference language is German, and there's going to be a simultaneous translation into English. The presentation is available for download at basf.com, and the direct link for that will be found in the chat. Let's start with the presentation. We are looking forward to your questions afterwards. The floor is yours, Markus.
Thank you, Thomas. Before I start, welcome to you. It's your first press conference in your, not brand-new position, but welcome again. We look forward to having a few more press conferences with you. Thank you. Good morning to you. Dirk Elvermann and I are pleased to welcome you to today's press conference. In mid-July, we already pre-released our results for the second quarter as our EBITDA before special items considerably exceeded average analyst expectations. We were able to increase earnings in nearly all segments. This was driven by stronger prices and higher volumes as well as lower cash fixed costs. We thus further strengthened BASF's position in the market and made major advances with our restructuring as well as portfolio measures. At our annual press conference in February, I presented to you our priorities for 2026.
Today, I'm pleased to say that we are making very good progress in all these areas. We have reduced our costs. We have brought down our capital expenditures. We have increased capacity utilization at our plants. Our team in Zhanjiang successfully ramped up the new Verbund site. The sale of our coatings activities marks an important step forward with our value-enhancing portfolio measures. As you can see, we are successfully implementing our Winning Ways strategy. We'll provide you with more details about that later. To begin, let's take a closer look at BASF's sales development and the key influencing factors. In light of the geopolitical developments, we are presenting monthly figures compared with the corresponding months of the prior year. These figures are adjusted to exclude the impact of metals on sales in the surface technology segment.
At the beginning of the year, declining prices for key raw materials such as naphtha and natural gas resulted in lower sales prices. Following the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, this trend reversed in the second quarter of 2026. In response, we successfully implemented significant price increases, particularly in our upstream businesses. We also achieved considerable volume growth throughout the first half of 2026. This was supported by the startup of our new Verbund site in China. Another decisive factor was our ability to maintain uninterrupted supply by leveraging our local-for-local production footprint by flex feed steam crackers and dedicated trading operations to source key feedstocks. BASF's unique setup did and does provide a clear competitive advantage. Volume growth accelerated significantly in March. The high uncertainty in the markets led customers to secure supply through some advance purchases.
In the second quarter, volumes continued to grow considerably compared with the prior year months, particularly in the core businesses. Currency headwinds eased over recent months. Moreover, portfolio effects were minor and were mainly caused by the sale of the decorative paints as well as the food and health performance ingredients businesses in the second half of 2025. A slightly positive portfolio effect resulted from the acquisition of AgBiTech, a company specializing in biological insect control solutions, completed in March this year. Ladies and gentlemen, let's now take a brief look at regional volume and price developments compared with the prior year quarter, once again, excluding metal sales. Following the strong momentum in the first quarter of 2026, we continued to deliver considerable volume growth in Greater China, supported by the successful ramp-up of our new Verbund site in Zhanjiang.
As a result of the Middle East conflict, prices rose significantly in Greater China as well as in almost all other regions, particularly in the upstream businesses. In Asia-Pacific, excluding Greater China, we also recorded considerable volume growth, mainly driven by the chemical segment. In this region, too, prices rose considerably, especially in the materials and chemical segments. In Europe, all core businesses contributed to the volume growth. Prices in Europe increased strongly, especially in the chemicals and material segments. In North America, we recorded slightly lower volumes, mainly on account of a scheduled turnaround of the steam cracker in Port Arthur, Texas. By contrast, prices increased considerably. Now, let's move to earnings by segment. EBITDA before special items rose significantly by 54% to EUR 2.4 billion. This increase was primarily driven by continued volume growth and higher specific margins. Earnings grew in all segments except Surface Technologies.
The strongest contributors were the core businesses, particularly the Materials, Chemicals, and Industrial Solutions segments. Other also contributed to the considerable earnings increase, mainly due to commodity derivatives used for hedging. In the Material segment, higher contribution margins and lower fixed costs led to a considerable increase in EBITDA before special items. The strongest contributions came from the polyurethane and ammonia value chains. The Chemicals segment recorded a considerable increase in earnings, mainly driven by the petrochemicals division due to higher contribution margins. Scheduled maintenance turnarounds in Ludwigshafen and of the cracker at the Port Arthur site were a drag on earnings growth. The Industrial Solutions segment also delivered strong results. The significant earnings improvement was driven by lower fixed costs in the performance chemicals division and higher contribution margins in the dispersions and resins division.
In Nutrition & Care segment, earnings came in slightly above the level of the prior year quarter, mainly due to lower fixed costs in the Care Chemicals division. By contrast, EBITDA before special items in the Surface Technologies segment fell considerably. Compared with the prior year quarter, earnings in the ECMS division declined mainly because of lower earnings in precious metal services. This was partly offset by higher earnings in the emissions catalyst business. In the Battery Materials division, earnings declined due to the expiry of subsidies, which led to higher fixed costs compared with the prior year quarter. Let's now turn to Agricultural Solutions in more detail. The next key milestone for our largest and most profitable standalone business is achieving IPO readiness by mid-2027, and we are well on track here. Agricultural Solutions delivered a very robust performance in the first half of this year.
While sales declined slightly on account of currency headwinds and slightly lower prices, we captured volume growth in all regions. Volumes rose particularly in fungicides, herbicides, and seed treatment. Thanks to the earnings increase in the second quarter, EBITDA before special items almost matched the strong level recorded in the first half of 2025. In the current market environment, this is a strong achievement by the team. At 29%, the EBITDA margin before special items almost matched the level of the first half of the prior year. Ladies and gentlemen, as I mentioned at the start, we are continuing our efforts to further enhance BASF's competitiveness. We have once again accelerated the pace to make our global organization more streamlined and efficient. As you can see on this slide, in the first half of 2026, we already reduced more positions than in the prior two years combined.
I'd like to emphasize two figures that further illustrate the momentum behind our efforts. From January 2024 until the end of June 2026, we reduced the number of employees worldwide by 7,000. This figure excludes both the reductions resulting from divestitures and the workforce buildup associated with our Zhanjiang Verbund site. In May 2026, the number of FTEs at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen was brought below 30,000 for the first time since 1954. This is an important and necessary step towards restoring the site's competitiveness. Let me continue with further updates on the structural improvements at our Ludwigshafen Verbund site. We are well advanced with the necessary asset restructuring. Since 2024, the share of highly competitive production units at this site has increased from 78% to 88%.
Ludwigshafen is by far our largest site, with a very broad and diversified portfolio of upstream and downstream chemicals and a very high degree of integration. Over the past few years, the site has increasingly focused on supplying the European market. This is in line with our global strategy of local for local production. More recently, plant utilization rates improved amid the supply disruptions caused by the Middle East conflict. We will continue to review and adjust our asset portfolio as needed so that we can be a reliable and best-in-class supplier for our customers from various industries. We are also fully on track with our cost-saving programs and very confident of achieving our target of annual cost savings of around EUR 2.3 billion by the end of the year. At the end of June, the measures already implemented were equivalent to annual cost savings of EUR 2 billion.
We continue to expect total one-time costs of at least EUR 1.9 billion by year-end 2026. We have also made progress with our portfolio measures. As you know, we successfully closed the coatings transaction with Carlyle on June 30th. The enterprise value of the transaction amounted to EUR 7.7 billion, and the cash consideration received was around EUR 5.8 billion on a pre-tax basis. The disposal gain after taxes of EUR 3.5 billion is reflected in net income and earnings per share of BASF Group in the second quarter. We now hold a 40% equity share in the company, Surventis. Through this equity stake, we will continue to participate in the future value creation of the coatings business while sharpening BASF's strategic focus. This successful closing marks a key milestone in the swift execution of our Winning Ways strategy to unlock the value of BASF standalone businesses.
We have also accelerated the sell-down of our participation in Harbour Energy. Since March 2026, this has generated cash proceeds of more than EUR 800 million for BASF. We have monetized a significant portion of our participation in Harbour Energy and reduced our stake in the company to below 25%. This was achieved through the sale of 80 million shares via a so-called accelerated book building in March 2026, the agreed block sale of 150 million shares in May, and a number of smaller share sales into the market. Our remaining share in the company is currently worth roughly EUR 1 billion. As communicated on various occasions, it is our strategy to exit the financial investment in Harbour Energy over time while being mindful of the value. Ladies and gentlemen, with the standalone businesses on their own successful paths, our core has become more focused and coherent.
This creates new opportunities for our core businesses to unlock synergies and to work more effectively together across BASF. As announced in May, we aim to operate the core businesses at up to 20% lower net cash fixed costs by 2029 compared with the 2024 baseline. In the first half of 2026, our ongoing measures to improve competitiveness already led to a 4% reduction in net cash fixed costs in the core compared with the prior year period. There was strong positive momentum in the second quarter. This figure relates to BASF's core businesses and other, and is adjusted for currency, portfolio, and one-time effects, making it comparable. Since the baseline for CoreShift is 2024, part of the cost savings measures already initiated contribute to the program. However, CoreShift will go significantly further.
We will create a new tailor-made operating model for our core and leverage synergies across the core businesses, R&D, service units, and corporate units. We focus our activities on what truly matters. We harmonize our processes across the core and expand the use of AI, and we standardize our systems and tools to create even more synergies, reducing variety, enforcing common solutions, and focusing on what works best overall. At the same time, we increase flexibility, for example, in task location and organizational design to realize cost savings and benefit from synergies through bundling. In a nutshell, we change what holds us back and boost what makes us strong. This will position us to win in our markets and create the financial flexibility we need to keep strengthening and growing our core businesses.
I'm convinced that our core has the scale and strength to lead, the focus to compete, the power to perform, and of course, the best team. With that, I'll hand over to Dirk Elvermann.
Thank you, Markus, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's now take a look at the key financial figures of BASF Group in the first half of 2026 compared with the prior year period. At EUR 4.8 billion, EBITDA before special items improved significantly by EUR 715 million compared with the prior year period. Especially the Materials, Industrial Solutions, Chemicals, and Surface Technologies segments contributed to this increase. Cash fixed costs of BASF Group declined by around 4% to EUR 7.9 billion. This was the result of the ongoing restructuring efforts, particularly in our core businesses, and favorable currency effects. Net income improved by EUR 4.2 billion and came in at EUR 5.1 billion. This includes the disposal gain of EUR 3.5 billion after tax from the coatings transaction with Carlyle. Free cash flow decreased and came in at EUR -1.6 billion.
Lower payments made for property, plant, and equipment, and intangible assets partly offset the decline in cash flows from operating activities. Let's turn now to the cash flow development in the second quarter of 2026. Cash flows from operating activities declined to EUR 524 million, mainly due to higher cash tied up in the net working capital. This resulted primarily from two effects. First, higher sales led to higher trade accounts receivable. Second, capital tied up in inventories increased as a result of higher raw material prices. In addition, cash flows from operating activities were burdened by spending of around EUR 200 million related to the transformation of BASF Group. In particular, this was for cash-effective restructuring measures and the introduction of the new ERP systems needed in Agricultural Solutions and the core businesses. Payments made for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets decreased to EUR 713 million.
Free cash flow thus came in at EUR -189 million compared with EUR +533 million in the second quarter of 2025. We still expect to achieve our full-year free cash flow forecast. In the second half of the year, our operating divisions are expected to collect even higher receivables than last year. The level of inventory reduction will largely depend on price levels. Payments made for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets are likely to come in below the EUR 3.4 billion forecasted for the full year. We come to our capital allocation framework. On the left side, you can see the cash contributions, which Markus Kamieth has already largely covered. I will now focus on the use of cash on the right-hand side. We are committed to attractive shareholder distributions and paid a dividend of EUR 2.25 per share for the business year 2025 at the beginning of May.
We are also making swift progress with the second pillar of shareholder distributions, share buybacks. I will provide more information on the next slide. As previously communicated, we use a significant share of the cash proceeds from portfolio measures to strengthen our balance sheet through deleveraging. We will continue to do so in order to support our A credit rating. Compared with the prior year planning period, we will reduce capital expenditures by 20% in the four-year planning period until 2028. We expect CapEx to consistently stay below depreciation until 2028. At the same time, we will also consider value-accretive M&A as a potential lever to strengthen and grow BASF's core businesses. In the current market environment, the relative attractiveness of acquisitions versus organic growth has increased.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have just announced a EUR 1 billion share buyback program that will be executed between August 2026 and April 2027. This is part of the total buyback volume of at least EUR 4 billion by the end of 2028. That was announced in September 2024. This is the second part. Between November 2025 and June 2026, we already bought back around 3.5% of the outstanding shares for around EUR 1.5 billion. Given our strong cash position, we are now continuing this successful program with the next tranche. Furthermore, we are accelerating our deleveraging. This is supported by the maturity profile of outstanding bonds and loans, as well as the opportunity to repay liabilities earlier than planned at attractive conditions. In the first half of 2026, we repaid a bond with a nominal value of EUR 1 billion, as well as a loan of EUR 250 million.
In the second half of 2026, we will repay maturing bonds and loans with a total value of EUR 900 million. In addition, we will redeem bonds and loans with a combined nominal value of around EUR 1.6 billion in 2026, ahead of their maturities, which extend through 2029. This includes bonds with a nominal value of EUR 1.25 billion that will already be redeemed in August. Let's now briefly touch on our balance sheet at the end of the second quarter, compared with the end of June 2025. At around EUR 84 billion, total assets increased by 8%, mainly on account of higher current assets. The main reason is the considerable increase in cash due to the closing of the coating transaction and the related purchase price payment by Carlyle. BASF's equity ratio improved by 1.5 percentage points to 44.6% and remained very solid despite our ongoing share buyback program.
Net debt declined by EUR 4.2 billion to EUR 17 billion. We continue to have an A credit rating, which ensures unrestricted access to financial markets and favorable financial conditions. With that, back to you, Markus.
Thank you, Dirk. In light of the better-than-expected business development, as you saw, we increased our earnings forecast for the full year 2026. We now anticipate EBITDA before special items of between EUR 6.9 billion and EUR 7.7 billion in 2026. We kept the range between the lower and upper end of our forecast unchanged at EUR 800 million due to continuing geopolitical uncertainties. For free cash flow, we continue to expect between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2.3 billion in 2026. We anticipate higher earnings and lower capital expenditures to offset the higher working capital buildup. The forecast for CO2 emissions also remains unchanged. BASF's outlook is based on the adjusted assumptions regarding the global economic environment shown on the chart. Dirk and I will be glad to answer your questions. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Markus. Thank you, Dirk. We have time for your questions. You can click on the hand icon to get the floor, we will give you the floor. You're all on mute, please remember to unmute yourselves. We'll be very glad to see you as well. Maybe you can activate your camera. We start with questions in German, then switch over to the English channel. Please ask the question in the language of your respective channel that the interpretation works in both directions, you will receive the answer in the question of the channel. I think Ms. Buchhorn of the manager magazin is going to start.
Good morning to all of you. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Regarding acquisitions, Dirk Elvermann said potential acquisitions are more attractive right now. What is the direction BASF has in mind here?
If that's your only question, let me start. Good morning, Ms. Buchhorn. Yes, I wanted to give everybody else the opportunity to ask questions. Acquisitions. We announced that, in the current environment in the chemical industry, we see more and more of a momentum regarding transactions, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, a lot of things going on in the market. On the other hand, since 2024, when we started the strategy, we said that we are basically, or mainly interested in strengthening our core businesses. Restructuring and consolidation in the chemical industry is an opportunity for us.
Given the current environment where markets are getting tighter, the outlook regarding margins, especially in commodities, becomes more difficult, I would put it this way, the relative attractiveness of acquisitions compared to investments, especially major investments, is shifting at the moment. This is why we are looking around in the current environment to find out what are the opportunities of strengthening our core businesses. I don't want to be more specific, but you can derive from our strategy, it doesn't make any sense to acquire a standalone business. We would try to strengthen our core portfolio chemicals to make sure to become the preferred chemical company for the green transformation of customers to abide by this. Let me ask further. In Europe or anywhere else? We are operating globally with our portfolio.
We want to operate long value chains and, if possible, have assets in the regions where we are active. Globally active companies, of course, would be a good match, but I don't want to continue with speculation. It's not our main task to look for acquisitions. We are observing the market, and we think the current momentum is quite exciting, so we are looking at a few things here, but that's as specific as it gets.
Okay. Thank you, Markus. Thank you, Ms. Buchhorn. Ms. Martin, Bloomberg is next.
Good morning. Two brief questions. Zhanjiang first. You said it's starting now. Can you be more concrete? What about the current capacity utilization, and what do you expect for Q3 and Q4? You said in the analyst call that you expect disruptions in Europe, even though you are well prepared. Maybe you can talk about your expectations regarding European supply chains, maybe more details on effects that you expect for BASF, even though you have more ships that are operating and so on.
Okay. Zhanjiang. Thank you for your questions, Ms. Martin. Capacity utilization in Zhanjiang is as expected and as we announced last year, very high, and this is a development we've seen very quickly. The hypothesis, we are building something that is competitive and that makes it possible in the commodity markets to have high capacity utilization at a high speed. This turned out to be true. We have a very good capacity utilization. I don't have the exact figures, but many of the core product lines in petrochemicals is close to 90% or higher regarding capacity utilization.
Some assets are operating at a lower capacity utilization at the moment, either because we are still in the middle of customer qualification processes. We are also producing for our Care Chemicals division, where the products go into consumer products like detergents or skincare products, and you have to go through customer qualification processes, which sometimes take a few months. Capacity utilization is increasing a little more slowly. It's different from commodities where you switch on and are present in the market. Some assets, for tactical reasons, are not operated at full capacity utilization. Technically speaking, we can operate the site at a very high capacity utilization, and this will stay the same. This will remain the same for the years to come. There won't be any significant changes in the future, and ramping up of the Care Chemicals portfolio, I already mentioned it.
Okay. The Rhine River. Of course, the low water levels are concerning us, and site management teams and supply chain are looking into this. This means that we are taking a lot of measures to make sure that we do not see any negative economic effects. As Markus said, we are much better prepared than in 2018. For the incoming products and for the outgoing products, we are preparing alternatives at the moment, not only these so-called low water barges. These are barges that can operate at low water levels, but we are also looking at alternative ways of transportations, trucks trains, and so on. We think that we can manage quite well. I don't see any looming economic damage. Of course, logistics cost will increase in such a situation, but I think everything is under control, and we have to wait and see when we will have higher water levels.
In my comments in the analyst call, and I don't know if you listened, I didn't want to say that this is no problem. It's a challenging situation, but I was in the Board of Executive Directors in 2018, and the difficulties were very grave, and that led to economic downturns in our company. In the comparison with 2018, I didn't want to compare. I just want to say how very much better we are prepared and how further developed we are and how our teams deal with it. My comfort level, how the organization is very hands-on in tackling the situation and finding alternatives. It shows that when the pressure is high, at BASF, there are people that do really smart things and make things possible. That's our observation now.
Okay. Let's go on. Mr. Freytag, I think is next of FAZ. Good morning.
Yes, good morning. I have a few questions on the job reductions. It was said 7,000, and how many of them are for Ludwigshafen? The job cuts, will it continue at this speed? I also would be interested how the situation is at Ludwigshafen. Is Ludwigshafen profitable, or is it not yet? How many plants have been closed? The third question, Mr. Kamieth, I would like you to tell me that the job reduction program costs EUR 1.9 billion.
We talked to somebody who is aged at the end of his 50s. He can retire, and until the end, until his retirement, he gets 70% of his salary paid by BASF. I would like to ask you, how does that contribute to the sentiment in the chemical industry and the industry going to Berlin and asking for help and an easier transformation part, less CO2 emissions, but at the same time, you can have enough money to pay a lot for people who go into retirement.
Let me start with the first part, these 7,000 jobs you're talking about. They were shown in an adjusted fashion because with the number of people that work at BASF, we have different effects, your portfolio building, Zhanjiang, and others. Since the beginning of 2024, it's these 7,000 positions that we have already eliminated, and of those, if I remember correctly, 2/3 have occurred in Germany. The exact figure for Ludwigshafen, I don't have. There's always, well, a ballpark, because for us in Germany is always the biggest country, and it's not only as Ludwigshafen, but 2/3 occur really in Germany. The momentum that we see now, and we showed it on the chart, is that there is a growing momentum, 2024, 2025, 2026. That will still continue because the programs and the employee programs have fully started. Restructuring programs are ongoing.
Jobs are actually reduced. We have a run rate for the first semester 2026 of approximately 300 - 350 positions per month that are being reduced, and that will go on like that for a while. There's no target figure. Frequently, we have been discussing what is the target figure. We don't have it because we say, okay, we have measures. We do it by what we want to change positively and what will contribute to the value of BASF. Job reduction is the consequence of what we want to achieve. It's not the target as such, but we will see the same momentum for a while. The employee programs like severance programs, for example, we're not the only ones that do that. Of course, we look at our peers. We try to compare.
We do not publish anything here. We do look around and benchmark. There are legal rules in Germany that we have. There is a legal environment. In Germany, too, it is quite expensive for companies to do restructuring. That's also under discussion. We can't get out of this situation. We have a site agreement which is negotiated and which we have and we built upon, redundancies for operational reasons are excluded here. You have to talk to your employees when you are affected. We have to pay these severance payments, for example. You, Dirk, what would you like to add?
The severance payments are high. It's a fact that the industry, in part, or the part of the restructuring is carried by and paid by the companies, and part of that is high severance payments. It's the severance payments and the one-off costs that are lower than the savings that you can achieve on an annual basis. That's the calculation behind it. It is really worthwhile for a company when you can reduce a position and when you don't have this position any longer.
Let me make this point once more. For Germany, it is a challenge when it comes to the competitiveness with other countries, because in Germany and in other European countries, it is extremely expensive. That's maybe a different field, but if you look at growth fields, the risk for companies to invest in Germany and to make a mistake, the risk is very high. This is also due to our rigid legislation that we have. In part, of course, it is justified, and it was good for Germany, but it should be rethought by politics. We need a good approach here. That would be a good idea.
Thank you.
Okay, let's continue. Hartmut Reitz from SWR, he is next. Hello, Mr. Reitz.
Hello. Yes. Maybe that one question of Mr. Freytag is also interesting for me. It wasn't answered about profitability of the Ludwigshafen site. Maybe you can say something about that. I was also very pleased that we have a ballpark figure when it comes to the employee figures. I get the impression that FTEs cannot be compared with the figures that were published once a year so far, compared to the employee figures. Because that also includes half-time or shared labor figures. Maybe you can also talk about the sales divestiture figures. What was your desired target, maybe couldn't you have clarified that before, that with the selling that wouldn't have been so attractive at this point in time?
Sorry, Mr. Freytag. Obviously, I didn't answer your question on profitability. That was not done on purpose. Let's talk about that. The profitability of Ludwigshafen is not high enough yet to carry the profitability of BASF SE and the BASF Group, the productivity is making great headway. With our restructuring measures, also efficiency measures, we make good progress, therefore, Ludwigshafen is closer to the point of making a positive contribution. We are on the right path, as of today, we cannot yet say that Ludwigshafen is profitable again.
I would like to talk about the second aspect of Mr. Reitz. Let me start maybe. The basic idea of selling the flats of BASF was that where real estate management is not part of the total figure, it makes sense to look at it. We have an auction process as we usually do, it's a normal divestiture process which has one specialty. We have social interest here, this is why we added a social charter, we said we will only sell to somebody who offers the price that we envisage and also takes over the social responsibility. In the course of this process, which actually went well, we realized that in the environment in which we're moving, the capital market environment, interest rate development, and so forth, our price expectation is not met.
We said, "Okay, it's not the right point in time to do this now." We suspended the process, which doesn't mean that we will go away from the idea of selling it doesn't mean either that we will restart next week. This is a full stop for the time being, we will observe the market development. The tenants in our flats will know, or know that their rights are safe. Mr. Reitz, back to the point that I hear frequently, couldn't it have been avoided communicating first it doesn't work out, you don't sell, there's a lot of uncertainty?
That's true, the alternative would have been we would have done it behind the curtain secretly, somebody finds out, that would have been a loss of trust because then people say, "Well, BASF never tells us about their plans." That holds true for many parts of the transformation happening at BASF just now. You do observe it very closely. We have a lot in terms of transformation. We, as board of executive directors, decided that the way to be honest with the people, to tell them which ideas we have, even if we don't know yet 100% whether this will work out how will we do it exactly, which individual people will be affected maybe in two or three years.
We try to be open and transparent in our communication in terms of what we plan maybe also then risk the situation that we have now. We announced it. Many people were thrown into uncertainty. We took it very seriously. We now have to realize that this to be added value won't work out. So we had to stop it. The alternative to do it behind the curtain is always worse, because in times of strong transformation, trust is an important point, too. My experience is with unpopular decisions which are communicated openly and honestly, well, that's something people can handle better than them feeling that we didn't tell them everything. Well, it's a point of view. As long as we will be part of the board of executive directors, this will be our guideline and our direction, open and transparent.
Okay. Why did we decide to show the FTEs rather than the headcount? This was a conscious decision, right? Yes, a conscious decision, because we also looked at the historic comparability. Normally, I know outward, we communicate the headcount, but internally, when we look at the correlation with HR expenses, we always mention the FTEs, Full-Time Equivalents. This is how we control t he employees. This is what we do internally.
We said we want to show comparable figures. When were we at the state we are in at the moment, we had to translate it into FTEs. It's not 100% precise. We said FTEs below 30,000. The number of headcount would be slightly above 30,000. It's not a major difference. It's not 10% or more, no. Sorry for the slight confusion. We wanted to show you clean figures in order not to compare apples and oranges. Looking at a period of 70 years, we have to be careful.
Okay. Let's continue. Ms. Weiss of Thomson Reuters, please. Hello, Ms. Weiss.
Hello, Ludwigshafen. Let me ask again, regarding the earning situation in Ludwigshafen. Did I understand you correctly? Losses can be driven down this year, but you will not be back in the profit area. When will this happen? In the analyst call, you said 12% of assets in Ludwigshafen are not competitive at the moment. You're looking into closing assets. Can you tell us what assets you are looking at and how many jobs are affected? My last question, can you tell us on the basis of CoreShift, a shared service center will be relocated to India, how many jobs will be affected in Germany? Thank you.
Okay. Last question. We cannot tell you because at the moment we are developing the measures regarding CoreShift. The development of a new operating model for our core businesses, this number doesn't exist because that's not the basis for our planning. We are developing the measures. We are coming up with implementation plans and then organizational changes, adjustment figures will be the result. The analysis, the preparation of the implementation is ongoing at the moment. We will definitely not publish figures externally prior to communicating everything to our employees. We will do our best to do so in the months to come. We cannot just come up with figures now.
The second question, let me try again. Profitability in Ludwigshafen. It's rather complicated. We don't want to evade the question by all means. Of course, it's interesting to understand how profitable is the Ludwigshafen site. Let me make some basic announcements. We are not controlling the profitability of individual sites, but the profitability of businesses. Of course, we need a Ludwigshafen site, which as such is a profitability-generating site because it's our biggest site. If the Ludwigshafen site is not financially healthy, things will become difficult. We have to look at what is the Ludwigshafen site.
Basically, it's a production site which at a good capacity utilization is supposed to generate profitable business. The next thing is to regard Ludwigshafen as the corporate center, as the core of research and so on. The question, is Ludwigshafen profitable, is not an easy question to answer. What remains is what Dirk Elvermann just mentioned. Ludwigshafen, looking at all the different levels we are looking at, had an enormous profitability problem in recent years. This is due to the productivity that went down and a lack of capacity utilization. We worked on both levers. We tried to explain this today. We are reducing costs in Ludwigshafen to a bigger extent than I can remember we've ever done, since I've been with BASF, which is quite some time. We are also improving the competitiveness of our assets.
In Europe, we have a more positive business environment than expected, which means that the profitability contributions from Ludwigshafen are showing a positive development at the moment. How sustainable this is going to be, well, we have to wait and see regarding the market environment. We are developing the Ludwigshafen site in the right direction. All the people in Ludwigshafen, of course, all the changes in Ludwigshafen are painful. All of them make a contribution to make Ludwigshafen stronger and to streamline it. We are optimistic, we are confident that we are on the right track. There is no theoretical line that we have to pass here. Next, you mentioned something else. Oh, the assets.
Please bear with me that, of course, we are quite courageous when it comes to the guidance where we are competitive and where we are not competitive with production lines. We cannot give you individual plans for competitive reasons. We don't want to tell our competitors which plants we think are probably not competitive. On the other hand, these are topics we are not discussing with our workforce to the full extent because sometimes it's calculations. Competitive does not mean profitable or not profitable. It's an assessment of the cost situation of a specific plant compared to the competitors. One is a strategic assessment. The next is discussing the real world. We cannot provide this transparency.
Right, we can continue. Ms. Eschbacher, Mannheimer Morgen, will be the next. Good morning, Ms. Eschbacher.
Good morning. Question on the company flats. You did not stop the plan of selling them, you just postponed it. You're waiting for a better market environment and would try again, if I understood you correctly. It sounds as if the social charter was the crux of the matter, that this was the reason why you did not get the price you had in mind. Can you tell us what the Strait of Hormuz effect is when it comes to the capacity utilization in Ludwigshafen and China, and how sustainable this effect is?
The company flats. I think you misinterpreted in a way. We did not communicate that it was the social charter or the expectations of the buyers was the main thing here. We had several interested parties for the package. Of course, we assessed what kind of value this package of flats has for BASF.
To be quite blunt, we don't do it because we need money, because we think that somebody else would rate these flats much higher, because it is core business for them and not for us. You have to try to find somebody who gives it a higher rating than you yourselves. In the environment, the market environment, there is a market for BASF, for real estate. Of course, we tried to get some quotes, and they didn't satisfy us, and we said it's better to keep the objects because then the value is higher. This is not the process that is just starting and going on. No, no. It's a rather complicated process and you will not try again two weeks from now. It's not a value-increasing solution for us. This is a decision as such, and we take it seriously.
The fact as such, owning real estate is not the core of BASF. This remains unchanged. If in future, I cannot give you a date, but if in future we again say maybe now we see a market environment that makes it possible for BASF to increase value by selling, we will tackle it again. For now, it's done. This was a first attempt. It didn't work. From our point of view, we tried what we needed to do, and I think now everything is fine and we will stick to this.
Strait of Hormuz?
Well, the Strait of Hormuz, I can tell you that BASF so far has gone very well through this bottleneck. We actively communicated. We started very early in time to network our logistics network with everybody. Until this very day, we haven't had any non-available product. Everybody has access to all the products that we need to this very day. It also had a positive effect, didn't it? Well, this is now coming, yes. We were in the good situation to get more pricing power, particularly in Europe. Why did this happen? Well it is not as if the entire goods import from Asia and China broke down, but it's a fact that the transport cost increased by 30% compared to the situation before the crisis, and that can be felt by the importers, particularly from Asia. That lifted the price levels.
On top of that came the feeling of our customers, maybe it is not such a bad idea to have a customer next door and to buy maybe from a European supplier, chemical supplier. Pricing power, but also the reliability that we offer that helped us. Well, the crisis is not over, and for the third quarter, we still see an expansion of this pattern. Maybe it normalized a little bit. It is not just as an excited discussion as it was in April or May, but we still see that compared to the competitors, we went through quite smoothly.
Yes, I agree. Particularly in the chemical industry in North America, but also in Europe, we had a good economic development in the second quarter, a little better due to this disruption. Well, probably we'll have a number of companies that show a good second quarter. Within this field of companies, it shows our advantages, the size, economies of scale, and to have different supply chains that we can rely on. In this unforeseeable scenario, we made up some headway compared to the competitors, and that makes us very confident that we, in difficult situations, can fare well.
Well, thank you very much. I see Ms. Buchhorn with another question. It is the last from the German language channel, and then we have two English-speaking ones. Okay, Ms. Buchhorn first.
Well, yeah, I didn't calculate it, but if I may. Yes. Let me learn more on building a new operating model that you showed on the CoreShift chart. Obviously, there's more behind it than getting more efficient and lowering costs. You are telling us about harmonization, AI, and everything. BASF and the way it works, you want to put this on a different platform. Can you maybe elaborate on that?
Yes. Let me make it as a big headline, so to speak. Our core business as such is a very large part of BASF. It's EUR 40 billion, and we are talking the diversity of petrochemicals to cosmetic products for the end consumer. This is the range. It's a very complex portfolio. The big journey that we have started with CoreShift is as follows.
Over the last years, we have put ourselves in a very good starting position because the very complex and very heterogeneous standalone businesses were now hived off from the core. They have standalone businesses, and in the sense of coatings, the majority of it was already divested. The core business now has a more compact and even structure. Despite all the complexity, we are still talking about the chemical business of BASF. If you look at what opportunities we now have to go beyond this core business and to still go on harmonizing and standardizing, you see that it is now much easier because in the past, we had to harmonize the entire portfolio, including AP, coating, ECMS, that always had very special requirements. For all functional areas, there are options to reduce variations, to reduce diversity that was not wanted. It just grew.
It became more diverse. Now, against the background of CoreShift, we sat down with many employees from the different departments, and we said, "Okay, if we could, how would we organize the processes end to end?" Starting with HR, IT, and also how we operate at the different sites. There are great ideas coming up. They tell us, "Well, dear board, if you let us, and if maybe we can, well, just leave out some of the holy grails that existed in the past, we could organize ourselves differently." My confidence actually grew by saying, okay, this target to have 20% less cost and operate this new structure, that seems achievable. That will help us a lot. It will change maybe a number of things that we do at BASF, but we are very confident that until 2029, we can reach this target.
It is the right way how to operate this core. We will still make chemistry. We will have large Verbund sites. We will have value adding chains, but many things in two or three years' time will be done differently and more efficiently. This is the big journey, overall journey with CoreShift, you hear it in my language. Well, I am very optimistic. I have respect when it comes to this task, but I feel courageous, and I feel confident that we can really be successful and make BASF a good new unit.
Okay. That was worthwhile. I think Andrew Noël is next. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Great. Hi, Markus. Hi, Dirk . I've got a couple of questions. You've probably given your strongest commentary on M&A for a while. I want to ask, what makes you think BASF is well-suited to this situation of picking up assets through this restructuring consolidation of commodity assets? You're more socially responsible than a Mutares or a Nikita or someone like that. I'm just wondering, why you think you're best placed for the heavy lifting with job cuts, to make those challenged assets work. The second is, INEOS made an interesting comment, a short comment, but an interesting one yesterday. They exited a JV with Sinochem in Zhanjiang. Yes, they wanted to preserve cash, but they also said that they would like to take a more cautious approach strategically to China.
My question is, are you taking a more strategically cautious approach to China, in the timing of your extension phase of Zhanjiang? Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. First of all, to your first question, I'm struggling a little bit with the references you're taking. If you understood our comments that we are looking for distressed assets, and assets that are, let's say, of marginal value, and we try to do a heavy-hand restructuring as the only value-creation lever, you've misunderstood our M&A comments, and sorry for that. I think what we have always said since 2024 in our Winning Ways strategy, that our idea is to strengthen and grow the core. I think this idea that we need a portfolio that's strong, market-leading, innovative and allows us to play BASF strength to help, at the end of the day, all our customer industries to go through their transformation. That's the leading thought in our view around portfolio development.
All we are saying is that right now, in this time of market dynamics, in relatively attractive terms, M&A has become maybe more relatively attractive to large-scale investments, and that's why I think both avenues remain open for us. I think we would not see a strong value in buying assets that other companies would like dispose of because they are unhappy with the profitability or with the cash generation. That probably is not our filter, but to look for synergistic and value-accretive acquisitions is, I think, the role of every board. As I said many times, I think the current dynamic in the chemical industry, including also pressure on consolidation and portfolio changes, is an opportunity for BASF. We are not driven, and we are not forced to do anything. We just are a interested, let's say, participant in observing the market right now.
The examples you mentioned, this is not the playing field that we are looking at. China, very simple. We have also in our strategy announced that China continues to be a target market for us. Our ambition is to grow with the chemical market in China. In the past, we've grown significantly higher than the chemical market in China. We have gained market share. Given the competitive dynamics and the maturity also of both the chemical industry and also our customer industries in China, I think for us it would be overambitious to say we want to outgrow the chemical market now forever. I think growing with the chemical market in China is what we're aiming at. We made a significant step with the Zhanjiang investment. We will continue to invest in China in attractive businesses to grow with our customer industries there.
We stay committed to the Chinese market. We have a lot of strength there. We are approaching north teens, so 18%-20% of our share of business in China. We feel good about this, and we feel good about further ideas, but don't expect now a second Zhanjiang or a third Zhanjiang to happen in the next years. That's probably not going to happen. We continue to invest in China. We like China, we like the market opportunities, and we like the innovation speed in China as well.
Great. Thank you.
All right. I think we'll come to the final question, from Will Beacham, ICIS. Hi.
Hello. Hi, good morning. Good morning, gentlemen. I've got two questions related to the Middle East and one about the Rhine. First of all, on the Middle East, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has obviously cut off global supplies of crude oil and refined products and petrochemical feedstocks like naphtha, which has affected Asia really badly so far, but not so much Europe. This time round, with the strait closed again and global inventories running really low, I'm just wondering how concerned you are that there could be potential shortages of petrochemical feedstocks, not just in Asia, but potentially in Europe. That's the first question. Secondly, on the Middle East, you clearly got a really big boost from the market conditions that we saw in March, April time after the war began. There was a bit of panic in the market. Everyone was very concerned.
I just wonder how are your customers behaving this time around now that the strait's closed again completely? How are their inventories looking? How is demand looking? How is customer sentiment at the moment? One of you talked about, in Q3, an expansion of the pattern of earlier in the year. Just wondered what you meant by that. Then just finally, on the Rhine, if you can say anything more about the impact of the Rhine. Is this the worst it's ever been, the lowest it's ever been? You talked about no economic impact, but has there been any production impact on you? How worried are you that you might have to issue a force majeure or that your suppliers might have to, or that there could be really serious logistical problems in Europe for chemical producers? Thank you. That's it from me.
Yeah. Two very complicated questions, let me come back to the Rhine situation. First of all, I think what I have seen so far when you look at the Rhine level, it is actually as low as it has been right now because of the extended drought here in Germany. It's of course not the level that is so decisive, it's also the length of how long will it stay so low. Then you of course have secondary, tertiary effects if the time period is so long. We don't know this yet. Far, we can say we are in a much better situation than we have been in the past in similar situations. Not the first time we have low Rhine water levels. We discussed this earlier.
I also think it would not be wise to now exclude that there will be force majeure announcements or, let's say, product shortages in individual cases. Because as you know, Ludwigshafen and also other chemical factories along the River Rhine, BASF is not the only one, and on other rivers, probably in Europe, have very complex Verbund structures and value chains and so forth. Sometimes it's only one raw material that's missing, and then you have some ripple effects. This all puts a lot of stress on the system. I have a lot of confidence that our teams are handling this fairly well. We already see some inflated logistics costs because we're bringing now things from the ship to rail or to trucks.
We are seeing this already, but nothing that makes now the CEO or the CFO of BASF nervous when it comes to quarterly results or full-year forecasts. We're not in that category. That's why we said we didn't want to play it down. It's complicated, and it puts a lot of pressure on planning, on supply chain, and I don't want to rule out customer impacts and things where BASF will have to go out and say we have to curtail certain products. This could all happen in the next weeks, but from a financial impact, everything that we're seeing so far doesn't make us too nervous, and I think our teams have it very well under control and are mitigating these effects on a constant basis. Middle East, what's different this time? I tried to explain this also in the analyst call this morning.
When the war broke out in end of February and the Strait of Hormuz closed shortly thereafter, of course, everybody was facing a completely new situation. We had to deal with theoretical, hypothetical scenarios and of course, in this case, a lot of people then react towards, "I'd want to be on the safe side. No matter what, I don't want to run out of product. I will accept extraordinary conditions and pricing," and so forth. There was a lot of insecurity. The insecurity has not faded completely, but we've gotten used to this a little bit, and we have also seen that supply chains, global supply chains, energy-refined products, but also finished products in the chemical industry, have found ways to, let's say, deal with the different situation.
You can see it most prominently in China, the biggest chemical market, where already margins and supply-demand has already more or less in a lot of categories relaxed to where it was before the war. The system has, so to say, rearranged, and now these shocks, like a couple of days ago, this increased oil shock again, meets a much more prepared industry and a more resilient industry, so to say. That's why I expect these extreme reactions not to happen, but especially if we see elevated cost, limited supply over a longer period of time, it will lead to exactly what you said.
The more upstream you go, the lower the inventories are. That's why a few weeks ago, I also commented publicly in the media that if we continue to see a drain on crude oil inventories, eventually we might see a bounce back of crude oil prices again. I think we're seeing the first shades of this. I think it's a tense situation, but the chemical industry has dealt fairly well with it. We helped our customer industries to stay supplied. I continue to see this also as a base case for the next at least two quarters.
Thank you.
Okay.
I think no more questions for the time being. Everything was answered. That was it from our side. Thank you very much for taking part. Thank you for your interest in BASF. Of course, we appreciate this. If you need further information, our colleagues of our press department will be available. If you like, we also have pictures from the press conference that can be made available. The Q3 figures will be presented on 28th of October in form of a video conference. We'd appreciate to see you again. Thank you, and have a great day. See you at the next event. Thank you.