Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining our media update for the second quarter of 2024. Our CEO, Bill Anderson, will start the presentation with his perspective on the business development, and he will also speak about the progress we made on our strategic objectives. Our CFO, Wolfgang Nickl, will then explain the group performance in more detail and comment on the full-year outlook. After that, you'll have the opportunity to ask your questions. I'd like to start by drawing your attention to the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement. With that, I hand it over to you, Bill.
Thanks, Michael, and thanks to all of you for joining us. It's really a privilege to represent the work of all the people at Bayer today. Wolfgang and I are going to highlight the progress that we've made in the past quarter, and we'll take your questions. We hope you get a picture of what we see when we look at the company. It's an organization that's focused on the biggest challenges and the opportunities ahead of us. We're committed to delivering what we promise, and we're making progress in each of the areas that we outlined at our Capital Markets Day at the beginning of March. One of the central commitments we made on that day is that this organization will consistently perform while simultaneously addressing the longer-term roadblocks that hold us back.
The 154 days since March 5th have been pretty good evidence that we can do both. Our businesses are competitive. We're overhauling bureaucracy, ramping up our efforts on litigation. We're stepping up our cash generation. We're advancing the pharma pipeline. Particularly on the last one, we're making a lot of progress. Just yesterday, we got great news on Kerendia, which I'll touch on later in my remarks. We still have a lot of work to do, but I like our momentum, and we can confidently say that Team Bayer is up to the task. Let's start by looking at our performance. Here, the key message is we remain on track to deliver. We're confirming our outlook for the group. Revenues are up slightly in currency and portfolio-adjusted terms, which we will use throughout the remarks.
Our core earnings per share came in at EUR 3.76, and free cash flow improved from -EUR 2.6 billion in Q1 to -EUR 1.4 billion at the half-year mark. I'll touch on key highlights from the divisions, and Wolfgang will give you more detail on the numbers and what's behind them. It's no secret that the agriculture market has been challenging. We've felt that as well. But our crop science business nearly offset headwinds with corn pricing, as well as increased soybean and glyphosate volumes.
We saw margin pressure in the first half, but our team has shown discipline in recovering costs and improving inventories to improve our cash generation throughout the first half of the year. We'll continue to make that a priority in the second half. Pharmaceuticals posted another very solid quarter in Q2. The team has good momentum, and I'm really impressed by how we're managing the LOE transition.
Xarelto declined 11% in Q2, which doesn't come as a big surprise given increasing pressure from generics. But on the other hand, our launch products, Nubeqa and Kerendia, are continuing their impressive momentum, with sales of each up more than 70% year to date. Eylea is growing in all regions, and the 8-milligram launch is underway in the first markets. Our base business has proven to be robust. In fact, if you exclude Xarelto, our pharma sales would be up 9% in Q2 and 7% in the first half of the year. That kind of growth would position us at the upper end of the industry. And year over year, we've managed to expand our margin in the first half of 2024. Consumer Health returned to growth in Q2, bringing half-year sales to 2%, with most categories up.
We see great growth coming from our dermatology category, thanks largely to the Bepanthen brand family. And I've heard from pharmacists in Europe firsthand that they're very happy to see supply improvements in Iberogast, which is driving growth in our digestive health category. Our EBITDA margin came in at 22.3%. These results put us in a good spot to confirm our full-year guidance. We still have plenty to do, but we're going to continue building on our momentum quarter by quarter. I speak for my colleagues and everyone at Bayer when I say that we know what we need to do to deliver, and that's what we plan on doing. So let's move on to our strategic priorities. First, growth and innovation. There's a lot happening on our pharma pipeline. We'll cover that in a minute on a dedicated slide.
But I see important things happening in other divisions as well. In crop science, we continue rolling out short-stature corn. It's in the ground in fields in the United States, with pilots also running in Italy and Spain. But that's not the only innovation we're working on in this important crop. This year, we've launched a new generation of VT4PRO corn in the U.S. The technology helps the corn plant protect itself from one of agriculture's most pernicious pests, the corn rootworm. With a demonstrated yield advantage of more than five bushels per acre, we expect it to reach up to 1 million acres in its first year on the market. In consumer health, we've articulated a vision to reach billions of consumers with trusted self-care.
That's a step change from where we are today, and it will require quality growth through innovation, expansion of new brands, and the right portfolio choices. That's why we're taking brands like Iberogast, a beloved gut health treatment, and expanding it to the U.S. We're launching One A Day into the emerging field of cellular health. Now to litigation. On PCBs, we had some news at the end of July that I'd like to put in context. You might remember that in 2020, we communicated a nationwide class settlement with 2,500 local governments. Some municipalities opted out. Seattle was one of them, a unique case with special circumstances as it involved claims that were not present in the other opt-outs. So reaching a settlement here is significant. Overall, there are 9 environmental cases involving municipal plaintiffs that are still pending, and each case is different.
If we choose to pursue settlements on some of these, we expect them to come in at lower terms. Beyond that, we've ramped up our efforts to enforce the indemnity agreements signed with Monsanto. In the Roundup litigation, we achieved a very favorable decision from Down Under, where the Federal Court of Australia dismissed a class action. Once again, when it's really about science in the courtroom, we win. We've also seen positive developments in the U.S. Even the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, which is the most difficult court for companies as defendants in the U.S., made some decisions in our favor in the most recent Roundup case. This ultimately led the plaintiff to dismiss the case, which we consider a great success. Outside of the courts, we continue to explore measures to contain litigation risk.
This involves partnering with American farmers who understand glyphosate's great importance for their livelihoods and for global food security. We continue to focus on legislation at both the state and the federal level, including advocating for the passage of a farm bill in Congress as early as possible. We want to see a bill passed that gives American farmers the reliability and science-based regulation they deserve. We'll continue to champion their voices. Further, we continue to evaluate every appropriate measure to bring closure to the situation, both for our company and for U.S. farmers, because we need our revenues to go to funding the company's mission, not the litigation industry. Third, cash. We're advancing toward our target of EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion in free cash flow this year. We're also putting a strong focus on managing inventories and optimizing working capital.
Expect more progress here in the second half of 2024. Finally, dynamic shared ownership. Two weeks ago, Julio and his team announced the architecture of our consumer health division. They're combining roles, and they're removing multiple layers for more focus, bigger impact, and stronger integration of the consumer in the way we work. We've expanded the scope of leadership roles, combining our head of R&D and head of marketing, for example. We've consolidated regions, and we're extending the span of coaching. These are bold decisions, and we're going to continue making them. All three of our businesses now have an organizational blueprint that's leaner, less hierarchical, more focused on customers and products, and will continually improve toward that standard with the goal of orienting everything around our mission. We're systematically installing a new way of operating all across the company, and it's proceeding apace.
We have 3,200 fewer jobs in the company than we did at the start of the year, and we have stood up 900 teams working on some of our most important missions. Our Nubeqa team is fully schooled in the new model, and the business is growing in all regions ahead of expectations, quarter-over-quarter and year to date. Our crop science team plans to roll out 10 blockbusters over the next 10 years. Those teams are among the 50 product teams we've activated in crop science, each with the lone goal of improving the solutions we develop for the world's farmers. Now, I just mentioned progress in our pharma pipeline. Let's take a closer look at it. In just the past 90 days, we've taken big steps toward filling the mid-stage pipeline, expanding labels, and advancing late-stage assets.
I'll start with our most recent piece of news on Kerendia. Just yesterday, we released positive top-line results from the phase III trial, FINEARTS heart failure. That's important news, especially in a high-stakes, innovation-driven business like ours. We're happy to be able to say that each of our past five phase III clinical trials have yielded successful results. This trial evaluates the medicine in patients with heart failure with a left ventricular ejection fraction of 40% or more. Let me put that in context. Heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization for people over 65. Mortality rates are comparable or even worse than most common cancers. Of the 60 million people who suffer from heart failure worldwide, approximately half of them meet the parameters that this study evaluated.
We look forward to sharing detailed data from this study in less than four weeks at the upcoming Congress of the European Society of Cardiology on September 1st. We're hopeful that these results can lead to a significant expansion of the patient population that we reach with Kerendia. We're also making progress in the fight against Parkinson's, a devastating disease that hasn't seen significant advancements in the standard of care for far too long. The FDA gave Fast Track designation to AB-1005, a gene therapy to treat the disease. The therapy was also awarded the Innovation Passport, the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency's Innovative Medicine designation. A phase II trial, including 87 patients, is underway. This is already the second investigational gene therapy from AskBio to reach mid-stage clinical development.
In addition, the FDA also gave a Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy designation to bemdaneprocel, the most clinically advanced investigational cell therapy in the U.S. for treating Parkinson's disease. It has the potential to help patients living with Parkinson's regain functions they've lost to this terrible disease. Finally, we're working to be able to treat patients with non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors have HER2 mutations. This work was recently backed by FDA's Breakthrough Therapy designation. Our phase I results were so promising that we were able to advance the program directly to late stage, and enrollment of the first patient in a phase III trial is just around the corner. Beyond these pipeline advancements, we're also seeing good momentum commercializing our portfolio. We got positive top-line results out of the ARANOTE study for Nubeqa in mid-July.
We expect the data to pave the way for a broader label in the metastatic, hormone-sensitive setting of prostate cancer, now including the use of the medicine without concomitant chemotherapy. Looking ahead to 2025, we're preparing to launch both Elinzanetant, a potential novel non-hormonal solution for women suffering from vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause, and Acoramidis, a cardiology drug that we have exclusive marketing rights for in Europe. We recently submitted the regulatory filing of Elinzanetant in the U.S., and Acoramidis was already filed in Europe in January of this year. Since then, new data confirmed this medicine's potential for a best-in-class clinical profile. Our pharma pipeline is one of our biggest levers for value creation. There's certainly much more work to do here, but it's been a productive 2024, and we can be very optimistic about what's ahead.
Before handing over to Wolfgang, I want to close my remarks by looking at the remainder of the year. As I said earlier, we have some work to do to hit our targets. Let me assure you that we're keeping our eye on the ball, and we're going to deliver. Here are a few priorities that we're focused on across each business. In pharmaceuticals, we're going to make the most out of our growth opportunities. Expect us to keep writing the Eylea growth story, powered in part by the continued rollout of 8 milligram. And we'll keep growing our Nubeqa and Kerendia franchises. In crop science, we expect to see strong growth in our core, particularly from our core crop protection business, including innovative products like the Fox family and Curbix in Latin America.
In addition, we're stewarding our costs very carefully and assessing how to respond to increasing generic crop protection pricing pressure. We believe this is going to require a tailored approach, similar to how we manage glyphosate today. We continue to explore options to mitigate price pressures that we see in crop protection. Further, we want to expand our margins in the second half of the year, leaning on Dynamic Shared Ownership. In Consumer Health, we're going to drive demand and accelerate our growth through effective launches and science-based innovation. We're going to offer each of these priorities in the near term while continuing to address our longer-term challenges. If we want to earn back trust, we have to do both, and I know that we have what it takes. Thanks for your attention, and now I'll turn it over to Wolfgang.
Thank you, Bill, and hello also from my side.
I'd like to provide a bit more color on the drivers of our second quarter results before I turn to our outlook for the full year. Let's first look at our group results. Q2 sales increased by 3% on a currency and portfolio-adjusted basis to EUR 11.1 billion. We faced a EUR 240 million foreign exchange headwind. Therefore, as reported, sales growth was approximately 1%. Our EBITDA before special items came in at EUR 2.1 billion, which is 16% or about EUR 420 million below the prior year quarter. This was largely driven by an unfavorable mix effect in crop science and a higher provision for short-term incentives compared to a significant reversal in the prior year's quarter. We also saw about EUR 130 million of FX headwinds in our EBITDA before special items. Altogether, EBITDA margin before special items came in at 18.9% for the quarter.
Lower EBITDA before special items earnings translated into core earnings per share of EUR 0.94 in Q2, which is EUR 0.28 or about 23% below the prior year period. Our core financial result came in at -EUR 0.5 billion and was in line with the prior year. Despite lower earnings, our free cash flow came in at EUR 1.3 billion compared to a -EUR 0.5 billion in last year's quarter. Two major effects drove the improvement. Due to active working capital management, we improved our earnings conversion into cash. Our Q2 free cash flow, for instance, includes positive results from our inventory optimization efforts. In addition, we had lower incentive payouts versus prior year of about EUR 1 billion. The positive cash contribution in the quarter reduced our net financial debt to EUR 36.8 billion by the end of Q2. I will move now to the divisional full-year outlook.
With the first six months behind us, we have a better visibility for the full year. So let me talk a bit about the business drivers for each division. I'll start with Crop Science. Given the market-driven headwinds, we now expect our Crop Science division to come in at the lower end of our sales growth and margin guidance. For the second half of the year, we expect strong growth in our core business to be muted by significant volume declines in glyphosate following the phasing patterns in 2023. On the profitability side, growth in the core business, COGS recovery, DSO, and efficiency savings are expected to mitigate inflation and merit increases. This will lead to expanded margins compared to the second half of the prior year. In addition, we updated our FX estimation based on June and spot rates.
Compared to the March and spot rates, we now anticipate for Crop Science an increased currency headwind on sales of about 2 percentage points compared to about 1 percentage point previously. Let me move on to pharma. Based on the good performance in the first half of the year, we now foresee a year-over-year sales growth between zero percent and 3% for the full year. This is up from the previous - 4% to zero percent. For the remainder of the year, we anticipate increased pressure on Xarelto. This headwind is expected to partially compensate it by the ongoing strong performance of our launch assets and also Eylea. For the latter, we expect a low single-digit percentage sales growth for the full year. Our guidance on EBITDA margin before special items remains unchanged, illustrating a sequential margin decline in half two versus the first half of the year.
That is largely driven by an unfavorable product mix and continued investments in launches, as well as R&D investments into our pipeline. In consumer health, we confirm our full-year guidance at constant currencies. We expect to accelerate growth in the second half, driven by innovation and targeted pricing, coupled with further improvement of supply situations. We see continued cost pressure, which is weighing on our profitability. Together with enhanced operational efficiencies, targeted price management, and the speedy implementation of DSO, we're actively offsetting these effects. Let's now look at the outlook for the entire group. We reaffirm our full-year guidance for the group. FX group estimates based on June and spot rates remain unchanged compared to the March spot rates used previously. And with that, I would like to close our prepared remarks and hand it over to you, Michael, to start us on the Q&A, please.
Absolutely. Thanks, Bill, and thanks, Wolfgang, for your presentations. With that, we'll now start with the Q&A session. So if you would like to ask a question, please do the following. First, make sure that Zoom is the only active chat program open on your computer, as other programs might interfere with your ability to engage. Second, make sure your microphone is activated in Zoom. And third, use the raise hand function. We will register your interest in asking a question, and then when it's your turn, I will call your name and a pop-up window will open on your screen. And when you see this pop-up window, please unmute yourself and ask your question. And your camera, of course, will remain off. All right, so enough about the logistics here. Let's get started. And the first question actually comes from Olaf Storbeck from the Financial Times.
Afterwards, we have Ludwig Burger from Reuters, but we start with Olaf Storbeck first. Olaf, over to you.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
I have a couple of questions, probably to Wolfgang on some of the financial performance. What struck my eye is that net debt came down quite significantly in Q2, but EBITDA fell even faster, which I think kind of, if that was a protected pattern, would raise concern as your metrics would kind of deteriorate even further. Could you maybe explain a bit what is kind of the underlying reason for this and what you expect for the whole year in terms of net debt and EBITDA and your overall leverage? And the other question would be to Stefan and labor costs.
I mean, you have had a 5% decrease in employees, but personnel expenditure rose by a quarter, which is quite striking, I think, and probably wouldn't include severance pay, I guess. That would be somewhere else, I think. Can you please also explain a bit what's going on there?
Of course, gladly, Olaf. Good morning to you. Yeah, net debt came down in the second quarter when compared with the first quarter. That is simply a function of positive free cash flow. Remember, we had a positive free cash flow, and last year we had a negative free cash flow. I'd also like to remind you that the AGM approved a minimum dividend, so we had no meaningful dividend payout below the free cash flow. Therefore, the free cash flow translated directly into net financial debt reduction, which is the plan.
I can tell you I'm pretty confident on delivering on our guidance, both on the free cash flow for the year, which is EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion, and also on the corresponding reduction in net financial debt, where we want to reach EUR 32.5 billion-EUR 33.5 billion compared to EUR 34.5 billion at the end of last year. You ask about leverage. That will obviously help with leverage. Also, our net pension liabilities, since we're on the financials, are coming slightly down based on the interest rates worldwide. On the staff reduction, Bill mentioned the reduction of numbers in headcount. We're very pleased with the momentum and the trajectory there. But you cannot necessarily one for one in a quarter compare it with the total personnel cost, because, like we mentioned on the prepared remarks, you see effects from changed provisions for incentives there.
For instance, last quarter, we had a pretty significant hit because in Q2 last year, we had a reversal of a provision, and this year we provided into STI again, and severance costs are not accounted for in the personnel cost here. So again, I can confirm your net financial debt and on the DSO savings, we're well on track.
Can I have one follow-up, please, on the first issue, leverage and EBITDA?
Sure.
I mean, my point was that it looks like despite improvement on the absolute number of net debt, it looks like kind of the trend is going against you as kind of EBITDA is falling faster than net debt is falling. So the net debt to EBITDA is kind of deteriorating even in the first full years, sorry, in the first half of the year, which doesn't feel comfortable to me.
Yeah, we will have to wait until the year is over. Obviously, the leverage is a function of many things. It will include the EBITDA. It will include the absolute net debt. It will include the net pensions. Like I mentioned, it also will strongly depend on what the U.S. dollar will do. So we'll see what the leverage ratio comes out with. And on top of that, you heard us at the Capital Market Day. That's one of our top focus areas for the company. And over the next several years, we have said that we want to go back into the A territory. And whether this year at 3.2 or 3.3 or 3.4, our target midterm is clearly to go into A category. And you know that's about 2.5.
Okay, thanks.
You're welcome, Olaf.
Thank you. So the next one is actually Ludwig Burger from Reuters. And then afterwards, we have Jonas Jansen from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But we start with Ludwig Burger. Ludwig, over to you.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Two questions, if I can, please. So on the DSO, you've reported progress in terms of job reduction, if I count correctly, from 1,500 in the first quarter to 1,700 during the second quarter. And you've spoken a lot how this is a decentralized process and it's not driven by overall targets. Still, is this something that just falls into your lap and you have to accept as it is, as a result of some kind of granular process? Or do you have still a view on it? Is this on track? Is this too much or too little? And how much more can we expect throughout the remainder of the year?
So that would be great. Second question, interesting that you mentioned your lobbying push, if I can call it that, with regards to litigation. I wonder if you could be more specific there because you want to address lawmakers clearly here. Are there any draft laws or bills that may come up for a vote in Congress or state-level Congress in an election year? That's it. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Ludwig. First, on the question on dynamic shared ownership and job reductions, so we laid out very clear principles for the company about how we're going to organize in the future. That starts with putting customers, I mean, literally taking a customer in a country, in a city, building the team around the customer. Or likewise, in product development, you start with the product, you build out from that, as opposed to a conventional approach with org charts.
We have other basic sort of rules of the new system. So for example, in the new system, the people doing the work, basically, they have to be empowered to make 95% of the decisions that have to do with the work. That means if you have a team of, let's say, seven people in product development, they've got to be able to make the decisions about which product modifications to make, how much to invest, what's the timeline. That's on them. In a typical system, a lot of those decisions would rest with their managers or their manager's managers or the governance committee or all of the above. And we're basically taking all of that out. And so these are requirements for every part of the company. And when you have these clear requirements, that essentially determines the org structure and the org approach.
What you find is we move from, for example, in the old system, where we would have managers sometimes managing 3 people or 5 people or 7 people, we don't have that anymore. Now we have managers, typically, they can be managing 12, 15, 20, even 30 people because that management role is very limited. It's a narrower sort of administrative and career coaching role, whereas the actual work isn't being conducted through the managers anymore. And so when you do that, and we go basically area by area, then the organization kind of falls out from that. And that's what determines how many jobs are, yeah, going away. Most of those jobs, by the way, the 3,200 for the first half, we think about 2,500 of those roles were management roles. So that kind of gives you a flavor for it. So we're definitely on track.
This is exactly what we envisioned. We have visibility on these designs as they're produced. And so we can see from that that the system is very much on track. We originally set out to have EUR 2 billion in cost savings, largely from personnel-related costs, by 2026, and EUR 500 million for this year. And again, we can see that we're on track for both of those goals. Your question about the litigation and, yeah, efforts to provide for solutions that, again, make sure that farmers still have access to the tools they need to deliver food for the people, in this case, in America, at affordable prices. And we're working with a group called the Modern Ag Alliance that includes well over 100 farming groups that are also very concerned about this topic.
And so right now, for example, there's language in the U.S. House of Representatives version, in the Agriculture Committee version of the Farm Bill that spells out that, hey, if a product has been deemed as safe and effective by the EPA, which is the highest authority in the U.S. on these matters, that manufacturers following that label have basically met the requirements for health and safety warnings. Likewise, we're pursuing with the Modern Ag Alliance that kind of legislation in a number of states. This is common sense. Yeah, it's a basic protection that if we're operating under the regulatory policy of the nation and we're complying with all those requirements, that we can't have the litigation industry trying to basically take from that where we would otherwise invest in new solutions for farmers and use that to pay off the foreign capital that's subsidizing their industry.
Okay, thank you. The next questions come from Jonas Jansen, FAZ. And afterwards, we have Kevin Grogan from Scrip. But we start with Jonas Jansen. Over to you, Jonas.
Hey, good morning. And thanks for the opportunity. Just to ask again what Mr. Burger asked. So you cannot really put a number on that for the maybe next year or so that you can say, yeah, we will be around the same people that are working less for Bayer. That would be the first one. And maybe the numbers you already mentioned now for the first half of the year, can you say how many people are affected in Germany there? And then just two understanding questions. Wolfgang, what you said in your EBITDA paragraph, the variable compensation part, is that also DSO severance package effect, or is that a different thing what was affected there?
And then just looking at the stock exchange hiccups around the world, the yen, etc., do you expect more impact in the year regarding currency exchanges, which is something you sometimes are heavily affected by? But I can imagine that it's so short-term that it's not reflected yet in your outlook. I don't know.
Yeah, thanks, Jonas. I'll let Wolfgang take the second two questions. In terms of the ability to put a number on it, we expect the implementation of DSO to continue more or less on the course we're on. We've got, yeah, very good progress so far. I'd say we're moving, if anything, faster than we originally had planned, at least faster than my expectations. But we don't have a number for the remainder of the year or a number for next year because that's not how this is working.
So we insist on, yeah, basically people keeping to the principles, which is what we need to do to accelerate the pace of work. Let me just give you a few examples that I saw. Last week, Wolfgang and I and the rest of the Management Board were in New York and New Jersey, and we got a chance to hear firsthand from some of the teams that have already been working in the DSO model for some time. So, for example, in Consumer Health, we have our e-commerce people in the U.S. They're working in DSO. It's really quite remarkable because in the old system, you have the marketing people, and then you have production people, and they're all in their kind of organizational silos.
In the new system, these folks are all together, and they basically are on teams built around the actual customer that we're working with in e-commerce. They're even wearing the clothes that the customer wears. They were telling us this. It's like they said sometimes when they're in the team meetings, you can't tell who works for Bayer and who works for the customer because they're working so closely. They're pioneering new e-commerce product solutions. For example, you don't need the same packaging for an e-commerce product that you need to sit on a store shelf. They're able to make packages that are more convenient for consumers, that are less expensive in terms of shipping, and that are more environmentally friendly. They're doing this without basically going to headquarters or going to the boss.
The team is making these decisions and creating basically new SKUs independent of any hierarchy. In the Nubeqa team in the U.S., we heard from the folks in the field who are, imagine, in this case, we were talking to folks who are representing a group of seven northern states. And they have different sales territories and things. They run this whole business. And they're, for example, making decisions to eliminate a sales territory, basically expand the other ones, dissolve a sales territory, convert that person, that position into a different job that's focused on key accounts in other territories and supporting those, and then also taking some money that they saved in other expenses and hiring a third party to provide reimbursement support.
So this is stuff that always before this would have gone through committees and gone to headquarters and would have been factored into the following year's budget and maybe gotten approved. Now you basically have the people in the field that are doing the work, taking ownership, making decisions, and executing. They inform headquarters later. A third example, we have Talent Marketplace now in the U.S. For the folks that are in the home office, people in marketing and medical and distribution. Instead of sort of the bosses deciding what they're going to do and when they're going to do it, anyone can create a project and put in a one-page project description. Then they have literally Talent Marketplace where they all come together. People look at the projects, and then they vote with their feet.
Hey, what do I want to work on for the next 90 days? So there's no boss deciding. People are deciding themselves. Hey, what work am I going to do? And this is exactly what we're doing for all the people of Bayer. And it's really encouraging to see in each of these cases, the growth rates are astounding. In e-commerce, we're growing over 40% this year. In Nubeqa, it's been, yeah, it's over 50%. Other examples. So anyway, we're really on track. But it's not about us deciding at headquarters, hey, what's the number? It's about our teams taking hold of the new system and running with it. And Wolfgang, I'll hand it over to you on the financial questions.
Gladly, Jonas. Thanks for the clarification questions.
By the way, on the headcount piece, I don't think it's very useful right now to split this out by countries because overall, we'll probably proportionally reducing, but from a sequencing, we'll probably be different in different countries. Thanks also for the question on the EBITDA commentary for Q2. The commentary I made was on STI, short-term incentive. If you rewind the movie to last Q2, we had a profit warning, and that came with a reset of the provision we made for STI. In this year, we're performing to plan, and we're providing to STI. If you look at the delta between the two years, it's about EUR 370 million. So you have EUR 370 million almost explains the whole reduction in EBITDA year-over-year. And that leads also perfectly in your second question because there was another EUR 130 million that we were impacted by foreign currency.
So the effect between the two years is more than explained by STI and by FX. FX in general, I bet you that we're watching what's going on on the stock markets. And we have hedging strategies in place. As you know, 80% of our revenue is outside of the eurozone. We don't see any meaningful changes to what we had previously assumed. I also mentioned that in my prepared remarks. Overall, we think that we will have an impact on revenue somewhere around EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.5 billion. And then the impact on EBITDA for the year will be about EUR 0.5 billion or so. You've seen the half-year numbers. We were at about EUR 750 million on revenue at about EUR 330 million on EBITDA. In particular, we watch hyperinflation countries, Argentina, Turkey, and so on. But we have hedges in place in most parts of the world.
So we're fairly confident on the FX predictions that we have right now. And we'll, of course, update them every quarter as we go.
Thank you. Next questions come from Kevin Grogan from Scrip. And afterwards, we have Teresa Raufmann from Handelsblatt. But first, over to you, Kevin.
Good morning, everybody. You've answered quite a few of my questions, actually, on the DSO thing really there, Bill. So thank you. But I've got a question about Kerendia. Now, beforehand, it had been bubbling along a bit, really. Sales were sort of decent, but not exactly spectacular. And suddenly, they've shot up well ahead of consensus and so on. I'm just sort of wondering, why is that happening now, particularly? Is it DSO helping? What could you be the background and the full story and why it's doing so well?
And also, is the peak sales forecast of EUR 3 billion for Kerendia looking a little bit conservative? Thank you.
Yeah, Kevin, thanks for the questions. Yeah, we're very pleased with the current Kerendia performance. And as you said, it's looking particularly strong this year. It's a little hard to say exactly because the market for products that are treating kidney disease is complicated. There's a number of type 2 diabetes treatments available. And obviously, most of the kidney disease is associated with type 2 diabetes. And so it's a sort of a crowded field and a bit of a complicated narrative. And I think part of what we believe is happening is it's just been a question of time of getting physicians the opportunity to try Kerendia on enough patients that they start to get a feel for what it can do.
What we find is that once physicians start to use Kerendia in a few patients and they observe, hey, they like the benefit, the kidney health benefits that are delivered, that it becomes very easy as an add-on therapy for them. But until they've had that experience, then they're not quite sure what to do with it. So I think we think it's really a function of more physicians, the persistence of our team in educating physicians about the benefit of Kerendia. And so obviously now with the sales on the upswing and now with this data this week, yeah, we're quite excited about the potential in the future for Kerendia. We don't provide peak sales estimates. So I'll let you decide, Kevin, whether EUR 3 billion is conservative or not. But we certainly see a very bright future for Kerendia. Thanks.
Thank you.
Okay, so next question comes from Teresa Raufmann from Handelsblatt. And afterwards, we have Amber Tong from Endpoints News. But first, over to you, Teresa.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question. When you talked about EBITDA and EBITDA margin and crop science and pharma, and you were talking about an unfavorable product mix there. And I wanted to know what exactly is so unfavorable and if this is a thing that you can change quickly because I think it's a thing that you'll need time for to change it.
Yeah, I'll take a step. Teresa, good morning. Pharma, it's pretty clear. We're happy with the margin of all of our products. But Xarelto is extraordinarily high, both at the EBITDA and the EBIT level because there's almost no R&D and limited sales going into it as well.
As that comes down and we replace it with the launch products, like I said, we're happy with the profitability, but it's not at the same level. We clearly have a mixed effect there. What's Xarelto? Like 90%-95%? Way in the 90s. So it's a pretty decent mixed effect. And that's where we have our job cut out for us to work on the cost and the volumes and DSO-enabled efficiencies to offset to get to the margin numbers that were well in the guidance that Stefan provided and continue to be in the mid-20s, like we said before. Similar on crop, Bill mentioned it this year. Corn, acres are down. We knew that. Soy is up. Glyphosate was up in the second quarter significantly. And corn is also there, our most profitable product. And fungicides were down. That's also very profitable. So it's a mixed effect there.
I said in my remarks in the second half of the year that we'll turn a little bit because the core business is going up and glyphosate is going down. So we have mixed effects there. Some of that we can address short term or address by the market itself. Some of them are more mid-term in nature because it requires pipeline delivery and it requires DSO savings and so on. So all very clear to us and actions are in place, Teresa.
Okay, and we have a last question coming from Amber Tong from Endpoints News. Amber, over to you.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a couple of questions focused on the pharma group. First of all, can you give a bit more color into any changes in the organizational structure?
I think we recently saw the departure of the head of biotech and I believe the elimination of that role as well. Are there more changes organizationally that you expect in that unit? And secondly, you highlighted the regulatory filing for Elinzanetant. I think previously we've seen forecasts of about EUR 1 billion+ in annual sales. And although you said you don't comment on forecasts, are you still confident in that the sales potential there, especially given Astellas' competing treatment for menopause has been struggling commercially? Thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks, Amber. In terms of the structure, I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to in terms of head of biotech, but we are simplifying our leadership across the company. So for example, versus this time last year, we have about a 10% reduction in sort of the senior officer roles. That's something like the top 300 people.
We've reduced that by about 10%. That will continue to reduce further. Our system is focused on putting more power in the hands of the people doing the work. That means you don't need as many people in management roles. By the way, those management roles become all the more important when you have fewer and where you have a system that's focused on putting, yeah, the decision-making rights with the people doing the work. It takes a really special kind of leader, but we're making excellent progress on that. So I think we could have an offline discussion about it if you'd like more details. But I think we've basically been simplifying the leadership structure, and that also applies in the pharma area. In Elinzanetant, in terms of our outlook, yeah, we have big hopes for Elinzanetant.
We think the data from the three phase III trials was quite convincing on some of the things that matter the most in terms of hot flashes, in terms of sleep disturbances. Then probably most importantly, the safety data. We feel like it's a very compelling package that this is a therapy that should be made available for millions of women that are dealing with these menopause-related symptoms. We don't think comparisons with previous therapies are necessarily, yeah, are difficult because of this sort of unique combination of efficacy and safety. So we're looking forward to bringing it out next year. We also have a very strong field force in women's health. We've been a leader in the field for many years, and we're pleased to have an opportunity to leverage that team that knows the OB-GYN community very well
We know the players, I mean, the payers. Yeah, we know what it takes to be successful with women's health products, and we're looking forward to bringing it. So thanks again, Amber.
Okay, many thanks, Bill. Many thanks, Wolfgang. Many thanks to all of you for your time, for your attention. We greatly appreciate your participation. And with that, we.