Morning, everybody, and welcome our media update for the first quarter of 2025. To kick things off, Bill will share his perspective on Bayer's business performance and the progress we've made on our strategic priorities. Wolfgang will then provide further insights into the Q1 financials, the current geopolitical environment, and our outlook for the remainder of the year. After the presentations, we will have time for your questions. One additional remark: we also invite you to listen to the Crop Science webinar for investors later today at 4:00 P.M. Central European Time, where we will delve further into the division strategy and outlook. You'll find the link on our investors' page and in the news release. Now, before starting, I would like to briefly draw your attention to the cautionary language included in our Safe Harbor Statement. With that, over to you, Bill.
Thanks, Michael. Yeah, and hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today. We're really looking forward to going through our Q1 business results and our strategic priorities with you. We're also aware that the present geopolitical and economic uncertainty is top of mind. Wolfgang and I will try to give you a sense of how we're approaching that as well. Let's start with our first quarter performance. First, a reminder that we speak about our sales growth in currency and portfolio-adjusted terms. As a group, our sales are flat year over year. That positions us well within the -3% to +1% corridor that we guided in 2025. Our core EPS came in at EUR 2.49, and that means we're on track to reach our outlook of EUR 4.50-EUR 5.00 at constant currencies. Free cash flow is at -EUR 1.5 billion.
As we have explained before, the negative figure is due to seasonality of the crop business. It is also EUR 1 billion ahead of where we were last year at this time. We are pacing well to land within our 2025 guidance. I will now go through our businesses one by one. In March, we said we expected mid-single-digit sales declines in Crop Science in Q1, and sales declined 3%. As expected, regulatory impact cut into some of our higher margin sales, which is why our EBITDA margin is behind last year's Q1 number. Overall, we expect growth in Q2, and we are on track to deliver our outlook for the year. In Pharmaceuticals, we posted a strong first quarter with 4% growth. Nubeqa and Kerendia continued their exceptional momentum. Together, they grew 80% year over year. These gains more than offset the declines that we are seeing on Xarelto.
I also want to call out our cost management in pharma. We have launch activities underway across the business. So 12% earnings growth is a remarkable feat, and it's an encouraging sign that our model is helping teams do more with less. We know the Xarelto declines will weigh heavily on our top and bottom line over the remainder of the year, but we're equally confident in the momentum of our launches and the fundamentals of our business. In fact, in a more certain environment, we likely would have adjusted our guidance for pharmaceuticals upward. Given the uncertainty around tariffs, we feel it's prudent to reaffirm what we said in March and then closely monitor developments. Overall, we expect our pharma business to come in at the upper end of our 2025 outlook in both the top and the bottom line.
In Consumer Health, we grew 2.5% with contributions from across the business while experiencing soft conditions in key markets. Most importantly, we saw 2% volume growth in Q1. On margins, we were slightly behind prior year, but our guidance of 23%-24% is well within reach. Overall, these results put us in a good position to deliver the year. Now on to our strategic priorities. You see them captured on the slide, and I'll touch on select highlights here before handing over to Wolfgang. On the Pharmaceuticals pipeline, Beyontra launch is underway now in the EU, and we're prepping to launch Elinzanetant in the second half of the year. On litigation, we received an adverse decision by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania last week. That led to a technical revision of the litigation provision, while we will continue to appeal.
This also underscores the need of the U.S. Supreme Court to provide clarity on federal preemption. Our multi-pronged strategy to significantly contain litigation precedes apace. We filed for U.S. Supreme Court review in the Darnell case, and we've received notable amicus briefs in support of the argument from legal scholars, commodity groups, and other experts in support of the merits of our petition. We also filed two hold petitions with SCOTUS for the Johnson and Salas cases, as the issue of federal preemption exists for both, as in Darnell, and we seek the courts to hold these cases pending final resolution of that case. In the legislative realm, we welcome the progress we've seen in several states, including passage in North Dakota and Georgia, where the governor just signed this important bill last Friday.
We await developments in additional key states as legislative sessions conclude in the coming weeks and months. On crop science profitability, yesterday we announced that we're reorganizing Crop Science's production and R&D activities in Germany, discontinuing some activities by the end of 2028 and relocating other activities to other German sites. This is a difficult step, but it's necessary to guarantee the division's competitiveness. Let me spend some time on it, as it merits explanation. In recent years, Asian manufacturers of generic crop protection products have built significant overcapacities, driving the prices of crop protection products down with lasting effects. In fact, the market prices of some crop protection products are significantly lower than the cost of manufacturing them in Europe. On top of that, increasing regulatory hurdles make it harder to operate in the status quo.
In this environment, we're forced to focus our work only on the highly innovative technologies and products that differentiate us from generics companies, and we have to consolidate or stop some activities. We won't continue our research and production activities in Frankfurt beyond the end of 2028. We aim to sell parts of the activities, and others will be relocated to other German sites. Production at our Dormagen site will be streamlined and optimized for future growth. These are difficult decisions. We don't make them lightly. We're in close contact with employee representatives, and we will work with them to find viable solutions for our colleagues. We know that we're in dynamic industries, and that calls for decision-making that safeguards the future of Bayer's organization, our business, and the future success of our customers.
Finally, on our new system, the people of Bayer forge ahead in our journey to make Bayer leaner, faster, and more productive. We reduced around 2,000 roles in the first quarter of 2025, amounting to a reduction of roughly 11,000 roles since beginning the system in July of 2023. We're currently focused on two big enablers. First, freeing up resources so our teams can flow them to the highest impact work. Second, installing people enablement tools that are fit for our new system and that we continue to attract and retain top talent. Let me close with three points. First, despite headwinds from patent expirations and regulatory impact, our first quarter puts us in a good spot to deliver in a challenging and important year for the company. Second, we have a plan to address the company's biggest priorities.
You have a chance to get some more color on one of them, crop science profitability, later today. Finally, it is our mission to provide health and nutrition solutions, whatever comes. We are keeping a close eye on the macro environment, and we will adapt as required. Over to you, Wolfgang.
Thank you, Bill. Hello also from my side. I would like to start with some more color on the drivers of our first quarter results. For the group, Q1 net sales were flat versus the prior year, both in currency and on portfolio-adjusted terms and as reported. A decline in Crop Science was offset by growth in Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Health. EBITDA before special items came in at EUR 4.1 billion, which is 7% or about EUR 300 million below the prior year's quarter. The decline is largely related to the lower Crop Science earnings and the lower reconciliation result. The latter was driven by higher long-term incentive provisions and balance sheet-related hyperinflation postings. For Q1, the FX headwind on EBITDA before special items was EUR 165 million, largely driven by the aforementioned hyperinflation impacts.
Core earnings per share of EUR 2.49 were EUR 0.33, or 12% below the prior year quarter, mainly impacted by the lower EBITDA before special items I just mentioned. In Q1, we recorded EBITDA-relevant special items of EUR 587 million, including the glyphosate litigation-related provision update that Bill just referred to. Consequently, we now expect to come in rather towards the minus EUR 1.5 billion of our full-year modeling range provided. Driven by the crop business seasonality, we saw a negative free cash flow of EUR 1.5 billion in the first quarter. This reflects an improvement of about EUR 1 billion compared to last year, primarily due to effects relating to advance payments from our Crop Science customers and including the change in factoring. In line with the seasonality of our cash flow profile, net financial debt increased by EUR 1.7 billion to EUR 34.3 billion since year-end 2024.
Year on year, however, net financial debt was down by about EUR 3 billion. Let's now take a closer look at the divisional performance. When I talk about sales growth, I always refer to currency and portfolio-adjusted figures. For Crop Science, net sales came in at EUR 7.6 billion in the first quarter, down 3% versus the prior year. As a reminder, we had projected mid-single-digit declines for the first quarter, so we're largely in line with our internal assumptions. The core business declined by 3%, with Seeds and Traits down 5%, impacted by lower soybean and cotton sales due to the U.S. dicamba label vacature and also corn volume facing to the second quarter following a strategic adjustment of our distribution network.
The core crop protection business was up 2%, driven by higher non-glyphosate herbicide volumes, partially offset by lower insecticide volumes in the EU due to the expiration of the MOVENTO registration. The regulatory impact related to dicamba and MOVENTO in Q1 is in line with the previously communicated 200-300 basis point margin impact for the full year. We expect the majority of that effect in the first half of the year. Glyphosate sales declined by 10%, driven by phasing into subsequent quarters to support just-in-time purchases in the southern hemisphere. On profitability, EBITDA before special items came in 10% lower at EUR 2.6 billion, resulting in a margin of 33.7%. As expected, the lower margin is primarily an effect of high-margin sales losses due to the regulatory impacts and the corn phasing to Q2. We were able to partially compensate these effects by cost savings.
Let me now move on to our pharma business. Net sales of EUR 4.5 billion were up 4% in the first quarter, with growth across the portfolio more than offsetting the expected Xarelto decline. Our launch assets, Nubeqa and Kerendia, continued to perform particularly well, growing 80% year on year and reaching combined sales of EUR 680 million. This was largely driven by strong contributions from the U.S. Eylea grew by a solid 5%, supported by the ongoing rollout of 8 milligram, and sales were in particular strong in Europe and also in Japan. Our base business grew by 6%, driven by strong contributions from our radiology and women's health portfolio, in addition to high demand for Aspirin and also Adalat in China. As expected, Xarelto declined in the first quarter, coming in 31% below the prior year.
This was mainly driven by continued generic pressure in Europe and Japan. On the bottom line, EBITDA before special items increased by 12% to EUR 1.3 billion in the first quarter, resulting in a margin of 29.5%. Both higher sales as well as continued efficiency gains more than offset slightly higher R&D investments and an FX headwind of about 1 percentage point. Let me turn to Consumer Health. Sales grew by nearly 3% with balanced category and regional growth. Volumes were up by 2%, while price increases contributed 1%. All regions performed well, with growth in North America, APAC, and EMEA. Latter remained flat due to muted consumer sentiment influenced by the U.S.-Mexico trade relations. The Digestive Health category increased by 13%, driven by product launches as well as supply improvements in products like Iberogast.
For pain and cardio, we recorded growth of 7%, fueled by product launches and good consumption of Saridone in APAC. Additionally, Aspirin also performed well across all the regions. Dermatology was up 2% for the quarter, thanks to Bepanthen and Canesten, along with innovations within our product range, Kangwang, in China. The allergy and cold category grew by 2%, with strong growth for cold products in North America, partially offset by a slow start to the allergy season. In nutritionals, we saw a decline of 5% year over year due to weak demand for our prenatal nutrition supplements in China and the discontinuation of the Care/of business in the U.S. in June of 2024. Our EBITDA before special items increased to EUR 342 million, resulting in a margin of 22.8%, slightly below the prior year, but within reach of our guidance range.
The improvement in EBITDA before special items was primarily driven by increased sales. Additionally, our ongoing cost management efforts positively impacted profitability, including a reduction in the cost of goods sold. This was partially offset by lower divestment income and increased investments in marketing our innovative products. Let's now look at the outlook. As we see high volatility in the geopolitical environment, I will also share our thinking about the potential direct and indirect impacts around tariffs and FX. We are continuously monitoring the various tariff announcements. Our experts are analyzing potential impacts and working on possible solutions to secure supply to our customers. We are focused on maintaining the stability of our supply chains and on minimizing any potential impact.
Based on the current status on tariff announcements and our mitigation measures, we expect to manage the impact, and we confirm our outlook at constant currencies for the full year 2025. For Crop Science, we expect the direct tariff effects to be limited overall, mainly impacting the Crop Protection portfolio, as Seeds and Traits are mostly produced in the regions where they're also sold. As of now, most of our Crop Protection active ingredients, as well as glyphosate, are exempt from the latest tariffs. We're also evaluating indirect business implications. These could include, amongst others, the magnitude of acreage shifts from soy to corn in the U.S., potential soy shifts to latter, as well as several pricing and volume scenarios for glyphosate and the broader Crop Protection portfolio.
For the full year for Crop Science, we are taking decisive measures to maintain stable sales and margin in spite of notable regulatory headwinds. As the anticipated regulatory impact materializes, recovery in Latin America and Crop Protection, alongside strong efficiency gains, will help to compensate to achieve our full-year guidance. Moving on to Pharmaceuticals. On tariffs, we expect to see certain direct effects on parts of our portfolio, mainly product flows between the U.S. and China. With our production footprint in the EU, there is an additional risk of potential tariffs on pharmaceutical imports from the EU into the U.S. As you know, these are currently exempt but are under a Section 232 investigation. The business performance in the first quarter, particular for our launch assets, provides confidence in our ability to sustainably compensate the Xarelto generalization.
Considering this, together with what we currently know about tariffs, we expect pharma to deliver at the upper end of our sales and profitability guidance range. For consumer health, our expectations for the phasings throughout the year are in line with the full-year guidance. Based on the current tariff announcements, we expect to be able to manage the direct impacts within the guidance range. We are monitoring additional indirect risks, mainly related to potential demand impacts stemming from lower consumer confidence. Let me close with some comments on foreign exchange rates. In the past weeks, we have seen a material depreciation of the U.S. dollar and other currencies against the euro, which negatively impacts our top line and, to a lesser extent, our bottom line. In line with our longstanding practice and legal requirements, we are updating the FX estimate based on March months and spot rates.
Compared to constant currencies, this leads to the number shown in the last column of the table on page 11 of our investor deck. However, as we all know, currency has materially changed since the announcements from the U.S. administration in early April. To illustrate the potential impact, we performed further analysis based on the spot rates of April 24. In that scenario, there is an incremental FX headwind of about EUR 900 million in net sales and approximately EUR 0.10 in core EPS. On the other hand, this would reduce net financial debt by another EUR 500 million compared to the figures shown on this slide for March. We will monitor further developments and update you on the impact with our next reporting. I close my remarks and hand over to you, Michael, to lead us through the Q&A.
Thank you very much, Wolfgang and Bill, for your presentations. With that, we'll now start with the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please do the following. Make sure that Zoom is the only active chat program open on your computer, because otherwise there might be interference with your ability to engage. Second, make sure your microphone is activated in Zoom. Third, use the raise hand function. We will then register your interest in asking a question, and when it's your turn, I will call your name, and a pop-up window will open on your screen. When you see this pop-up window, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Your camera will remain off for the entire time. That is the logistics. Let's see where we have the first questions from. First question comes from Antje Höning from Rheinische Post. Antje, over to you.
Thank you very much. Greetings to Leverkusen. I have three questions. Can you give us an update to the lawsuits? How many lawsuits have been filed so far, and how many have you to be settled? The trade union is criticizing the closure of the Frankfurt site. Are further site closures planned, or can you give a guarantee for the German sites? Another question to BSO: How many jobs will you cut in the end, if you can estimate it now? How much money have you just spent on several payments up in the wind? Thank you. You want to take the first one? Yeah, I can take the first and the last one. Antje, good morning. I'll take the first and the last one, and Bill will obviously take the second one then.
On the lawsuits, and this is related to glyphosate, we have registered 181,000 as of somewhere at the beginning of April. 114,000 have been resolved, so consequently, there are 67,000 open. On your headcount questions, we are not really predicting headcount. You probably have seen that in the first quarter, we reduced another 2,000 on top of the 7,000 last year. Since inception of the program, it's actually 11,000. We have in total reserved EUR 1.4 billion since inception of the program, with about EUR 125 million in Q1. As you know, this is the reserve that we take in the P&L. The actual cash-outs will then come at a later point in time. I hope that answers your question. Bill, over to you.
Yeah, Antje, regarding further site closures, what I can say is that we don't have any plans for further site closures at this point. We have this sort of economic reality of we're producing generic crop protection products today in Germany. Unfortunately, because of the buildup of capacity and, in fact, quite a lot of overcapacity in Asia now, the prices of these generic products have really crashed in the world markets over the last few years. It just means that with our costs in Germany, things like electricity and gas, which are two to three times higher than our Asian competitors, we're just not competitive in the generic products. What we're doing is we're actually focusing our efforts on our innovative products, both from production and R&D standpoint. We hope that can strengthen our German presence so that we're much better set up for the future. That's our outlook.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Ayisha Sharma from Endpoint News, followed by Ludwig Burger from Reuters. First, over to Ayisha.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just two from me. Firstly, with the Trump administration announcing plans for most favored nation pricing, I was wondering how you expect that to impact your pharma business. Secondly, I know that you mentioned that you cut, I believe, 2,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2025. Would you be able to clarify how many of those jobs are in each of the business units? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Ayisha. Regarding the announcement from the U.S. administration, I think it's really too soon to say. I think there's a lot of discussion that needs to happen about this. As you know, the U.S. has been a world leader in innovation and biotechnology.
I think that's been from this sort of unique combination of generally providing for patient access at prices that are, yeah, so that patients that are of means or patients without means are able to access therapies. At the same time, having prices that provide for sustaining that innovation, for funding that innovation. We definitely encourage policymakers around the world to keep an eye on those two things. In fact, I think there's an opportunity for European policymakers to look hard at their approach and make sure that each European country is also funding its fair share for innovation, because that bill should not be falling heavily on one country at the exclusion of others. I think it's really too soon to speculate on where this goes next and what the next turn is.
I think what's important is that policymakers from, yeah, all the major countries are having dialogue about this and how do we make sure that we continue to fund advances in cancer, in chronic diseases, so that we don't lose the benefits for the next generation. In terms of the, yeah, again,
Ayisha, we don't really disclose reductions by country or division, but you should just walk under the assumption that we are doing this change in our operating model across the companies in all three divisions and also the enabling functions. I can probably tell you that there is a very keen focus more on the level of positions that are being reduced, are mostly management positions. And probably one interesting fact is that represents itself in a much higher span of coaching.
Since the inception of the program, that was somewhere in the five to six range, and now we're approaching 14. So we see very substantial progress on that front.
Thank you.
Okay, the next question comes from Ludwig Burger from Reuters, and afterwards, Tim Loh from Bloomberg. But first of all, Ludwig Burger, over to you.
Thank you very much. Good morning. My question is on the approval from the shareholders at the AGM on a potential capital increase. Just given recent developments in Pennsylvania Appellate Court or whatever else is going on, is the likelihood of a capital increase, is it now higher, or can you say anything about the likely size of such a move? Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Ludwig. So as we mentioned before we requested the capital authorization, we have no immediate plans to use such authorization, and that's still the case.
We think in most scenarios we look at, we do not need to raise capital. We wanted to make sure, because the way the German law works, management boards do not have authorization to issue capital unless that has been explicitly approved by an annual shareholders meeting or a special shareholders meeting. We wanted to make sure that we have that provision in place, as do, I think, more than 80% of DAX companies. I think, yeah, there is really no news on that.
Okay, the next question comes from Tim Loh from Bloomberg, and then followed by Jens Tönnessmann from Die Zeit. Tim, over to you.
Great, thanks. Two quick questions on the Roundup front. Concerning the Asian generics production of pesticides, I just wanted to know if you could explain a little bit more what is behind that, because I am hearing more and more about this.
Did producers in China significantly expand their capacity in the last couple of years? Because I was just looking at glyphosate commodity prices, and it seems to me like, aside from the, you know, there was the 2021 to 2023 spike in prices, but aside from that, it looks like they've returned to the levels that they were mostly at between 2014 and 2020, which is when Bayer acquired Monsanto. I am just trying to understand what's the new phenomenon happening right now that's causing you to consider phasing out production of glyphosate and other pesticides.
Yeah, thanks, Tim. I think there may be two issues that are sort of getting conflated here. The question of glyphosate production is something that has been, I think, a factor for probably close to 15 years, that it's been quite highly genericized.
On glyphosate, we actually have a relatively competitive cost structure with our phosphorus mine in Idaho and our production facilities in Louisiana and Iowa. There is a pretty different discussion. I think the situation there is that, yeah, the prices have been low, and they've sort of stayed low. That is a pressure on glyphosate, the cost structure. For us, the question about continuing to produce glyphosate is a combination of that situation, plus the fact that in the U.S., there is no broad protection for producers of pesticides because of this current lack of clarity around pesticide labeling, that we can comply with the EPA labeling requirements and still get sued for failing to warn. That is, frankly, just a policy issue, and that has to do with glyphosate.
Now, the thing we're talking about, about realigning crop protection production in Germany, has nothing to do with glyphosate. It has to do with other crop protection products that are produced in Germany. Those are products that have had increasing generics penetration. You asked about new capacity. In Asia, there have been a number of new facilities that have come online. In fact, some of those facilities were delayed during COVID, and it resulted in sort of an avalanche of new facilities being approved. That has led to really more intense competition from generics for the broader portfolio of crop protection products. Hopefully that clarifies it, Tim.
Sure, that's helpful. Can I just ask a quick add-on to that?
When it comes to, like, should Bayer decide to stop producing glyphosate in the U.S., I assume that, at least for now, Roundup would still include glyphosate that you would source from overseas. Does that help at all in terms of the future litigation risk if there's still glyphosate in the product, even if you're not producing it?
Yeah, I wouldn't even speculate about that, Tim. I think you're making some assumptions about what the business would look like, and I really couldn't say. I think we have to evaluate that very thoroughly.
Roger, thanks.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Jens Tönnessmann, Die Zeit. Afterwards, we have Kevin Grogan from Scrip. First, over to Jens.
Good morning. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. I've got an additional question concerning your decision to close the Frankfurt site. Mrs.
Hausfeld, speaking for the Betriebsrat, said yesterday that the Betriebsrat and the union will fight for the rights of the employees and that they are strongly against abandoning the Frankfurt site, which they call modern and future-proof, and that the move actually violates key social partnership agreements from the jointly adopted future concept. I would like to know, is she right? Are you ignoring early agreements with the Betriebsrat? Furthermore, can Bayer afford a labor dispute in this tense situation and the intense transformation the company is currently going through?
Yeah, thanks, Jens. Obviously, it's a very difficult situation for everyone involved, and particularly for the workers involved. I deeply regret that. I would say everyone at Bayer has a deep commitment to, yeah, to our employees, to our future, and to the people in Germany. I think that doesn't change because of decisions like this.
This decision really reflects just the economic reality that we're trying to produce products that are subject to generic competition, but with a very high cost base. By the way, that cost base is not the fault of the employees. It's not the fault of management. There's no one in management, there's none of the workers who decided that gas and electricity prices, which are the major input costs for these products, would be two to three times in Germany what they are in the countries where our competitors are producing. As much as our hearts are with continuing here, we can't afford to ignore that economic reality.
This is a time where we have an opportunity to make changes that can strengthen our German footprint, that Germany can be a stronger producer of the most innovative crop protection products in the world, that our R&D efforts in Germany are, again, focused and concentrated on the most innovative products that the world is going to need in 2030, in 2040, in 2050. That does not make it easier. We have to work through that.
Thank you very much, but I would like to come back to the question. Is she right? Are you ignoring early agreements? I mean, this is what they are saying and what they announced in their press statement. Is she right in saying that you are ignoring this earlier agreement you have made with the Betriebsrat?
Look, since I arrived at Bayer two years ago, I've had a very close partnership with the unions and with all our employees. That means a lot to me. Yeah, I would say there's no agreement that I've made that I've not honored. I will continue to keep all my agreements and all my commitments to the workers. I'm happy to, yeah, to talk about that in any public forum.
Thank you.
Thanks. Next question comes from Kevin Grogan from Scrip. Afterwards, we have Isabella Boufakis from Il Sole. First of all, Kevin, over to you.
Good morning, everybody. I've just got a quick question, first of all, on manufacturing. Could you give a bit more color on the manufacturing situation, given that the product flow between the U.S.
and China and with your production footprint in the EU, do you need to do more manufacturing in the U.S. like many of your peers? What's the story with manufacturing? A second quick question on Beyontra, the launch. Obviously, it's very early days. Any early thoughts on how you think it will go this year? The BridgeBio launch is shattering every sort of consensus forecast. It's flying off the shelves. How do you think it will go in Europe? Thank you. Sorry for the echo.
Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, if it makes you feel better, we did not have any echo on our end, so all good. Yeah, in terms of the manufacturing balance, and this is generally true across Bayer, across the three divisions, but maybe you're asking about pharma. We have considerable manufacturing in both the U.S. and in Europe, and we have sort of a rough balance.
If you look across the divisions, across the products, that's one reason why for us, continued free trade is very important because we have an optimized production network that really benefits from being able to focus production, say, of one product in Germany and another product in the U.S., and then we can ship back and forth. That's a real benefit for the company. That's a benefit for consumers because it allows us to keep our prices lower. We have no immediate plans to revisit our manufacturing footprint because, as I said, we're roughly balanced around the globe. In terms of Beyontra launch, yeah, we've now got it in the market in Germany. The initial impression from doctors has been, yeah, really positive. We're very excited about it, but we're literally weeks in.
We do not really have any quantitative update, but we are very pleased with what we see. We see, yeah, a really great future for Beyontra across Europe.
Okay. The next question comes from Isabella Bufacchi from Il Sole. Afterwards, we have Andrew Noel from Chemical ESG. Isabella, you are first.
Good morning, and thank you very much for taking my questions. The first is on debt. If you can give an idea if already you could see an impact of the shareholders' authorization to increase capital or impact on bonds and also on ratings. I mean, you do have a rating which is getting closer and closer to speculative grade. You have a negative outlook on Moody's. I thought this message you gave that we are not going to increase debt to pay the litigation bills if they blow up could have an impact.
I saw that your debt year over year is going down. What is the importance of this reduction? The second question, if I may, you do not comment on plans on country by country on the reductions of jobs. Italy, of course, has Germany as a problem of very high electricity costs and gas and is worried not to be so competitive. How, at least, do you look at your performance in Italy? Thank you.
Isabella, good morning. I'll take the first one, and Bill will take the second one on Italy. In regards to debt, first of all, I think it is important to point out that it is one of our five priorities to reduce debt and in the midterm to get back more into an A category as opposed to the triple B that we have right now.
It's good for us to have all the tools in the drawer, as Bill said earlier, on resolving the litigation. In general, you can say that in the discussions with debt holders and rating agencies, having that flexibility and not under any circumstances relying on the debt market is an encouraging signal for them. We saw that to a certain degree in the reduction in the spreads. We're in constant exchange with all rating agencies and bondholders. Like I said, we're committed to reduce the debt, and you'll see a step towards that already this year.
Yeah. Hi, Isabella. Happy to answer the questions about the position of Italy. In fact, I was in Italy in, gosh, I think it was either late November or December to visit our teams there, one of the plants.
We have a very strong position in Italy, both commercially, but also with seed production, a lot of specialized medical manufacturing where we have really some world-leading capabilities and some, I guess I would say some, yeah, very specialized manufacturing. It is not particularly sensitive to energy prices. It is not particularly raw material or energy intensive. Yeah, we feel really good about our position in Italy. Also, the Italian commercial affiliates have been early adopters of dynamic shared ownership, and they are really doing amazing things. I hear fairly regular updates from the team there. I think, yeah, we feel really good about our position in Italy.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Andrew Noël from chemicalESG . Andrew, over to you.
Hello there. Thanks for taking my question. I just have one.
When I listened to Corteva and their Q1 results, you know the licensing was such a big theme, outlicensing and how they're accelerating their broadening it. Yet it doesn't seem to be such a, I know Bayer does do some licensing, but it doesn't seem to be such a major transition strategy. I just, yeah, I wondered if you could talk about, given you're trying to deal with all these commodity markets and so on, is that something that you'd be looking to accelerate?
Actually, Andrew, I think probably historically, I would say we've been the world leader in licensing, and we still are the world leader in licensing. I think, yeah, maybe we're taking it for granted in terms of not talking about it. I can assure you from a business standpoint, we don't take it for granted.
That's why we're also the largest investor in seed R&D, which is where most of the licensing is. We've got a whole new wave of breakthrough innovations coming. If you look in the next 10 years, things like direct-seeded rice, short-stature corn is a big one. We've got HT4 and HT5, which are new soy platforms. For example, HT4 confers resistance to five different pesticides. HT5 is six different pesticide resistance. These are all new licensing opportunities for Bayer. You do not hear us talking about it so much explicitly, but it is certainly, yeah, a key part of our business model.
Yeah. Andrew, probably just to add color on, we have gone public to a certain degree that that revenue for us is in excess of EUR 2 billion per year. It is a very substantial part of the business.
As Bill said, a reflection of our innovation power in particular in the seeds and traits area. The only additional info I can give you is that a very small single-digit % comes from our multinational competitors. The rest comes from a wide array of license takers around the world.
Thank you.
Okay. Next question comes from Michael Heussen, Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Over to you.
Yeah. Good morning, Bill. We read recently that you spent a lot of time in the U.S. and Washington to meet representatives of the new government there. Can you give us some words on the result? Is there any progress with the new administration in Washington that Bayer could profit from?
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Michael. Yeah. I spent quite a bit of time in the U.S., both in Washington as well as in a number of state capitals.
Yeah, I think the starting point is when you have a new administration, and don't forget, we also have a new Congress with many newly elected representatives, a lot of the, for example, committee chairs changing. It's important to have conversations with people and make sure they understand the value that our company brings, and whether that's on the pharmaceutical side with breakthrough therapies and experimental therapies in diseases like Parkinson's disease, various cancers, or whether it's on the crop science part. I had, yeah, quite a lot of good conversations. It's important that people are informed because there's a lot of, how would I say, there's a lot of misinformation about things like pesticides.
We have to make sure that members of industry and also farming groups are making clear the realities of what it takes to put food on the table in an affordable way for people in America, people in Europe, people around the world. I think you can see some results of that. Those are not really results of my efforts. These are results of really the agriculture community communicating and stepping up.
You can see that legislation that was passed in North Dakota, in Georgia, these are states that are saying, "Hey, our farmers need these tools to be able to grow safe, affordable crops." Having clarity around that is important not just for today's manufacturers or today's products, but it's also important for the future that manufacturers would have the confidence to invest in new solutions because you can hardly invest 10 years and $300 million or $400 million in a new crop protection product if the reward at the end of that is endless lawsuits. I think we see progress. I would definitely say policymakers are increasingly aware of the stakes and what it means in particular for food security, food safety, and affordable food in America.
Okay. The next question comes from Daria Sukarczuk from APM News. Daria, over to you.
Yes. Hello.
Thank you for taking my question. I have a short one. How does Bayer see the situation around one of your bestsellers, Eylea, which is facing biosimilar competition right now, especially in Europe? And I see Bayer is launching the high-dose product. Do you see that you are compensating for generic competition? Thank you.
Yeah, Davi, that's basically our goal. That's what we believe is a reasonable sort of a reasonable target for us is that with the introduction of the 8 milligram Eylea, which has some real dosing advantages for patients in terms of, yeah, extending the interval between intraocular injections, we think we can basically make up what's lost on 2 milligram to biosimilar, we can make up with 8 milligram over the next few years. That's our goal.
Okay.
That seems to be the last question that we actually had in the system. With that, I'd like to say thank you very much for your questions. Thank you very much for your interest. That concludes actually our call for today. We also hope that you actually got a dial into our Crop Science investor update this afternoon. Our time would be great that you could also spend some time and learn more about that business. With that, we wish you all a great day. Thank you very much and bye-bye.