“Glyphosate is an indispensable chemical for modern agriculture that is safe to use, very effective and saves resources,” chief executive Werner Baumann told journalists in a telephone conference.
Investors have been watching Bayer anxiously as legal risks over the chemical pile up for seeds and pesticides maker Monsanto, which by the end of October faced some 9,300 cases over glyphosate alone.
“More lawsuits are to be expected,” Baumann acknowledged.
But he insisted that “more than 800 scientific studies, decades of practical experience and evaluation by licensing authorities all over the world” demonstrated glyphosate’s safety, criticising a 2015 World Health Organization finding that it could cause cancer.
“I can only confirm again that we will defend ourselves with all means available,” Baumann said.
Completely safe
“When used appropriately, glyphosate is a completely safe and good product,” he added.
A serious blow for Bayer came in August when a Californian court ordered it to compensate Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper afflicted with terminal cancer who had used a professional version of glyphosate, for failing to inform him of the alleged risks.
A judge in October reduced the award from more than US$200 million (178 million euros) to US$78 million, but upheld the fundamental finding that Monsanto was responsible.
Baumann told reporters that Bayer’s appeal of the case could last up to two years, while the first new cases are set for hearings early next year.
The group’s stock has slid in the intervening months as investors totted up the billions in payouts that it could suffer if thousands of other rulings go against it.
Baumann played up the US$1.2 billion per year Bayer expects to add to the combined group’s bottom line from cost savings and increased revenue within four years.
On a closer time horizon, Bayer forecasts revenues of more than 39 billion euros in 2018.
The group’s stock has fallen almost 33% since January, and was almost flat Tuesday on its positive third-quarter results, trading at 68.67 euros by 11.45am (1045 GMT).
Solid third quarter
Net profit slumped 25.6% year-on-year to 2.9 billion euros (US$3.3 billion) between July and September but that was still good enough to beat estimates from analysts surveyed by Factset.
The headline results reflected the comparison with a positive one-off effect in 2017’s third quarter, when Bayer sold off parts of its former specialist chemicals subsidiary Covestro to fund the US$63-billion takeover of Monsanto.
Operating, or underlying profits before special items at the group were steady year-on-year, at 2.2 billion euros in the three months, while revenues jumped 23.4% to 9.9 billion euros.
The third quarter also saw Bayer sell off some of its seeds and pesticides businesses, worth 7.6 billion euros, to rival BASF — a condition imposed by competition authorities before the Monsanto deal could go ahead.
That meant that operating profit after special items more than tripled, to 4.4 billion euros.