FRANKFURT, March 5 (Reuters) - Bayer on Wednesday raised the prospect of a return to earnings growth next year but reiterated that a decline was expected for this year, potentially testing investors' patience with the CEO's turnaround efforts.
The German maker of drugs and farming pesticides said 2025 would be "the most difficult in terms of financial performance, with net sales roughly in line with and earnings and free cash flow behind the prior year".
"The company expects improved performance from 2026 onwards," it added.
CEO Bill Anderson is facing increasing investor pressure to deliver on restructuring efforts and reverse the profit decline.
He is in the middle of cutting managerial jobs, speeding up decision-making and slashing red tape, and has put on hold plans to break up Bayer's diversified businesses.
The group, which is grappling with costly U.S. product liability litigation over its weedkiller Roundup, said on Wednesday it had slashed 7,000 jobs last year and cutbacks would continue.
For the fourth quarter of last year, Bayer reported that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), adjusted for one-off items, fell 22% to 2.35 billion euros ($2.50 billion), beating average expectations by analysts of 2.27 billion posted on the group's website.
It predicted adjusted EBITDA of between 9.5 billion and 10 billion euros this year, excluding effects from currency swings. That was down from 10.1 billion in 2024 but above a market consensus of 9.4 billion.
The group's main rivals had flagged slight improvements in agriculture market trends but Bayer said that its revenue from crop protection and seeds would remain broadly flat this year, citing a delay in U.S. approval of a new soy variety to go with weedkiller Dicamba.
U.S. agrichemicals company Corteva last month posted a smaller fourth-quarter loss helped by strong sales volumes, and Germany's BASF, also competing with Bayer in farming products, flagged volume gains during the fourth quarter.
($1 = 0.9409 euros)
Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Editing by Miranda Murray and Jane Merriman
Source: Reuters