ZCZC
BCN-29
GERMANY-PHARMA-CHEMICALS-EARNINGS-BAYER
Bayer earnings slump as Monsanto lawsuits pile up
BERLIN, April 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – German chemicals giant Bayer said its
first quarter net profit slumped by more than a third, as it booked a big
charge amid a flood of lawsuits over its subsidiary Monsanto’s Roundup
weedkiller.
Amid the legal entanglements and ongoing costs integrating Monsanto,
Bayer’s first quarter earnings slumped by 36 percent to 1.241 billion euros
($1.38 billion).
Bayer, which bought Monsanto for $63 billion in June last year, said it
now faced lawsuits from 13,400 plaintiffs over the glyphosate weedkiller.
It booked a charge of 51 million euros for “litigations and legal risks”
in the first three months of 2019, up sharply from 4 million euros a year
ago.
Of the looming Roundup lawsuits, Bayer stressed that it “continues to
believe that it has meritorious defences and intends to defend itself
vigorously in all of these lawsuits.”
Monsanto was ordered last month by a court to pay $80 million to an
American retiree who blames his cancer on the weedkiller.
The verdict was the second stinging defeat for the company in recent
months, after it lost a case to a California school groundskeeper suffering
from terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
It was initially ordered to pay $289 million to the plaintiff, before the
damages were reduced to $78.5 million.
Bayer is appealing those cases.
A third trial is underway in Alameda County, while another four are
scheduled in Missouri and Montana for 2019, Bayer said.
Amid the legal entanglements and ongoing costs integrating Monsanto,
Bayer’s first quarter earnings slumped by 36 percent to 1.241 billion euros.
BSS/AFP/HR/1325