By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger
FRANKFURT, March 4 (Reuters) - Germany's Bayer issued a 2026 earnings target range below market expectations on Wednesday, as the drugmaker's CEO struggles to revive a stock battered by costly litigation and massive financial debt.
Based on foreign exchange rates at the end of 2025, the company projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) before special items of 9.1 billion euros ($10.57 billion) to 9.6 billion euros.
The upper
end was slightly below market expectations of 9.67 billion euros, based on an analyst consensus posted on the group's website.
That compares with a figure of 9.67 billion Bayer reported for 2025, which was slightly above the market view.
The shares were down 3.8% at a two-month low at 0905 GMT. Barclays analysts said, at mid-point, the guidance was 3.3% below the 2026 consensus.
CEO Bill Anderson has been overhauling Bayer's management structure but he has suspended a strategic review that could have led to a breakup of the diversified group.
Bayer last month struck an agreement worth as much as $7.25 billion to resolve tens of thousands of product liability claims after years of grappling with litigation over weed killer Roundup from its 2018 takeover of Monsanto.
Under the CEO's push to reduce layers of hierarchy and speed up decision-making, Bayer said it cut annual costs by 700 million euros last year and planned to bring that figure to 2 billion euros by the end of 2026.
Bayer last year said about 65,000 contested claims by Roundup users blaming their cancer on the herbicide were pending, but it declined to provide an updated figure on Wednesday, citing the confidentiality of ongoing settlement talks.
Bayer's stock has been on a rollercoaster ride.
Hit last month by investor scepticism over the settlement, it had previously seen a boost from a successful drug trial and from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear Bayer's bid to sharply limit Roundup lawsuits.
The company projected a 2026 free cash outflow of between 1.5 and 2.5 billion euros, driven by about 5 billion euros in litigation payouts.
($1 = 0.8612 euros)
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss, editing by Kirsti Knolle and Tomasz Janowski)
