Bayer's Profits Rise As Group Refocuses

The turnaround in the fortunes of the German chemicals and pharmaceuticals companies since last year has been proven with healthy results and strong growth in the first nine months of 1994 from BASF (Marketletter November 28), and last week from Bayer and Hoechst.

Bayer's pretax profits for the nine-month period grew 32% to 2.4 billion Deutschemarks ($1.5 billion), as a result of streamlining and restructuring measures, according to Manfred Schneider, group chairman. Sales were 32.8 billion marks, up 6%. Bayer AG had sales of 12.7 billion, up 5%, and pretax profits were 1.2 billion, ahead 31%.

Bayer's health care segment had strong sales, up 5% to 8.35 billion marks. The self-medication business performed well, but the chemicals businesses showed strongest growth. The pharmaceuticals segment in Germany made up for some of the substantial declines last year. Dr Schneider said that the recent merging of the German sales organizations of the Tropon and Bayropharm subsidiaries with that of Bayer AG has helped lower costs and improve the earnings situation. Strong gains were also made in Japan and the USA.