While Bayer’s consumer and crop science divisions continued to slide—both in the fourth quarter and in 2024 overall—the company’s pharma division was able to eke out modest sales gains of 1.7% in the fourth quarter and 0.3% for the year.
But don’t expect the pharma turnaround to continue in the next few years. With sales of its top-selling product, blood thinner Xarelto, tumbling because of generic competition, Bayer isn’t projecting growth for the pharma division until 2027.
Bayer’s pharma sales will “remain stable” through 2026, division chief Stefan Oelrich, said during the company’s Q4 conference call.
“We will see a sales trough for either 2025 or 2026, with our next wave of growth following latest by 2027,” Oelrich said.
While Xarelto sales fell 15% from 4.1 billion euros ($4.4 billion) in 2023 to 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) last year, the pace of the decline is increasing, evidenced by a 19% drop in Xarelto sales the fourth quarter of last year.
In 2025, Bayer expects a bigger hit to Xarelto as it faces more patent expirations as well as “additional risk from EU patent rulings and at-risk launches from generics,” said Oelrich, who added that the company is estimating Xarelto’s sales will fall by between 1 billion and 1.5 billion euros ($1.1 billion and $1.6 billion) this year.
Helping compensate for the shortfall will be increased sales of prostate cancer treatment Nubeqa and kidney disease medicine Kerendia. Annual sales of the products were up 75% and 72%, respectively, in 2024. Bayer expects sales of the duo to increase from 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in 2024 to more than 2.5 billion euros ($2.7 billion) this year.
Another concern for Bayer is the oncoming loss of patent protection in Europe for eye disease treatment Eylea, which generated sales of 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), good for a 2% increase. The gain comes as Bayer’s partner Regeneron—which commercializes the drug in the U.S.—has seen a slight decline in sales over the last two years.
Still, Oelrich said that the company expects “the resilience of our base business of the Eylea franchise to continue,” in 2025.
Steeped in litigation resulting from Bayer’s disastrous $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018, the company will continue its cost-cutting this year, lopping 800 million euros ($860) from its operating expenses. The company originally announced the figure in November.
“We see 2025 as the toughest year for our turnaround,” CEO Bill Anderson said.
The reduction is part of an initiative to slice 2 billion in costs through the end of 2026. Last year, Bayer made cuts of 500 million euros ($538 million).