With Bayer’s pharma sales growth lagging behind its crop science and consumer health divisions in the second quarter, analysts once again raised the possibility of major changes to the German conglomerate’s group structure.
Nevertheless, CEO Bill Anderson—who joined in 2023 on a mission to reverse the company’s fortunes following its ill-fated Monsanto acquisition—thinks Bayer has a good thing going and that it will be better served by adopting a wait-and-see approach for now.
For the second quarter of 2026, Bayer’s group sales landed at 10.87 billion euros (about $12.5 billion), good for 2.2% growth year over year on an adjusted currency basis, the company announced on Aug. 4.
But that growth appears to have leaned heavily on crop science, which grew its haul for the period while pharmaceuticals stayed flat versus the same period in 2025. Elsewhere, sales from the company’s consumer health arm were also up 1.5% in Q2.
Pharmaceutical sales in the second quarter landed at nearly 4.46 billion euros ($5.1 billion), down slightly from the 4.47 billion euros the division secured the prior year.
In a bright spot for the company’s branded drug fortunes, Bayer noted (PDF) that it has continued to log “significant gains” across both its cancer med Nubeqa (up 61.2% to $880 million for Q2) and chronic kidney disease and heart failure treatment Kerendia (which increased nearly 80% to bring home sales of $329 million).
Growth of new drugs and a steady base business helped Bayer weather expected declines across Xarelto and Eylea sales in Q2, the German conglomerate’s new CFO, Judith Hartmann, Ph.D., told analysts on a conference call Tuesday.
Blood thinner Xarelto and Regeneron-partnered ophthalmology drug Eylea continued to face pressure from generic and biosimilar competition, respectively, with sales falling nearly 43% for Xarelto and 34% for Eylea during the quarter.
“We’re now at the inflection point of turning to growth going forward,” Hartmann told analysts on Tuesday’s call, adding that while pharma growth in the first half of 2026 was relatively muted, Bayer expects that momentum to accelerate over the final six months. The company also affirmed its previously issued full-year group sales guidance of 45 billion to 47 billion euros.
Analysts nevertheless pressed Bayer on how it plans to continue navigating present challenges, in particular asking CEO Anderson—who has already led major restructuring efforts at the company during his tenure—what it would take to trigger a full strategic review and potential rethink of the firm’s group structure.
Bayer’s management board is always weighing this option, Anderson responded, because the “key question for us is what’s the most effective way to pursue our mission and also to secure the future of the company—which, as you know, was no trivial matter over the last few years with some of the challenges we faced at hand.”
At the end of the second quarter, Bayer employed 87,830 people, down nearly 2% from 89,556 a year earlier.
As of August 2025, two years into Anderson’s tenure, the company revealed that it had already reduced its workforce by more than 12,000 as part of the CEO's Dynamic Shared Ownership model intended to cut through much of the bureaucracy at Bayer.
“We’re definitely in a better position now than we’ve been at any point in the last few years to make strategic choices,” Anderson continued.
On pharma specifically, Anderson noted that Bayer has “done a good job” rebuilding its late-stage pipeline—spearheaded right now by investigational stroke treatment asundexian—while admitting that “we have more work to do on the mid-stage pipeline.”
Circling back to the broader question of Bayer’s group structure, Anderson stressed that “We’ve got momentum; we’re getting basically better every quarter, and we don’t want to break that up right at the moment.”