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Stock Watch: Bayer’s Movable Goalposts

Lowered Full-Year Guidance Met After November’s Revision

 
• By Andy Smith

After lowering its full-year earnings guidance just six weeks before the end of 2024, Bayer, by talking up of the prospects for its new drug launches and a major clinical trial result in 2025, might risk damaging its integrity further.

Stock Watch Image, Andy Smith
ANDY SMITH OFFERS A LIFE SCIENCE INVESTOR'S PERSPECTIVE ON BIOPHARMA BUSINESS
Key Takeaways

Bayer’s fourth-quarter sales fell by over 1% on the same quarter of 2023 while its stock price rose by up to 6% on the announcement.

 

The prospects for its new drug launches in 2025 likely contributed to investors’ warm reception although its full-year 2025 revenue guidance was for a modest decline.

 

Having limped away wounded from a failed study of its experimental anticoagulant asundexian in 2023, Bayer has another chance to redeem itself in 2025.

 

Of all the stock price reactions in the fourth-quarter 2024 earnings season, the last – that of Bayer – was...

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