Last year was operationally very successful for the Bayer Group. All three subgroups achieved sales gains and raised underlying earnings. So that the stockholders benefit from this gratifying performance, the company proposes to pay a dividend for 2012 of €1.90 (2011: €1.65) per share, giving a payout of €1.6 billion.

On a currency- and portfolio-adjusted basis, sales increased by more than 5% in 2012 to €39.8 billion. Earnings before the financial result and taxes - in other words EBIT - declined by nearly 5% compared with 2011, to €4 billion. This was mainly due to special items of €1.7 billion, mainly for restructuring and litigations. However, EBITDA before special items rose by nearly 9% to roughly €8.3 billion, and core earnings per share increased by almost 11% to €5.35.

Management Board Chairman Dr. Marijn Dekkers made special mention of the dynamic pace of growth in the Emerging Markets, where sales rose by more than 7% overall in 2012, and also in the Life Sciences businesses.

Sales in both HealthCare segments - Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Health - advanced by about 4%. EBITDA before special items of this subgroup grew by nearly 8%.

CropScience was particularly successful for the second year in a row. Here, sales climbed by 12%, while underlying EBITDA rose by more than 21%.

MaterialScience also contributed to Bayer's success last year. This subgroup raised sales by 3% and EBITDA before special items by 7%.

Q1 2013

In the first quarter of 2013, sales of the Bayer Group rose by 3.7% to €10.3 billion. EBIT rose by a substantial 8.6% to €1.8 billion, after special charges that amounted to €45 million compared with €169 million in the prior-year period. EBITDA before special items came in level with the prior-year quarter at €2.5 billion. While both of the Life Sciences businesses - HealthCare and CropScience - contributed to this performance, earnings at MaterialScience posted a significant decline. Group net income rose by 11.5% to €1.2 billion.

Outlook

Dekkers expressed his confidence for the company's continuing development in its anniversary year and confirmed the Group outlook for 2013: "In the Bayer Group as a whole, we expect sales for the full year 2013 to increase by about 4 to 5% on an adjusted basis to approximately €41 billion."