Bayer will “significantly contain” glyphosate litigation by the end of 2026, CEO Bill Anderson said this week during the company’s second-quarter 2025 earnings call.
“Every decision we make has the goal of positioning the company to move past our litigation woes.”
The company has repeatedly said this litigation—which has been ongoing since Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018—is “a huge burden” on company financials thanks to payouts to plaintiffs alleging that the weed killer caused them to develop cancer.
Thus far, Bayer has settled 17,000 cases “at a low cost per case,” Anderson said on the call, adding that “just recently, we’ve taken thousands of cases off the table through confidential settlements on a low cost per case average in the glyphosate litigation.”
“I don’t want to get into whether this is a turning point,” he said of the settled cases. “I would simply say that we are turning over every stone to make sure that we’re executing on all of the various approaches that that we’ve called out in the past, and we remain committed to substantially containing this litigation threat to the company by the end of next year.”
Bayer has another 61,000 cases to go on glyphosate litigation, for which it just allocated an additional $1.37 billion on top of the more than $10 billion it has already spent.
It also faces significant litigation around polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds that Monsanto stopped producing in 1977 and which the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned in 1979.
SCOTUS ruling expected ‘by summer of next year’
Bayer has repeatedly said it stands behind “the safety and non-carcinogenicity” of glyphosate.
The company is currently awaiting word from the Solicitor General as to whether the supreme court will take up the case—in which the plaintiff sued after attributing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to Roundup exposure—around an appeal of a lower court’s $1.25 million verdict in a Missouri state court.
Bayer argues that since the EPA has approved glyphosate-based product labels without requiring a cancer warning, plaintiffs should not be able to sue under state law for a failure to include warnings.
“We welcome this step, and we expect a recommendation in the coming weeks or months,” Anderson said of SCOTUS asking for input from the Solicitor General.
“This decision keeps intact the broader timeline of having a SCOTUS ruling by summer of next year.”
“But,” he added, “Our strategy is multipronged, and we’re not dependent on a singular milestone like a positive SCOTUS decision. We also remain active outside of the courtroom. We welcome legislation at the state and federal level that reaffirms the authority of the US EPA.”
“Beyond these measures, we continue to examine additional options to protect the company, and everything remains on the table. We remain acutely aware of the threat of this issue for US farmers, US consumers, and our company. This is an important time with numerous prongs of our strategy advancing toward important junctures. As we move forward, we’re making each decision with one broader goal in mind, narrowing the overall threat and bringing our company closer to containment.”
‘Optimistic’ around Dicamba registration
Bayer’s Crop Science division sales increased by 2.2% during the quarter compared to the previous year, CFO Wolfgang Nickl said on the call.
Core business grew by 3% versus the prior year with seeds and traits up 11% for the quarter. Corn sales rose by 30% in Q2 based on global price increases and acreage expansion.
“This growth was amplified by the expected volume phasing from the first quarter following the strategic adjustment of our distribution network,” he said.
Soy and cotton sales declined by 18% adn 26%, respectively, due mostly to the Dicamba vacatur, when a US federal court halted use of Dicamba in 2024.
In 2025, the EPA proposed its decision to approve registration for new uses of Dicamba, for which it “has not identified any human health or dietary risks of concern.”
“With the recent proposal of the EPA to approve dicamba, we are optimistic in regaining registration for the next season, which could also help in soy and cotton pricing going forward,” Anderson said on the call.
As a final Q2 milestone, Anderson also highlighted Bayer’s “blockbuster herbicide” icafolin-methyl, for which it has submitted registration applications in the US, Brazil, Canada, and the EU. The company is targeting an initial launch of the herbicide in Brazil.
The post Bayer ‘turning over every stone’ to ‘significantly contain’ glyphosate litigation by end of 2026 appeared first on AgFunderNews.
