Will Bayer's global CEO step down early? After a $10 billion litigation crisis, it is still not split. What does Bayer's global tumor top 10 ambition rely on?

Werner Baumann's CEO journey at Bayer may be coming to an end

Bayer is quietly looking for Baumann's successor, and Bayer Chairman Norbert Winkeljohann is studying internal and external resources to nominate a new CEO candidate

In fact, there are already voices calling for Baumann to

Baumann has no shortage of supporters, but another Bayer investor, Union Investment, said it would support Bowman to continue his duties until the end of his term (2024), Union Investment believes that ending the contract early will only cause confusion for the company, and believes that Bowman's planned departure is a satisfactory outcome

Baumann has been CEO of Bayer since May 2016

But this record-breaking acquisition has plunged Bayer into a number of huge lawsuits

This incident may doom Baumann's career at Bayer to be full of ups and downs

Since Baumann took over as CEO in 2016, Bayer's stock price has fallen 48 percent, EBITDA has fallen 33 percent, and dividends per share (DPS) have fallen 20 percent

For many investors, the strategy proposed for Bayer, in addition to replacing the CEO, is to let Bayer join the

The main reason for supporting their idea is that the century-old store's three major business units of pharmaceuticals, crop science, and consumer health lack of synergy, and now the time is ripe

Bayer's troubles at the moment

In fact, looking back at Baumann's tenure, the acquisition of Monsanto and the series of lawsuits it has caused, and the question of whether the three major business units of the company have been split or not, they are only the fuses that have triggered deep anxiety among investors, and the root cause is that Bayer's current development is not enough to reassure

To be sure, in the first half of this year, Bayer's two divisions, Crop Science and Consumer Health, achieved significant growth

The concern is in the

The main factor is that Bayer's two major drug patents are about to

Other products, such as the hypertension drug Adalat (nifedipine) and the heart disease secondary prevention drug Aspirin Cardio (aspirin) benefited from the excellent performance of the Chinese market, although the first half of this year achieved double-digit growth, but sales are still a big gap compared

In addition, as of June this year, Bayer has 10 projects that have entered the phase III clinical trial, including: the development of high-dose Elelea for the treatment of DME, and the development of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD); PI3K inhibitor Copanlisb + chemotherapy second-line treatment of indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (iNHL); Polykinase inhibitor Regorafenib (regorafenib) for the treatment of diagnosed or recurrent glioblastoma; The guanylate cyclase (sGC) agonist vericiguat (vericiguat) treats heart failure (HFrEF) with decreased ejection fraction, etc

Bayer's clinical phase II and III products under research Source: Bayer 2022H1 financial report

Expect the oncology business to be among the top 10 in the world

In terms of prescription drugs, Bayer's development goal is very clear, that is, to strive to rank Bayer's oncology business among the top 10 in the world by 2030
.
This is an important strategic goal
proposed by Bayer at the Global Media Day on Prescription Drugs in March this year.

It is understood that Bayer has established the Cancer Strategy Business Unit since 2017 to strengthen R&D innovation
in this field.
And in recent years, through a series of collaborations to expand its oncology product pipeline
.

For example, in August 2021, Bayer entered into a $2 billion acquisition agreement with Vividion Therapeutics to acquire full rights
to the latter's proprietary discovery platform.
It is reported that Vividion's key projects include a number of precision oncology targets and precision immunological targets
.
And Vividion's platform is capable of producing a range of small molecule therapies for a wide range of indications
.

In June 2021, Bayer entered into an acquisition agreement with Noria Therapeutics and PSMA Therapeutics to acquire an exclusive right to
radionuclide therapy based on actinide-225 and a prostate-specific small molecule antigen (PSMA) differential α.

In June, Bayer announced a strategic investment of $140 million to open a new research and innovation center in Kendall Plaza in Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and to open a new precision molecular oncology research center with state-of-the-art laboratories and office areas to further Bayer's oncology drug development process
.
Since 2020, Bayer has agreed on more than 40 projects including commercial development and licensing and has invested $1.
5 billion in collaborative projects
through the Leaps by Bayer.
The new center will also play an important role
in future investment and collaboration-related work.

At present, Bayer's tumor pipeline mainly focuses on three aspects
: targeted radiopharmaceuticals, immuno-oncology and tumor cell therapy, and precision molecular oncology.

In terms of indications, prostate cancer is one of Bayer's key areas of
focus.
Bayer has marketed two therapeutic drugs, nobegor (darotamine) and dofigo (radium chloride [223Ra]
).
Among them, Nobego is regarded as the cornerstone product
that leads Bayer's oncology business to become a global leader.
In 2021, the product was officially included in China's national medical insurance catalogue and was used for non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC)
with high risk of metastasis.
2021, the first full sales year of Nobego, has generated more than €
200 million in global sales.
In the first half of 2022, Nobego generated sales of 181 million euros, doubling
sales compared to the same period last year.
Bayer has high hopes for Nobego and is trying to cultivate it into a new "blockbuster" drug, which Bayer has predicted will reach a potential maximum sales of 3 billion euros (about 21.
5 billion yuan).

Among the products under research for its tumor pipeline, the PI3K inhibitor Copanlisb+ chemotherapy second-line treatment of indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (iNHL), and the polykinase inhibitor Regorafenib (regorafenib) therapy diagnosis or recurrence of glioblastoma are already in the clinical phase III
.

In addition, Bayer has strengthened its R&D pipeline in cell and gene therapies through a series of acquisitions and collaborations
.

In 2019, Bayer acquired Blue Rock Therapeutics, a developer of allogeneic cell therapies, for $1 billion, and through this acquisition, Bayer hopes to vigorously expand its presence
in the cell field based on BlueRock's industry-leading iPSC technology platform 。 In 2020, Bayer announced the acquisition of Asklepios BioPharmaceutical for $4 billion, using AskBio's AAV technology to promote Bayer's gene therapy, and in the same year, Bayer also launched a dedicated cell and gene therapy platform
in its pharmaceutical division.

In January 2022, Bayer announced a strategic partnership and option agreement with Mammoth to develop in vivo gene editing therapies
using the latter's CRISPR system.