Monsanto Co.

Bayer's pharma business is taking shape behind growth products Nubeqa and Kerendia, but for one more year overall sales are likely to drop as the company expects the decline of its mature products Xarelto and Eylea to kick into higher gear in 2026. The primary growth drivers in Bayer’s pharma sector—Nubeqa and Kerendia—are performing even better than the company anticipated and their momentum is expected to continue in 2026. But that won’t lead to growth of Bayer’s pharma business overall this year as two contraction drivers—Xarelto and Eylea—are working in the opposite direction. This will be the last year of the sector’s “resilience phase,” Bayer’s pharma president Stefan Oelrich said during a quarterly conference call, which will set it up for growth in 2027.In a way, Bayer’s pharma business is the company in a microcosm. As the German conglomerate absorbs massive litigation charges related to its disastrous acquisition of Monsanto a decade ago and eyes a potential $7.25 billion settlement of Roundup lawsuits, a rebound is finally in sight.“We’re expecting a negative free cash flow this year, due to litigation-related payouts,” CEO Bill Anderson said. “That outlook is emblematic of the company’s current strategic position. Strong signs of progress but still working on a comprehensive turnaround.”Sales of prostate cancer treatment Nubeqa were up (PDF) 57% in 2025 to 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion). Meanwhile, kidney disease drug Kerendia achieved sales of 829 million euros ($936 million) in 2025, an increase of 79%, with a particularly notable year-over-year growth rate of 93% in the fourth quarter.“We’re well set for our next wave of growth, right into the next decade, driven by significant, sustained Nubeqa and Kerendia sales,” Oelrich said, also citing the launches of BridgeBio-partnered cardiomyopathy treatment Beyonttra and recently approved menopause drug Lynkuet, as well as the potential of investigational stroke medicine asundexian. On the flip side, sales of eye disease treatment Eylea were down 6% last year to 3.1 billion euros ($3.51 billion), with fourth-quarter sales falling by 16% year over year. Oelrich cited increased pricing pressures due to the market entry of biosimilars, which is being offset partially by an increase in volume, including a boost in the sales of the 8 mg, long-acting version of Eylea.“Biosimilar entry is not so much a volume erosion for us as it is much more a price erosion, and that’s really hard to beat,” Oelrich said.As for blood thinner Xarelto, which faces ongoing generic erosion, sales were down 33% in 2025 to $2.34 billion euros ($2.6 billion). The drug’s performance also saw a negative trend in the fourth quarter, with a year-over-year decline in the period of 39%.Bayer is expecting sales of both of the aging products to decline more rapidly in 2026, projecting a 20% to 25% slide in Eylea sales and a 35% to 40% drop for Xarelto.“We expect a modest contraction of our base business in 2026,” Oelrich said, adding that Bayer expects that top-line sales in the second half of the year will top those from the first half, setting the pharma sector to realize mid-single-digit growth in 2027. For 2025, Bayer’s pharma sector was down 2%, with sales falling to 17.83 billion euros ($20.1 billion). As for the fourth quarter, pharma sales were down 4% to 4.48 billion euros ($5.1 billion). Bayer’s consumer health unit showed a similar quarterly trend but to a higher degree, as sales for the year were down 1%, to 5.80 billion euros ($6.5 billion), while falling 7% in the fourth quarter to 1.46 billion euros ($1.6 billion).

The resolution of the case came “down to the wire,” with less than a week to spare before a jury trial was slated to kick off, analysts at Evercore ISI wrote in a note to clients. About four years after the case was filed—and against the backdrop of a significantly changed COVID-19 vaccine landscape—Moderna has resolved a long-running patent feud.Moderna will pay $950 million upfront—and no future royalties—to settle patent litigation over its mRNA-based vaccine Spikevax. The case was brought by Roivant subsidiary Genevant and infectious disease biotech Arbutus in 2022, alleging Moderna infringed their patents with the lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery technology in its blockbuster shot.The case eventually drew in Moderna’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine mRESVIA, too, which was approved by the FDA in 2024. The resolution of the case came “down to the wire,” with less than a week to spare before a jury trial was slated to kick off, analysts at Evercore ISI wrote to clients this week. Under the terms of the agreement, Moderna could be on the hook to pay Genevant and Arbutus another $1.3 billion, contingent upon Moderna’s potential liability over sales of its vaccine through government contracts, the companies said in a March 3 press release. Moderna is tackling that issue in appeals court and noted in its own release Tuesday that it isn’t anticipating a charge for the potential additional payment because it does not consider that outcome “probable.” With the upfront payment on the books, however, Moderna said it now expects to have cash and cash equivalents between $4.5 billion and $5 billion at the end of 2026. "Resolving this legacy matter from our pandemic response removes uncertainty and allows us to turn our full focus to Moderna's exciting near-term future," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. "In 2026, we will return to revenue growth and end the year with a strong balance sheet, with more than $5 billion in liquidity, as we drive toward breakeven in 2028.”Despite Moderna’s “sizable” upfront payout, analysts at Evercore said they had an “overall favorable view” of the settlement, noting that investor expectations for how the case might play out “were all over the map.” Given that some had expected Moderna’s tens of billions of dollars in COVID shot sales to incur a steeper award for Genevant and Arbutus, the deal “appears manageable and eliminates a meaningful tail risk,” the Evercore team said.  Analysts at Jefferies were also optimistic about Moderna’s side of the deal, noting that the $950 million to $2.5 billion it could ultimately owe amounts to an effective 2% to 5% royalty rate on its $48 billion of cumulative worldwide vaccine sales. This in turn removes the “worst-case scenario of potentially a double-digit royalty rate,” the Jefferies team wrote in a March 3 note. Overall, Moderna is becoming a “cleaner” story in 2026, the Jefferies analysts added, noting that the lawsuit’s resolution provides greater certainty around Moderna’s next-generation COVID vaccine mNexspike, its experimental COVID and influenza combo shot mCombriax and the company’s flu pipeline more broadly. Moderna’s stock was up nearly 9% in Wednesday trading.Genevant and Arbutus levied their initial lawsuit against Moderna in February 2022, with the legal action following unsuccessful efforts by Moderna to invalidate two Arbutus patents.In the suit, filed in a Delaware federal court, Genevant and Arbutus said they were seeking damages on six patents which they claimed Moderna infringed. Crucially, the suing companies said they did not intend to stop Moderna from selling and supplying its immunization, but instead wanted compensation that amounted to a “reasonable royalty on all infringing sales.” In a gesture that enables continued sales of Moderna’s vaccines, Genevant and Arbutus noted Tuesday that they’ve also granted the company a global non-exclusive license to their LNP delivery technology in infectious disease applications through the settlement, alongside a pledge “not to sue for certain Genevant/Arbutus patents and Moderna products.” Moderna has pledged in turn not to challenge the validity of certain Genevant and Arbutus patents. The settlement resolves all global LNP litigation between the companies, Genevant and Arbutus said this week. “Nobel laureates, industry executives, and prominent researchers have long recognized that Arbutus scientists changed the drug development landscape when they invented LNP delivery technology, enabling nucleic acids, including mRNA, to be used for medicines and opening a new world of possibilities,” Lindsay Androski, Arbutus’ CEO, said in a statement. “Today, Moderna has finally acknowledged the same.”Meanwhile, Gevevant chief James Heyes noted that it is “enormously gratifying for the Gevevant team to, at long last, be recognized for our pivotal contribution to restoring normalcy around the world in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”  Lawsuits still at play Genevant and Arbutus’ legal spat with Moderna is just one piece of a broader patent litigation landscape that sprang up in the wake of authorizations for Moderna and Pfizer’s respective mRNA vaccines, Spikevax and Comirnaty, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Roughly a year after filing suit against Moderna, the companies set their sights on Pfizer and its German mRNA partner BioNTech, arguing infringement over similar LNP delivery technology claims. “As we continue to pursue our ongoing litigation against Pfizer/BioNTech, whose Comirnaty sales represent ~2/3 of global COVID vaccine sales, this resolution with Moderna reduces uncertainty, validates our IP estate and provides near-term significant cash inflow,” Roivant CEO Matt Gline said Tuesday. Meanwhile, Moderna and Pfizer are also duking it out with each other over intellectual property claims in cases spanning multiple countries.  And at the start of the year, Bayer filed separate complaints against Moderna and Pfizer and BioNTech in Delaware—as well as Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey—over claims that the companies’ COVID shots tread on a technology to improve mRNA stability that is patented by Monsanto, the crop science company Bayer bought out a decade ago. GSK has been on a COVID vaccine litigation streak too, and last summer it secured a $320 million payment after its mRNA licenser CureVac resolved its own COVID-19 lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech in the U.S. 

New public opinion data from 2,569 respondents reveals near-unanimous opposition to key provisions of the administration’s glyphosate executive orderAUSTIN, Texas, March 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) released the results of a public opinion poll conducted in response to the Trump Administration’s executive order directing federal agencies to stockpile glyphosate-based herbicides. The poll, which drew 2,569 respondents, found sweeping opposition to federal stockpiling of glyphosate, near-total rejection of legal immunity for manufacturers, and widespread concern about the integrity of safety research used to justify current policies. Key Findings 97.8 respondents oppose legal immunity for manufacturers of glyphosate-based herbicides — the strongest consensus in the poll. 89.0 oppose the federal stockpiling of glyphosate-based herbicides as part of national preparedness planning. 95.6 are aware that glyphosate-based herbicides have been linked to more than $10 billion in cancer-related jury verdicts and settlements. 95.6 say the November 2025 retraction of a foundational safety study has affected their trust in current glyphosate safety claims. Context and BackgroundThe poll was launched in February 2026 following the administration’s executive order directing federal agencies to ensure an adequate domestic supply of glyphosate and related chemical herbicides as part of national preparedness planning. The order came amid heightened public scrutiny of glyphosate’s safety profile, driven by several converging developments: Bayer AG, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, has paid more than $10 billion in verdicts and settlements related to claims that its glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide causes cancer — particularly non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — and continues to face approximately 67,000 active lawsuits. In February 2026, Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion class settlement to resolve current and future claims. (Source: Bloomberg / Insurance Journal, February 17, 2026) On November 28, 2025, a study published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology — long cited as a foundational piece of evidence supporting glyphosate’s safety — was formally retracted, raising further questions about the scientific basis for current regulatory positions. “These results speak for themselves,” said Del Bigtree, founder and CEO of ICAN. “The American public is paying attention. They know about the billions in legal judgments. They know the key safety study has been retracted. They are sending a clear message: they do not support policies that result in stockpiling products with unresolved safety questions or shield corporations from accountability.” About the PollThe ICAN Glyphosate Public Opinion Poll was conducted online in February 2026 and distributed through ICAN’s email list, website, and social media channels. A total of 2,569 respondents answered four multiple-choice questions covering awareness of glyphosate litigation, federal stockpiling policy, manufacturer legal immunity, and the impact of a recent study retraction on public trust. Each question offered three response options: Yes, No, or Unsure. The full results report, including detailed data visualizations and analysis for each question, is available HERE. Note: This poll reflects the views of ICAN’s engaged audience and is not presented as a statistically representative sample of the broader U.S. population. Results should be interpreted within the context of the respondent base. A complete methodology note is included in the full report. About ICANThe Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on scientific integrity within the vaccine and pharmaceutical industries. Through investigations, legal actions, public education, and Freedom of Information campaigns, ICAN works to ensure that government health agencies and corporations are held to the highest standards of transparency and accountability. ICAN is the producer of The HighWire, a weekly investigative news program. Learn more at icandecide.org. Media Contact: Catharine Layton | press@icandecide.org | 512-522-8739 A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/59926f6d-1466-4426-bb25-c75c2697a7c7