(Clarification in seventh paragraph: 2019 rpt. 2019 to 2023)

PHILADELPHIA/LEVERKUSEN (dpa-AFX) - The pharmaceutical and agrochemical company Bayer must pay significantly less than expected in a lawsuit over the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup. A court in Philadelphia reduced the damages awarded to the plaintiff by a jury from 2.25 billion US dollars to 400 million US dollars (367.5 million euros), according to court documents filed late on Tuesday. This was the highest amount since the start of the trials surrounding the alleged cancer risks of the weedkiller glyphosate in 2018. Bayer intends to appeal. The share price rose.

"Although the court has reduced the unconstitutionally high amount of damages, we do not agree with the court's decision on the merits," the company announced on Wednesday. The proceedings were characterized by serious errors. These could and must be corrected. Furthermore, Bayer points out that the company has prevailed in court in 14 of the most recent 20 cases. In addition, most of the lawsuits have been settled.

The reduced court fine did not knock investors off their feet. In the early afternoon, the shares rose by a good 1 percent to 28.69 euros. For the current year, the share price is still down around 15 percent. Since the end of January, the share price has not made it sustainably above the 30 euro mark.

The burdens associated with Roundup are still too great for the Group as a whole for investors to be relieved, said one trader. Another Borsianer called the court's decision unsurprising, as the damages previously awarded were "unusually high". However, the all-clear was inappropriate in view of the very high number of lawsuits still pending with an uncertain outcome.

Goldman Sachs analyst James Quigley also considers the reduced penalty to be in line with expectations. A reduction of around 80 percent has already been made in other cases.

Bayer brought the problems surrounding the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup into the company in 2018 with the takeover of the US company Monsanto, which cost over 60 billion dollars. A first judgment against the DAX-listed company followed in the same year. This set off a wave of lawsuits in the USA. In 2020, Bayer launched a multi-billion dollar program to settle the majority of the lawsuits without admitting liability.

A good portion of the lawsuits have been settled, but risks remain. At the end of January, around 54,000 of approximately 165,000 cases were still open. The wave of glyphosate lawsuits has already cost Bayer 10 billion euros. Bayer has spent a total of €13 billion on legal disputes in the USA for the period 2019 to 2023, including lawsuits relating to PCBs and dicamba, for example. The provisions amounted to 6.3 billion dollars (5.7 billion euros) at the end of 2023./mne/lew/jha/stk/jha/