BASF starts the new year with a decline in sales and earnings
BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, has made a weaker start to the new year due to significantly lower prices. Negative currency effects also had a negative impact.
Sales in the first three months shrank by 12.2 per cent year-on-year to 17.6 billion euros, as the DAX-listed company announced in Ludwigshafen on Thursday. The bottom line was a profit of just under 1.4 billion euros, compared to almost 1.6 billion a year earlier.
The last Annual General Meeting took place on Thursday with CEO Martin Brudermüller. He was handed over the helm to Markus Kamieth. In February, Brudermüller announced another cost-cutting programme worth billions and further job cuts at the main plant in Ludwigshafen. The largest production site in the Group is to be reorganised.
Specifically, additional annual costs of one billion euros are to be saved there by the end of 2026. “The situation is serious, so we are explicitly not ruling out any measures,” Brudermüller said, outlining the situation. Of the almost 112,000 employees worldwide, 38,710 were most recently employed in Ludwigshafen, two thirds of them in production.
