Bayer Aktiengesellschaft (BAYN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning for all of you here live in Iowa, but also good afternoon and good evening for some of the ones that are on the webcast as well. So I'm Rodrigo Santos, I'm the President of the Crop Science Division at Bayer. And it's a real pleasure that you guys have here spend a day with us. The team had a lot of work in the field and I'm sure you're going to enjoy. So it's really great to have you in this 2026 innovation event. 16 months ago, if you remember, 16 months ago, we introduced our 5-year framework to you. And in a brief summary, the 5-year framework was built around 3 key elements of the triangle that we mentioned. The first 1 EUR 3.5 billion growth on the top line based and fueled by the innovation that we're going to see today. Second one, mid-20s EBITDA margin supported at more than EUR 1 billion savings that we have, and you're going to have an update on that 1 as well. and at the same time, to generate another 1.5 cumulative cash in the plans that we have for the next years until the end of the decade. So my hope today is that after all the information that you're going to get from Guru, Sasha, Mike and also what you're going to see in the field you are as convinced as we are as the people here are that, first, we are delivering on the commitments we made. That's the first one. And the second one, we're going to see -- and we're going to show, by the way, how exactly what we committed, what we have already achieved and all the proof points that we demonstrate on our execution. But also second as important as we are delivering. The second is that we have an engine to deliver sustainable value to our farmers and to our investors. We believe that our ability to consistently out-innovate our competition, creates differentiated value for customers really put us to drive sustainable financial performance, and you're going to see that with Mike and the engine of R&D and again, in the field. But before I go into more of that and to deep dive on that one, -- let me hand over to Jana that help us to give us a little bit of what we're going to have on the day today. Jana?

Thank you, Rodrigo. Good morning, good afternoon to those online. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I'm Jana Ackermann, Bayer's new Head of Investor Relations. And happy to have you with us today. whether you have followed by a crop science for years or whether you're new to agriculture. We're delighted to have you here and appreciate your interest learning more about our business. So let me walk you through our agenda for today. First, Rodrigo Santos, our Crop Science President; Guru Moti, our CFO; and Sasha Israel, our Head of Product Supply, represent the capital market update. That runs from now until 11. Then from 11 to 11:45, Mike Graham, our Head of R&D, will give you an update on our R&D capabilities and pipeline outlook, followed by Q&A. And then after the lunch break at around 1:15 comes the highlight of the tour of the event today, our future getting real experience of how our pipeline is coming to life in the field makes this year's investors event truly different. Throughout the presentation, you will see the designing the ACRE logo which highlights innovations that you will also experience in the field today. You will have the chance to meet our full leadership team and many of our leaders and scientists from around the world. Those are the people in the dark blue shirts, so please take the chance to speak to them and ask your questions. We closed the day today with barbeque here on site, and you'll get the chance to interact even more with the team. So it's a full day, very rich day. And obviously, we enjoy that you very much enjoy it. Now -- as with any investor event, I would like to bring your attention to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information. To put it into a frame, as you know, Bayer is a global leader in Health & Nutrition, and Crop Science is our largest business, representing nearly half of the group sales, as leading positions across seeds and traits and crop protection and serves an attractive global market. So as Bayer advances, crop science has become a more leaner, more focused organization. Today, the team will share the significant progress we have made and how we're executing on multiple levers to drive growth, expand profitability and enhance cash generation. So these actions do more than just to strengthen the crop science profile, but they also safeguard future investment in innovation, improved financial flexibility and contribute to a stronger Bayer overall. So by the end of today, we hope we'll leave with great appreciation for the quality of the Crop Science business, the strength of our innovation engine and the confidence in crop science ability create sustainable value. From a very personal experience perspective, I had the privilege of spending the past 5 years in Brazil and Asia in Crop Science. And my experience there showed me how diverse agriculture is across the world, from relapsed, scale farms in Brazil to small holder farmers in India. And one thing, regardless of the market for me consistently stands out, and that's what we're going to show you today. It's the passion to innovate and bring sustainable solutions to farmers. So on that note, I look forward to meeting each of you today, and please reach out to me or Erica if you have any specific investor relations topic that we can address today or as a follow-up. And with that, happy to hand it over to you, Rodrigo again.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're going to experience the heat of Iowa this afternoon. But before that, -- so let me go a little bit more into the details, and we're going to share more information with you that what excites us at Bayer at Crop Science and what we have in our pipeline. So here are the 5 -- on this slide, you have the 5 reasons why we are very confident in the prospect of our division. Let me go through them 1 by one. So first, we operate in attractive and growing market. Our market, seed and crop protection globally is growing at a rate of 2% a year in the next 5 years. Second, we have a proven and winning business model. We are the leading global innovator in seeds and trades and in Crop Protection and our leading position in the markets that matter around the world, allow us to create trust with farmers and deliver constant value creation. The third, we are executing the 5-year framework to deliver our financial plans that we have. I want to emphasize that because we are executing on our margin growth and our cash measures, as you're going to see here today. And we remain committed to deliver EUR 1 billion of savings by 2029 and to realize the free operating cash flow above EUR 3 billion. You'll see clear progress on this in the presentations this morning, and we're going to deliver that. Fourth, innovation-driven growth. We are committed to growth above market in our launch in the pipelines in this industry-leading from precision breeding and the launch of more than 400 hybrids and varieties every year to the front side of the 10 blockbusters that we will launch in the next years to the geographic expansion and the new value pools creating that we're going to see, opportunities that will create value by pricing, share and volume opportunities that we have. But even more important, Mike will show you how the engine and decades of data powered by AI will drive further differentiation for our platforms in breeding, biotech, chemical discovery, genome editing and digital tools. And fifth, sustainable value creation for the future. Beyond the launch pipeline, we have the leading R&D engine in the industry. And this engine will really constant deliver further innovations into the next 10 years. These setups for the long-term success if you bring all that together, if you bring the execution of the 5-year framework, we are set to deliver real growth through the midterm and capitalize on our leadership and innovation in the long term. So that's the case that give us so much confidence. The 5 reasons for our Crop Science business, it stands alone. So -- but let's go more into details in each of them to focus a little bit more on the next slide. So first, let me start the market. I'll start with the market. There are some distant market segments, each of them with some specific dynamics and growth opportunities. And the fourth thing that I will go a little bit deep that you know this one, agriculture and our farmers face a fundamental challenge. They must produce more on every acre every single year. And why is that for 2 key reasons, right? So the first 1 the demand on the left here keeps growing and the supply keeps getting harder. So let's talk about demand first. So by 2050, the planet adds 1.5 billion more people in the planet. That's 18% more people than today, and all of them needs to eat, of course. At the same time, the biofuel targets are rising globally. By 2035, we expect the biofuel demand to be growing by 50%, reaching almost 65 billion gallons. And this is an area that we are very excited about because of our portfolio and our biofuel crops that you're going to see also today. And there is a third element here, so the diets are changing. So the growth is showing that we're going to talking about 12% increase in animal protein consumption by 2035. So all the demands on the left, let's talk about the supply here on the right, because supplying also is not getting easier. It's getting even harder. So climate change is already leading to more frequent and more severe weather events. These events are impacting harvest. Just 1 number to you we are expecting that you could have 11% to 25% of harvest impact depending on the crop, depending on the region. At the same time, weeds and diseases are adapting every year more than 10 new resistance with cases of peers. Today, we have already about 550 documented cases globally. Weeds are evolving faster than we would like. And the third element here is the soil. Scientists tell us that by 2050, 90% of the soils are at risk of degradation, 90%. So here is the picture. Growing demand shrinking or at least more challenged supply, but that's exactly why we are here. That's exactly why this industry exists. This is why the buyer employees every day get to work is to bring and to really drive our vision of Hunger Funan. And I believe we are really well 1 of the few companies that we have the scientific muscle and the market reach to provide essential solutions to get it done. So let's put a number on that opportunity that I just mentioned on the market. Our global market seeds and trades together with Crop Protection was worth EUR 120 billion in 2025. And we expect to reach almost EUR 130 billion by 2030. So this is around 2% growth CAGR for the next 5 years. And sets and trades a little bit higher, 2% to 3%. And in Crop Protection, the growth is around 1% to 2%. So this is the next 5 years and the next 10 years together is a market that is durable and it's growing. That is the market that we operate in. So that's the we have set for ourselves, but let's talk how we're going to win in that market that I just mentioned. So on the first slide here that I will show you, we're going to have a look on our business model first. How we compete, how we steer the business day by day. This slide shows exactly what the leadership look like for us in numbers. So in corn, first, we are the global #1 with a EUR 7.1 billion in the market in 2025 and the number tells by itself, around 35% of global market share. Soybean -- we're also #1, EUR 2.2 billion in net sales, around 30% of global share. On the other seeds and traits, cotton, canola, vegetables, depending on the crop, we are seeing anywhere from #1 to #3. EUR 1.8 billion in net sales and around 35% share in cotton specifically. In core Crop Protection, we are the global #2. It's EUR 8 billion in net sales, around 12% share. But if you break that down further, we are #1 in herbicides, #2 in fungicides and #3 in sites. In the noncore Crop Protection, our glyphosate business, including Ruveon is the #1 globally, EUR 2.5 billion in net sales, around of share in that market. So look at that lineup and leading positions in every single platform we operate in means. So importantly, these results are driven by farmers around the world choosing our innovation year after year to make -- to help them make their business productive and profitable. These results reflect decades of investments in innovation, reliable product supply and our go-to-market approach that has built trusted relationship with farmers increasingly through our digital capabilities and will even faster with artificial intelligence. So I want to outline to you what this business model is at least hard not to say very difficult to replicate. So the first element here is our portfolio. We hold the leading portfolio in each of every product segment that we compete, you experienced this in the products first hand out of the field this afternoon. That's the first element. The second 1 is our product supply, both in Crop Protection and in seeds, our supply chain is resilient and efficient -- we've secured access to active ingredients, including partnerships in best cost countries and our seed production is robust. And in a world where you have a lot of disruptions, more tariffs, more uncertainty -- this matters more than ever. Third, we have the largest reach among the key markets in this industry. That means proximity to the grower, that means trust -- you cannot build that overnight. That really takes decades of relationship. And fourth is R&D. We have the leading capabilities across every technology stack. I'm talking about precision breeding biotech, gene editing, chemistry and our digital tools. And finally, to unlock the new value pools in segments that goes beyond our traditional car. So this is not something new for us. We've done it before, and we are doing it again. This is the architecture that we have. This is the model that we created, and this is what we are taking forward for the next years as well. So we believe that we are very uniquely positioned to deliver agriculture at scale. It's important to have that. This is our competitive differentiation in our business. We can unlock value on every acre. We are talking about designing the acre here. We have the portfolio and the scale to bring multiple technologies, multiyear, multi-crop and system solutions that we talk a lot. And this is a good example of a farm in the future, specifically a typical large-scale farmer here in that region in Iowa, as an example. First, you see the amount of technologies that show up on the operation. This technology is increasingly working together. The C choice enables farmer options for crop protection. And all of that work to maximum effect when unlock then with digital tools. Second, these are next-generation technologies that come from the 10 blockbusters in our pipeline. We are rewriting the competitive standards and creating the next wave of differentiation that will further separate us from the historical peers that we have in the market with the blockbusters. And third, this future farm evens rewrite the traditional way of corn and soybean rotation. As we introduce the intermediate crops like covercrafts, we offer a potential new income stream for farmers in a truly multi-seasoned system. This shows you the full potential of our strategy and our portfolio from seeds and traits to crop protection, biologicals digital tools, assistant approach to help farmers improve the yield and profitability at scale globally. And let me be clear, we are very proud as well that this platform in this business model is already working. And this is the section that every platform is different. We have different growth dynamics, different farmers need, different regions and competitive dynamics by the different platforms that we have. This is why it's important that we pursue a very diligent and different strategy for each of the platforms that we have. Because we have scale, we see having different business segments together as a strategic advantage and 1 that plays out is that what we innovate, how we can serve the growers. But that doesn't mean that we operate each of this business in the same way. In fact, one of the key to our strategy is that we operate each of the business according to the unique dynamics segment. So let me go through the commercial strategy 1 by one. So if you start with corn, our corn platform, -- this is our biggest platform today. Our strategy here is very clear. We're going to continue to further growth, further expand win market share. We are bringing innovation, geographic expansion, and go-to-market approach to help the platform of corn continue to grow. Soy, seeds and traits is different. We are still the global market leader challenges that you very know about North America when we have the Dicamba label Vaca tour. But this is resolved now and we are transitioning towards our next wave of innovations with Viconic and Intacta 5, and this will change the game in soybean again. Third, we have the other seeds and trade business, cotton, canola, vegetables. Here, we are expanding market share through innovation and commercial reach. This is smaller crops have different innovations and go-to-market approach from corn and soybean, and we are touching that one. So then for Crop Protection, the strategy on crop protection is to target profitability. We focus and we did the homework in managing our structure and our costs and making the business more resilient and more flexible. We focus our R&D. We streamlined our portfolio and our go-to-market footprint, and we adjust our product supply to drive profitable growth in Crop Protection. And then there is the noncore Crop Protection. This includes Roving as a dedicated stand-alone entity for the U.S. glyphosate business. We announced this in July 1 this year. And for the commodity glyphosate business, the strategy is different for the core and for the others. Here, you require a commode mindset and a very dynamic pricing to unlock your potential here. And very important, this business needs a very low possible overhead. And that's what we put on the Ruveon to be a very lean and agile organization to deal with that market. And finally, the new value pools and we are very excited about that. Things like the biofuel crops that you're going to see today. Here, we aim to build a leading position in strong partnerships. This is how we run buyer crop science. We will talk about all the platforms much more detail later today. But now before I go and talk more about the integration of the platforms and how we manage each of them different, I will transition to Guru to first provide you an update on the 5-year progress that we made so far. Guru, please.

Thank you, Rodrigo. And let me also add my warm welcome to everyone joining us today, whether you're here in the room or dialed in. It's absolutely great to have you with us here. So let me give you a progress update on the implementation of our 5-year framework. Our 5-year framework continues to be our top priority. In the following sections, we will provide clear evidence of execution underpinning our confidence in achieving our targets. I was closely involved last year when we defined the program and I'm now accountable for its delivery. Importantly, the entire leadership team remains fully aligned behind its objectives and is fully committed to making it a success. Our ambition is clear. On margin, we target more than EUR 1 billion of margin improvements between 2024 and 2029 from measures that are within our control. On cash, we work towards more than EUR 1.5 billion cumulatively freed up from working capital. And on sales, we aim for above-market growth, realizing EUR 3.5 billion in incremental sales on a currency and portfolio-adjusted basis. To accomplish this ambition, our 5-year framework consists of 3 dimensions: first, strengthening the foundation of this business. Second, capitalizing on our rich pipeline in our core business; and third, expanding beyond the core into new value pools which will contribute in the 2030s. Let me now briefly elaborate on how we are working towards meeting our ambition. We have a focused and agile implementation framework and governance model that enables us to drive execution with discipline, adapt to changing market conditions and prioritize the delivery of our 5-year framework targets. This rests on 5 key principles. First, dedicated delivery teams that relentlessly drive execution of our initiatives to realize outcomes with great discipline and focus. Second, committed executive sponsors who guide and steer implementation with full accountability for delivering target values. Third, following our DSO operating model, our teams operate in a 90-day sprint cadence, enabling them to respond quickly to changing market conditions while maintaining speed and discipline in executing against our targets. Fourth, effective collaboration with our works councils, the employee representative body to ensure we move at the right pace. And fifth, harmonized team incentives linking delivery of our ambition directly to personal compensation. Let me elaborate a bit on this. Across the vast majority of our markets, we now have incentives tied directly not only to sales and margin, but also to cash flow performance. What I am seeing is how this has positively impacted behaviors. Our teams are highly committed to cash flow delivery even under difficult market conditions. Together, these 5 principles have helped us to establish a framework for disciplined and adaptive execution. And the progress we are making is increasingly reflected in our numbers. Let me now walk you through this progress on our 2029 ambition. Starting with margin and cash ambitions where outcomes are largely execution driven within our control, and determined by our own actions rather than the broader market environment. On margin, we confirm our ambition to deliver more than EUR 1 billion of clean EBITDA improvements by 2029. And I'm pleased to report that we have delivered approximately EUR 380 million of annualized run rate benefits, representing around 40% of our ambition by year 2 of our 5-year program. This progress gives us confidence that we remain firmly on track to achieve our 2029 target. These planned improvements are driven by all 3 areas. For R&D, we are targeting more than EUR 150 million and have already delivered EUR 40 million. In product supply, we are targeting more than EUR 600 million from COGS measures and have already delivered EUR 250 million, supported by sourcing, productivity and optimization initiatives. I'm really pleased to report that our sourcing initiatives are ahead of schedule. And in go-to-market and global functions, we are targeting EUR 400 million and have already delivered around EUR 90 million. As you see on this slide, all 3 areas are fully on track and progressing well with product supply initiatives being the biggest contributor as expected. The trajectories of progress reflect the nature of these initiatives. Productivity and sourcing actions in product supply materialize faster, whereas site consolidation, footprint optimization as well as organizational changes require more preparation and phasing to minimize disruption to our business and to our customers. On cash, our ambition is to free up more than EUR 1.5 billion of cumulative cash from working capital by 2029. By the end of 2026, we expect to deliver approximately EUR 1 billion already through working capital management, with the inventory reduction initiatives tracking ahead of schedule. Next, turning to sales growth. Our ambition remains unchanged. To grow above market and realize EUR 3.5 billion in incremental net sales on a currency and portfolio adjusted basis by 2029 against our 2024 baseline. Also here, our progress to date remains fully consistent with our midterm expectations. As we have previously shared, the first phase of the 5-year framework is focused on strengthening the foundation through margin and cash measures, while sales growth is expected to accelerate in the later years of the program. In 2025, we delivered 1% CPA growth. And for 2026, we guide for 0% to 3% CPA growth. And following a strong first half we remain well on track to meet that guidance. Importantly, this progress should be seen in the context of actively managing our core crop protection portfolio through regulatory-driven exits as well as divestments and pruning of lower-margin products. The latter is naturally moderating top line growth, but improving the quality and profitability of the portfolio. Taken together, the incremental sales for 2025 and 2026, this would translate into roughly EUR 550 million of incremental sales at the midpoint of our guidance. A significant growth contribution from our innovation pipeline is expected in 2028 and 2029, reflecting the timing of our blockbuster launches and the adoption ramp up. As a result, we will be seeing a back-end-weighted growth profile, reflecting the strength of our innovation pipeline in the years to come. So in summary, our execution-led initiatives are delivering as expected, with a couple progressing ahead of schedule. Our sales trajectory remains aligned with the timing of our innovation-driven growth opportunities, giving us confidence in achieving our 2029 ambition. With that overview of our 5-year framework progress, we will now get into a deeper update on the first dimension we call strengthen the foundation before we take you through the other 2 dimensions. This dimension is particularly important because it creates the operational and financial foundation required to fully capture the value of our upcoming innovation pipeline. With that, I'll now hand it over to Sasha, who will take you through the details of how we are strengthening the foundation.

Thank you, Guru, for that overview on our progress, and I'm very happy to take us forward now and provide you with further details on the individual components of the program. And I would like to start with product supply, specifically the improvements to our cost of goods sold. This, as you have seen, is the largest lever in our margin program. And our ambition here is the more than EUR 600 million of clean EBITDA run rate impact by 2029. We are driving these improvements across 3 areas. The first is sourcing and process improvements in crop protection with a clean EBITDA target of EUR 240 million. We have already secured EUR 200 million of cost improvements through the sourcing levers as well as technical improvements. So in this area, we are ahead of schedule as of now. The second area is our crop protection production network with a target of more than EUR 240 million. This lever is very important as it adapts our network to the current market context of increased generic pressure and very cost-efficient product availability out of China. This market environment has caused cost of underutilization and some cost competitiveness issues for some of our raw materials and molecules. We are, therefore, adjusting our network for active ingredient manufacturing and for formulation, filling and packaging to address this. Specifically, we are reducing the share of active ingredient production we do in-house significantly from around 35% today towards 25%. Implementation is well advanced, and we will see a cost improvement of more than EUR 240 million in 2029 as a consequence. And third, with our seed production optimization with a target of around EUR 120 million. Also here, we have already implemented our first wave of structural improvements across production, logistics and warehousing and are well on track with this lever as well. One important point across all 3 before we go into each area. It's noteworthy that implementation and product supply of the measures that we've outlined here is running significantly faster than the financial impact. Depending on the specifics, it can take 12 to 18 months for the benefits to transition from production to inventory and then fully to the P&L. This is already reflected in the savings ramp up you see on the slide, and we are tracking very well also on our upcoming milestones. So let's focus on each area in more detail, starting with sourcing and process improvements. How are we actually delivering the savings here? In this area, we are focusing on 3 major levers. The first is raw material and active ingredient cost deflation. Over the last year to 18 months, we've set up several dedicated teams and formats to aggressively renegotiate the existing and new suppliers across the entire portfolio. We've also worked jointly with our strategic partners to unlock cost advantages across the value chain. Second, we have shifted 10 active ingredients to external sources in low-cost countries in an accelerated outsourcing process. A couple of similar shifts have been or are still being executed for several key raw materials where we are also moving from higher-cost geographies and suppliers to new partners. And third, process optimization. We have focused over the last year, our technical teams. And here, I'm talking specifically about our chemists and engineering teams decisively on cost improvements. To this end, we've set up 14 end-to-end optimization teams, and they are focused on things like yield, waste reduction, energy efficiency and chemical route optimization. This is also a very nice example, by the way, of our usage of artificial intelligence as AI is allowing us to significantly expand the scope of molecules and processes we can cover with our team and our existing resources. So overall, our progress across procurement, supply chain and manufacturing is well on track and capturing the benefit in this specific area is growing even faster than we have originally foreseen when we set up the program. Now let's move on and focus on our crop protection production network and the more than EUR 240 million we are targeting there. This is a very sizable saving, but it's also feasible. And we've made very significant decisions in this space already that we are fully committed to. Let me start in Germany at our largest site in the network in Denmark. We are consolidating from 6 plants at the site down to 3 by 2029. We are also integrating our Kazak operations into Dorma. And in Frankfurt, which is our second major combined AI and FFP side in Germany, we are fully exiting our activities. The cost savings from these measures include elimination of cost of underutilization, further outsourcing of 8 active ingredients, several relocations within the network and efficiency gain. This measure by itself will consequently yield more than EUR 100 million cost improvements, and we will realize it in several waves between 2027 and 2029. We take a similar approach in our Kansas City active ingredient manufacturing site. Here, we consolidate from 2 into 1 plant. This also eliminates significant cost of underutilization and adjust our fixed cost base, in particular, also in the infrastructure area and delivers a total cost reduction of more than EUR 100 million as well. Lastly, we are globally adjusting our formulation capacity by 20% to 25%. This change will focus the network on key technologies, improve our utilization and deliver savings of more than EUR 40 million. The savings include the discontinuation of our formulation activities in our Frankfurt side that I've mentioned previously, but it also includes further changes across our network such as our recent announcements relating to our Shakopee side in the U.S. or our formulation site in Bangpu in Asia. It's needless to say, these changes are a major transformation for us. So I'm very glad that we have a great and committed team working on it, and we have made significant progress since our last update. Let's look at some of these key milestones and achievements. Firstly, we have signed a joint declaration enabling the changes in Germany, including the before-mentioned measures in Frankfurt and Dorman. We are well on track with the technical product transfers. We have and are progressing well with the required registration activities, and we are building the necessary bridging stocks and are well advanced with that. Lastly, we've also already decided or are in the process of finalizing the required sourcing contracts relating to the molecules we are outsourcing. And we can, therefore, also save its confidence today that these contracts are in line or better than foreseen in our original assumptions. So in summary, we are very committed and well on track to deliver the Envision network savings of more than EUR 240 million as planned in our 5-year framework. Lastly, let's talk about seed production. Let me prephase that and start by saying -- we have a world-class seed production, which has continuously improved efficiency and yield, leveraging science, digital technologies and best practice operations and agronomic practices over the last years. And we expect this trend also to continue in the future. In our 5-year framework, we are focused on specific additional improvements, which are more structural in nature to further boost efficiency and support growth. The expected benefit is an additional EUR 120 million of cost improvements. One focus area here is our warehousing and logistics network. As an example, we were able to optimize our soy warehouse network in the U.S. by a 10% reduction of contracted storage and we improved logistics by increasing the share of direct customer shipments by a factor of 3. We are also in this space, optimizing our network, such as in the case of our recently announced divestment of our windfall soy side. Another focus area in this space is supporting geographic expansion with improved costs. An example here is the opening of our new corn seat site in Zambia in March 2025. So this site serves as a distribution hub for Africa, and we expect it to deliver efficiency and supply high-yielding corn seeds to roughly 10 million small holder farmers in the future. So this lever represents a broader set of individual measures compared to the crop protection lever, but we are also well on track to deliver the committed savings of EUR 120 million. So let me summarize what we've seen in the area of product supply. Across our crop protection, production network, our seed production and the broader 5-year framework for product supply we have strong confidence in delivering our plan. We are on track, and we are in several places ahead of schedule with the implementation, and we have a strong team that's continuing to implement the changes. What's important is that our vision for crop protection in particular is that with the changes, we will not only get the overall EUR 600 million of cost benefits. With our measures, what we'll also do is transition to a setup that has a significantly lower structural cost base, improved utilization and a new renewed and focused portfolio. At the same time, we will have significantly increased the share of external sourcing. And through the combination of all these measures, we will deliver resilience, flexibility and also the competitive product costs required to win in today's market. Now moving on to portfolio and R&D. On the portfolio side, we have announced changes as well, and we are on track. In total, we have divested 5 nonstrategic active ingredients. One of them is through Bendiamide, -- another one is Metrobustine, just to name 2 examples. On the formulated product side, we have discontinued we are discontinuing more than 200 of what we call strategic product groups. These are specific product formulations in a given geography or country. Together, these product groups represent about EUR 200 million of sales. Today, these products do not fit our strategic growth or profitability expectations anymore -- and roughly 100 of those will already be phased out by the end of 2026. It's worth noting that the average gross margin of the product we are discontinuing is 10% to 15% below percentage points below our crop protection average. So this streamlining enables not only cost savings, but it's also generally accretive immediately to our margin. Next, let's take a deeper look at our R&D measures. As we laid out last year and driven by the changed market environment, most of our R&D measures are addressing our CP business. Our ambition here is more than EUR 150 million of clean EBITDA impact by 2029. The key levers are increased focus on return on innovation spend as well as adjusting our R&D fixed cost base, similar to what we've done in product supply. We are on track and EUR 40 million will already be delivered in 2026. So let's also look at this important lever in a bit more detail. To deliver the improvements, we have made important progress along a number of dimensions. First, we have concluded a comprehensive pipeline review and adjusted our assessment framework by lifting the profit margin threshold. And we are introducing a next wave of automation and artificial intelligence into our process. We've also made clear decisions on rightsizing our global R&D footprint and reducing our fixed cost base. As our most important measure, we are consolidating our Crop Protection R&D by transferring our herbicide research from Frankfurt to Monard. This will allow us to capture greater efficiency and reduce our fixed cost base, for example, through synergies in lab and greenhouse usage. Implementation is already on the way, following the previously mentioned joint declaration in Germany. In parallel, we are adjusting our field testing network, country support model and systematically relocating formulation technology activities into regional hubs. Also this will improve cost efficiency while improving proximity to our customers. An example of this measure is our site in U.K., in Japan, where we will discontinue our global crop protection formulation technology center and relocate the activities into more cost-competitive locations. So in summary, the changes in the R&D space will drive significant cost and efficiency gains focus our activities much more on the highest area of return and also reshape where and how we conduct R&D in a changed market environment. Finally, let's move over to the last category, and let's cover go-to-market and SG&A cost. Our ambition here in that space is more than EUR 400 million of EBITDA improvement by 2029. Our first lever is to improve gross to net realization by becoming more disciplined and targeted with discounts, rebates and other market funding. This also includes simplifying how we operate across markets to drive down our cost to serve. We've also revised what we call country archetypes in line with market fundamentals and business opportunities. This approach, which I'll explain in a little bit more detail in a second is leading to strong efficiency gains and increased focus as well. One outcome of these archetypes includes, for example, several crop protection country exits in West Central Africa and a set of smaller markets -- smaller Asian markets. It also led to the adjustment or refocus of go-to-market resources. An example for that is our Asian markets where we focus our activities from a much broader portfolio to a set of priority brands and also continue to increase the role of digital demand creation. Moving to global functions here at the bottom part of the slide, we are on track and making good progress as well. We continue to implement our functional productivity programs. They are driving greater automation and the use of artificial intelligence, together with the continued rollout of our leaner, more empowered operating model. We've also optimized and are challenging our spending on outsourced services for relevance and market opportunity to deliver savings as well. Overall, with these changes, we are seeing very good momentum and expect the benefits to build steadily through 2029. So to conclude, and as promised, let me give you a bit more flavor on how we are implementing the changes with our revised country archetypes. With a revised approach, we have 3 categories of countries in our portfolio. First is our focus countries. They represent more than 70% of our crop science sales. This is where we are strengthening the demand generation to capture growth. Looking ahead, the next appears to expand our own farm presence and further refine our partner network. Later today, in the field this afternoon, Brian Neighbor will share more details on how we strengthen our go-to-market approach in our largest market, which is here in North America. Second, we have our leverage countries. They represent about 1/4 of our sales. In these markets, we push for efficiency to reduce our selling costs while still strongly benefiting from the innovation we deliver to our focus countries. Our measures in this second group of countries are already yielding an annual cost reduction of EUR 30 million. We are continuously increasing collaboration with distributors and retail partners and we are sharpening the focus of our teams to market segments with the highest fit to our portfolio. Last, we have our harvest countries. They account for less than 5% of our sales. Here, the focus is on freeing up resources, taking the leanest possible approach or exiting markets altogether. In the harvest countries, we have already discontinued commercial activities in the first wave of around 10 countries since last year. This includes, for example, the before mentioned crop protection business in several West Central African markets as an example. We also already reduced our FTE base in these countries by around 100 positions, and we will continue this process going forward. Across all our measures related to go-to-market and global sanctions, we are consequently on track and progressing well. Now -- this also brings me to the end of the deep dive on the individual components of our strength in the foundation part of the 5-year framework. As you can hopefully see, we've made significant progress since our last update and are consequently very confident to deliver on our ambition in this area. With this, thank you very much for your attention, and I will now hand it back to Guru, who will continue from here with an update on cash.

Thank you, Sasha. So let me close this section out with our cash productivity program because margin is only part of the story. Cash matters just as much. Our ambition is to free up more than EUR 1.5 billion of cumulative cash from working capital between 2024 and 2029. And we are on track. In fact, we got off to a strong start ahead of schedule, as I'll show you in a moment. There are 3 levers. First, inventory. As mentioned previously, we are tracking ahead of schedule. We have already delivered EUR 500 million inventory reduction in 2025 with a further $300 million in implementation. And we are very confident to deliver EUR 800 million by 2029. The key measures driving this reduction include safety stock optimization of active ingredients globally and formulated products on a regional level, tighter management of our seed stock levels, including reduction of excess production and dedicated management of slow-moving inventory. Second, on payables, we are extending supplier payment terms for our own cash position. We have set up a dedicated team renegotiating terms with more than 200 of our most important suppliers. And we have expanded the use of supply chain financing to provide a funding solution to our suppliers. As a result, we expanded our average supplier payment terms by 4 days in 2025 and we continue to drive further improvements in our terms. And third, on receivables. We have reduced our days sales outstanding by 2 days already year-on-year by standardizing payment terms, being more disciplined about timely collection, and we've also expanded our price-linked terms into Asia. So across all 3 areas, inventory, payables and receivables, we are strengthening our working capital productivity and building resiliency to our overall cash delivery. To wrap up this part of the deep dive, you can see why I'm very confident that our execution remains well on track. Our margin and cash initiatives are largely within our control, and we are making great progress through our focused and agile implementation framework. With this, I'm handing it over to Rodrigo to take you through the other 2 dimensions of our 5-year framework.

Thank you very much, Guru and Sasha. So we talk about the savings and the margin expansion and the cash. Let's talk about growth. So let me share a little bit more about the platforms that we have and how we're already translating into results already in '25 and '26, and we're going to talk beyond. So let me start with first in corn. Corn, we grew by 13% year-over-year in 2025, double-digit growth in every single region. This year, first half of the year, we are growing corn again, even with the decreased area in North America. Second, soybean. Soybean, we stabilized the top line. We regained our Dicamba label in North America as we speak it and we grew share of our Intacta 2 Xtend in Brazil by 9 percentage points. Third, in our order seeds and traits, we gained share in canola in vegetables and in corn, cotton, sorry. And in our core crop protection, as you heard, we are making the operational progress we want to see in our portfolio. We divested the 5 active ingredients, as Sasha mentioned, we discontinue and we prune our portfolio for more than 100 products that we're diluting our margin and we launched the new more profitable ones in their place that I'll mention later in the presentation. And last, in our noncore crop protection, the consolidated U.S. liposate assets are different managed at Ruveon entity, and this is where we're sitting today on the first results of the expansion of our growth. But let's talk about the next years. Let me connect you to the ambition that we mentioned to our 2029 every platform that we have, I just walked through has its own plan. And this is what I told you early, we pursue very differentiated strategy by each of the platforms that we have. So starting first with corn and the seeds and traits, our fastest growth engine, and we are already delivering the results that I mentioned, but we are building even further momentum in '26, '27, '28 and '29. Soybean is different. We stabilized in 2025. And essentially, we are flat while we are preparing the launch our game-changing innovations that will get us on a new growth trajectory beyond 2028 when we launched Viconic and Intacta 5s in Brazil. So let me go here on the core crop protection. We are also expecting the low single-digit growth here. We have fostered profitability measures like pruning our portfolio and we will get profitable growth in the second half of the 5-year framework period. And the noncorp protection glyphosate here is different. We are managing the price based on the dynamics of the market and focus on margin, not on top line. All of that not put us in a solid above-market growth plan that we have for the next years until 2029. Let's go deeper here. This is 1 important slide. Let me show you how exactly behind the above-market growth that I just mentioned and how are the different drives comes together. The key driver of growth are our innovations. Starting with the blockbusters. The blockbusters, we have the strongest trade and crop protection pipeline in the industry. So we are talking about Preceon. We're talking about corn rootworm for an LAP 4, Blanexos and the new fungicide that will come in the early 2030s. This is the blockbusters. As these blockbusters are only begin launching now in the next years, their contribution 2029 ambitions is still moderate, but they feel our growth that will go beyond 2030. But that's beyond the innovation engine in the breeding that refreshes and upgrades our portfolio every year. We launched more than 400 new hybrid and seed varieties across corn, soy, canola every year and each of the new horizon hybrids bring advantage for growers and increase yield per acre, right? So none of these hybrids or varieties is a blockbuster alone, but the totality of our breeding pipeline might be the heating blockbuster, driving the biggest portion of our 2029 ambition. And our breeding engine is running very well. It will continue to drive growth in the 23rd and beyond. Also, another big contributor to growth until 2029 is the seeds and traits geographic expansion. We are pursuing our proving technologies into new markets, into new markets where seeds and trades demand is growing fast, like in Asia and in Africa. And last, Crop Protection Life Cycle Management is also driving growth, and I'll mention more details. We deploy new formulations, and we extend the application of our proven AIs into new geographies, new crops and additional applications. That is the pipeline behind our above-market growth plan that we have in the next years. So let's go through each of the platforms, and we start with corn. Corn is our largest platform, and we will keep it our strongest. Our measures here are already delivering growth above our mid-single-digit ambition, putting us firmly on track to contribute to our 2029 ambition. We get in four layers here. The first, the grower relationship itself, best-in-class support, so growers seed and we stay loyal to us. So that's the first one. The second one is geographic expansion. In Europe, Middle East and in Africa and in Asia, and we are growing faster there, and I'll come back to more details on that one. The third is genetics. About 2 new hybrids every year expanding our lead in North America and Latin America and with a new next generation of trades coming together with that new genetics. And fourth, scaling up our Preceon smart corn system globally, along with our field view digital platform. So corn deserves that I go a little bit deeper in each of those key elements here at least. So let me start with the geographic expansion. This is where I want to spend a little bit of a moment because it's -- I think it's really underappreciated. In Asia and in Europe, in Middle East and Africa together, we are targeting more than 10% compound growth in the next years. That's more than EUR 600 million of incremental sales by 2029 from these 2 regions alone. So let me make that concrete with a few examples. So first, Asia, where we marketed strains and our genetics and focus our commercial teams across the different regions. We are growing above double digit there. And also, if I go to EMEA, where we are growing at a high single-digit rate. Here are 2 examples. Tanzania leverage market for our Sub-Saharan Africa. We built a dedicated corn team there focused purely on unlocking demand and taking our technology to farmers. In Germany, 1 of our focus markets, we set up a dedicated silage team, simplify how we go to the market to a single point of contact for the customer and bundled our corn Hubsite with our cab seats. Sales there are growing around 10% a year. So this isn't one strategy for platform across the whole EMEA region. It's a playbook adapted market by market, and it's growing and it's working on that region as we have here. So let me go now let's talk about the innovation engine behind the growth that we have. So first, we have a clear trade road map running out to 2035, better weed control, stronger protection against rootworm and enhanced protection against certain pasts and several of these are genuine blockbuster traits. Some of this, as you would expect, is still pending regulatory approval, as I need to mention, and behind that, we have more than 1,000 hybrids in North America market today only. We deploy roughly 2 new 200 new hybrids every year. And by 2029, about 70% of our portfolio, our commercial portfolio, we have been renewed. And each new generation is delivering 2% to 4% yield increase. This is how we keep our lead through our stead continuous pipeline of blockbusters, not just one single big but also a pipeline of continued innovation and the engine that is leading to the market. Let me talk about because one of the key questions that you have is about Presume, because this is a really game-changing in corn. So short-statute corn products, and we're going to see that in the field are more resilient and easier to manage. That gives farmers extended access to the field for later season crop protection. -- and it's paired with field view data guidance and with tailored support from our organization. As this technology is new to the market, we want to ensure that farmers receive the best possible introduction and support as they adopt the product. And we have set up a clear rollout plan to ensure the best experience for our growers. Pharma interest is already strong, participation in our groundbreakers programs in the U.S. is tripling every year. And following our first commercial launches in Europe, in Spain and Italy, we capture 5% of the market in the first year. And in 2030, we are taking this to Brazil to Argentina and many other regions across conducting all the trials that we have in the plan. So if you look the Preceon by itself, let me tell you that what is mean to our portfolio, right? Preceon is going to contribute meaningfully to our growth and it does that in 2 ways. First, through acreage expansion itself, as you see on this slide, growing from a standing start to 26 million acres by 2035 and faster heading towards 50 million acres by 2040. These acres will be partially coming from our toll corns, but also we'll take share from our competitors. By 2035, the incremental acreage should be fueled by growth of our global market share by 4 percentage points. And second, we will have higher sales per acre coming from volume and pricing coming from that technology as well. The increased seeding density in the yield maximization strategies that we have leads to higher seed volumes per acre and also all the benefits for the growers and the value creation for Preceon allow us to capture a fair share of value pricing at a premium. So that's the corn, our largest platform. And I think you are clear proof points of where this whole company is heading. So let me go to soybean. Now soy, soy is a different story. Currently, we are stabilizing our business, and we're preparing the launch of the new innovations that will get us back to a strong growth plan after that. In North America, we did what we said we would do, right? We regained our Dicamba registration for the '26 and '27 seasons. We defended our acreage. We streamlined our cost structure and we are preparing the launch of iconic soybean, a new trade package to growers for seed multiplication in '27 for commercial sales in '28, pending the regulatory approval as well. In Latin America, we secure our position for future growing seasons. We increased our share of Intacta to extend by 9 percentage points to around 30% of the market. And we are already preparing our next-generation trade Intacta 5 plus for launch in 2027, also pending the regulatory approval that I need to make that this claim. So soybean, different plant and corn. So now let's talk a little bit deeper on that one, because it's a very important platform for us. Let me start with the North America. We launched a new Hubsite is Triex after regaining the Caballo dicamba label. We stabilized our market share in the first half of 2016. I would say that we're even better than that, and we are streamlining our footprint, including divesting and processing facility Indiana Sasha mentioned. Now on top of that, let me be specific about Viconic. Because I think it's a really game changer for the market. It gives growers the widest option for weed management available and that will change the farmer buying behaviors. Today, the weed control system is the most important buying criteria. When we -- with controls get easier with Viconic, the focus will naturally shift to yield performance of the genetics. And in our trials, our Viconic class severe show better yield advantage against all the competitors. In 2027, we will start commercial seed production -- this already happens by the commercial soybean growers who gain experience with the new technology. And in 2028, Viconic, rights will be commercially accessible for all farmers. And we expect adoption will be very steep on the case of iconic, because we expect more than 50% trade share in North America by 2032. This is, of course, as I said, depending on the regulatory approvals that we have. In Latin America, the story is about transition. As you know, in 2028, the exclusivity rights for the first generation Intacta trait will expire, but we're already making the upgrade to better-performing products. Growers are transitioning from Intacta to Pro to intact that you extend for better performance right now as we speak, and that share grows from 9% in '24 to 19% in '25 to 28% in '26, and the market we are targeting more than 65% in the next years. It offers better red control than our next best competitor and better insect protection, and that's why you're seeing this ramp-up that you see in the numbers. But that's not enough. Behind that, we are preparing the Intacta 5 plus with even stronger set protection and with control for the launch to exceed multipliers in '27 and commercial sales in '28. So defend in North America, converting Latin America, that's how we solidify and we accelerate our soybean growth to going further after 2030. Beyond corn and soy, we have the 3 more seed platforms, and each of them are growing, as I mentioned. So let me go deeper here. We expect mid-single-digit growth ahead, but individual pieces are moving even faster. In canola, we are targeting low double-digit growth until 2029 through next-generation hybrids and region-specific go-to-market. In cotton, already the global #1, we are targeting mid-single-digit growth until 2029 through new trade technologies. And in vegetables, we are targeting mid-single-digit growth until 2029 through a new portfolio of more than 400 new varieties that we are launching. Let me go into details in the canola integration story here because I think it's a very good one. Almost a decade ago, after the divestiture of our legacy Canola assets to -- we were the #3 player in the Canadian market. Now we are a strong #2, constantly growing our business and gaining fast share -- and in Europe, our decab genetics carry resistance trades that protect yield against key regional diseases. In Canada, our newest hybrids deliver more than 6% yield advantage against leading competitor and we are gaining the significant share that I mentioned. The global canola market itself is growing 1% to 2% a year, but through better genetics and sharper regional execution, our target is significantly higher with lower double-digit net sales growth until 2029. That's how we outgrow our slower growing market in the case of canola here. We are already the global #1 in cotton. Let's talk about cotton here. Our strategy now is to extend that lead to our Trivon trade technology, and you're going to see and we're going to talk about that as the next-generation trade launches in 2029. And we run that in a very different by region. In Australia, we're expanding acreage. In the U.S. we are growing our own brands and our trade license -- and in Brazil, we are growing trade share through our license and our Delta fine brand. So global cotton demand is growing around 2% a year, and our target is a mid-single-digit net sales growth until 2029. So also another growing platform. And finally, the vegetable seeds here. This is another hidden gem that we have here. It doesn't get the attention that corn and soy, but look at what it does. It's very interesting. We are running #1 in tomatoes and peppers and 2 on the top 3 vegetable crops globally, and #2 in the vegetable seeds overall. Our ambition is to continue to drive growth back by 400 new varieties introductions between now and 2030. Again, you are seeing and hearing the engine of R&D working here. On average, we bring around 20 new products per crop to market every single year. And that's really the pace of innovation that we are seeing and you're going to see acceleration coming for the next years. Think about disease-resistant concumbers or tomatoes resistance to a major regional virus and even a tomato enhanced with a vitamin D through gene editing. That's a unique opportunity that we have. The global vegetable seed market grows around 2% or 3% a year, and our target is some market is to grow above market until 2029 as well. So let's talk about Crop Protection platform. As we talk about, we are managing the business for a low single-digit growth, and we are doing this with 3 levers. First, the new blockbuster launches over the next years. That's the first one. The second life cycle management, developing new formulations and expanding improving active ingredients and products into new geographies and new crops. And third, sharper go-to-market -- we're deploying our resources into the markets and brands where we can grow profitably. I need to go deeper in 1 of those elements here because this deserves a deeper dive here. So let me go first to the this piece here. We have 2 new exciting blockbusters coming in the next years. You heard about that PlanexusinIcafoline, 2 new blockbusters for our new insecticide our launch plan is on track. We have already realized the first commercial sales, and we expect to launch the product in key markets like Brazil in '27 and U.S. in '28. We see peak sales potential of around EUR 500 million in the mid-2030s for Plenexis. For our new herbicide Cafoline, we are still we'll submit those sales which will cover 95% of the market potential already by the end of this year. And we are targeting around EUR 750 million of peak sales also driven by additional herbside tolerance opportunities that we have. And behind these 2, we have already a new fungicide in the pipeline, targeting major launches in the 2030s. So Cafoline and Planexus, both on track with more innovation already behind them. We are also getting more value out of our portfolio through life cycle management. Let me give you 3 examples. There are different strategies are very important for capturing value. So Covintro. The strategy here is geographic expansion. We are taking this proven active ingredient into North America into Brazil with extended crop spectrum, both markets we wasn't sold before, and this has the opportunity to triple our potential market and addressing even increasing customer needs for resistance-breaking solutions. So Covintro herbicide is the first one. Another good example is Vayego, Here, the strategies crop and pest is factoring expansion through new formulations. And I'll give you a number. through the life cycle management alone, we plan to double Vayego sales from 2025 to 2030. That's another example of the life -- -- what we have, but it's also about creating new opportunities, and I'll go very briefly on that one. So let me go to the give you a very concrete example of this new value pool, biofuel crops. We already have the #1 high-yielding portfolio of intermediate crop seats for biofuels. -- we cover 3 of the 4 key crops used for renewable diesel and for sustainable aviation fuel. And we are not doing this alone but through partnerships. So cover Crest first, where we hold 65% ownership in a true farm to fuel supply chain. Winter canola through a strategic partnership with a market leader in sustainable aviation fuel in Europe; and Camelina, a strategic alliance in scaling up under the new Gold brand. So our ambition here is bold. We have -- we want to expand our acreage by factor of 60, so more than 5 million acres by 2035, and we commercialize this into 2 ways. First, the seed sales and also through sharing in the very further downstream. That's also an opportunity that we have here. This is what a new value pool looks like when you're building properly real partnerships and acreage, real commercial website. And with that, the combination of what we have on the core to drive the above-market growth in next years and beyond the core for the 23rd and beyond. I'll go back to Guru so he can bring all this together. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Rodrigo. So now let me now take you through the path to our 2029 ambition and the overall financial outlook. We confirm our ambition for above-market growth and mid-20s clean EBITDA margin by the end of the decade. This is consistent and reinforces what we shared with you last year. We expect a compounded annual growth of approximately 3% through 2029 against a market, which we expect to grow on average 2%. This above-market growth is driven by our strong portfolio and innovation pipeline. Our 5-year framework will deliver more than EUR 1 billion margin improvements from efficiency measures fully within our control. This leads to a margin expansion of 100 to 150 basis points per year on average. Seeds and Traits, core crop protection and noncore crop protection, each have very different economics. And we don't manage them with a one-size-fits-all playbook. For example, Ruveon, as announced in July this year is a distinctly managed business. This differentiated steering by platform is very important. And I will share a bit more on different approaches to capital allocation later in my section. We are not introducing a new story here. We are showing you the financial translation of the implementation program. And I will now provide additional context on how the different components come together to support delivery of our midterm ambition. So let's start with our sales outlook. Our ambition remains to grow above market at approximately 3% CAGR on a currency and portfolio-adjusted basis by 2029, compared with the 2025 baseline. Corn being our largest and most profitable crop accounts for the largest portion of the growth driven by innovation, both through new hybrids and blockbusters and geographical expansion. In addition, we are very excited about Pression becoming a growth driver through both market share expansion and increased value capture per acre through 2029 and further accelerating into the 2030s. Soy is expected to be essentially flat. Towards the end of the period, however, we expect to see strong growth momentum from the introductions of Viconic in North America and Intacta 5 plus in Brazil, that translate into significant acceleration into the 2030s. Other seeds and traits are expected to contribute a mid-single-digit growth rate. A similar impressive growth trajectory as our con platform just at a smaller scale. Crop Protection is expected to deliver low single-digit growth. Our recent performance has been impacted by regulatory headwinds, industry-wide generic pressure and planned portfolio pruning. Looking ahead, as this environment continues, our focus is on profitable growth, driven by the ongoing geographic rollout of Convintro, continued expansion of the Fox fungicide franchise and additional crop registrations and uses for Vigo. In addition, the upcoming launches of our blockbuster innovations, Plinexose and Icafolin will drive growth over the coming years. So before moving on, let me provide you with 4 additional insights. First, on calendarization. As a reminder, top line revenue in 2025 and 2026, includes revenue from the licensing resolution with Corteva. It creates some phasing effects between the years, but does not change the underlying business trajectory or midterm targets. This licensing revenue is part of our business model and reflects compensation for the use of our proprietary technology. However, the timing of revenue recognition creates a strong step-up in 2026, which, combined with further CP portfolio pruning will naturally moderate the year-over-year growth comparison for 2027. Secondly, on growth beyond '27. As mentioned before, beginning in 2028, we expect growth momentum to accelerate as our blockbuster launches gain scale and make a more meaningful contribution to the business. Third, on currency effects. This will remain an important factor for our business going forward. We faced strong exposure to the U.S. dollar and Brazilian real from our top 2 markets. We saw negative effects here in 2025 and to a lesser extent also this year. Fourth, on external market factors, ag cyclicality and geopolitical volatility can affect our top line. As a result, sales growth is unlikely to follow a perfectly linear trajectory, but we remain focused on actively managing these dynamics and executing the levers within our control. So in summary, our growth ambition is underpinned by the strong growth profile of our seeds and traits business, a robust innovation pipeline across both seeds and traits and core crop protection and targeted life cycle management. Let me now build on the licensing resolution I just mentioned on the previous slide because it illustrates a broader point about the strategic value of our technology leadership. Our leading position in traits is not only an important driver of our own seed business. It also creates significant value throughout licensing. In Brazil soy, for example, our trades are used on more than 85% of the planted area. More broadly, we have 2 to 3 trade generations ahead of our closest competitor. While we are already working on Gen 5 and Gen 6 traits, our closest competitor is still working through Gen 2 and Gen 3. That gap is the result of years of R&D and regulatory investment and expertise, not something that closes quickly. This leadership means that other industry participants rely on access to our technology to remain competitive. The recent agreement we signed with Corteva on the licensing resolution includes HT technologies in soybean and cotton and is just 1 proof point for the strength of our technology and how sought after it is. Financially, this translates into a highly resilient licensing business. On the top line, we have greater than EUR 2.5 billion of sales from royalties. And on a net basis, including fees we pay for in-licensing, we generate well above EUR 2 billion of net licensing income annually. The agreement for our current technologies continue well into the mid-2030s. And we have secured already important licensing arrangements for our key pipeline technologies including HT4 in soy and cotton as well as corn rootworm 4 and LEP 4 in corn, which go even into the 2040s. Together, this agreement safeguard more than EUR 2 billion of net licensing income annually into the future with further upside potential in 2030s as new technology adoption grows. This resilient income stream reflects the long-term value of sustained investment in trade innovation and supports our overall financial outlook. So now let me turn to margin and explain the key components that will drive our path towards our mid-20s screen EBITDA margin ambition by 2029. As stated earlier, we expect average annual margin expansion of 100 to 150 basis points over this period, driven by 2 main levers: sales growth and efficiency gains from the execution of the 5-year framework. Let's look at sales growth first. This will be a meaningful contributor to margin expansion over the coming years and several factors underpin this contribution. First and foremost, we expect a favorable portfolio mix at the divisional level. As our higher-margin seeds and traits business, continues to grow faster than Crop Protection. Within seeds and traits, growth is driven by improved price and mix as we continue to launch new hybrids and gain market share. Second, within Crop Protection, we are actively and systematically improving the quality of earnings through portfolio pruning and the divestment of margin-dilutive products, an execution lever that is largely within our control. Thirdly, our innovation pipeline and blockbuster launches are expected to further enhance the margin profile of the business. Taken together, these actions are driving higher quality, more margin accretive growth, which we expect will make an increasingly significant contribution over the course of this period. The other major contributor to margin expansion will be the productivity and efficiency gains generated by the execution of the 5-year framework. As explained earlier, we have an overall ambition of greater than EUR 1 billion, with product supply being the biggest contributor with over $600 million in savings. The overall program remains fully on track with some initiatives that are tracking ahead of schedule. Productivity and sourcing actions in product supply materialize faster, but a site consolidation, footprint optimization, and organizational changes require more preparation and phasing to minimize disruption to our business and to our customers. Further, the expected structural inflation across our cost categories will be more than fully offset. Since the introduction of the margin ambition 16 months ago, the ag macro environment and geopolitical backdrop have become volatile. However, our actions to drive margin expansion have materially strengthened the resilience of our business. In fact, they have enabled us to absorb inflationary cost pressures, including higher fuel, energy and logistics expenses related to the conflict in the Middle East while remaining within our 2026 guidance range. So let us now look at the margin trajectory. In line with our guidance, we delivered a 19.4% clean EBITDA margin in 2025 despite FX headwinds and regulatory challenges affecting high-margin sales. As communicated earlier on our earnings calls, the timing of licensing resolution income benefited 2025 with further positive impact also in 2026, along with certain onetimes, for example, from divestments. Importantly, we expect strong underlying margin expansion in 2026 with a major contribution from the EUR 380 million of productivity and efficiency gains delivered through our 5-year framework. This demonstrates our ability to deliver within our average annual margin expansion range of 100 to 150 basis points. For 2026, we confirm our guidance range of 20% to 22% clean EBITDA. Looking ahead to 2027, we expect strong and continued progress on our margin initiatives. At the same time, the comping effect of onetime gains and licensing income from 2026 is expected to moderate the year-on-year EBITDA margin expansion. I want to reinforce that the underlying drivers of margin improvement remain firmly in place. We will provide more specifics in early 2027 as part of the overall Bayer group guidance. So let's move to 2028 and 2029. We expect margin expansion to accelerate towards the upper end of the 100 to 150 basis point range. Higher quality margin accretive growth will become more visible through portfolio mix improvements and innovation-led growth, while structural productivity and efficiency benefits continue to build. So let me summarize this. We are rigorously executing our 5-year framework and the levers within our control with initiatives either fully on track or ahead of schedule. Even as market dynamics evolve, we will adapt as needed and remain fully focused on achieving our mid-20s clean EBITDA margin ambition by 2029. So let me now turn to our cash outlook. As I mentioned earlier, we have already delivered EUR 500 million of inventory reduction in 2025 alone, with a further $300 million in implementation. We also extended average supplier payment terms by 4 days, while reducing days sales outstanding by 2 days year-on-year. This represents strong progress in working capital productivity. At the same time, our 2025 free operating cash flow was impacted by currency headwinds and a planned change in our pre-collection practices which is designed to improve cost to serve. But here is an important point, despite these impacts, our underlying cash program is unlocking working capital productivity, and establishing the trajectory we need for 2026 and beyond. Looking ahead, we expect to build on the EUR 1.4 billion of free operating cash flow from 2025 progressively year-by-year, reaching more than EUR 3 billion by 2029. Four drivers enable us to get to our ambition. First, profit expansion will be a major contributor. Our sales growth is increasingly driven by high-margin products, and we expect incremental revenues to convert at higher margins. In addition, the productivity and efficiency measures of the 5-year framework drive operating earnings. Regarding our foreign exchange exposure, we aim to actively manage this over the midterm. Second, working capital productivity. This will help fund our sales growth rather than constrain it. We have an additional EUR 300 million of inventory reduction underway, and we see continued progress on our customer and supplier cash productivity. Third, we have carefully planned and will make the investments that are required to enable successful execution of the 5-year framework transformation and which will sustainably improve our profit and cash generation. The majority of these onetime implementation cost will occur between 2026 and 2028. Fourth, as mentioned earlier, the personal compensation of our teams across many markets is now linked to cash flow performance in addition to sales and profit margin. So taken together, these measures support our clear focus on improving cash conversion to greater than 50% and achieving our ambition to generate more than EUR 3 billion of free operating cash flow by 2029. As Bayer's largest division, Crop Science plays a critical role in the group's cash delivery. The cash we generate funds the R&D and capital investments required to reinforce our long-term leadership while supporting Bayer group priorities. The entire crop science management team is fully focused on delivering our cash ambition. Let me now move to our capital allocation priorities. As I mentioned, we steer our platforms differently. This also applies to how we allocate capital. In seeds and traits, we continue to invest to expand our market leadership through R&D, for genetic and trade leadership and through CapEx for growth and footprint expansion. This is where our licensing advantage that I described earlier gets reinforced and extended. In core crop protection, we streamlined go-to-market and R&D and selectively invest to drive profitable growth. That includes process improvement, site adjustments and R&D for our long-term active ingredient pipeline and life cycle management. And in noncore crop protection, including Ruveon Capital allocation is managed independently from the core, focused on maintaining the asset base, which is consistent with Ruveon on managing its business as a distinct entity. So across every platform, capital follows strategy. And that discipline is what ties together everything I've walked you through today. Above-market growth anchored in corn canola, vegetable seeds and our core crop protection pipeline, a resilient licensing income stream and accelerating margin trajectory and a cash program that is unlocking working capital productivity. Individually, each of these is a reason for confidence. And together, they make a compelling case for why we will deliver our 2029 ambition. Let me summarize our financial outlook. We confirm our ambition to deliver above-market growth, achieve a mid-20s screen EBITDA margin as well as more than EUR 3 billion of free operating cash flow by 2029. Our confidence is underpinned by the strong execution of our 5-year framework and the tangible progress we have already achieved across our key initiatives. In closing, I want to leave you with 6 key messages to take away from today. First, our 5-year framework delivery is fully on track with measures progressing well across all 3 elements of the triangle, sales, margin and cash flow. Second, we have a differentiated steering approach across our platforms, which lets each of our businesses respond flexibly to market trends rather than following a one-size-fits-all playbook. Third, corn remains our main growth driver. Our Pression SmartCone system is developing into a leading platform for the next decade. While the growth we expect through 2029 comes to an even larger degree from new hybrids and geographic expansion. Fourth, our soybean recovery is gaining real traction with the return of the dicamba label and our iconic and Intacta 5+ trade technologies are well positioned to lead in both U.S. and in Brazil. Fifth, we are transforming our core crop protection business into a leaner business focused on driving profitable growth. And sixth, Bayer remains the key innovation leader in this industry. We have the broadest pipeline and the strongest technical capabilities. And these are fueling both our own business and our licensing opportunities. With that, I want to thank you for your attention and we'll now hand it over to Mike Graham, our Head of R&D, to speak further about our R&D capabilities and impact on current and future pipeline.

Thank you. Well, good morning, and great to be here today, and a huge thank you, Guru. It's truly, truly wonderful to be here today. It's a real pleasure for me to be actually here in Huxley -- for those of you who I haven't had the chance to meet, I'm Mike Graham, I lead the R&D organization. And I've actually spent my entire career in R&D. And it's really, really neat for me to be back here today because I actually started my career on this very farm. So to have the opportunity 30 years later to be with you today and share the amazing innovations that we have in front of us is truly an incredible opportunity. Now what you heard this morning is where we're taking the company. What I'm going to do over the next 45 minutes or so is take you deeper inside the engine that is delivering the innovations and fueling our growth plan. I'm going to share the technology that sits and sits behind it today and what our teams are actually delivering right now and what all of that means for the value we create for our growers. And I want to do it by answering the key questions you've been asking us. So the questions we hear from you are on this slide. And let me start by putting those questions on the table right upfront. And I'd actually rather take them head on. The first question we get is relevance. Does innovation in agriculture still matter. And that is a very fair question. If you look at where crop productivity and crop prices are today. The second question is race. Are we going to win the race to the next disrupting technology. There's a lot of noise out there, and a lot of companies are claiming a lot of things. And finally, return, is our innovation pipeline still going to differentiate us beyond 2030. I know you are very eager to understand the next quarters, but the foundation of our success in the many quarters of 2030s is being set today. So relevance race return I will come back to all 3 of them at the end, and you can hold me to whether we answered them or not. Now I'm going to start with relevance. And I want to start with a little bit of history because it's easy to forget what R&D has already delivered. And you can go back to the mid-1800s and simply look at the advancements we've made in breeding and new genetics and productivity in corn. The first 70 years of that line are flat and farmers were working just as hard then as they are today. When they wanted to harvest more, they had to plant more acres. Then hybrid corn showed up and everything changed. In the 1990s, we bought GMOs into the game and everything changed again. Today, we're at around 100 to 80 to 200 bushels an acre in the U.S., same land, same acre more than 6x the output. Now if you think about what actually drove that, it's the 4 things that are on the right. Seed and trades define the yield and the quality of the crop. Crop protection, safe guards that yield against weeds, pests and diseases. Fertilizers provide the nutrients that crops need to grow, and machinery lets a farmer work that field with precision and efficiency. And the first 2 are our market. These are the 2 crucial levers that decide how much a grower is actually going to harvest. Now let's look ahead. Guru already talked through the drivers of growing demand and the supply side challenges for crop production. What is important in the context of R&D is arable land, which is vastly farmed already. There is not a much expansion area left. So in contrast to our 19th century farmer, we cannot simply go out and plant more acres. We need to further increase productivity, and we need to uplift the yield on every acre despite increasing headwinds. For example, just think about the potential impact on corn yields in Iowa. When the number of days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit triples by 2050. This really leaves 1 answer. Innovation is urgently needed on every acre. So relevance is settled. Innovation matters more than ever. Now the second question is the race. I'm going to give you my short answer upfront and I will prove it in the next several minutes. We will win this race for 5 reasons. The first 1 is our leadership spans across key R&D platforms driving agriculture innovation. Breeding, biotechnology, genome editing, crop protection and data science, not 1 or 2 of them, we are second to none in all 5. We seamlessly integrate and scale next-generation technologies, and that's what continuously refreshes already industry-leading pipeline, which is the most importantly tailored to our growers' needs. Having access to technology isn't the same as running it at the scale inside of commercial pipeline. And I'll show you exactly what that difference looks like. Second, we are uniquely integrating these platforms to create synergistic systems, not just products, novel solutions and grower outcomes cannot be replicated. That's truly where the step change value where Bayer sits and it is the hardest thing in this industry for anyone to copy. Third, our proprietary data and AI engine accelerates our R&D pipeline. And that speeds up the delivery of value to the farm gate. We have 20 years of connected data that you simply cannot go out and buy. And finally, our world-class R&D team has the expertise not only to discover, but to critically execute and deliver breakthrough products at a global scale. And I don't want to dwell on that 1 for a second, because it's the reason the other 4 actually perform. Platforms don't discover anything on their own. People do. And this is the deepest bench in the industry. So if you take 1 line off the slide, take the 1 at the bottom. Others have pieces, we have the full engine -- and that is exactly why we are entering a new phase of innovation, more products, better performance and more value for our farmers. Now that's a big claim. So let's take a look at our unique R&D advantage, so you can understand why we are so confident. And this is a whole advantage on 1 slide. and it maps for everything I'm going to show you today and everything you will see in the field. On the left are our 4 foundational R&D platforms, supercharged by data NII. Precision breeding, which combines speed with the #1 germplasm library in the industry. And germplasma is the 1 thing in this business. You can't simply create or invent. You can only accumulate it. our biotech platform, which is protected by more than 11,000 granted patents, and that's a real moat stemming for more than 30 years of amazing and incredible work. Our genome editing, which as you will see, is embedded in our #1 breeding pipeline. Not sitting off to the side because an edit has limited value unless it's combined with elite high-performing duramplasm and managed through a strong breeding pipeline. And last, but not least is our molecular design, built on an industry-leading target discovery to develop new modes of action, new active ingredients tackling new modes of action. Now in the middle of this, that is the piece that makes a difference, and that's our data and AI engine. It supercharges off all of those platforms. It's the reason we can make the decisions we make faster and more accurately than anyone we compete with. And on the right is what comes out of it, superior solutions for our growers. Seed and traits, crop protection, digital solutions. And we go one step further with system design, where we bring all of it together on 1 acre to pride growers with end-to-end solutions. So the logic on this page is simple, leading tech platform supercharged by data NAI combined into differentiated solutions and systems. Any competitor can do 1 or 2 of these things. Not 1 of them can come at all of it. Now I'm going to walk you through each of these and show you the proof points rather than the ambition, relevance, race and return. Three words in mind as we go through this presentation. Now let's start with seed and traits. Now before the details, let me give you the high-level picture on the connection of our tech platforms and the value that we deliver to our growers. On the left, the same platform we just saw with data NII sitting across all of them. On the right, 3 tangible benefits for the farmers with which we are after, increased genetic gain that's simply raising the ceiling on a farm, yield resilience, which is an adverse weather and climatic change is a requirement, and that's just simply making sure that the ceiling is maintained throughout the growing season and effective protection against weeds, pests and diseases by increasing the crop tolerance levels. And we do this across corn, soy and our other crops. Now corn is our largest crop, and we are the undisputed global market leader and leading in 3 out of the 4 regions. Our market position follows performance, not the other way around. And if you think about our leadership in corn, it rests on 3 cornerstones. We have the largest germplasm in the industry. We lead in key countries that are producing corn in temperate subtropic and tropical environments. We have an unmatched trade portfolio and pipeline. We have twice the trade events of our key competitor. And we have a local performance edge, which is the 1 that actually pays the grower. Our decab hybrids in the U.S. deliver a tremendous 6.2 yield advantage over our key competitor products. Now going forward, I will use corn as a template and as an example to explain in more detail how our differentiated technology platforms are set up and how we develop them to develop -- to deploy the next generation of innovations and maintain our leadership position. But please be sure we're using all of these technologies and differentiators as well in soy and our other crops. Now all of this innovation starts with data, and this is most probably the most underappreciated asset we have. No 1 else in this industry comes close to our scale. And it is really, really hard to replicate because you need 5 things working at the same time, and you've been needing to do them for many, many years. You need the automation. You need the data that comes out of that automation. You need the IT systems to store that data. You need the capabilities and the models to understand that data. And then you need the discipline to think about where those decisions go and how do they impact our pipeline. Our capability in these areas is unparalleled with millions of genotypes, millions of phenotypes, environmental measurements around the world that are continuously feeding advanced artificial capabilities across our platforms. In total, today, we make well over 250,000 AI decisions every day, and that number is simply growing. And that's not something a competitor combined. That takes many, many years to build. Now I'll share many examples of how we're using data across the pipeline, but this is actually 1 of my favorite examples. On the left is the farmers P&L. And the important part is that we build this P&L county by county, not country by country, yield times price realization minus cost. And what's left, obviously, is a profit that a farmer takes home. We have developed what we call a bioeconomic index. It takes that hyper local farmer P&L differentiated by geographies, environmental condition and crop usage and it translates the most impactful profit drivers into actionable R&D target product profiles. The example on this slide is our light 105, 110 relative maturity right here in the U.S. and you can read the priorities straight off the bars. Increased performance, which is realized yield gain is not surprising. It carries by far the highest way. Improved agronomics, such as options and weed management and pest control come second. Improved plant health, using, for example, our best-in-class traits or disease tolerant hybrids, and decreased production costs, for example, avoiding a few job steps, which cost diesel and labor. We're not inventing technology here for knife to have purposes. -- we start where the grower makes or loses most money in a specific maturity zone in a specific geography and we design against it. That is what design-driven R&D means. And if you think about what that does when your R&D is pointed at the biggest value pools, 2 things happen. Your hit rate goes up and your ability to price for that value you create goes up with it. Now this is perhaps the most technical and important slide as you think about the advancements we're making in plant breeding. So I want to walk through it very carefully. Historically, breeding has been a fairly linear process. You make crosses, you start making selections, you put material in the field to test and you advance the very best material. After roughly 5 years, you have enough data on a given line or a given inbred to realize that it is a high value so you could start breathing a new generation with it again. And that whole process typically takes about 5 years. Now on the left-hand side of this slide is how we have transformed our breeding approach. Ours is a continuous genetic cycling loop, constantly feeding breeding lines and data into product development. And look at the line underneath because it's the essence of what this enables. It takes us from that 5-year generation time to a 4-month cycle time. That is 15-fold faster than what we have done in the past. And on the right, you can see what this does for growers. Again, this is that same North America portfolio and the late maturities measured now in dollars per gain per acre. The white line shows historical breeding progress, a gradual increase worth $13 an acre a year in genetic game. The green line is this new methodology precision breeding, which has already created 9 generations of breeding in 3 years. And because of the speed, the genetic gain from 1 generation to the next has been accelerated, and it delivers roughly $38 an acre per year. Now that is 2x the amount of genetic gain that we are delivering versus our historic approach. But here's the part I want to be really clear about because it's super easy to miss. This is a rate not a one-off step change. Every year, it compounds and the gap between our germplasm and our competition simply gets wider. And that's why I personally and we all up there, are confident talking to you, not just about the next advantage of our next launch class, but our competitive advantage for the next 30 years and beyond into 2030. Now besides the speed of our breeding engine, understanding performance of new genetics and products in the field over diverse environmental conditions and years is crucial for our success. And this is also an area where we've made significant progress in recent years. Just 5 years ago, this capability did not exist. It only became possible with the latest AI and computational capabilities. We have taken all of that historic data from genomics to weather and sole characteristics to build a digital twin of our field testing program. And actually, we have not only a digital twin of our testing fields, but almost every corn field in North America. We can simulate how any specific hybrid is going to perform on any specific acre under all possible weather scenarios without ever planting a plot on that acre. And this is already doing 3 things for us to do. It allows us to do yield simulations to assist product advancement and placements on a grower's field. We can simulate literally millions of physical environments so that we have much better understanding of our genetics and our products into the future. And that then allows us to think very differently about how we prescriptively produce the next generation of products that we want to place on our growers field. And the accomplishments on the right is the 1 that I'd hold on to. Today, we sit in story County. We used to test hybrids on 3 physical testing locations in this county. With the digital twin today, we can actually simulate 85,000 simulated data locations. And we have county-wide acreage cover of almost 300,000 acres of simulation. And the beauty of this system, it scales, it goes beyond Storey County. You can scale it to Iowa, what gives you 7.6 million locations you can simulate. But you can start simulating across the world across crops and enabling us to think very different. And why it matters is commercially at the bottom. You can start thinking very differently about the timelines it takes to deliver a product to market, moving much faster than what we're doing today because we can leverage this simulated data. It improves how we're advancing and placing a product in every grower's field. And additionally, it allows us to run a much more efficient R&D testing engine which enables us to gain more knowledge with similar amounts of resource that we use today. Now what does all this look like when you bring it together. Today, you're going to have the opportunity to see a hybrid in the field. And this hybrid is DK6835, and it's a recently launched Cal Superstar product. It's a hybrid you will see for a number of different reasons because here's what it delivers. It is, first and foremost, a contest winning hybrid. Last year, it went 67% of the 2025 national corn yield growers contest. In trials, it has an average yield advantage of 13 bushels an acre advantage against our key competitor with an incredible win rate of about 82%. This hybrid is unique. It leverages proprietary international genetics for multiple countries, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina and the U.S. And it's truly a testament to what I shared with you earlier about strength of our global germplasm library. Nobody else can draw from such a broad inverse germplasm base as we can. This hybrid has amazing agronomic characteristics, superior plant and grain characteristics, it's tolerant to heat and drough test, and it's got really robust route characteristics. And the amazing thing about this hybrid is adapted to about 60% of the U.S. corn markets. Now why am I showing you on hybrid? Because this is our entire story in a product. It's that germplasm base I talked about. It's our advanced breeding methodologies that I talked about. And it's all of that coming together to deliver a superstar hybrid that we have today in the field. And you will get the chance this afternoon to work and interact with our team as they describe the journey of the development of this hybrid and what you can expect in the years to come. Now I want to move to the biotech side because it also is an incredible story. Now every organization can actually have a slide like this. What nobody else has is what happens when you own all 5. And I'm not going to go through all of them. You'll hear the story today. You'll see some of the evidence for what we're trying to build, but I want to focus on the first three. When you are in the space of plant biotechnology, it all starts with your genetic library. And that -- and this is why it matters. You can never design a trait against the target you have never seen. The libraries for us are our search place itself. So 7x more complete genomes isn't 7x more work. It's 7x more shot on goal. We then focus on how do we capitalize on AI to design the next level -- the next traits. And this -- the old model in this space was find and test, and it was really a numbers game. So when you say 200x greater target activity, it isn't a better trait. It's really a different entry bar. And finally, tunable gene expression is the one that I want to call truly unique. The industry treats a trait is binary. You have it or you don't. The farmer really values what sits in the dose, how strongly it expresses in which tissue does it express and at what growth stages. That's where efficacy and yield drag get decided. Nobody else has this capability. So let's put it together. The library defines what's possible. AI decides what's worth building. Tunability decides how well it works. This is all complemented with our high through validation capability. And in the end, this means that we will double the number of high-value trade products by 2040. That is not luck or a one-off effect it's a systematically higher hit rate. Now there's 2 ways you can look at the scorecard, and this is one, and it answers the race question much faster than what I actually can -- as I mentioned, we have over 30 years' experience in plant biotech and an absolutely unrivaled position. We hold the #1 trade share globally and also #1 in each of the crops, corn, soy and cotton, and we are constantly 2 to 3 trade generations ahead of our competitors. Today, our reached today, we have are in more than 15 countries, and this leadership also becomes clear when you look at our trade portfolio. We have more than 2x the number of traits in the marketplace today versus our closest competitor. And this goes out. And if you look out through 2029, we will launch 5 new traits, and they are basically all blockbusters. The biotech version of Pression, Iconic Intact 5 core route14 and LEP4. And in the pipeline for 2030 and beyond, we have 16 additional traits. With that strong pipeline, we will maintain our leadership position and even extend it versus our competition. We are simply widening that gap. Now somebody would ask me what it would take for our competitors to actually keep up or have approximately what we have, I would answer that they would have needed to start it several decades ago. Now the other scorecard look is what we have from a trade perspective in the field today. Now let's start with the left-hand column because this is a key point. All of these launches come from the same innovation engine. An engine that consistently produces more winning innovations than our competitors. Now here's what it means for the short-term future. Throughout all of our core products, we see that our launch classes bring in significant yield advantages against our key competitors of roughly 5 to 12 bushels per acre. That is a meaningful for our corn growers and it is a basis for our above-market growth and market share gains. New hybrid launch classes with different traits, all of them beating the key competitors. And that is what I mean when I say we are entering a new phase of launches. And for successive launch classes in '28 and beyond, our first gene edit school commercial and will contribute further to this performance uplift. And that is what I want to talk about next. Now genome editing is a technology I get asked about the most. And we have not talked about what we are doing in genome editing as much as some of our competitors who have been much more vocal. Our expectation is that we will have global regulatory status determination in place by the early 2030s. And we will be ready to introduce our first genome edit products at scale to meet this time line. It is also really important to understand that the editing tool itself is not worth much on its own. This technology is available to virtually everybody. The advantage is the data and the analytics that inform you want to edit and then the system you plug it in to create a product for a grower. And that is exactly what we have been working on. Our experience and capacity in genome editing is vast. We've been working in this space for almost a decade. We have many external partnerships, including a 7-year collaboration with Par waves and we now have 1 of the leading genome editing platforms in the industry. We have made over 100,000 edits. We've tested thousands of edits in the field, and we've created significant advancements in identifying novel genetic variation that we can bring to our pipeline. But most importantly and most recently, our editing capabilities have been fully connected and integrated into our precision breeding engine. And this allows us to capitalize on the speed of precision breeding and the genome design capabilities of editing. The combination of these 2 will further accelerate the rate of performance increase of our pipeline. Now remember what I shared earlier, editing without elite germplasm gives you an interesting result in an inferior plant. We are fully unlocking the potential of editing. And where this takes us long term, biotech, breeding and gene editing create a complete flywheel, each 1 making the other 2 faster. It opens up genuinely new product concepts, for example, areas like nitrogen use efficiency and to say it plainly, competitors have pieces, they do not have the system. Now 1 last thing, and you'll see this throughout my presentation. None of this would have been possible a few years ago. It's the advancements in data and computing that make this real. So let's look at this in a little more depth. Earlier, I highlighted some of the key characteristics to advanced genetic improvement that includes speed and accuracy. A large third component and the fuel for the germplasm engine is useful genetic variation. Genome editing unlocks this variation at an unprecedented scale -- for example, look at the corn plant on the left, multiple different parts of the plant can be targeted by genome editing. And every one of them is new variation that traces back to a farmer's P&L that I showed you earlier. So every improvement means real dollars for our growers. And these characteristics aren't incremental agronomic tweaks. Every one of them changes the economics of the acre, and we are working on a massive wave of commercial launches to come and take 2035 when it will be 100%. And as I mentioned, in the early 2030s, we launched our first commercial genome Tech protection with industries yield leading genetics underneath them. Now let me tell you a little bit about what's in the pictures above, which is simply highlighting some of the underpinnings to how we run our R&D operations. So Petrolina Brazil and just down the road in Ankeny, Iowa. And at times, it's really difficult to imagine that the complexity and the scale that we've done is really through the sites that are running these type of operations. And you have to be really thoughtful as you build this, of what operations do you need to have, what automation do you need to put in place -- and how do you seamlessly integrate it across the entire pipeline you're trying to manage. Now if you look go down the road, Ankeny Iowa applies automation at a scale, not evident anywhere else in the industry. And if you simply look at our winter nursery sites in Puerto Rico and Brazil, our industry-leading teams there are using new capabilities, new technology and running multiple breeding cycles every year. And so you can imagine when those teams are working in their summer or winter here, we are simply accelerating the journey of our seed to our growers' fields around the world. Now let me look at the soy pipeline advantage. And this sets up the same way as what we talked about for corn. If you look at the left-hand column, and this is again, the point, I'm making, these are the same 4 platforms you saw in corn. And also in soy, we have an industry-leading R&D engine that will deliver more innovation in the next 5 years than some of our competitors have delivered in the last decade. So here's what our innovation means for our growers. Our intact to extend our most recent trade launch in Brazil, which is currently gaining strong market adoption already delivers a 2.1 bushel per acre advantage against our competitors. Our next innovations, Viconic in the U.S. and Intacta 5s in Brazil, which both contain industry first trade stack with tolerance to 5 herbicides will further lift the bar and increase the yield advantage by 2.2 bushels per acre and 4.3 bushels per acre, respectively. And also in soy, similar to corn our first gene edits will go commercial in the early 2030s. Now Rodrigo covered a lot of the other crops, but 1 crop I wanted to spend just 1 slide on is our hybrid wheat journey. And obviously, wheat is grown on more acres than any other crop in the planet, but it has only received a fraction of the technology investment that corn and soy got. Yields have been close to flat for years. And really, that's not a problem, but it's a big opportunity. And what we've been working on is building the biggest wheat germplasm base in the industry. And this is the same thing we did for corn. We're doing it by combining 2 distinct sources of germplasm. Our very own West bread germplasm here in the United States and the RGT germplasm pool in Europe. And when this is complete, nobody else in the industry will have that global scale of germplasm. And this will be really important as you think about hybrid wheat, because it will enable us to develop hybrids for multiple climatic zones around the world. Now the right-hand side of this slide is really 2 steps, and I want to put them in the right order. If you first look at where we sit today with varieties, we lead in varieties today. In 2025, West spread won 57% of the national winning placements, and that's more than anybody else. Now our hybrids add up to a further 11% on top of our current winning varieties. And I want to be clear what that number actually is measured against. It is measured against our modern West bread commercial varieties across Texas, Kansas and Nebraska. Now this is the hardest benchmark the industry is using. Much of the hybrid data you see from others is comprehensive varieties, which make the delta look far bigger, but we deliberately want to benchmark against the best hybrids in the market, which happen to be ours, and in that, we still are able to generate double-digit upside. And I've been in this industry a long time. And I've watched what hybridization has done in corn and crops. It didn't improve the corn market. It really created it. So when I see an 11% on top of leading varieties in a crop of this size, and I understand the continued improvement that our teams are making, I don't read that as an incremental product. I read it simply as a new market, and we intend to be the ones who will lead it. Now let's move to crop protection. And this -- and you may have seen based on my experience that I spent the majority of my career in seeding traits. But learning and working with our crop protection and seeing and understanding the incredible innovations that they are making is 1 of the best stories that we haven't shared. So it's a true pleasure for me to be able to talk a little bit about what we're doing, where we're going and what is the impact we believe those innovations are going to have. If you just go back in time and you think about how crop protection was discovered, it was super powerful, and it was slow, and you actually needed a pinch of luck to be successful. And cropkee really flips this around. We and our teams start with a target protein inside the past or the pathogen, and we call that the lock. And then we use advanced computational technologies to identify a molecule that fits in it. And we call that the key. And we are currently the only company that systematically is discovering these new targets. I won't take you through all of the 5 numbers because 2 of them really carry by far the most wait for the story. Our recent research has led to the identification of a 4,000 fold increase in the number of targets. And every new target can be a new mode of action. -- 1 that resistance has never seen before. The second 1 is safety insights. With our design approach, we've delivered built-in safety and features. We have them 5 years earlier than what we used to have in the past. And obviously, that means a lot for our R&D efficiency. In our business, the expensive failure isn't the 1 in year 1 or 2. And -- it's 1 in year 9 that has already cost you plenty of development money. And today, registerability, not efficacy is a binding constraint for new molecules. But the real value isn't in 1 single number. These are not 5 separate improvements. They're 1 chain. More targets only pays if you can design keys for them. Keys only pay if they are registerable. And registrable AIs only pay if you can actually manufacture them and formulate them at cost. Competitors are improving One Link. We have rebuilt the chain. And by the way, we also believe that this buys us 2 years of additional patent protected life on every product. And that is truly what is unlocking new modes of action looks like. The most differentiated, resilient and registrable innovations for our growers into the future. And this has led to the amazing results and real change in our CP pipeline, and I want to compare it to the past. And let me simply walk you through this. On the far left is the old industry part paradigm I mention, and it included us in it. From 2000 to today, the whole industry performed incremental development of new molecules based on the same key modes of action. And the majority of crop protection sales today still sit on those 8. And you can see what that produced of everything we launched in that period, only 20% carried a genuinely new mode of action. And so we have developed several of the named here. Now let's start looking at what Crop Key does as we start moving to the right in our pipeline. In development today, 30% of our candidates carry a new mode of action. Two of them, you already know by name, and you will see later today in the field, our blockbuster Planexis and Ecofolin. If you go earlier in the pipeline in research and early development, almost 50% that are coming through the pipeline are new modes of action. And then if you simply look earlier in early research, 70% of new chemical classes are built on new modes of actions and these will hit in 2040 and beyond. And obviously, if you play this out and you look at what's in place in our target discovery, every single candidate is a new molecule target leading to a new mode of action. So the share of new mode of action goes from 20% to 100% as you walk into the future, and that adds up to more than 50 new modes of action in the pipeline today. That is the single most important line I can give you on crop protection today. Now I want to share what that tangibly looks like if you look at our pipeline. Asian soybean rust is the most damaging disease in soy. And Brazil is the biggest fungicide market in the world. So this is a huge price in our crop protection business, and everyone is chasing it. Our new fungicide is particularly designed to fit the requirements -- let's take a look on the left in key aspects and features. The white shape is what a normal candidate would look like, and it's really what the future candidates of our competitors are going to look like. And it's normal for a reason. Anything discovered than designed has trade-offs. You buy efficacy and pay for it somewhere else, safety and cost of goods or reestablity. Our new candidate scores in every dimension because we have been designing molecules based on target discovery. That is an entirely different approach from the 1 that we've been doing in the past. So we have a very differentiated product with an exclusive novel motive action that has the highest biological efficacy and a broad spectrum. And farmers don't spray 1 disease, they spray a field with several at once. And so spectrum is what takes a pass of their sprayers. At the same time, this new fungicide meets all current safety aspects. And here's what it really means to the growers. In our early trials, it shows about a 17% yield advantage against the commercial standard under disease pressure across 7 locations in Brazil. So this is not a lab result. It's real yield uplift in [ Cerrado ] field conditions. Finally, I want to wrap up the Crop Protection section talking a little bit about biologics. Interestingly, this has been an area that I followed most of my life. My father was a sole microbiologist. He spent his career discovering and deploying microbes that improve crop production for growers around the world. That is the right vision and undoubted the impact we all believe biologics can have. But if you look at the map, it is clear that our biologics solutions are more regional in nature and in many cases, are more similar to how a new hybrid or a new variety would work in a region. They are adapted to specific regions or conditions, specific environments, specific pain points for growers and specific P&L relevance that are different everywhere. But similar to our approaches in seed, traits and crop protection, data and AI capabilities enable us to transition to a more design-based approach for biologic development. We sit on one of the leading data sources of biological sequence information and associated performance field data. Additionally, we have developed a rich ecosystem of strong partnerships to tackle the most relevant and commercially attractive biologic segments. Each of our partners is bringing specific technology, regional strength or new approaches to accelerate our journey. And we already have a strong portfolio. [ Sereinade ] is the global leading biofungicide. [ Abesio ] is a novel biologic bird repellant. And with our partners, we have more than 15 projects in the pipeline today. All of them evaluate against our strict criteria. New biologics need to strengthen the farmer's P&L, and they must strategically complement our core businesses. To sum it up, every market needs different biologic solutions. Our partners are bringing specific capabilities to optimize them and turn into winning products. My father spent his career, as I mentioned, in this space. Today, we believe we can further design them for the future. Now I'll move to the digital side of this story. And this is a really, really interesting story that you'll hear more about in the field today. But it's a story that every company has. So let me tell you why our story is actually different. Digital doesn't sell a farmer anything. It makes everything they already bought from us worth more. And there's three parts to it. There's a data asset, which is a part that can't be copied, not because of its size, but because of where it came from. Our data comes from R&D, our data comes from the commercial organization and our data comes from our customers. And it enables us to have insights on every one of our products on every farm. A competitor without our seed and chemistry footprint has no route to the data at this data at any price. The insight layers matter because that's what sits behind it. With FieldView, the recommendation a farmer gets come out of the same model that designed the product in the first place. Nobody else can close that loop between the front end of a breeding program and taking it all the way to the field. And we have opted for an open platform, which is a choice that some people think is counterintuitive. But it looks like giving away an advantage, but it really isn't. It's how the data keeps coming in. And it means that we never ask a farmer to change their equipment, change their agronomists in order to work with us. And the proof is on the right. FieldView with Preceon delivered a 5% increase in the U.S. You can see the same proof in Brazil with [ Valora ], which delivered an outstanding 6% increase. Now think about what that means economically, same bag of seed, same acre, several percentage points more yield. That is why I'd argue that digital is the highest margin yield we produce. So my own ambition here is very simple. Every single product we will sell should be connected to a digital recommendation. We're not there yet, but I have no doubt that is where we're going. Now finally, I want to talk about the uniqueness of our system and share a little bit about where we're going in this journey. And let me start with a clear example, HT6 and [ Ecofolin ]. And I want to be precise about the phrase from the seed onward because it's the whole claim on this page. The industry norm is to retrofit. You take a herbicide that already exists and you go looking for a trait to get tolerance to it. We are designing it simultaneously as one purposely crafted system. Our seed and trait gives you an HT6 an elite best-in-class germplasm, which means there's no trade-off in yield for tolerance. Crop protection gives us [ ecofolin ], a novel active ingredient for resistance to grass weeds. And grasses matter because that is where a farmer has the fewest options left and resistant issues such as black grass continue to evolve fast. And digital solutions here enable you to safeguard the best weed manage, deliver insights to inform the field, deliver specific product recommendation, spreading timing and manage compliance. Now anybody in this industry can sell a herbicide. Almost anybody can sell a tolerant seed. What we did was design the trait and the molecule for each other from the beginning, and that is why the tolerance is clean and the agronomy works so well in the field. And what is that worth to our growers? It's worth over-the-top flexibility with an HT system. They spray when the weeds are there, not when the crop stage allows it. And timing is the single biggest driver of whether control actually works. It enables lower doses because the application is targeted, less product on the acre for the same control, which is a cost answer as well as a regulatory answer at the same time. And we see up to a 25% yield increase in resistant challenge environments where resistant grass weeds are the key issues. We can build such systems because we have the trait. We have the molecule, and we have the digital tools sitting under one roof. That is why this is ours alone. And then you can take this one step further, also raising the bar for differentiator from a competitor further. What you're looking at is a 2-year cropping system on 1 acre here in the Midwest. Year 1, Preceon short-stature corn and year 2, Viconic. And in between is [ Cover crust ], an intermediate crop between the cash crop, which turns that fallow window into a third income stream. And to design such a multiyear multi-crop system, our tech platforms are contributing each of their part. You see the traits, for example, breeding for short-stature corn hybrids and traits for further enhances come into play. We use genome editing to modify maturity and oil content in crop cover crest. So it actually fits in the window between the cash crops. And in soy, we get excellent yield potential from the genetics plus genome edited enabled standability. In our crop protection, for example, our [ Valaro ] complete formulation is well suited for late-season fungicide applications. And remember, and you'll see this today that Prescient allows for late seasons accessibility. And we have also extended the labels of six of our proven crop protection products for use in intermediate crops, a great life cycle management example. In soy, strike herbicide formulation plus fuel appliance, seed treatment actually safeguards the crop. And our FieldView digital solutions are adding the insight and foresight to select the best specific hybrid implanting density for the field and monitor crop growth. And that truly means that we're designing the acre. We're not selling a farmer a list of products. We're designing the system so that it improve what it earns them. Now think about what that actually requires. You need leading seed, you need leading chemistry, you need leading data and artificial intelligence, and you need all three of them talking to each other. We are the only one in the industry with leading competencies across all of these three elements. There isn't another company that can copy it. So let me come back to the three questions I put on the table at the start. Relevance. Does innovation matter? It truly matters more than ever before. Demand keeps rising, supply side keeps getting harder, and there is actually no more land, which leaves exactly one variable in the equation. How productive can we make the acre already farmed. That variable is R&D. The race, are we winning it? We are leading in every single tech platform, and we are the only company that can combine -- company able to combine them into one unique system. And I'd stress the second half of that sentence because the platforms can be bought, the combinations can't be made. Others have pieces. We have the full engine. And finally, return. Does the pipeline differentiate us beyond 2030? It's stronger than it has ever been, and it delivers on four fronts: seeds with strong yield advantage in all of our crops, best-in-class traits for weed and insect protection, new crop protection modes of action with superior performance and safe by design and a crop systems designed to maximize grower profits. And we do all of this while closely aligned to our R&D resource allocations. And that last point is one I'd leave you with. This is not a single blockbuster story. It's four independent sources of advantage arriving across the same decade. So it does not stand or fall on one launch, one trial or regulatory decision. And that is what it makes something you can actually underwrite. I've spent my whole career in this organization, and I have never seen a pipeline like the one I showed you today. And after lunch, you're going to get the opportunity to walk out of this room and see these products and systems and solutions in the field. And I'm generally looking forward to your questions. A huge thank you.

Hold you back in a minute. Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much. Wow. So let's go now after the insights that we have. I'll go straight to the point here because I know we brought you here. We felt that we needed to share a lot of information with you, but now it's time for you to do all the questions that you have. We allow a lot of time for the questions that you have. I will invite, of course, Mike, Guru, Sasha to join me. Jana will help us facilitate the questions. [ Erica ] will help as well with the questions that we have online, and we're going to cover that one. But also, I want to share with you that here, you have a picture of the leadership team in Crop Science, but also you have people from all the different regions with you this afternoon. One of the key elements of this event is to give you the opportunity to interact with the leadership team with all the different areas as well. So you can ask your questions. You can go deep dive on hybrid wheat or [ Camelina ]. We have a challenge at Bayer. We have so many things in the pipeline that sounds like, oh my God, it's a lot, but that's a little bit of the luxury that we have. So if you want to go deep dive on some of the crops, cotton or biofuel or corn or soybean, we're going to have the full opportunity this afternoon. So let me go straight and invite the team to join me here and also Jana to help us, and we go for the Q&A session here. Any question?

Okay. First of all, thanks to the team. Thank you for all the great presentations. I said it was a rich day, a full day. I think we delivered a lot of content, and now it's up to you, and we invite you to ask your questions. [Operator Instructions] So with that, let's start the Q&A, roughly 45 to 60 minutes. Okay. A lot of questions here. I think, Richard, you are first.

Richard Vosser from JPMorgan. First question, just what's underlying the slow ramp of Preceon? It seems relatively slow given the innovation that it brings the yield advantage. There are obviously other traits that have yield advantage as well. But just what's underlying that? And then secondly, there seems to be a limited contribution from Preceon and Viconic to the '28, '29 growth ambitions. So what's driving the acceleration in '28 and '29 given that '27 is going to be maybe 1% growth or something like that based on the base from '26?

So let me start here, Richard, and the team can complement here. So thanks for the question. First, on the Preceon. There is two elements that we have here. One is the breeding event of Preceon and the other one is the biotech version that Mike mentioned that we are launching in '28. When you have the biotech version, your ability to bring the technology to many, many hybrids goes faster, and that helps adopt to speed up the adoption of the technology because it's a hybrid by hybrid technology that you need to bring to the farmers. So there is an initial adoption of Preceon, but the ramp-up really will go with the biotech version that we're going to have. I would encourage you also to explore with Mike this afternoon that there is also a gene editing version of Preceon because when you think about biotech and then you think other markets like Europe, the gene editing can be another unique solution for that market. In terms of the contribution, you're right, Richard. If you think about our next years, as we are launching these new technologies, the first tiers of adoptions, you don't have a significant financial impact. So when you think about our growth that we have for the next years, you have like 20%, 30% of that is coming from the blockbusters. There is a lot of coming from the innovation that is driving growth this year, as an example, all the new hybrids, the new formulations, the expansion that we have, the geographic expansion that we are having right now. This is the complement growth that we have. So the combination of growth for the next years, it is that one. We decided to focus a lot about the next years. If we would have this event talking more about 2035, then we would have a lot of the contribution of these new blockbusters. We decided that to focus more on the next 5 years, right, Mike, but this is the core element. Any complement?

No. And Richard, you're going to get the opportunity this afternoon in the field to kind of really experience Preceon. And Rodrigo highlighted it really well. We started with a native trait. We then progressed into a biotech trait, and we have a gene edit in the pipeline. The other thing that's important is it looks like corn, but it's actually different from top corn. So there's a period of learning that has been required, not so much for us, but how we interact and help our growers be successful with the system. And one of the big advantages of what we've done is we've partnered really well with our growers around the U.S., 3 years of piloting now. So we've gained learning in terms of how you produce and they've obviously gained a lot of learning. So that's been really helpful in us just thinking about really how do you maximize the value of this technology. But no doubt, I don't think you're going to find anybody in this organization that is not super excited about what this technology can do and what it's going to bring to a grower.

Jeff [ Zekauskas ] from JPMorgan. When I was looking at your cost reduction in crop chemicals, I think you're going to take $240 million out of cost of goods sold. And what you're going to do is you're going to limit your active ingredient production in Europe and across your portfolio. And this is a strategy that's not so different from what [ FMC ] is doing or Corteva is doing. So what is it about the manufacture of AI of active ingredients that makes it uncompetitive from a cost standpoint in Western Europe and in North America relative to Asia? And as you move to your production in Asia, is it more China or more India and why? Can you sort of explain what's going on in that industry dynamic?

[indiscernible] And Sasha will help us on that one for sure.

Yes. Thanks for the question. So first of all, I mean, we have two categories that play into the savings, so the sourcing and technical and the structural one. So in total, it's $440 million. And to your question, when we set up this initiative, we really went through our molecules one by one. And the key guiding criteria was, is this cost competitive with the best places and players in the world to produce it. And the answer is not unanimously the same. So we have, in particular, as we go to molecules that have very complicated chemistry, very yield dependent, smaller lines that require very flexible sort of setup. It is not that we found that we can consistently source this, for example, cheaper from China. So this is the ones we are also keeping in our network, and we can continue to develop successfully in the future. However, for some other molecules, which are global commodities these days, they are very much energy price driven, large overcapacities, et cetera. We did not see a path to produce this competitively in our assets in Europe. So that's why we made the decision to move them over. Now to your question, sort of a lot of the new partners we have that will supply us are in China, but we still pursue a strategy of resilience as well. So just that we outsource doesn't mean we have only a single partner, for example, one option that you can go for is try to go for a setup with partners in China and India, just to name one example. Of course, this builds a little bit over time, but this has been our process and the proposal and the measures you have seen today, this is what offers us the best near and also midterm cost benefit in terms of EBITDA improvement.

Always a good plan. [ Kevin McCarthy ], I'm with Vertical Research Partners. So I have two questions. I'll ask them one by one. First, in your corn seed business, you've set forth a target of market share gains of 4% by 2035. Can you talk about how that target was developed and whether the path to that 4% might be linear or smooth in your plan or follow some other timing cadence, for example, more exponential with the introduction of Preceon. So I'll stop there for the first question.

So let me address that one, and this will be a great discussion in the field as well with the team. That is for Preceon. One of the things that we had when we are introducing this new system for the farmers, the first thing that we realize on our models is that a big portion will replace our toll corn, right? We have the leading market share position in the U.S. as an example. So a significant portion of the growth that we're going to have with Preceon will be replacing our toll corn. But in our models as well, we identified the opportunities to continue to gain share and accelerate the gain share with that specific system, and that is the projection that we shared today of gaining additional 4 points of market share with the assistant versus our competitors' approach that we see in the market. The Preceon, I mentioned that one because we see a different opportunity with Assistant, and Mike said something that's very unique. I was with the North America farmers this year, they are doing the groundbreakers. It's quite unique. every single farmer is using the system in a different way. Some of the farmers increased high density and kept the same distance between growth, some other farmers adjusted. Some farmers use a different approach on controlling disease, as Mike mentioned, is a very individual farm system that is very unique. But that brings us different value opportunities. First, market share that you mentioned. The second element of pricing, of course, with that one, the seed density, the entire system drives a higher seed density is another opportunity that we have and the system approach. One of the key challenges for the farmers, a good example in U.S. is to apply fungicide on late stage. Well, that allows us to have another opportunity here. So -- but the market share specifically is what we model of gaining share over competitors over the course of the next years.

And then my second question might be for Mike on the Crop Protection chemical pipeline. You talked about moving from 20% of the product mix being new modes of action to 70% for Phase 1 and 100% for discovery phase or Phase 0. Can you elaborate on what that means for the economics of that whole decade-long process in terms of cost, hit rates and ultimately, return on investment, as you said?

Yes. It's a great question, which we're actually debating last night. So I appreciate the question. I mean, obviously, when you change the number of new modes of actions that way, you cannot assume that you're going to continue to do everything the same way you've done in terms of how you evaluate them, how you move them through the pipeline and how many actually end-of-term innovations you actually need to put in the marketplace. So kind of that back-end business model of when those molecules come to fruition and how they impact the pipeline, that's work that will be done in the years ahead. But the beauty of what we're doing, and this applies not just to [ CP ], it applies to whether you're in seed or traits is every one of our teams is thinking about how do you use new capabilities that will help you either think differently about how you evaluate a product upfront, so it becomes cheaper, more efficient, faster think differently about how you would evaluate them in the field. So it becomes cheaper, better because you're getting better data actually in the end. And then think about how you move from pipeline to pipeline. So our expectation is this doesn't necessarily mean that this is a massive growth in incremental resources that we need. Our expectation is that we're going to continue to innovate so that we can think about how do we do these things in a different way so we can continue to maintain a pipeline that has the likelihood of having high success but also contributes to the growers at the time.

Christian from Kepler...

Christian Faitz, Kepler Cheuvreux. Two questions, please. First of all, you mentioned a bit nitrogen fixation. Can you elaborate that? Where you see market potential yield or, let's say, artificial nitrogen destination? And also, I guess that's mostly corn and wheat. So maybe if you could elucidate that a little bit. Second question, Rodrigo, you have that map of Europe and European expansion. There was a big white spot, actually two white spots. There was Russia and Ukraine. Can you talk a bit about the current and expected market situation in both countries and where you are there?

Yes. Maybe I'll start on the nitrogen fixation. Maybe two ways to think about your question. One is to simply think about what these new technical capabilities allow you to unlock. And this is the incredible power that a technology like genome editing has because once you understand the sequence information of the plants, how genes connect, what they impact and what are the potential toggles you can use, you can then start editing the plant to do things like nitrogen fixation. So early, early, early in the pipeline, we are doing this type of work, where we're evaluating edits that we believe have an impact on nitrogen -- improvements in nitrogen efficiency. The other thing I'd leave you with is my example was editing in plants. You could obviously do the same thing in -- and we are also looking at that because we understand that not just today, this is going to be a challenge. But if you think about where nitrogen as a whole goes into the future, it's an area that we've got to continue to explore in more detail. So certainly, you're going to see us continue to do this and continue to focus on it. But it really also is intended to give just a view of the magnitude and the potential that this technology unlocks in a way that we haven't been able to address some of these things in the past.

So let me talk about the region there. So the first element that I want to just share is that when Mike shared about some of the new crops that we are working, we talk about hybrid wheat here. There's rice also the work that we're doing. This is when you think about mid, long term, those crops has a huge impact in some of the regions that we are talking here, EMEA, Asia. But specifically on Ukraine and Russia, corn in Ukraine was always a very important crop, and we had a very important presence in Ukraine. Of course, the war is bringing a lot of challenges for that region, and we have the team here that leads there that can share more details with you. But this is the challenge. And it's interesting because when you go to the farmers and the farms in Ukraine, as an example, they have a very large operations farming, extremely rich soil, high technology. One of the best adoptions of digital tools that we saw in that region was in Ukraine by the farmers. So you have there a really unique potential. The challenge that we have today is still because of the impact of wars and how this is impacting sometimes the dynamics for -- continues to impact the dynamics for the farmers there. extremely resilient, but we -- I really hope that we can turn that page as sooner as possible to return to the normal circle of agriculture that in the region. I think the team can help you more with more details there as well later.

Alek next.

Alek Ebbeling, UBS. Two, if I may. First on margins next year. So I appreciate you're not at the point to give guidance for next year, but I was wondering directionally about the possibility for margin expansion in '27, given the Corteva litigation one-off that you talked to, but also higher crop protection input prices from the Middle East conflict potentially kicking in next year and the potential to take advantage of high glyphosate prices, which may not continue into next year. Will 2027 be a bump in the road? Or could there still be potential for expansion? Kind of maybe what tailwinds could support expansion? And maybe second, if I could, on competition in short stature corn. So yesterday, a competitor announced they also plan to launch reduced stature corn. So how do you expect Preceon to differ from the competition? And what IP protection do you have that is unique to Preceon?

Wonderful questions. Thank you very much. I will start, and I'll ask your help here, and Mike as well will help me on the answers. On the margin, thank you for your -- on your question, you mentioned it's too early to guide for '27, but you want to get a direction of travel more than the guidance, of course, without getting further details. You already mentioned some of the elements that we're going to need to manage in '27. We see directionally the expansion of our margin for next year in the combination of factors that you mentioned. One element you saw when Sasha was giving you the full overview of the savings that we have in our plan. There are some elements that we are already doing in '26, some other elements that we'll continue to have in '27 that will continue to contribute to the journey of the margin expansion that we have. Also, of course, we have the new growth with our pipeline that we have as well on the line of that one. that we will manage that. We are managing a lot of the cost impact that we have for the recent war in the Middle East as well. All those elements will play. We believe that we are -- the direction of travel for the margin expansion continues, as you said, Guru, you want to add a little bit?

Yes, certainly, I can add. I think as we said earlier, early '27, we will give you more specifics on the guidance. I mean, directionally, what is important to recognize is that in '26, we will be able to demonstrate margin expansion on an underlying basis on the strength of the productivity and efficiency work that's happening on the 5-year framework. We expect this to continue in 2027. So if you want to think about it directionally for '27, I think it's a margin expansion vector on the productivity efficiency side. Of course, as Rodrigo mentioned, we're going to look at all aspects of growth, including pricing opportunities and challenges. And we also then also consider the comp effect of the licensing resolution income that's sitting in '26, not in '27. So when we guide further in '27, we'll give you more specifics on how they all come together.

And Preceon, and again, you'll have this discussion a little bit in the field today. And it's kind of important to understand the journey that we've been on with Preceon and how it varies by the trait you're using. So the trait that you'll see in the field today is a native trait. So it's available in our germplasm, there's no IP around that trait. When you start moving into the next generation, then you get some level of IP in place. The important thing when you go on this journey, and this is really hard for folks that don't think about this space a lot is because you -- just because you have high-performing tall genetics doesn't mean when you translate them into short genetics of the same background, they're going to perform the same way. And so there's knowledge and insight and data that allows you to inform those decisions. And that is a really, really important process that we go through. And you will see a little bit of this today when they demonstrate some of the digital capabilities that the team has built because it's not just making that conversion to shirts, it's then making a recommendation digitally of how it's going to perform in every field. And that is where this gets really hard to replicate. If you don't have all of those streams from the germplasm, the innovation, the digital to the experience in the field to the customers that are connected to it, that's a super, super hard model to duplicate at ease.

John Roberts, Mizuho. With all the technology we've heard about today, is there anything that affects glyphosate? And what's the multiyear outlook for Ruveon?

Well, John, not for the R&D component, no. We are not -- again, of course, Icafolin is a wonderful new mode of action in herbicide that for 30 years, we're not able to launch, and we are very excited about the launch, and we have this end of this year, 95% of the regulatory global submissions made. So it's really exciting, but not on the glyphosate piece. On glyphosate, what we see is a little bit what we said, it's really managing that business in a commodity approach with a very lean organization, fast decisions and managing that business in the -- we are -- what we are doing in terms of -- if I go one step deeper to your question, what we are doing on glyphosate, we are always working on the formulations, how we simplify formulations, we make cost competitive, and there's a lot of work on that side, but that's it not on the R&D.

And then could you talk about the balance sheet of Ruveon a little bit? So what are the assets that are in there, the [ Pocatello ] mining operations, all the manufacturing? And anything unusual on the liability side that's in the new legal entity?

Do you want to cover?

Yes. So I'll go first and see if anybody wants to add anything. So the way we have set up Ruveon is it's an end-to-end entity that covers all of the U.S. production as well as the commercial end of the operations. And so the asset base that comes with all of that is sitting on the balance sheet of Ruveon, includes the mining to the end of the gold. That's all included.

Michael? The gentleman here in the blue. And then we go right.

Mike Santangeli from Anomaly Capital. I just had two questions on the gene editing slides you discussed. So the first, given you are hybridizing new crops and applying your innovation engine to -- and gene editing to more crops that aren't hybrids? A, why not go out and acquire more germplasm? And b, what would make a good or bad addition to the portfolio given there's plenty of new TAMs out there that this technology potentially unlocks for you?