The German chemical group BASF suffers a drop in profits in the first half of the year compared to last year. BASF has published its results for the first six months of the year and revealed that its profit figure was 1.797 billion euros in the first half of the year.
In terms of sales, BASF has seen its sales fall by almost 10% compared to the same period last year, to 33.664 billion euros.
In terms of its business lines, sales in the chemicals division increased by 1.6% to more than 5,603 million euros, and in the nutrition area, revenues fell by 4% to 3,396 million euros.
In April, BASF exceeded its expectations for the first quarter of 2024, although they were previously forced to rectify them. During the first quarter, the German chemical company recorded an increase in sales of more than 17 billion euros. With the new results, Markus Kamieth, the company's chairman of the board acknowledges that ‘there is still pressure on prices’ and, on the other hand, the company's chief financial officer, Dirk Elvermann, argued that BASF is on track to achieve a projected annual cost saving of €2.1 billion by the end of 2026.
BASF expects to reduce its annual costs by around EUR 800 million.