Bayer Crop Science 2024 Innovation Pipeline Event Highlights and Analysis

Index

1. Overview

2. Four Things I am Thinking About After the Event

   1. 250 million acres within FieldView and Digitally Enabled Sales Definition

   2. N Fixing Biological Product and Biological Development

   3. Innovative Tech, Opportunity for Innovative Incentives and Bundling

   4. Regenerative Agriculture

3. Overview of Preceon Smart Corn System

4. Overview of CropKey

5. Update on Biologicals

Overview

On June 17th, Bayer had its 2024 Crop Science Innovation Update in Chicago.

The company built on their 2023 Innovation event in New York to highlight what they frame as ten blockbuster launches over the next decade.

Each blockbuster is projected to contribute over €500 million each to Bayer's €32 billion forecasted R&D pipeline.

The ten blockbusters include:

1. Preceon Smart Corn: Breeding and Biotech Approaches for their short corn efforts.

2. Plenexos Insecticide: next-generation ketoenol insecticide with high plant mobility and strong efficacy against sucking pests at low dose rates for foliar and soil uses.

3. Icafolin Herbicide: a new mode of action for post emergence weed control based on Bayer’s CropKey approach.

4. New Fungicide: For global use in cereals, corn, fruits & vegetables with upside potential in numerous other crops, it also has a compelling regulatory profile.

5. Fourth-Generation Soy Herbicide Tolerance Trait and Fifth-Generation Soy Herbicide Tolerance Trait: Fourth generation will include tolerance to five products, including HPPD (Mesotrione) and 2,4-D tolerance to existing traits that provide glyphosate, glufosinate, and dicamba tolerance. The Fifth generation will ad PPO tolerance for six modes of action in one product.

6. Third-Generation Soy Insect Trait and Fourth-Generation Soy Insect Trait: The third generation trait offering includes two new proteins for enhanced protection from lepidopteran pests, with a focus on Latin America and expected launch in 2028. The fourth generation Trait will use multiple modes of action to further enhance the Intacta franchise with multiple modes of action for control against velvetbean caterpillar and soybean looper.

7. Fourth-Generation Corn Rootworm Trait and Fifth-Generation Corn Herbicide Tolerance Trait: The fourth generation of Bayer’s Corn Rootworm trait (CRW4) is expected to launch mid-decade. CRW4 features two new modes of action plus improved RNAi technology to enhance efficacy against rootworm populations.

I combined these into seven because numbers 5, 6 and 7 are the evolution of trait technology.

Five Things on my Mind After the Event (no particular order)

1. 250 million acres within FieldView and Digitally Enabled Sales Definition

This number went up from 220 million in 2023 to 250 million this year.

When I asked how these acres breakout by Prime, Plus and Premium they stated they do not break these numbers out externally (pay level).

Generally, when a company doesn’t breakout the revenue driving aspects of their product lines it’s a signal of weak results (revenue), though not a rule (see YouTube and Google). I suspect they have a very low conversion to the Premium offering at this time.

It might not be the most important aspect of FieldView moving forward, given their other point of emphasis.

Bayer has ambitions to drive their core business (seed, crop protection) with FieldView.

Bayer’s ambition is to have “100% of their sales digitally enabled by 2030.” This signals that FieldView will be a lynchpin component of that and acres grow considerably in coming ~5 years— leading to overall revenue growth for their business.

Bayer still has not defined a digitally enabled sale, but throughout the event we could see breadcrumbs of how they are going to be building in this capability, such as: