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Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the Board of Management, I too would like to welcome you to Leverkusen this morning. I very much appreciate your interest in our company.


(2007-1524e-1)

We started off the year with an outstanding first quarter and continued on a path of growth in the second quarter.

We again achieved a gratifying performance in the third quarter, with all subgroups contributing to the increases in sales and earnings. This business trend has strengthened our confidence that this will be another very successful year: In fact we are targeting another record for the full year 2007.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our strong performance is accompanied by a dynamic upward movement in the price of our stock. Including the dividend paid for 2006, our stock achieved a performance of more than 40 percent in the first nine months of 2007, which was above the average of the relevant indices. Our goal is for this positive development to continue in the future.


(2007-1524e-2)

But first let's take a look at the key data for the third quarter: Bayer saw global sales increase by 4.5 percent to EUR 7.8 billion. Adjusted for currency effects and portfolio changes, business expanded by 7 percent.

The largest absolute gains were achieved in Europe, where business expanded by _EUR 182 million, or 6 percent, to EUR 3.4 billion. Sales in Germany rose to EUR 1.2 billion, posting a 2.1 percent increase when adjusted for portfolio effects. In the dynamic growth market of China, currency-adjusted sales grew by a substantial 37 percent.

The earnings trend for the Bayer Group is also gratifying: EBITDA before special items advanced by 7 percent to EUR 1.6 billion, despite adverse currency effects and high prices for raw materials. After special items, third-quarter EBITDA moved ahead 28 percent to EUR 1.4 billion.


(2007-1524e-3)

EBIT before special items increased by 24 percent to EUR 953 million.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This means we again maintained a very positive trend. We have now recorded year-on-year increases in underlying EBIT in the 19 consecutive quarters since the beginning of 2003.


(2007-1524e-4)

We took net special charges of EUR 276 million in the third quarter, compared to EUR 139 million in the prior-year period. These are almost entirely accounted for by EUR 119 million in expenses arising from the acquisition and integration of Schering and a EUR 152 million impairment of intangible assets from a Betaferon®/Betaseron® development project.

Despite the substantially higher special charges, EBIT also rose by 7.5 percent to EUR 677 million.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This brings us to the performance of our subgroups in the third quarter.

Sales of the HealthCare subgroup climbed to EUR 3.7 billion. On a currency-adjusted basis, sales grew by 9 percent. Both segments contributed to this increase with pleasing growth in business.


(2007-1524e-5)

Sales of our Pharmaceuticals segment improved by EUR 126 million to EUR 2.6 billion. On a currency-adjusted basis, this was equivalent to an 8 percent increase. The main growth drivers were the Yasmin® product family along with Mirena®, Ultravist® and Nexavar®.

The oral contraceptives of the Yasmin® family achieved currency-adjusted sales growth of 41 percent. Currency-adjusted sales of our intra-uterine system Mirena® also rose by a gratifying 35 percent.

Business with our contrast agent Ultravist® recovered strongly following the voluntary withdrawal of one formulation in the summer of 2006. Ultravist® sales jumped by 92 percent on a currency-adjusted basis.

In the Oncology business unit, sales of Nexavar® doubled to EUR 76 million.

Our Consumer Health segment, which comprises the Consumer Care, Diabetes Care and Animal Health divisions, had sales of EUR 1.1 billion. Currency-adjusted sales grew by 10 percent, considerably outpacing the market. All three divisions achieved sales growth in all regions.

Particularly gratifying gains were made by our One-A-Day® vitamin products and products from the Rennie®, Berocca® and Canesten® lines, as well as our Ascensia® Contour® blood glucose monitoring systems and the Advantage® product line of the Animal Health Division.

We also further improved the operating result of Bayer HealthCare. EBITDA before special items climbed by 8 percent to EUR 953 million. This increase was mainly due to the strong performance of the business and synergies already realized from the integration of Schering. Earnings were diminished by considerably higher marketing and distribution costs, particularly in Pharmaceuticals.


(2007-1524e-6)

That brings us to the Bayer CropScience subgroup, where we had sales of nearly EUR 1.2 billion in the third quarter. Currency- and portfolio-adjusted sales rose by 12 percent.

In the Crop Protection segment, sales rose to EUR 1 billion, posting a 15 percent increase on a currency- and portfolio-adjusted basis. Higher prices for agricultural commodities, increased cultivation of crops for the production of biofuels and a more favorable market environment in Latin America led to an expansion in business.

We benefited from this trend particularly in our Fungicides and Seed Treatment business units, which saw sales grow by 28 and 43 percent, respectively. By contrast, sales of the Herbicides business unit were virtually level with the previous third quarter. In the Insecticides business unit, our Confidor® product family performed particularly well, as did our young products such as the herbicide Atlantis®, the fungicide Flint® and the seed treatment Poncho®.

In the Environmental Science, BioScience segment, sales showed a currency-adjusted 1 percent decline to EUR 172 million.

In the Environmental Science business unit, sales of products for professional users in the United States were lower as a result of heightened generic competition and unfavorable weather conditions. This decrease was partially offset by an increase in business with home and garden products for consumers.

Sales in our BioScience business unit grew particularly as a result of the good performance of our canola seed, marketed under the InVigor® brand, and our vegetable seed business.

The overall development at Bayer CropScience led to a sharp rise in earnings that resulted primarily from higher volumes. EBITDA before special items rose by 17 percent from the prior-year period, to EUR 167 million.

This brings us to MaterialScience.


(2007-1524e-7)

Business in this subgroup expanded to EUR 2.6 billion, up 3.5 percent when adjusted for currency and portfolio effects. This increase was largely due to higher prices than in the prior-year quarter in nearly all regions. We also achieved a small increase in volumes. This was chiefly attributable to rising demand in Asia and Latin America.

The Systems segment had sales of EUR 1.9 billion. Adjusted for currency and portfolio effects, business expanded by 3 percent, mainly as a result of selling price increases. Our Coatings, Adhesives and Sealants business unit and the Inorganic Basic Chemicals business contributed to this improvement. Currency- and portfolio-adjusted sales of our Polyurethanes business unit were level year on year.

In the Materials segment, we grew sales to EUR 767 million. After adjusting for currency and portfolio effects, business increased by 6 percent. We achieved slight increases in volumes and selling prices in both the Polycarbonates and the Thermoplastic Polyurethanes business units. Sales of the Taiwanese Ure-Tech Group are also included here for the first time.

EBITDA of Bayer MaterialScience before special items moved ahead by 10.5 percent to EUR 421 million. This was the first time in fiscal 2007 that Bayer MaterialScience showed a year-on-year improvement in underlying quarterly earnings. We compensated for the rise in raw material and energy costs, mainly through higher selling prices.

Now let's get back to the key data for the Bayer Group as a whole.


(2007-1524e-8)

The non-operating result came in at the previous year's level, at minus EUR 266 million. It contained net interest expense of EUR 180 million, which mainly reflected the financing costs for the Schering acquisition.

We recorded net tax income of EUR 769 million. This included a one-time, non-cash, positive tax effect of EUR 911 million, already announced in our half-year report, which resulted primarily from remeasuring the deferred tax liabilities accrued in connection with the Schering acquisition. This was done mainly in order to reflect the lower nominal tax rates that will apply in Germany from 2008.

Without this one-time effect, we had third-quarter tax expense of EUR 142 million, compared to EUR 109 million in the same period of 2006.

Net income of the Bayer Group came in at EUR 1,175 million, bringing earnings per share to EUR 1.46, against EUR 0.42 in the third quarter of last year.

For a few quarters now, we have been reporting core earnings per share. The purpose of this is to facilitate comparability between our performance and that of other companies, particularly with respect to the impact of major acquisitions. Core earnings per share in the third quarter amounted to EUR 0.81, up from EUR 0.77 in the same period last year.

Gross cash flow increased by 2.6 percent year on year to EUR 1.2 billion. With less cash tied up in working capital, net cash flow rose from EUR 1.5 to EUR 1.6 billion.

Finally, we lowered net debt by EUR 0.8 billion in the third quarter, to EUR 12.7 billion. That means we succeeded in reducing the debt incurred in connection with the Schering acquisition by EUR 4.8 billion in the first nine months of this year.


(2007-1524e-9)

We are also more than satisfied with the rapid progress of the Schering integration. We have identified synergy potential of more than EUR 800 million a year that we aim to achieve by the end of 2009.

And we have systematically strengthened the streamlined research and development pipeline of Bayer Schering Pharma through inlicensing. In the hematology indication, for example, we have added recombinant human thrombin, a blood coagulation product in late-stage clinical development. What's more, we plan to further develop and market the active substance amikacin for inhalation using a novel technology.

To strengthen our Consumer Care business in the area of calcium-based dietary supplements, we have acquired the global Citracal® product line.

We have also made considerable strategic progress at Bayer CropScience. Here we are driving forward the expansion of our BioScience business, in particular.

With the acquisition of U.S.-based Stoneville, which is this subgroup's largest takeover since the purchase of Aventis CropScience, we have considerably expanded our position in the cotton seed market and are now the world's number two supplier in this area.

We have also decided to continue with the development and marketing of our herbicide tolerance technology Liberty Link® - which is already applied very successfully in cotton and canola - in two other major crops, corn and soybeans. In this context, we have signed an important agreement with Monsanto, to whom we have granted a license to use our Liberty Link® technology in corn and soybeans. This collaboration opens up considerable potential for royalty income.

At Bayer MaterialScience we are focusing especially on growth regions, and therefore have further expanded our polyurethane system house business in central and eastern Europe and in Asia.

We also plan to invest roughly EUR 1.8 billion through 2012 to expand our integrated production site in Shanghai, making it into a hub of the Bayer MaterialScience production network in the Asia-Pacific region. There we already operate or are currently building world-scale facilities for the production of polycarbonate and of polyurethane raw materials, especially our isocyanates MDI and TDI.

The production of TDI will involve the first ever commercial use of gas phase phosgenation, an innovative process that reduces solvent usage by some 80 percent and energy consumption by 40 percent. This year we increased the planned capacity of this plant from 160,000 to 300,000 tons per year. This is another way in which we are underscoring our commitment to one of the world's most important growth regions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In addition to this strategic progress over the course of the year, the Bayer Group posted a further significant improvement in operating performance in the first nine months of 2007.


(2007-1524e-10)

Sales from continuing operations increased in this period by 16 percent to EUR 24.3 billion. This should be seen in light of the fact that in 2006 the acquired Schering business was included only on a pro-rata basis - in other words, from June 23, 2006. Currency- and portfolio-adjusted sales advanced by 7 percent.

EBITDA before special items grew by 24 percent in the first nine months of 2007, to EUR 5.4 billion. EBIT before special items improved by 23 percent to EUR 3.5 billion. Net special charges amounted to EUR 744 million, compared to EUR 301 million in the same period of 2006. The acquisition and integration of Schering accounted for more than half of this figure. EBIT of the Bayer Group advanced by 8 percent to EUR 2.8 billion.

Net income for the first nine months of the year came in at EUR 4.6 billion, against EUR 1.4 billion in the prior-year period. This year's divestment gains included EUR 2.1 billion for the Diagnostics business and EUR 0.1 billion for H.C. Starck in the first quarter, and EUR 0.2 billion for Wolff Walsrode in the second quarter.


(2007-1524e-11)

Ladies and gentlemen,

Despite high raw material costs and unfavorable currency effects, this business trend has strengthened our confidence that 2007 will be another very successful year. We now forecast an increase in Group sales in 2007 to more than EUR 32 billion. This would correspond to an increase of about 6 percent after adjusting for portfolio and currency effects.

We plan to increase the Group's EBITDA margin before special items by at least one percentage point from the 19.3 percent recorded in 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I already drew attention to our disclosure of core earnings per share. This is also the indicator on which our dividend policy is based. We plan to base our dividend for 2007 on a range of between 30 and 40 percent of core earnings per share. I'm sure you understand that we can't yet give any further details on the dividend for 2007.

Now let's move on to the forecast for our subgroups in 2007 as a whole.

We remain optimistic about the prospects for our HealthCare business. For the year as a whole, we continue to expect all of the HealthCare divisions to grow with or faster than the market. We now expect to achieve an EBITDA margin before special items of more than 25 percent. This takes into account our expectation that marketing and research and development costs will be higher in the fourth quarter of 2007 than in the preceding quarters.

We anticipate a continuing positive market environment for our CropScience business in the fourth quarter. For the full year 2007, we confirm the raised target we announced in August of increasing the EBITDA margin before special items to more than 22 percent.

We also do not envisage any significant change in the business environment for our MaterialScience subgroup in the fourth quarter and continue to expect a good, value-creating earnings level. Due to the normal seasonal slowdown in business activity toward the end of the year, we expect EBITDA before special items in the fourth quarter to be below that of the third quarter but above the fourth quarter of 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Bayer MaterialScience strives to occupy the leading position in its competitive environment in terms of technology and profitability. Our process and product innovations, as well as our world-scale production facilities, already give us an outstanding starting position in this respect.

In order to sustainably strengthen the earning power of Bayer MaterialScience, we have initiated further cost-structure measures. The goal is to achieve savings of EUR 300 million annually by the end of 2009.

Specifically we aim to

- achieve further process and cost optimization in the operation and maintenance of our production facilities worldwide,
- significantly lower administrative costs and
- rigorously manage our marketing and distribution costs.

In order to realize these savings, we expect to take a total of between EUR 150 million and EUR 200 million in special charges through 2009. We anticipate that the headcount reduction necessitated by the measures can be achieved in a socially compatible way and through normal attrition.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This brings me to our perspectives beyond 2007. In the other subgroups, we also are focusing on further value creation.

At Bayer HealthCare, particularly in the Pharmaceuticals segment, we believe we are on track to achieve a sustained increase in profitability. Here we are counting on the systematic implementation of the more focused research strategy we decided on in the context of the Schering integration, and on the further development of our very promising pipeline. The products that surely harbor the greatest potential are Nexavar® and Xarelto®.


(2007-1524e-12)

We have already seen that Nexavar® is firmly establishing itself as a treatment for kidney cancer. And we are making gratifying progress in the liver cancer indication as well. Just a few days ago, the European Commission granted marketing authorization for Nexavar® in this indication. This makes Nexavar® the first approved systemic therapy, and the only drug therapy, for liver cancer.

We are expecting further approvals too, including completion of the accelerated procedure in the United States by the end of this year. Liver cancer is particularly widespread in the Asia-Pacific region, where we have already submitted registration applications in China and Japan.

Yet we are nowhere near exhausting the potential of Nexavar®: The active substance is already at an advanced stage of clinical development for the indications of lung, breast and skin cancer. That's why we believe Nexavar® is on track to establish itself as a therapy for several types of cancer.

The most promising product - with blockbuster potential - is the oral anti-thrombosis drug rivaroxaban, which we intend to market under the tradename Xarelto®. The current study program already comprises four indications. A further indication - the treatment of hospitalized patients with internal diseases - is to be included in this program shortly. It is planned for a total of about 50,000 patients to take part in these studies.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This is the biggest clinical study program ever carried out at Bayer. Around 20,000 patients have already been enrolled in the studies, of whom about 10,000 have been treated with Xarelto®.

The available results of the first Phase III study on prevention of venous thromboembolism in knee replacement surgery have exceeded our own expectations. Just a few days ago we submitted the first registration applications in Europe for prevention of venous thromboembolism following major orthopedic surgery. Market introduction in Europe and submission of the registration application in the United States are planned for 2008.

Ladies and gentlemen,

These are highly promising perspectives for our company - not only for our HealthCare business, but also for CropScience.

In the agricultural industry in particular, the long-term trends are driven by a growing global population and changing consumer habits. For example, ever higher yields will have to be achieved on the same amount of arable land in order to feed the world's growing population. Parallel to this trend, we are observing growing demand for animal-based protein, which in turn requires a higher volume of plant-based animal feed.

In addition to these long-term trends, we are currently seeing a sharp increase in the demand for biofuels, the importance of which is steadily growing in connection with the current climate debate.

Innovation in crop protection will thus remain a key requirement for safeguarding harvests and crop yields in the future. At Bayer CropScience we are responding to this situation with a considerable increase in our research budget through 2015.

In addition, we aim to take much greater advantage of the opportunities inherent in plant breeding by developing high-yield hybrid crops, and also to more thoroughly exploit the potential of plant biotechnology. This includes the development of plants with much higher tolerance for stress-causing conditions, such as drought and saline soils. In so doing, we aim to help society address the consequences of climate change.

We also have a lot to offer in terms of preventive climate protection - such as the tremendous potential harbored by our polyurethanes as insulating materials to reduce CO2 emissions. On November 19 we will hold a news conference to present to you the Bayer Climate Program and detail our company's efforts in these areas.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our performance so far in 2007 has shown that Bayer is on the right track both strategically and operationally.

Partly as a result of the Schering acquisition, we have enhanced our earning power and strengthened the operating performance potential of the Bayer Group for the long term.

Our extensive cost-containment and efficiency-improvement measures are designed to help us further enhance our profitability.

And even more importantly, with our innovative products we are not just growing our sales, but making our own specific contribution to the solution of urgent social problems.

Thank you.


Forward-looking statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in our annual and interim reports to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and in our reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (including our Form 20-F). The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.