BASF SE Financial Statements 2018 and Management's Report
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BASF SE Financial Statements 2018 and Management’s Report Contents Management’s Report of BASF SE 1 Management and Supervisory Boards 61 Business Development 3 Board of Executive Directors 61 Digitalization and Innovation 6 Supervisory Board 63 Nonfinancial Statement in Accordance with Sections Report of the Supervisory Board 65 289b to 289e of the German Commercial Code (HGB) 7 Financial Statements of BASF SE 70 Opportunities and Risks Report 29 Statement of Income 70 Outlook 36 Balance Sheet 71 Corporate Governance Statement Pursuant to Notes 72 Section 289f of the German Commercial Code (HGB) 37 Assurance Pursuant to Sections 264(2) and 289(1) Corporate Governance Report 37 of the German Commercial Code (HGB) 109 Compliance 44 Independent Auditor’s Report 110 Declaration of Conformity 46 Compensation Report 47 1 Management’s Report of BASF SE Corporate structure New organization of the BASF Group as of January 1, 2019 As the publicly traded parent company in the BASF Group, As of January 1, 2019, the BASF Group has 12 divisions grouped BASF SE takes a central position: Directly or indirectly, it holds the into six segments as follows: shares in the companies belonging to the BASF Group, and is also the largest operating company. The Board of Executive Directors of – Chemicals: Petrochemicals and Intermediates BASF SE manages and steers the BASF Group. – Materials: Performance Materials and Monomers – Industrial Solutions: Dispersions & Pigments and Performance Until December 31, 2018, the BASF Group’s portfolio was arranged Chemicals into four segments: Chemicals, Performance Products, Functional – Surface Technologies: Catalysts, Coatings and Construction Materials & Solutions and Agricultural Solutions.1 Within these four Chemicals segments, 12 divisions bear operational responsibility and manage – Nutrition & Care: Care Chemicals and Nutrition & Health the 54 global and regional business units. The divisions develop – Agricultural Solutions: Agricultural Solutions strategies for 86 strategic business units and are organized accord ing to sectors or products. Business processes are the shared We are considering the possibility of merging our construction responsibility of the divisions and the functional units. BASF has chemicals business with a strong partner, as well as the option of companies in more than 90 countries. The BASF Group operates six divesting this business. The outcome of this review is open. The Verbund sites and 355 additional production sites worldwide. Construction Chemicals division will be reported under the Surface Technologies segment until signing of a transaction agreement. The operating business of BASF SE represents a portion of the BASF Group’s global business and is managed and steered by Nonfinancial statement (NFS) in accordance with sections the respective divisions and business units as well as the corporate 289b to 289e of the German Commercial Code (HGB) and functional units based on the performance indicators of the BASF Group. The functional and corporate units provide services in The nonfinancial statement in accordance with sections 289b to areas such as finance, investor relations, communications, human 289e HGB can be found on pages 7 to 28 and are a part of resources, engineering and site management, as well as environ the Management’s Report. Within the scope of the audit of the mental protection, health and safety. annual financial statements, the external auditor KPMG checked pursuant to section 317(2) sentence 4 HGB that the NFS was Over 80% of the operating divisions have production plants at presented in accordance with the statutory requirements. KPMG the BASF SE site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. This underscores also con ducted a substantive audit with limited assurance of the the importance of this Verbund site for the BASF Group. From NFS. An assurance report on this substantive audit can be found Ludwigs hafen, BASF SE supplies products and services to over online at basf.com/nfsaudit2018/basfse and is part of the 2018 10,000 customers from various sectors in almost every country in Management’s Report of BASF SE. The audit was conducted in the world. Our customer portfolio ranges from major global cus accordance with ISAE 3000 (Assurance Engagements other than tomers and mediumsized businesses to end consumers. Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information) and ISAE 3410 (Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements), the Our 9,000 or so suppliers also come from many different sectors. relevant international auditing standards for sustainability reporting. They supply us with important raw materials, chemicals, investment goods and consumables, and perform a range of services. Some of Accounting principles the most important raw materials are naphtha, natural gas, metha nol, ammonia and benzene. The Financial Statements of BASF SE are prepared in accordance with the German Commercial Code (HGB) and the German Stock BASF SE had 35,316 employees on December 31, 2018, of which Corporation Act (AktG). 4,434 in Research and Development. The Consolidated Financial Statements of the BASF Group, how A complete overview of BASF SE’s operating business is provided ever, take into account the Financial Statements of BASF SE that are by the Consolidated Financial Statements of the BASF Group. To prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting assess the operations of BASF SE, a distinction must be made Standards (IFRS). between sales and income from operations from BASF SE’s own production and from the sale of products of other European BASF Group companies. BASF SE’s function as the parent com pany of the BASF Group is primarily reflected in the financial result. 1 On September 27, 2018, BASF and LetterOne signed a definitive agreement to merge their oil and gas businesses in a joint venture. Since the agreement was signed, we have no longer reported on BASF’s oil and gas business as a separate Oil & Gas segment. BASF SE Financial Statements 2018 2 Corporate Governance Statement pursuant to The global chemical industry (excluding pharmaceuticals) grew by section 289f of the German Commercial Code (HGB) 2.7%, below our expectations at the beginning of 2018 (+3.6%) and slower than in 2017 (+3.7%). Chemical production in the E.U. The Corporate Governance Statement in accordance with section declined slightly overall after the strong prior year (2018: –0.9%, 289f HGB, printed on pages 37 to 46 (Corporate Governance 2017: +3.2%), but fell sharply at the end of 2018 in particular. Report, Compliance, Declaration of Conformity), is an element of the Contrib uting factors included capacity bottlenecks, lower export Management’s Report. The audit of the disclosures required by demand and weaker demand from the automotive industry in the section 289f(2) and (5) HGB pursuant to section 317(2) sentence 6 second half of the year. In Asia, growth slowed overall to 3.4% after HGB is limited to whether the disclosures have been made. 4.5% in the previous year. At 3.6%, growth in the world’s largest chemical market, China, was lower than in the prior year (+4.0%) Economic Environment and significantly lower than forecast at the beginning of the year (+5.0%). Stagnant demand from the automotive industry and slower Overall, global economic growth in 2018 was as strong as we momentum in other customer industries had a dampening effect. In expected at the beginning of the year.1 However, momentum slowed Japan, too, growth fell significantly to 0.9% (2017: +7.1%) due to considerably over the course of the year. Economic output in the softer export demand. By contrast, growth picked up in the United advanced economies rose at roughly the same rate as in 2017, States on the back of the economic upturn there and new produc while growth in the emerging markets softened slightly overall. tion capacity (2018: +3.7%; 2017: +2.6%). Growth in the European Union (E.U.) declined significantly. By con trast, gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States increased faster than expected. The Chinese economy cooled in the second half of the year. Global GDP grew by 3.2% overall, only slightly slower than in 2017 (+3.3%). The global chemical industry (exclud ing pharmaceuticals) expanded by 2.7%, below the 2017 figure (+3.7%). The average price for a barrel of Brent blend crude oil rose to $71 per barrel (2017: $54 per barrel). Global industrial production grew by 3.2% in 2018, roughly in line with our expectations at the beginning of 2018 but down from the previous year (2017: +3.4%). Growth slowed in both the advanced economies (2018: +2.1%; 2017: +2.4%) and the emerging markets (2018: +4.2%; 2017: +4.4%). The downturn was most pronounced in the E.U. (2018: +1.4%; 2017: +3.1%) and in Japan (2018: +0.9%; 2017: +2.7%). In South America, too, industrial production again declined slightly (2018: –0.3%; 2017: –0.8%). In the emerging markets of Asia, growth in industrial production was roughly on a level with the previous year, at 5.5% (2017: +5.6%). By contrast, growth in North America accelerated again markedly (2018: +3.1%; 2017: +1.8%). 1 All information relating to past years in this section can deviate from the previous year’s report due to statistic revisions. In addition, the baseline for calculating real growth rates for GDP, customer industry and chemical production figures has been adjusted from 2010 to 2015. This changes the market share of individual countries and slightly increases global growth rates overall. BASF SE Financial Statements 2018 3 Business Development above the prioryear level. The balance of other operating income Results of operations and expenses improved by €260 million year on year. Income of Million € €452 million (previous year: €344 million) was recorded in the report 2018 2017 ing year from insurance refunds for the damages caused by the Sales revenue 23,587 23,195 fire at the North Harbor in Ludwigshafen in 2016, as well as for Gross profit on sales 4,567 5,002 damages to production plants and product damages in 2017.