Targets and Target Achievement¹

For us, long-term business success means creating economic, ecological and social value, which is why we pursue ambitious targets along the entire value chain. We report transparently on target achievement so that our stakeholders can track our progress.

Our objective is profitable growth – we have set new financial targets as part of our corporate strategy and adjusted our dividend policy. In the 2028 business year, we want EBITDA before special items to reach a value between €10 billion and €12 billion in moderate to good economic conditions. The cumulative free cash flow for 2025 to 2028 is expected to be more than €12 billion. For the return on capital employed (ROCE), we endeavor to achieve a figure of around 10% in 2028. In the 2024 business year, EBITDA before special items was €7.9 billion, free cash flow was €0.7 billion and ROCE was 5.1%.

In the medium term, we want to keep the overall distribution to shareholders at least at prior-year levels through a combination of dividends and share buybacks and will pay out a minimum of €12 billion to our shareholders between 2025 and 2028. Specifically, we want to pay out a dividend of at least €2.25 per share or around €2 billion per year. This policy already applies to the dividend for the 2024 business year, which will be paid out in 2025. The dividend proposed by the Board of Executive Directors for 2024 is consequently €2.25 per share (more information on financial indicators).

We have also set ourselves comprehensive targets in the area of sustainability. By 2030, we want to reduce our CO₂ emissions from production (Scope 1) and energy purchases (Scope 2)² by 25% compared with 2018 (2018: 21.9 million metric tons, 2030 target: 16.4 million metric tons). In the 2024 business year, this figure was 17.0 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents (2023: 16.9 million metric tons). By 2030, we want to reduce the specific CO₂ emissions from the purchase of our raw materials (Scope 3.1)³ by 15% compared with 2022 (2022: 1.64 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram of raw materials purchased, 2030 target: 1.39 kilograms). Our specific Scope 3.1 emissions in 2024 amounted to 1.58 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram of raw materials purchased (2023: 1.67⁴ kilograms). By 2050, we endeavor to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1, 2 and 3.1).

We are working to further increase sustainability in our supply chains. Our previous target was to have 80% of suppliers improve their sustainability performance upon reevaluation. Moving forward, we are concentrating on suppliers that generated inadequate results in evaluations. For the time frame up to 2030, we are working toward ensuring that, annually, 80% of suppliers who underwent a sustainability evaluation during the reporting period, and who had inadequate results in a prior comparable evaluation, improve their sustainability performance. In 2024, the figure was 76%. With the new target, we want to sharpen our focus on and gear our measures even more strongly toward suppliers with increased risk in terms of sustainability.

We intend to align our portfolio and the work of our research and development units even more closely with climate protection and the circular economy. For this purpose, we rely on the assessment of our product portfolio using the TripleS methodology (Sustainable Solution Steering). By 2030, we want to achieve more than 50% of BASF sales relevant for TripleS⁵ from Sustainable-Future Solutions – products that make a positive contribution to sustainability. In 2024, these products accounted for 46.3% of BASF sales (2023: 41.4%). We also introduced a new target for circular economy solutions, known as Loop Solutions, in 2024. By 2030, we want to achieve €10 billion in sales with these solutions. Sales with Loop Solutions stood at €5.7 billion in 2024.

We want to establish a sustainable water management at all production sites in water stress areas⁶ and at our Verbund sites by 2030. In 2024, we reached a share of 65% (2023: 57%).⁷

In production, we want to further improve safety and focus on reducing high-severity work-related accidents and process incidents. By 2030, we aim to achieve a rate of no more than 0.10 High Severity Process Safety Incidents (hsPSI) per 200,000 working hours. The global rate of hsPSI in 2024 was 0.03 (2023: 0.05 hsPSI). For the period up to 2030, we are also committed to a maximum rate of 0.05 High Severity Work Process Related Injuries (HSI) per 200,000 working hours. In the 2024 business year, this figure stood at 0.02 HSI (2023: 0.03 HSI).

Furthermore, we have set ourselves the target of increasing the proportion of women in leadership positions to 30% by 2030. The global proportion of women in positions with disciplinary responsibility was 29.3% in 2024 (2023: 28.4%). Furthermore, we would like to create a work environment in which more than 80% of our employees feel that they can thrive and perform at their best at BASF. In 2024, we reached a rate of 79% (2023: 79%).