FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The surprising resignation of Werner Lanthaler from his position as CEO of the drug discovery company Evotec triggered panic selling of shares on Thursday. The confirmation of the annual targets and the strategic partnership announced this morning with the biotech company Owkin, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), did little to change this.

The MDax-listed shares slipped so sharply that they broke through several important trend signals on the chart, which further increased the selling pressure. In addition to the 21-day line, the 200-day line was also breached. Evotec shares recently fell by 20.3 percent to EUR 17.08, bringing them to the bottom of the mid-cap index by some distance. The price gains since the beginning of November are now history.

As Evotec announced the previous evening after the close of trading, Lanthaler is stepping down after almost 15 years at the helm of the Hamburg-based company - before his contract, which runs until March 2026, expires. The CEO justified his decision with an "extremely challenging and exhausting year 2023, both physically and overall". Supervisory Board member Mario Polywka will take over the position on an interim basis, the statement continued.

"Werner Lanthaler has strongly shaped the company in recent years and was largely responsible for many operational successes. It is therefore not surprising that investors are reacting with shock to the news of his resignation," commented market expert Andreas Lipkow. "The footsteps are very big and a suitable successor must first be found. This is unlikely to prove easy."

Analysts Charles Weston from the Canadian bank RBC and Christian Ehmann from Warburg Research also emphasized Lanthaler's achievements. Weston wrote in his commentary ahead of the Borsen launch: "As CEO of Evotec for 15 years, Dr. Lanthaler was instrumental in growing the company's revenues by a factor of approximately 20 over this period." Weston emphasized Evotec's move away from clinical risk and expansion into advanced technologies with a recent bias towards antibody design and manufacturing.

However, both experts remain optimistic. Ehmann, for example, wrote: "The company is well positioned operationally." It is well on track to achieve not only its own forecasts for 2023, which were confirmed the previous evening, but also the targets for 2025.

Ehman also emphasized that Evotec had already divided the management tasks more broadly in order to alleviate concerns that the fate of the company was too heavily dependent on one person. In addition, Supervisory Board member Mario Polywka, who will now temporarily lead the company, knows Evotec well - after all, he used to run the day-to-day business./ck/tih/mis