Germany’s Bayer said Wednesday it had set aside more money to deal with long-running legal woes related to weedkillers, even as investors cheered better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

The maker of drugs, seeds and crop chemicals said it had increased its provisions for litigation by more than 900 million euros ($1.0 billion) in the July-September quarter.

But the group’s operating profit before special items, closely watched by investors, rose sharply to 1.5 billion euros on sales of 9.66 billion euros, with its crop science division putting in a strong performance.

Bayer’s shares were up 4.5 percent in Frankfurt after the results were released.

The group has been hit with a flood of legal cases in the United States related to claims that the glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller caus

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