Letter to the shareholders

Dear Shareholders

When we look back on the development of our Company over the past few years, it is apparent just how challenging this journey is.

First of all, like many other companies, we are exposed to the prevailing external challenges. These include geopolitical conflicts that put our global presence to the test, as well as new regulatory requirements that can lead to delays and increased costs. The US tariffs also pose a risk to our growth opportunities in key markets.

At the same time, we are confronted with various internal difficulties – many of which are self-inflicted and which we will have to overcome ourselves. Instead of focusing on the needs of our customers, we are often too preoccupied with internal projects and initiatives that distract us from our actual goal. Our organizational complexity can inhibit our agility and efficiency in some cases. We remain a complex organization with structures and processes that are not designed for responding quickly and flexibly.

Consequently, we are not exploiting our full potential, as the figures of the Carl Zeiss Meditec Group for fiscal year 2024/25 show. We were able to generate revenue of €2.2bn. Our EBITA is €258m, which corresponds to growth of around 4%. In organic terms, our growth – adjusted for acquisitions and currency effects – is around 3%. These results do not live up to the ambitions and goals we have set ourselves. However, we are firmly convinced that we are in a position to overcome the challenges and improve our financial performance again. We urgently need to set a new course which will allow us to build on previous successes.

We are strengthening our Commercial Excellence in order to secure our future success. We have an innovative and extensive product portfolio which holds great potential for increasing revenue. However, we have not succeeded in exploiting this potential in recent years, which is why we are now realigning our sales and service organization. By appointing a Chief Commercial Officer, we have already taken a decisive first step towards strengthening our customer relationships and establishing a stronger presence in our markets. Our aim in the new fiscal year is to use clearly focused local-market strategies to achieve growth with our existing portfolio, superior services and new business models.

Our global sales organizations intend to deploy new business models as a means of responding to the different market conditions and seizing market opportunities. Our SMILE^® technology, for example, is an important growth driver – not only in China, but also in Japan, the US and Europe. The recurring revenue that we generate – with treatment packs for refractive surgery, and also with consumables for cataract and retinal surgery – are increasing our resilience. In the 2024/25 fiscal year, we received market approval in China for DORC’s ILM-Blue^®. Since its market launch in 2010, the vital dye has already been used in more than 900,000 vitreoretinal surgery procedures worldwide. Another successful product in terms of recurring revenue is DORC’s VisionBlue^® dye, which has already helped surgeons in more than 10 million cataract operations worldwide.

Our intraocular lenses (IOLs) also help increase our resilience. In combination with appropriate market strategies and expected market approvals, our portfolio of standard and premium lenses for a wide range of visual needs will allow us to generate significant growth .

In innovation projects, too, we place our customers at the heart of our activities. It is important for us to focus on development projects that can be realized in the short term, but we must also prioritize research initiatives which address specific customer needs and benefit the well-being of patients. Customer-focused innovation will be the driver and the key to our long-term and sustained economic success.

From our discussions with doctors, it is clear that we are pursuing the right strategy with our workflow solutions which enable networked and efficient clinical workflows. The ZEISS workflows represent a blueprint which our global sales organization can use for placing our products and solutions in clinics and practices in response to specific market requirements. However, here too, it will be important for us to align our digital solutions more closely with the actual needs of our customers for our future success. We have already made the first organizational changes here.

We are issuing a cautiously positive forecast for the 2025/26 fiscal year. The global macroeconomic environment – characterized above all by geopolitical conflicts, trade barriers and regulatory changes – remains extremely challenging. Nevertheless, as we described above, we see opportunities for growth, and we are tackling these proactively.

The cooperation among, and the expertise of, our employees worldwide provide the foundation for the future success of the Carl Zeiss Meditec Group. We are delighted that our team has been nominated for the German Future Prize for the development of the high-precision SMILE technology, putting us among the very best in the field in 2025. The Federal President’s Award for Technology and Innovation is one of the most prestigious science awards in Germany, and winning it raises the profile of our SMILE technology beyond its commercial success. The nomination is an honor for us and proof that we as a team are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible. In the ZEISS Expert Talk with Dr. Rupal Shah from India and Dr. Eui-Sang Chung from South Korea, it became clear how we have revolutionized refractive surgery with our SMILE technology.

You, our investors – and your trust – are of great importance to us. Together with you, we want to return to our former success and shape the sustained growth of Carl Zeiss Meditec. This will enable doctors to continue improving their patients’ quality of life with our solutions in the future.