Foreword by the Executive Board

All four ZEISS segments grew over the past fiscal year. With its EUV (extreme ultraviolet) technology, the ZEISS Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology segment has already made a leap in innovation for the production of microchips. The segment continues to enable the semiconductor sector with its High-NA EUV lithography, the newest EUV product generation, to create the next microchip generations. In addition, the ZEISS segments Industrial Quality & Research and Medical Technology grew considerably in the past fiscal year. The Consumer Markets segment achieved stable growth despite the difficult market environment.

ZEISS is synonymous with one thing above everything else — and that is innovation. This characteristic has made ZEISS a world-leading technology company over the past 177 years. ZEISS is not only advancing the world of optics with our solutions. All four ZEISS segments are at the forefront of digitalization with their innovations. ZEISS develops solutions for semiconductor manufacturing technology which allows chip manufacturers all over the world to produce ever smaller, more powerful and energy-efficient storage microchips. From vision care and photography through to microscopy, metrology, and medical technology, ZEISS is developing solutions for the digital world.

We have a very successful financial year under our belt - measured in terms of revenue, innovative strength and growth. Success in the future means seizing every opportunity which opens success up to us and setting ourselves up for the future. As a foundation company, we benefit from sustainable development and long-term prospects. We build on our distinctive innovative strength. To ensure this continues, we have invested more in research and development, personnel development and infrastructure than ever before.

At 15 percent of revenue, ZEISS spent a record 1.5 billion euros on research and development in the past fiscal year. In the ZEISS Group's research and development departments, more than 6,200 employees work every day to further expand our innovative strength. This is reflected in our many patents which totaled around 11,300 worldwide as of the reporting date.

With around 43,000 employees, ZEISS is bigger than ever. Almost 18,000 new employees joined the global Team ZEISS in the past seven years alone. And we continue to work on attracting talent to our teams around the world. We are creating a working environment for them in which they can contribute their strengths, develop themselves and advance society. This also includes creating modern workplaces. ZEISS is making targeted investments in the expansion of infrastructure. Over the next five years, ZEISS plans to invest around 3.5 billion euros in infrastructure worldwide. A large proportion of this will flow into infrastructure projects in Germany alone, such as the further expansion of the Oberkochen site and new sites in Aalen-Ebnat (Baden Württemberg) and at the site of the company’s founding in Jena (Thuringia).

ZEISS has been successful for many years with innovative and market-defining products that have secured us world market leadership in many areas. As an innovation-driven company, this success provides us with sustainable and profitable growth in our markets. We want to continue on our successful course in the future. We have set the right priorities for this with our group-wide strategy - #agenda25 - and aligned it with important global megatrends such as digitalization. This way, we can secure and promote growth and market success.

However, growth always brings new challenges. And, because we want to continue to grow sustainably and profitably in the future, we initiated a comprehensive company transformation process. Part of this transformation is about allowing us to become even more efficient and robust in our processes and to make decisions in an increasingly data- and process-driven way. This will allow us to realize our full potential and achieve significantly more with the same effort and expense and secure our growth trajectory through higher customer satisfaction and greater market success.

We are creating a company that adds value for its customers, that offers its employees an inspiring working environment and that provides its business units with room for productive work processes. In this way, we as a company will be better equipped to deal with the unknowns of a dynamic and varying market environment.

Our high level of innovation and extensive investments in our future, our strategic focus defined in #agenda25, the transformation we have initiated to become a data- and process-driven company and our approximately 43,000 employees worldwide altogether form the foundation for the continued sustainable and profitable growth of ZEISS. At the same time, all of this helps us to remain resilient in rapidly changing times. After all, the last few years have shown us how difficult it is to assess the geopolitical situation, how quickly it can change and the complex challenges that can arise from it.

ZEISS is successful today. Success in the future depends on us continuing to keep an eye on geopolitical risks while, at the same time, realizing our potential and maximizing every opportunity. We believe that our strategic agenda and interconnected transformation activities will enable us not only to evolve, but also to continue to grow. We are optimistic about the future.