Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-10-08
Form Type: DFAN14A
Source: 0001213900-25-097463
Chunk: 2

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-10-08
Form: DFAN14A
Chunk 2
---
 deliver
significant and enduring value for shareholders. Just a few short months ago, it appeared that STAAR’s Board of Directors and management
team shared our confidence. In fact, management spent most of 2025 publicly touting the progress on its turnaround plan,
while assuring investors that short-term challenges were abating and that STAAR’s future was bright.

That was before the management team realized
it could make tens of millions of dollars quickly by selling STAAR to Alcon, even for a woefully inadequate price of $28 per share.

As recently as July 23, 2025, management projected
that the Company would generate twice as much EBITDA in 2027 as the most profitable year in STAAR’s history. Then,
just ten days later — notably, after Alcon agreed to pay $28 per share for STAAR, triggering the accelerated vesting of management’s
unearned shares and $55 million in compensation upon closing of the deal — management suddenly revised its forecast, sharply reducing
its 2027 EBITDA forecast by 20%.

Despite what the Board now claims, creating
two sets of projections within ten days during an M&A process — one for enticing a counterparty to bid, and another to justify
an otherwise inadequate price that resulted from a cursory and failed negotiation — is highly unusual and suspect.

We believe that STAAR’s management lowered
its projections to justify a low-ball valuation in a deal that would yield great financial rewards for management but not STAAR’s
shareholders. The Company’s CEO alone stands to receive approximately $24 million in compensation if the deal closes, even though
he had been serving in his role for just five months at the time the agreement with Alcon was signed.

The Company also now admits that the Board’s
financial advisor conjured out of whole cloth its critical cost-of-capital assumption, which had the effect of dramatically ratcheting
down the range of STAAR’s “fair” value. According to the Company’s own statements, its financial advisor did
not properly derive that assumption from a mathematical model or market observation, as is conventional.

| 1 
 2 | Source:                                                                                        
 STAAR Q1 2025 earnings call, May 7, 2025.                                                      
 Source:                                                                                        
 William Blair Growth Stock Conference, June 4, 2025.                                           |
|:--|:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 3 | Source:                                                                                        
 STAAR proxy statement on Form DEFM14A,