Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-09-29
Form Type: DFAN14A
Source: 0001213900-25-093211
Chunk: 5

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-09-29
Form: DFAN14A
Chunk 5
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 STAAR executed poorly in China, causing STAAR’s revenue to temporarily decline and profits
to evaporate. However, as STAAR and some of its customers have recently acknowledged, these issues are abating. The Company is now forecasting
a return to growth and profitability.

Given the foreseeable turnaround
in STAAR’s prospects, we are disappointed that STAAR’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) decided to sell the Company
now, and especially at a price that does not reflect the value and future promise of the business. In our view, the acquisition (the “Proposed
Merger”) of the Company by Alcon would prematurely end STAAR’s tenure in the public markets at a woefully inadequate price
and before the Company realizes its immense potential.

In our view, STAAR remains a
fundamentally sound company, with nearly $200 million in cash, no debt, leading technology, a privileged position in large markets, and
a clear path to growth and profit margin expansion in the near term. We do not believe there was any imperative for the Board to sell
the Company amid a temporarily strained macroeconomic environment, particularly while STAAR’s stock was trading at a depressed valuation
due to transitory issues in one of its markets. And there certainly was no imperative for the Board to do so before disclosing the substantial
turnaround in the Company’s prospects in its second- quarter earnings report, as well as management’s financial projections.
These projections, which were only released when STAAR filed its preliminary proxy statement, were well above the consensus of analysts’
estimates.

156 West 56 Street,
3 Floor, New York, New York 10019

Tel: 212 508-5735 Fax: 212 508-5756

Even more troubling, the Board
made the consequential decision to sell the Company following a hasty and limited process, which took place in less than a month and did
not involve proactive outreach to even a single alternative counterparty. STAAR granted Alcon the privileged position of being the only
party with access to diligence materials and management

— perhaps because STAAR’s
Chair had a longstanding consulting relationship with Alcon, one that paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars over a seven-year period
and which, as best we can tell, was not discussed with her fellow Board members until we insisted on it, just days before the transaction
was announced.

The Board should have realized
that parties other than the Board’s seemingly preferred buyer, Alcon,