Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-024813
Chunk: 49

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 49
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 senior management and other key employees. The loss or incapacity of existing members of our executive management team could negatively impact our operations, particularly if we experience difficulties in hiring qualified successors. Further, it could be particularly detrimental if any key employee or employees went to work for a competitor. Also, our future success depends on our ability to identify, attract, train, motivate and retain other highly skilled personnel. Failure to do so may adversely affect our results. We do not maintain insurance policies to cover the cost of replacing the services of any of our key employees who may unexpectedly die or become disabled.

We compete with much larger companies and low-cost Asian manufacturers.

We believe our primary competition in selling the ICL to patients seeking surgery to correct refractive conditions lies not in similar products to the ICL, but in laser surgical procedures.  Alcon (formerly a part of Novartis), Johnson 

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& Johnson (formerly Advanced Medical Optics or AMO), Bausch Health Companies (formerly Valeant, Bausch & Lomb or B+L), and Carl Zeiss Meditec AG, all market lasers for corneal refractive surgery and promote their sales worldwide. Each of these companies has much greater financial, technical, marketing and distribution resources and brand name recognition than we do, and some of them have large international markets for a full suite of ophthalmic products. Their greater resources for research, development and marketing, and their greater capacity to offer comprehensive products and equipment to providers, makes for intense competition. We also face competition from other phakic implantable lenses, including lenses made by Biotech Vision Care, Care Group, Eyebright, and Ophtec. Increasingly, competitors from Asia are beginning to appear in some markets with their low-cost version of an implantable contact lens, which competes with our ICL. With our commercial success with the ICL, additional companies may seek to enter the refractive phakic intraocular lens market.

We could experience losses due to product liability claims.

We have been subject to product liability claims in the past and may experience such claims in the future. Product liability claims against us may not be covered, may exceed the coverage limits of our insurance policies or cause us to record a loss in excess of our deductible. A product liability claim that exceeds our insurance coverage could materially harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Even if an insurance policy covers a product liability loss, we must generally pay for losses until they reach the level of the policy’s stated