Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-09-24
Form Type: DFAN14A
Source: 0001213900-25-091197
Chunk: 3

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-09-24
Form: DFAN14A
Chunk 3
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 (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.

A Flawed Process

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, would be interested in acquiring the Company. In fact, as the Company itself
has disclosed, at least two potential counterparties took it upon themselves to contact an unconflicted STAAR Board member to express
their interest in acquiring STAAR during the same month that STAAR was engaging with Alcon.

And yet, the Board took the lead of its Chair
and effectively shunned the inbound interest (and did not attempt to foster other interest), did not provide those two parties with diligence
materials or access to management, and did not invite them to submit