ANNUAL REPORT 2008/09 - Sonova

CEO’S COMMENTARY
ACHIEVING MARKET LEADERSHIP IN
A CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT
“We signifi cantly exceeded market growth and expanded
our market share to around 23%. This makes us the
world’s biggest producer of hearing systems according
to sales. We are developing our success story further,
focusing on innovation and customer benefi ts.”
The Sonova Group is pleased to report another excellent
result for the fi nancial year 2008/09. The diffi cult economic
environment resulted in demand for hearing systems
growing at a slower rate than in previous years – a trend
aff ecting the entire industry. Even so, we were able to increase
our sales to CHF 1.25 billion. In the fi nancial year
2008/09, sales rose 10.8% in local currencies. In terms
of organic growth, sales grew 7.8%. The main contributors
to this performance were dynamic sales in the business
(+25% in local currencies) and in the economy class (+18%
in local currencies). We once again sig nifi cantly exceeded
the overall growth rate of the hearing instrument industry,
which is estimated at around 2% for the reporting period,
and expanded our market share to around 23%. This makes
us the world’s biggest producer of hearing systems according
to sales. Particularly in these rather challenging
times, this is a clear sign that we are very well positioned
and that both hearing specialists and end customers appre
ciate the substantial benefi ts brought by our products.
4 CEO’S COMMENTARY
With an EBITA margin of 26.6%, which was somewhat
weaker than last year primarily due to negative currency
eff ects, the Sonova Group is one of the most profi table
companies in the industry. In anticipation that growth
might ease and exchange rates could become less favorable,
Sonova has launched a series of proactive measures
to trim costs across the Group. We will continue to improve
our cost base and lay a solid foundation for increasing
effi ciency and profi tability.
Innovation was the most important success factor for
Sonova during the fi nancial year 2008/09, and will continue
to be in the future. Last year we generated 62%
of sales with products less than two years old. Our commitment
to research and development is unrivalled
in the industry: during the fi nancial year 2008/09 we
invested CHF 93 million in R&D. Our high level of effi -
ciency is illustrated by the fact that it took only 12 months
to establish Phonak’s entire product portfolio of hearing