The very good start to 2021 continued throughout the year. Dental practices operated with robust patient flows. Pandemic-related restrictions, which were still limiting spending alternatives such as travel to a certain extent, left some consumers with more disposable income to spend on specialty dental treatments. Specifically, the first half of 2020, heavily impacted by the pandemic, represented a very low comparative period when contrasted with the first half of 2021. This partially explains the high growth rates across all regions. Strong growth was enhanced by our ability to adapt to the changing environment, paired with our innovative solutions. We successfully launched our tissue level implant TLX, further established our BLX implant, relaunched our digital solution Virtuo Vivo, launched the new orthodontics software ClearPilot and introduced our clear aligner material ClearQuartz in Europe. Overall in 2021, we gained market share by growing the current customer base, gaining new customers and expanding geographically. We believe our market share in implantology increased from approximately 27% in 2020 to approximately 29% in 2021, further establishing us as a leader in the industry.

On our way to this record result, impacting more than 3.7 million smiles in 2021, we also faced major challenges this year. Winter storms, floods in production sites and the significant impact of the pandemic on raw material supplies had implications for our business. Thanks to our operation and procurement teams, we successfully navigated these challenges, preventing major consequences for our customers.

This result was only possible thanks to our people. Our strong company culture – our number one priority for the past few years – has emerged as our most important competitive advantage. It is a key enabler in our ability to perform and has helped us to drive strong growth by capturing opportunities and remaining resilient and proactive in challenging times. Our vibrant corporate culture energizes our colleagues, attracts new talent, increases loyalty and inspires us to create our future. Our employee engagement score of 80 in 2021 places the Group in the top 25% of companies worldwide.

OUR PURPOSE, VISION, MISSION AND BELIEFS FURTHER DEFINED IN 2021
As our environment keeps changing at an ever-faster pace, we worked extensively to evolve the foundation of our company culture and our overall journey as a company. We sharpened our purpose and vision and clearly redefined our mission and beliefs, as they guide our day-to-day decisions and actions for the future. Our purpose is to unlock the potential of people’s lives as we envision a world where oral health is a source of confidence.

We will achieve this with our mission to be the most customer-focused and innovative oral care company in the world. We believe culture is at the heart of a successful company, defining how we do business. Our beliefs shape our behaviors, behavior drives culture and culture drives results, helping us to deliver on our promise to impact more smiles every year.

EVOLVED STRATEGIC COMPASS TO ACHIEVE 10 MILLION SMILES PER YEAR
As a company, we underwent a comprehensive assessment involving internal and external stakeholders centering on the four Ps – People, Purpose, Planet and Performance. By identifying current market trends among customers, health consumers, product technologies and within the socio-political landscape we developed our evolved strategy. It will ensure we achieve our growth and revenue ambition of CHF 5 billion and our goal to impact 10 million smiles per year by 2030.

The new strategy reflects three major shifts. First, we have to evolve from being product-centric to customer-centric, with more emphasis on services and solutions. Secondly, we are already on our way to shifting from an implant company to a digitally-powered oral care company – meaning that we’ll undergo a digital transformation. And thirdly, the business environment is changing. We will evolve from a single-business model focus to a multiple-business model company in order to address different stakeholders, including health consumers. In summary, we will focus on culture, digital transformation and sustainability to enable the four strategic priorities of expanding implant leadership, becoming a leader in orthodontics, winning strategic target groups and building consumer presence. To strengthen our organization for our future journey, we continued to invest in building our capacity for innovation, expanding the business and enhancing our manufacturing capabilities this year.

MAJOR INVESTMENTS FOR THE FUTURE POSITION THE GROUP FOR FUTURE INNOVATION
To maintain the momentum of driving disruptive innovation in implantology, we formed the Implantology Business Unit combining research and development (R&D) as well as marketing. It will allow us to tap into the full potential of our multi-brand implant strategy, increase our efficiency, focus even more on our customer obsession and further accelerate our speed to innovation. Our implantology pipeline includes the Neodent ZI as well as the Anthogyr X3 implants, which will both be launched in 2022. In addition, we invested in our future capacity for innovation. We acquired a 39% stake in mininavident to develop its technology with the aim of providing a best-in-class platform for guided surgery. We believe that dynamic surgical navigation is the next step in the digitalization of dental surgery.

DIGITAL AS A KEY DRIVER OF OUR TRANSFORMATION
On the digital side, we have made major progress in advancing our unified platform approach, with the aim to be at the forefront of providing an exceptional customer experience for dental workflows in orthodontics and implantology. We also became a founding partner of 3Shape Unite, a new open platform that provides simple and highly efficient access to services and solutions for clinicians and laboratories.

STRENGTHENING FUTURE BUSINESS EXPANSION
The global market for clear aligners continues to offer strong growth opportunities and is increasingly driven by direct-to-consumer marketing and online service providers who offer treatment packages. In addition to DrSmile, a leading provider of doctor-led direct-to-consumer clear aligner treatment solutions in Europe, we acquired Smilink, one of the fastest-growing providers of orthodontics solutions in Brazil.

In December 2021, the Group signed an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in Nihon Implant, a leading dental implant treatment concierge in Japan. The acquisition supports the Group’s strategic priority to build a consumer presence and helps expand access to healthcare consumers.

Furthermore, our newly established partnerships with Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) such as Western Dental and Aspen were instrumental and will further support our future growth.

EDUCATION IS A KEY LEVER TO ADVANCE ORAL CARE FOR PATIENTS
With education still a key enabler to broadening access to treatment for patients worldwide, we heavily invested in our high-quality internal training programs and supported our most important partner – the International Team of Implantology (ITI). In orthodontics, we recently launched our Ortho Campus, a comprehensive collection of tools and curricula for professionals to ensure treatment success.

EXPANDING OUR PRESENCE AROUND THE WORLD
While our implantology premium brand is already available in more than 100 countries, our value brands expanded. The Neodent brand was further established in the US and launched in Europe, meaning that it is now available in more than 80 countries. Our challenger brands Medentika and Anthogyr further established their presence, becoming available in more than 60 countries. Building on our long-term commitment, we extended our reach in China across our brands.

Geographical expansion has also been important for our orthodontics business. ClearCorrect is currently available in 46 countries and is due to be launched in eight further countries in 2022. It is manufactured in the US, Brazil and Europe. This means our production sites are close to where our solutions are available, giving us a competitive advantage as this speeds up delivery times. Expanding our footprint will further establish ClearCorrect as a global brand.

INVESTMENTS TO ENHANCE OUR INNOVATION POWER AND MANUFACTURING CAPABILITIES
In 2021, we made the decision to invest more than CHF 300 million in our R&D and manufacturing facilities in the coming years. This will ensure we can meet existing and future demand, catering for our future growth and innovation capacity.

In the coming years, we will build our China Campus in Shanghai and a new Group Technology and Innovation Center in Arlesheim near Basel, Switzerland and further expand manufacturing in Villeret, Switzerland, Mansfield, US and Latin America.

NEW SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK
The Group brings lasting improvements to people’s lives and its success is built upon acting sustainably – today and for future generations. For many decades, we have been building a sustainable business, creating long-lasting value for all stakeholders in a responsible manner. In March 2021, we established a sustainability task force at Board level. The goal was to define our sustainability targets, roadmap and deliverables by 2022. Today, sustainability is a strategic priority and helps guide our company in terms of efficient use of resources and responsible business practices.

It also helps us secure the best talent, strategically prioritize our community activities and engage with our stakeholders across the value chain. We exist to bring lasting improvements to people’s lives and our success is built on our sustainability, which paves the way for us to become a role model for our industry. Our strong focus on sustainability is also the reason why we have chosen to have a more integrated reporting approach going forward.

The Sustainability Framework is built upon the commitments to Advancing oral care, Empowering people, Caring for the planet and society and Acting with responsibility to deliver on our purpose ‘to unlock the potential of people’s lives’. The major targets include: impacting 10 million smiles per year by 2030, providing 35% of educational activities in low- and middle-income countries, having 50% of leadership positions held by females by 2026, 100% renewable electricity by 2024 and to set a net zero carbon emissions target in 2022.

Our commitment also encompassed over 30 charitable projects in 2021, offering dental care and humanitarian relief.

COMMITTED TO CREATING SUSTAINABLE VALUE FOR OUR SHAREHOLDERS
For the first time, we broke through the CHF 2 billion turnover threshold and reached a market capitalization of over CHF 30 billion in 2021 with healthy operating margins of 27.4% which were inflated by fewer than usual travel and marketing expenses. Investing in sustainable growth was our focus and it will remain so going forward.

Some changes will be made to the Board of Directors. Sebastian Burckhardt has decided not to stand for re-election. He has been a member of the board since 2002 and made outstanding contributions, bringing in his extensive knowledge in corporate law.

The Board of Directors will propose the election of Nadia Tarolli Schmidt as a new Board member at the Annual General Meeting of the shareholders on 5 April 2022. Nadia studied law at the University of Basel. She is a partner at the business law firm VISCHER AG with a special focus on finance, healthcare and life sciences. Straumann’s Board of Directors will benefit from Nadia’s expertise as an independent lawyer and her experience on several other corporate boards as well as in financial matters. As a new non-executive member, the election of Nadia will further contribute to the balance of the independence of the Board.

Based on the 2021 results, the Board of Directors proposes to increase the dividend to CHF 6.75 per share, payable on 11 April 2022. We intend to continue increasing the dividend in the future, subject to further good performance.

LONG-TERM GROWTH AMBITION (BARRING UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES)
Considering the significant expansion of our business and geographical footprint, we are now operating in a potential CHF 18 billion market. In order to achieve the Group’s ambition of CHF 5 billion revenue by 2030, an average organic growth rate of at least 10% annually is needed. The strategy will require continuing investments in growth leading to a core EBIT margin in the range of 25–30% (at constant FX rates) in the coming years, depending on the size of the investments. In general, the Group will continue to provide guidance on a yearly basis and aims to continuously increase its gross dividend.

On behalf of the Board and our colleagues, we would like to thank you, our shareholders, for your ongoing support and confidence in our company.

Yours sincerely,

15 February 2022