Message from the CEO

Dear readers,

Our innovation and broad range of solutions create value for consumers and enable us to offer a path to better hearing for people around the world, continually setting new standards in hearing performance, ease of use and design by regularly launching new advanced products and powerful eSolutions. A significant innovation for 2018/19 was the release of the Marvel™ technology platform. Marvel takes full advantage of the unique connectivity enabled by our SWORD™ (Sonova Wireless One Radio Digital) chip and combines it with the proven convenience of our rechargeable solutions.

We strive to expand access to hearing care by offering the industry’s broadest distribution network. We maintain a strategic focus on high growth markets, meeting the needs of their newly-empowered consumers with suitable product formats. In China, for example, we are expanding our distribution network, accelerating our China-specific innovation, and scaling up our education program for local professionals.

We also support people with hearing loss who have no access to hearing care through our Hear the World Foundation. This year the foundation provided funding, hearing aid technology, and expertise for 23 projects, including in Peru assessing the hearing of over 20,000 children, fitting hearing aids, and training 50 speech therapy students to become audiology technicians.

Of equal importance to us is our commitment to develop our employees through our professional leadership culture and proactive approach to employee engagement. This year, we conducted Sonova’s first anonymized employee survey, called HearMe. We are proud that 84% of the respondents reported feeling engaged through their work here at Sonova.

We continue to find ways to minimize our ecological impact, across all our business activities, through our comprehensive environmental program. In 2018/19, we were able to reduce our ratio of group-wide greenhouse gas emissions to revenues by 11.7% from the previous year, keeping us well on track to achieve our long-term goal.

These efforts have once again been recognized through our inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability and FTSE4Good Global indices for 2018. Our first-time selection to the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index shows that our commitment to equality and a comprehensive diversity and inclusion strategy is bearing fruit.

Sonova has been a signatory of the UN Global Compact since 2016, fully endorsing its ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. We also support the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, which define the global sustainable development agenda through 2030.

I invite you to read our Corporate Responsibility Report to learn more about our strategy and how we are contributing to these global goals through our own sustainability commitments.

Arnd Kaldowski
Chief Executive Officer