After years of constant growth, the corona pandemic slowed the Zeiss optics company in the past fiscal year. Sales fell in the financial year 2019 / 2020 by two percent to 6.3 billion euros, according to the CEO Karl Lamprecht said on Thursday at a digital press conference in Oberkochen (Ostalbkreis). This ended a ten-year series of increasing sales. The profit decreased by 132 million euros to 616 million euros.

Only one division with a clear plus Not all corporate divisions were from the Corona Pandemic equally affected. In the field of semiconductor manufacturing optics, sales rose by 000 percent, while the other divisions of the group recorded sales losses of between 6 and 9 percent . The consequences of the pandemic were felt most strongly in the Consumer Markets division. As a result of shop closures, sales of eyeglass lenses, for example, were 9 percent below the previous year’s figure.

However, Lamprecht was convinced that Zeiss’s growth path would be medium- and is unbroken in the long term and the group will emerge stronger from the crisis. The company’s broad portfolio and global positioning helped the company during the pandemic. The group generated around 90 percent of sales abroad. In the past fiscal year, China replaced the USA as the largest sales market for the first time.

Despite the Corona crisis, the number of employees rose by 3 percent to 32. 200, of which round 13. 000 work in Germany. The group, headquartered in Oberkochen, expects the corona pandemic to have an impact in the coming financial year and is again assuming a slight increase in sales.

(mho)