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17 Feb 2026
But the German optics giant is optimistic of a return to growth this year as demand in key market sector recovers.
Jenoptik has posted provisional financial results confirming a fall in annual sales revenues last year against a backdrop of geopolitical turmoil and reduced demand from key market sectors.
At €1.05 billion, the 2025 total was down 6 per cent on the previous year, with order intake at just under €1 billion, down 3 per cent.
Those figures reflect a challenging environment in the semiconductor and automotive markets in particular, both of which are major ones for the German photonics company.
Jenoptik had originally been hoping to post sales of €1.2 billion in 2025, before pushing back that target by one year. The firm’s latest announcement suggests that growth will return this year, although it does not identify a specific sales outlook.
Outgoing CEO Stefan Traeger, who is due to leave his position this month, said in a company release: “Jenoptik performed well in a generally difficult market environment in 2025.
“Despite an approximately 6 per cent decline in revenue, we were able to maintain our profitability at a good level with an EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization] margin of around 18.4 per cent due to cost-cutting measures and in spite of associated one-off expenses. We further significantly reduced our net debt.”
Growth period
The latest result means that former Zeiss and Leica Microsystems executive Traeger has overseen a rise in sales revenues from €685 million to the current total during nearly nine years as Jenoptik CEO, after taking over from Michael Mertin in summer 2017.
Traeger’s period in charge has included multiple reorganizations of the company, alongside the acquisitions of Prodomax Automation, Trioptics, SwissOptic, Berliner Glas Medical, and two machine vision companies, and a €100 million investment to double micro-optics production capacity in Dresden.
While sales targets for 2026 and a broader outlook on company prospects for the year will be presented with Jenoptik’s annual report on March 25, CFO Prisca Havranek-Kosicek said of the current situation:
“In a market environment that continues to be characterized by macroeconomic and political developments that are difficult to predict and thus by considerable uncertainty, we are optimistic that we will return to growth in 2026 thanks to our strong growth platforms in the core markets of semiconductors, life science and medical technology, measurement technology, and smart mobility. This is supported by improved demand at the beginning of this year.”
That positive end to the message is the result of what Jenoptik called a “fundamentally positive development” in the semiconductor equipment sector in recent weeks, partly as a result of the massive investments in data centers announced by US-based tech giants targeting AI dominance.
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