2025 has been a challenging year for the global hearing healthcare market, which continued to be impacted by macroeconomic uncertainties. These dynamics have, unfortunately, reduced the willingness to invest and resulted in delayed purchases. In turn, this led to lower-than-normal growth in the hearing healthcare market, especially in the US, and thus intense competition.
Being one of the market leaders, we were influenced by these market dynamics in 2025. The Group saw organic revenue growth of 2% and an operating profit before special items of DKK 3.96 billion. Our Hearing Care business area saw particularly good performance with revenue growth of 10% in local currencies.
We are pleased that the Group delivered results in line with our updated expectations and maintained industry-leading margins. However, we cannot be fully satisfied with a year where we had to revise our outlook downward twice. Against the backdrop of a disappointing 2025, we have therefore presented an ambitious plan for 2026 for Demant to improve profitability in the coming years. I will get back to this plan below but let me first share highlights on how we delivered on our strategy through consistent execution in 2025.
Fundamentals intact
Even windy conditions do not change our view of the fundamentals of our industry – a growing need for hearing healthcare driven by increasing elderly populations all over the world. Our business is based on a long-term and well-defined demand for state-of-the-art hearing aids, diagnostic solutions and personalised care. Our strategy is clear: We want to become the leading hearing healthcare company, driven by our ambition to improve as many lives as possible and a purpose of creating life-changing hearing health.
Our strategy to become the leader in hearing healthcare guided our choices and decisions throughout the year. We achieved significant milestones.
Largest expansion in our history
We proudly announced and finalised the acquisition of KIND, one of the world’s leading retailers of hearing aids. This – our largest-ever – expansion of our global network of hearing care clinics complements our long-term aspirations of helping more people with hearing loss through personalised care.
The KIND acquisition makes Demant a leading retailer in Germany and will increase the Group’s revenue by almost 10%. Acquiring KIND is yet another strategic step for us to further consolidate and grow our Hearing Care business. By adding a broad national clinic network and a very strong brand in Germany, we are now closer to even more users. Combined with Demant’s existing global clinic footprint, we now have more than 4,500 clinics globally. With this transaction, I am delighted to have welcomed more than 3,000 new employees to the Demant Group, now totalling approximately 26,000 life-changers.
Even though numbers speak volumes, they do not necessarily tell the full story. By combining Demant’s innovative hearing aid technology and diagnostic equipment with professionalised hearing care, we cover the entire journey – from diagnosis and acceptance of hearing loss to getting a hearing aid – helping more people, faster and better. Helping more people is also about working to lower the age threshold for starting hearing treatment, meeting people physically and making hearing treatment easy and accessible.
Unprecedented innovation
In 2025, we stayed on course by offering a clear and focused hearing aid portfolio. We expanded our AI-driven product range with even more styles, including a truly compelling new product. Few moments capture our purpose as clearly as the launch of Oticon Zeal. The unseen in-ear hearing aid unites discretion with full functionality and directly addresses a classic barrier for first-time hearing aid users.
People with hearing loss want discreet solutions, but not at the expense of sound quality, reliability, rechargeability or connectivity. Bringing AI-driven sound processing, modern rechargeability and broad smartphone connectivity together in a small and ultra discreet device, Oticon Zeal is an “addictive” first encounter.
In addition to Oticon’s activities, our other hearing aid brands, Bernafon and Philips, also launched products during the year. Hearing Aids generated organic revenue growth of 2% in 2025, and we expect the business area to see improvements in 2026. This will be driven by Oticon Zeal and additional new products to be launched during the year, as we prepare for an intense competitive environment where everyone will fight even harder to compensate for the soft market.
Strengthening Diagnostics
The macroeconomic uncertainties also impacted performance in our Diagnostics business area. Despite a flat market, we managed to deliver organic revenue growth of 1% due to good commercial performance in the fourth quarter. We also saw strong tender wins and growth in service and consumables during the year.
Throughout 2025, we have worked to solidify Diagnostics global leadership position through a multi-brand strategy and key account wins. We have implemented structural changes in the organisation to enable scale and efficiency, positioning the business area to further growth. This includes a sharpening of our distribution activities and innovative product portfolio.
Focused on hearing healthcare
The year stood out as significant in terms of our transition into a focused hearing healthcare company. We signed an agreement to sell Oticon Medical in the fourth quarter, a transaction which is expected to close in the beginning of 2026. It has been a key priority to find a good new owner of the business, ensuring that patients will also be supported going forward. I am very happy that we have succeeded in doing so.
In late December, we wrapped up our divestment activities in 2025 when we signed an agreement to sell our audio and headset business, EPOS.
Lives improved
Why is it important to be focused? In addition to strengthening our core business, helping people with hearing loss return to life-changing conversations and interaction with family, colleagues and friends is what drives us.
In 2025, 1.6 million people were tested for hearing loss in our clinics, and we improved more than 12.1 million lives with Demant’s hearing aids. Thanks to higher unit sales in Hearing Aids and supported by our acquisition of KIND, we are on track to deliver on our impact targets: By 2030, we want to improve more than 16 million lives and raise awareness about hearing loss by testing more than 2 million people in our clinics.
As we deliver on our core commitment to society, creating life-changing hearing health, we also take pride in making progress on our targets for the broader ESG areas (Environment, Society, Governance). In 2025, we thus reached an important emissions milestone: We used 53% renewable electricity, thus delivering on our target of 50% renewable electricity in own operations by 2025. We also made good progress on our gender balance target for the Group, reaching a female/male ratio of 33%/67%, respectively, in our top management.
An even stronger future
Also in 2025, we continued building the foundation for an even stronger Demant for the benefit of our customers, employees and shareholders.
Ensuring cost-effective best practices and scalable solutions across the business is vital for operating the Demant Group even more effectively, as we continue to grow.
This brings me back to our plan for 2026: While we remain optimistic about the underlying need for hearing treatment, we expect no signs of changes to the soft global hearing healthcare market and intense competition. In line with our strategy and financial goals, we are executing a company‑wide initiative that will make Demant more effective and lower cost growth in the coming years. By optimising and tightly prioritising our cost base, we will improve profitability in an expanding business. And we will be keeping customer focus and service high while continuing to deliver innovative new solutions.
These will be key topics for 2026 in order for Demant to be able to create long-term value for all our stakeholders, who put their faith in our company.
Thank you to our customers, users and shareholders, for your trust throughout the year. And thank you to our employees for your continued engagement and dedication to delivering life-changing hearing healthcare.
Søren Nielsen