STAAR SURGICAL CO

Shareholders and Board of Directors

STAAR Surgical Company

Lake Forest, California

Opinion on the Consolidated Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of STAAR Surgical Company (the “Company”) as of January 2, 2026 and December 27, 2024, the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive income (loss), stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for each of the three fiscal years in the period ended January 2, 2026, and the related notes and financial statement schedule listed in the accompanying index (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at January 2, 2026 and December 27, 2024, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three fiscal years in the period ended January 2, 2026, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”), the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of January 2, 2026, based on criteria established in Internal Control – Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (“COSO”) and our report dated March 3, 2026 expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Income Tax Provision

As described in Notes 1 and 10 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company operates in multiple international markets and is subject to income taxes in the U.S. and numerous foreign jurisdictions. The tax provision is based on management’s understanding of current enacted tax laws and tax rates of each tax jurisdiction with consideration of intercompany transactions across multiple tax jurisdictions.

We identified the accounting for the Company’s income tax provision as a critical audit matter due to the complexity involved in: (i) the application of relevant tax laws and regulations in calculating domestic taxable income and domestic deferred tax balances and (ii) the application of transfer pricing guidelines to various intercompany transactions. Auditing these elements required challenging auditor judgment and an increased extent of audit effort, including the use of income tax professionals and professionals with knowledge and skills in transfer pricing.

The primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

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Testing the completeness and accuracy of the underlying data used to determine domestic taxable income, domestic deferred tax balances and transfer pricing adjustments.

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Utilizing income tax professionals to assist in evaluating management’s application of relevant domestic tax laws, enacted tax rates and regulations in calculating domestic taxable income and domestic deferred tax balances.

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Utilizing professionals with knowledge and skills in transfer pricing to assist in evaluating management’s application of the transfer pricing guidelines to various intercompany transactions.

/s/ BDO USA, P.C.

We have served as the Company's auditor since 1993.

Los Angeles, California

March 3, 2026