Strategy and goals
Committed to life
At Fresenius, we live up to our promise of being committed to life. We save and improve human lives with affordable, accessible, and innovative healthcare products and the highest quality in clinical care. In doing so, we consider significant paradigm shifts in the healthcare environment with regards to biologic products and therapies, technological change, and new forms of data generation, processing, and usage.
Patients are always in the focus of our activities. Our vision is to be the trusted, market-leading healthcare company that unites cutting-edge technology and human care to shape next-level therapies. Our portfolio targets three platforms: (Bio)Pharma – including clinical nutrition, MedTech, and Care Provision. With these platforms, we cater to major trends in healthcare and are becoming a more therapy-focused company. The health and quality of life of our patients is at the core. At the same time, our platforms address attractive value pools in healthcare, which will provide opportunities for future profitable growth. Hence, we orient our portfolio towards businesses that enable a strong focus on margins and capital returns, and the highest ambitions for operational excellence and competitiveness.
Fresenius operates in key healthcare areas. We continuously develop our business segments and strive to assume leading positions in system-critical healthcare markets and segments.
At the same time, we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards of quality and integrity. All of our business segments make an overall contribution to increasing the quality, affordability, and efficiency of healthcare as well as patient satisfaction. At the same time, we care for our environment by protecting nature and using its resources carefully.
Fresenius Kabi’s commitment is to improving the quality of life of its patients. The quality and safety of its products and services is thus of paramount importance to Fresenius Kabi.
Fresenius Helios hospitals are characterized by high standards of treatment quality, hygiene, patient safety, and quality of care.
At Fresenius, we combine our medical expertise with extensive production capacities, and clinical practice with technology know-how to continuously improve therapies for our patients. We will continue building on our strength in technology, our competence and quality in patient care, and our ability to manufacture cost-effectively. Developing products and systems that provide a high level of safety and user-friendliness and enable tailoring to individual patient needs is an inherent part of our strategy of sustainable and profitable growth. We plan to develop more effective products and treatment methods in order to offer best-in-class medical standards. Digitalization is playing an increasingly important role – whether it is in healthcare facilities or in production. It drives innovative technologies and treatment concepts and can contribute to solving numerous challenges in the healthcare system.
The commitment of our more than 178,000 employees worldwide is key for the success and sustained growth of Fresenius. We firmly believe in a culture of diversity, as we are convinced that different perspectives, opinions, experiences, and values enable Fresenius to continue successfully growing as a global healthcare company.
To tackle the upcoming challenges and be able to continue to grow as a company, attracting new employees is key. Not only do we try to attract new talent, but also do everything we can to retain and develop our employees over the long term. We offer a variety of flexible working-time models and incentive programs to ensure that our long-term needs for highly qualified employees are met. Furthermore, we offer our employees attractive opportunities to develop their careers in an international and dynamic environment.
In fiscal year 2025, there was no change in the Group’s strategy.
Executing segment strategies
The Fresenius Group offers a broad spectrum of system-critical products and services for the health and quality of life of our patients. Our business segments hold leading positions in key areas of healthcare, and all of them are continuing to execute their respective strategic priorities to sustain leadership and contribute significantly to the benefit of healthcare systems. At the level of the Fresenius Group, we manage the strategic direction of the Group, and orient our portfolio towards value-maximizing business areas and maximum patient impact.
With its Vision 2026, Fresenius Kabi has developed a strategic plan to transform the company for the next decade and to better capture new growth opportunities. Fresenius Kabi will continue to focus on high-quality products for critically and chronically ill patients. Within this clear direction, Fresenius Kabi has defined three growth vectors, alongside the strengthening of the resilience of our volume businesses (3+1 strategy). The growth vectors are:
the broadening of our biopharmaceutical offering,
further rollout of clinical nutrition,
expansion in the MedTech area.
We consistently pursued our business strategies in fiscal year 2025. Fresenius Kabi and mAbxience (acquired in 2022) form a complete, vertically integrated biopharmaceutical business that holds a strong portfolio and pipeline, provides extensive and cost-efficient manufacturing, and is strengthening the targeted commercial footprint in Fresenius Kabi’s and mAbxience’s target regions. In addition, Fresenius Kabi and mAbxience continue to strengthen the biopharma business and strategic network through new agreements and partnerships.
Successful market launches have made Fresenius Kabi the leading provider of intravenous lipid nutrition in North America. This strengthens the global clinical nutrition business beyond its solid base in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.
With the award-winning Ivenix infusion system, the MedTech business of Fresenius Kabi has entered the infusion therapy market in the United States. With the acquisition of Ivenix in 2022, Fresenius supplemented and strengthened its existing range of infusion therapies, particularly in the U.S. market. The design of the Ivenix infusion system is easier to use than conventional systems and increases the safety of infusions. The pump also works seamlessly with other systems.
In parallel, Fresenius Kabi has continued to build resilience in its volume-driven IV business and is extending the portfolio with continued launches in all regions.
Fresenius Helios wants to further strengthen its position as the leading private healthcare service provider in Europe.
Helios Germany will continue to focus its offerings on cross-sector healthcare, further specialize hospitals, and coordinate their respective medical service portfolios within regional structures. In regional competence centers, we are already pooling expertise in various specialist areas in order to achieve the best treatment results for our patients. We will continue to drive this clustering forward in the future in order to further enhance medical quality. We intend to exploit the growth potential in the outpatient sector by linking our medical care centers (MVZs) even more closely with hospitals. In addition, we will seize the newly created regulatory opportunity of daytime inpatient treatment as a further form of care. We also aim to increase the efficiency of our energy consumption in the interests of sustainability and climate protection.
In Spain, we expect demand for hospital and other healthcare services to continue to rise. We aim to integrate our diverse range of inpatient and outpatient services even better and further expand them across the entire network of sites. We will selectively consider building new clinics and expanding existing hospital sites. Fresenius Helios consistently puts focus on the strategic factors of medical excellence, innovation, and service quality in order to attract patients. Our focus here is on optimal treatment quality as well as patient satisfaction.
Fresenius Helios is constantly advancing its digitalization agenda in order to further improve patient care and service, building on our already extensive digital offering in particular through the Quirónsalud patient portal and app. In the Spanish hospitals, the hospital information system Casiopea is the core element of the digitalization strategy and was expanded in 2025 to include the AI-based application Scribe. Scribe is a digital assistant designed to support medical consultations between healthcare professionals and patients. The application analyzes conversations in real time, extracts clinically relevant information, and automatically generates structured reports. In addition, Scribe guides physicians to cover all relevant topics during the visit. Irrelevant content is filtered out, while important clinical data such as symptoms and recommendations are directly integrated into the ePA. The report is reviewed and released by the responsible physician. This way, the application can relieve physicians of administrative tasks and improve the quality of care. Alongside the digitalization of our documents and internal processes, we will focus even more strongly on the digitalization of direct clinical processes and clinical decision support in the future. In doing so, we also want to make responsible use of the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence.
#FutureFresenius
In fiscal year 2025, we further advanced our #FutureFresenius program in order to transform our Group and position it for the coming decades. In fiscal year 2025, we continued to make great progress in the structural and financial progression of the Group.
The healthcare industry has a long runway for growth, which will be accelerated by quickly evolving technologies, new therapies such as biopharmaceuticals, more and more professional steering of patient journeys, and a true digital revolution. We want Fresenius to be at the forefront of these trends and have thus charted our course for continued system relevance in our businesses.
#FutureFresenius: Kicked off Rejuvenate phase with strong momentum
The first step of this journey was a Reset: strengthening our return focus, driving structural productivity, and creating change momentum across the organization. The next step in the journey was the Revitalize phase, with continuous portfolio optimization and the pursuit of growth verticals. In fiscal year 2025, we started the Rejuvenate phase, in which we aim to grow profitably along our strategic platforms. In addition to the disciplined continued development of our portfolio, we will also succeed in driving forward future-oriented innovations.
For Rejuvenate, we have defined a clear paradigm that guides our actions across the entire company, into which the individual development plans of our business units and functions are integrated: upgrade core – scale platforms – elevate performance.
Upgrade core describes the necessary individual further development of our business units, functions, and Group operating model in the current business environment. We continue the measures initiated under Revitalize – and do them even better.
Fresenius is strengthening its foundation by upgrading core operations, investing in talent, modernizing physical and digital technology infrastructure, and enhancing operational excellence across all business units. In particular, this also includes investments in growth capacity and the consistent improvement of our market and competitive positions through projects on Commercial Excellence and other efficiency enhancement measures.
Scale platforms is the core element of our medium-to-long-term strategy – the development of our (Bio)Pharma, MedTech, and Care Provision platforms in terms of their relevance for the healthcare ecosystem of the future. Each platform is “scaled” by its own means – whereby scale is not just about size, but particularly about relevant advances to each platform and the ecosystem as a whole.
Through upgrading our core and scaling our platforms, we are elevating our performance and impact. Our strategy is poised to move Fresenius to higher growth market segments and hence support value creation, as we address new profit pools previously untapped. While predominantly organically driven, our growth strategy will also seek to use further opportunities resulting from our ecosystem approach of partnering, licensing, and potentially acquiring products and services that complement our growing product portfolio.
Portfolio focus
We have executed a comprehensive diagnosis of our Group portfolio at business level, in order to highlight growth opportunities aligned with market trends, further refine our management approach for each business we operate, and identify areas to strengthen our portfolio focus.
Going forward, we want to increasingly orient our portfolio to three platforms: (Bio)Pharma – including clinical nutrition, MedTech, and Care Provision. With these platforms, we cater to major trends in healthcare and are becoming a more therapy-focused company. The health and quality of life of our patients whom we serve with high-quality, affordable products and services is at the core. At the same time, our platforms address attractive value pools in healthcare, which will provide opportunities for future profitable growth.
We will pursue growth investments in the businesses within our Operating Companies Fresenius Kabi and Fresenius Helios, thus focusing on our core business areas. This will ensure that we have a solid capital structure and sufficient funds to seize future growth opportunities. Within the Fresenius Group, we will – under the operating model initiated in 2023 – provide strategic direction, effective governance and risk management, and targeted services to the benefit of our segments and the overall capital efficiency of the Group.
Structural productivity
While fundamentally healthy and geared toward long-term growth, our market environment is also characterized by typical macro headwinds that challenge our operations and increase our cost base. With that in mind, we have continued our focus on structural productivity and are running corresponding measures in all our business segments and at the corporate center.
Structural productivity improvements are expected to offset market headwinds and to create additional financial flexibility for future growth investments in the coming years.
Change momentum
At Fresenius, our collective actions have always been driven by our enormous passion and the strongest possible commitment to patients. On our pathway to #FutureFresenius, we want to nurture this passion, and combine it with a strong appetite for change, preparing us for the dynamic shifts in the healthcare industry for the best of our patients. As part of #FutureFresenius, we aim to embrace new ways of working and establish a culture of excellence, where we measure ourselves against the best and maintain trusting dialog that welcomes diverse perspectives. Throughout our company, we engage in such trusting dialog with our employees, stakeholders, and external partners, and our global top leaders are agreed about the need for change. We aim to continuously pick up the pace of change and improvement and use this momentum to create #FutureFresenius.
Sustainability program
For Fresenius, sustainability is an integral part of its business model. The Company is working to establish global sustainability standards and continuously improve its own sustainability performance. To this end, Fresenius continued to drive forward its ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) initiatives.
Fresenius has set climate targets for the Group complementing its existing sustainability targets and programs. The Company aims to be climate-neutral in Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2040 and to reduce 50% of absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. On June 27, 2024, Fresenius announced an additional decarbonization target: The Company aims to become net zero along the entire value chain by 2050; this includes Scope 1 and Scope 2 as well as Scope 3 emissions.
Further information on our sustainability organization and measures can be found in the Sustainability Statement.