By Andrea Figueras
Shares in L'Oreal slid after the French cosmetics giant closed last year with weaker-than-expected results amid a complex beauty market landscape.
The stock was 4.5% lower at 374.10 euros in European morning trading, having fallen as much as 7.1% earlier in the session. Since the start of the year, shares have risen 2%.
For the final three months of 2025, the group logged a 6% sales increase on a like-for-like basis compared with the year-earlier period, leaving the total sales figure at 11.245 billion euros ($13.35 billion). This was below consensus estimates of a 6.3% increase, according to Visible Alpha.
The miss on fourth-quarter sales growth is not helpful, considering cautious commentaries from the company's rivals in the beauty market and high expectations in the results, RBC Capital Markets analysts Wassachon Udomsilpa and James Edwardes Jones said in a research note.
Earlier this month, New York's Estee Lauder said that it remained cautious amid continuing macroeconomic uncertainty and headwinds including evolving trade policies and tariffs. For its part, Coty withdrew its guidance for fiscal 2026, citing a complex market backdrop with weakening sales trends in consumer beauty.
Analysts at J.P.Morgan reckoned that the quarterly performance makes it difficult to envision top-line acceleration this year, while Deutsche Bank's Tom Sykes said that growth in the near term could slow from the levels seen in the last three months of 2025.
Despite this, Chief Executive Nicolas Hieronimus remained optimistic about the outlook for the global beauty market and confident in L'Oreal's ability to keep outperforming it. For 2025 as a whole, the group logged sales of 44.05 billion euros, 4% higher on-year on a like-for-like basis and ahead of the market's growth of 3.5%, it said.
L'Oreal is ready to accelerate its growth in an increasingly complex environment, the CEO said in an earnings call on Friday. The current year started pretty well in all markets, he added.
Write to Andrea Figueras at andrea.figueras@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 13, 2026 04:33 ET (09:33 GMT)
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