Estée Lauder is entering its new fiscal year as a fundamentally changed company, Chief Executive Stéphane de La Faverie said.
The beauty conglomerate has spent the past several years working to turn around the business, increasing investments in its consumer-facing operations and expanding into higher-growth sales channels. The company has also cut costs, in part through layoffs.
Now, Estée Lauder is bearing the fruits of these efforts. The company narrowed its fiscal fourth-quarter loss as sales rose 6.3% to $3.63 billion, ahead of Wall Street estimates and driven by broad-based strength across geographies and categories, de La Faverie said on a call with reporters.
Looking ahead, the owner of brands such as MAC, Smashbox and Jo Malone is focused on maintaining its momentum. The company continues to expect organic net sales growth of 3% to 5% in the coming year, and it has additionally lifted its adjusted operating margin outlook.
"We're going to double down on what is working, which means continuing to strengthen the desirability of our brands and bringing bigger and bolder innovations to the market faster," de La Faverie said.
Shares jumped 11%, to $93.19, in premarket trading Wednesday.
Consumers are under pressure, but they remain resilient and willing to spend, de La Faverie said. That is especially true of beauty, as the global beauty market continues to grow despite continued economic uncertainty, he added.
Estée Lauder is focused on creating and retaining consumer loyalty, doing so in part by meeting consumers where they like to shop. The company has cut roughly 10,000 positions, largely consisting of point-of-sale demonstration roles across its department-store and freestanding-store channels, as it pivots toward higher-growth sales channels such as Amazon and TikTok Shop.
The cuts have helped unlock about $1.2 billion of total gross benefits from the company's profit recovery and growth plan, Estée Lauder said. The turnaround plan has also resulted in total cumulative charges slightly above the high end of the previously guided range of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion.
The company, which earlier this year terminated discussions of a potential business combination with Puig Brands, remains open to mergers and acquisitions, assuming any potential deal would help diversify its growth prospects and could be completed at the right price, de La Faverie said.
For its three months ended June 30, Estée Lauder posted a loss of $116 million, or 32 cents a share, compared with a loss of $546 million, or $1.51 a share, a year earlier. Stripping out one-time items, adjusted earnings of 39 cents a share topped analyst views for 32 cents a share, according to FactSet.
Sales growth was supported by Estée Lauder's skin care, fragrance and makeup divisions, all of which posted higher sales. The increases were partially offset by hair care sales.