Q3 comps accelerated with 6.3% growth, beating expectations
Ulta Beauty reported a strong Q3, with sales and EPS beating expectations. Management raised full-year guidance while a cautious consumer outlook, citing robust underlying demand and successful strategic initiatives. The call highlighted successes in digital, international expansion, and brand building, as well as detailed commentary on pricing moves across the beauty supply chain. Strong Q3: Revenue +12.9% to $2.9B; EPS $5.14 (flat YoY); comp sales +6.3% (above guidance); strong margin expansion.
Buzzberg readQ3 comps accelerated with 6.3% growth, beating expectationsUlta Beauty reported a strong Q3, with sales and EPS beating expectations. Management raised full-year guidance while a cautious consumer outlook, citing robust underlying demand and successful strategic initiatives. The call highlighted successes in digital, international expansion, and brand building, as well as detailed commentary on pricing moves across the beauty supply chain. Strong Q3: Revenue +12.9% to $2.9B; EPS $5.14 (flat YoY); comp sales +6.3% (above guidance); strong margin expansion.Read full analysisCollapse analysis
Ulta Beauty reported a strong Q3, with sales and EPS beating expectations. Management raised full-year guidance while a cautious consumer outlook, citing robust underlying demand and successful strategic initiatives. The call highlighted successes in digital, international expansion, and brand building, as well as detailed commentary on pricing moves across the beauty supply chain. Strong Q3: Revenue +12.9% to $2.9B; EPS $5.14 (flat YoY); comp sales +6.3% (above guidance); strong margin expansion.
FY25 guidance includes Q4 comp sales growth of 2.5-3.5%, reflecting a more cautious holiday outlook despite strong Black Friday/Cyber Monday results.
Prestige and mass beauty markets both grew mid-single digits, with Ulta gaining share in both.
Revenue$2.8576B
reported
EPS$5.14
reported
Gross margin40.44%
reported
Op margin11.01%
reported
What changed this quarter
01
Guidance
Q3 comps accelerated with 6.3% growth, beating expectations
Guidance · revenue to $12.3B
02
Guidance
Q4 comp guidance decelerates to 2.5-3.5% due to cautious consumer
Guidance · revenue to $12.3B
03
Margins
SG&A deleverage driven by incentive comp and investments
Reported gross margin was 40.44%, reinforcing the quarter's better-than-guided profitability.
04
Demand
Fragrance category led growth with double-digit comps
Management expressed optimism about the company's momentum, market share gains, and holiday readiness, while maintaining a cautious view on consumer spending.
Demand & capex
Demand
Bookings & conversion
Fragrance category led growth with double-digit comps. Management expressed optimism about the company's momentum, market share gains, and holiday readiness, while maintaining a cautious view on consumer spending.
Capex
Investment and capacity
Management discussed investments in technology infrastructure and supply chain, including the retrofit of the Dallas Distribution Center with automation and robotics, and cloud-based software investments that are driving near-term expense pressure but expected to support long-term growth.
Tone · Confident
Management expressed optimism about the company's momentum, market share gains, and holiday readiness, while maintaining a cautious view on consumer spending.
Supply-chain alpha
A1
Ulta Management names specific publicly traded brands (Coty, Helen of Troy) that are taking market-wide price increases, suggesting these brands are successfully passing through tariff-related costs.
Ulta confirmed that price increases and tariff-related inventory benefits have a short-term, one-to-two-quarter gross margin benefit before the higher cost inventory flushes through.
“it's based on our inventory evaluation method the average cost so it's going to take a while for it to reach the new cost level but it most likely takes about one or two quarters for it to flush through.”
Ulta's 'SpaceNK' acquisition is contributing to SG&A growth, but management is protecting the brand's unique clienteling and agility, which could mean the acquisition is more about learning than integrating.
“I want to protect what makes Space NK unique. I do not want to turn Space NK into a mini Ulta beauty. I think that's what's made Space NK so special.”
Ulta's strength in e-commerce (mid-teens growth) is partly driven by app engagement and improved capabilities like 'split cart' and 'ship from store' with 1,000 stores.
“In Q1, we had split cart launching... In Q3 wish list and Venmo just in time for the holiday season.”
Ulta's shrink reduction has been a tailwind to gross margin for the year and is expected to be a modest improvement in Q4, indicating internal operational efforts are paying off.
“In Q3, there was a modest improvement, and in Q4, we expect another modest improvement in shrink.”
Ulta's new CFO comes from a large healthcare conglomerate, signaling a focus on financial discipline but with no direct operational impact for BDX.
“I couldn't be more pleased than to welcome Chris Del Orfez to Walter Beauty as he assumes the role of Chief Financial Officer tomorrow. He joins us from Becton Dickinson, where he serves as CFO for the last four years”
… management system, and a new warehouse execution system. We incorporated key learnings from prior retrofits and executed this upgrade flawlessly. We expect these upgrades to strengthen our foundation, further enhancing inventory flow and increasing capacity. As I've shared previously, one of my top priorities has to make sure that I have the right leadership team in place to drive our future growth. And I couldn't be more pleased than to welcome Chris Del Orfez to Walter Beauty as he assumes the role of Chief Financial Officer tomorrow. He joins us from Becton Dickinson, where he serves as CFO for the last four years and brings more than 30 years of diverse corporate finance experience. I want to express my gratitude to Chris Lealios, our interim CFO, for his partnership and leadership during this important time of our business. And thankfully, he's not going anywhere. He will continue his role as SVP and corporate controller and help ensure that we have a smooth transition. In addition to shaping our leadership team, I've been keenly focused on re-energizing our culture. Over the past several months, I've had the opportunity to spend time across our broader organization, …
… successful launch of Fenty Skin Body, exclusive to Ulta Beauty, and strengths in brands like Tatcha and Dermalogica. Masked skincare benefited from newness and social media virality in key brands like Bioma and Starface. In addition, our newly expanded wellness assortment also contributed positively to skincare performance. Makeup delivered another quarter of mid-single-digit comparable sales growth, supported by growth in both masked and prestige makeup. Mass makeup growth was driven by compelling newness from brands like NYX, Morphe, and L'Oreal, as well as the benefit from market-wide price increases from select brands. Prestige makeup growth in the quarter was supported by a highly successful 21 Days of Beauty event, with notable brand standouts being Estee Lauder and MAC within the event. Across the quarter, we also delivered strong growth across a number of our prestige brands, including Hourglass and NARS, and in our Only at Ulta brand portfolio with newness in dibs. Our new K-Beauty assortment in makeup is also driving strong growth. The hair care category delivered mid-single digits comps, fueled primarily by strong performance in prestige hair. Mass hair, hair color, …
… activations included celebrity appearances, brand launches, brand education, and highlighted our differentiated in-store experience, which truly makes Ulta Beauty an unmatched beauty destination for our guests. From a category perspective, All major categories exceeded our expectations and delivered positive comp growth against the third quarter last year. Fragrance sustained its position as our strongest growing category, delivering double-digit comp sales growth in Q3. Newness from luxury brands like Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana, alongside compelling new-to-market brand launches from Miu Miu and Prestige, and Squishmallows en masse resonated with the guests. This quarter demonstrated the power of our unique low-to-luxury brand assortment. In October, we also rolled out incremental shelf space for fragrance in more than 60% of our U.S. stores, which we believe positions us to capture holiday demand and beyond for this important and growing category. Skincare, our second fastest growing category, delivered solid high single digit comp growth driven primarily by the strength of Prestige Skincare and solid growth of Mass Skincare. Our unmatched K-Beauty assortment continues to …
Ulta Management names specific publicly traded brands (Coty, Helen of Troy) that are taking market-wide price increases, suggesting these brands are successfully passing through tariff-related costs. — This confirms pricing power at CPG suppliers, potentially boosting their revenue and margins but risking volume in a value-conscious consumer environment.
Good afternoon. Can you talk about what you're hearing from brands about pricing? The 3.8% ticket comp was very impressive. Do you think this might build in the coming quarters?
Hi, Lorraine. Thanks for the question. I would say that, you know, we generally have pricing increases, you know, quarter to quarter as brands come through. And we had – there were plenty of publicly traded companies that announced that they were taking price increases of Cody and Helen and Troy, just to name a few. that, you know, we were seeing some price increases with this quarter. Chris, maybe I'll let you give a little bit more color around what the pricing increases look like for the quarter. But, you know, pricing increases are not new in this part of the business, and I don't think that we saw anything that was, like, extraordinary by any means. Chris?
Ulta confirmed that price increases and tariff-related inventory benefits have a short-term, one-to-two-quarter gross margin benefit before the higher cost inventory flushes through. — This provides a clear timeline for when suppliers' price increases will become headwinds to margins, relevant for forecasting their earnings impact.
… Bioma and Starface. In addition, our newly expanded wellness assortment also contributed positively to skincare performance. Makeup delivered another quarter of mid-single-digit comparable sales growth, supported by growth in both masked and prestige makeup. Mass makeup growth was driven by compelling newness from brands like NYX, Morphe, and L'Oreal, as well as the benefit from market-wide price increases from select brands. Prestige makeup growth in the quarter was supported by a highly successful 21 Days of Beauty event, with notable brand standouts being Estee Lauder and MAC within the event. Across the quarter, we also delivered strong growth across a number of our prestige brands, including Hourglass and NARS, and in our Only at Ulta brand portfolio with newness in dibs. Our new K-Beauty assortment in makeup is also driving strong growth. The hair care category delivered mid-single digits comps, fueled primarily by strong performance in prestige hair. Mass hair, hair color, and accessories also contributed positively. This growth was partially offset by sales declines in personal styling tools, which continues to navigate pressures from tariff-related price increases. From …
Ulta is gaining prestige market share in both brick-and-mortar and digital channels while its competitor Sephora at Kohl's comped negative. — This points to ongoing weakness at Kohl's and its partnership, while Ulta's share gains show the strength of its model versus the competitive set.
Thanks. Could you discuss the competitive situation? Amazon Premium Beauty still seems to be growing a lot. I think Sephora at Kohl's actually comped negative, yet LVMH's selective retail was positive. A lot of different moving parts from your competitors. How do you see the competitive situation today versus, you know, three months ago or earlier in the year?
Management is aware of Amazon's success in premium beauty but frames it within its own differentiated strategy, implying continued competitive intensity.
Thanks. Could you discuss the competitive situation? Amazon Premium Beauty still seems to be growing a lot. I think Sephora at Kohl's actually comped negative, yet LVMH's selective retail was positive. A lot of different moving parts from your competitors. How do you see the competitive situation today versus, you know, three months ago or earlier in the year?
Ulta is gaining prestige market share in both brick-and-mortar and digital channels while its competitor Sephora at Kohl's comped negative. — This points to ongoing weakness at Kohl's and its partnership, while Ulta's share gains show the strength of its model versus the competitive set.
Thanks. Could you discuss the competitive situation? Amazon Premium Beauty still seems to be growing a lot. I think Sephora at Kohl's actually comped negative, yet LVMH's selective retail was positive. A lot of different moving parts from your competitors. How do you see the competitive situation today versus, you know, three months ago or earlier in the year?
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