Luxury sales fuelled by double digit growth in China pushed L’Oréal to higher than expected global growth in Q3. The US was also a standout performer with sales up 23 per cent for the period.
The world’s largest beauty company posted revenues of 8 billion euros (AUD$12.46 billion) for its third quarter ending September 30 – up 13.6 per cent over the same period last year. The multinational also outperformed the general beauty market in all categories.
Revenues from L’Oréal’s Luxe division, including Lancôme, Kiehl’s, Giorgio Armani and YSL Beauty, rose 20.7 per cent over the three-month period to 3.21 billion euros (AUD$4.99 billion).
The dermocosmetics category continues its dream growth run in major markets and fuelled a 28.4 per cent increase in sales for the Active Cosmetics division (La Roche-Posay, CeraVe, SkinCeuticals) to 951.3 million euros (AUD$1.48 billion)
The Consumer Products division, including L’Oréal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier, is the multinational’s largest and saw sales rise 3.2 per cent to 2.979.5 billion euros (AUD$4.64 billion) in the third quarter as makeup sales recovered.
While the Professional Products division, including Kerastase, Redken and L’Oréal Professionnel, enjoyed double digit growth of 10.3 per cent to 945.6 million euros (AUD$1.47 billion)
The group’s sales have increased by 9.3 per cent like-for-like over the past two years, with a remarkable acceleration in the third quarter, said Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L’Oréal.
“Since the beginning for the pandemic, L’Oréal has been constantly gaining strength and is ideally positioned to continue to grow at its pre-crisis pace. We are more confident than ever in this growth momentum”.
The US and prestige beauty were also the backbone of Unilever‘s sales surge in Q3 to 13.5 billion euros (AUD$21.01 billion) – up 4 per cent.
The beauty and personal care division – the multinational’s largest – generated sales of 5.69 billion (AUD$8.85 billion) in Q3, thanks to power and prestige brands such as Dove, Vaseline, Dermalogica, Paula’s Choice and Murad.
Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever, was pleased with the results, describing Q3 as “a good quarter against strong competitors”.