L'Oréal's strong growth in the first half of 2024 is enough to offset the impact of continued weakness in the Chinese market

In the first half of 2024, L'Oréal's sales totaled 22.12 billion euros, with a reported increase of 7.5%, mainly due to the booming skin beauty business and the rebound of the makeup business. Regarding this result, Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L'Oréal, said: "We continue to maintain strong momentum in emerging markets, Europe and North America, which is enough to offset the downturn in the beauty market in mainland China and the adverse impact of travel retail."

Specifically, skin beauty sales increased by 16.4%/15.5% year-on-year, mainly due to North Asia, especially the expansion of SkinCeuticals and CeraVe in China. Other driving factors include La Roche-Posay's MelaB3, Vichy's double-digit growth and Skinbetter Science.

It is worth noting that the company's growth came after Hieronimus pointed out that the global beauty market growth slowed down. Professional sales rose 4.9% on a reported basis, driven by growth in North Asia, including China, and Latin America. The consumer products division grew 8.3%, driven by double-digit growth in Durope, Brazil, Mexico and India, as well as L'Oréal Paris. Other highlights included double-digit growth in Elvive Glycolic Gloss, cosmetics, the launch of Bright reveal, and Mixa's expansion in Europe.

L'Oréal's luxury division sales rose 2.3% year-on-year (4.0% reported), with growth accelerating in the second quarter. Key drivers included double-digit growth in Europe and North America. The company reportedly is improving in Travel Retail, while perfume performance was driven by Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Maison Margiela and Prada, as well as Azzaro. Makeup was strengthened by Yves Saint Laurent, Armani and Urban Decay.

Regarding these data, Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of the L'Oréal Group, said:"In the first half of the year, we achieved strong growth of +7.3%, with a good balance between value and volume, and consolidated our global leadership in a dynamic beauty market."

"We continued to maintain strong momentum in emerging markets, Europe and North America, which more than offset the downturn in the beauty market in mainland China and the unfavorable travel retail market. In this context, I am particularly pleased to see the accelerated growth of L'Oréal Luxe, the dynamism of the Consumer Goods business and the continued share gains in the Skin Beauty and Professional Products business."

"Our strong R&D innovation capabilities combined with unique marketing creativity enable us to offer consumers breakthrough innovations. We continue to increase advertising and promotional spending to support these innovations and our 37 international brands, which has put us ahead of the global beauty market again."

"In an environment of continued economic and geopolitical tensions, we remain optimistic about the prospects of the beauty market and believe that our innovation capabilities and the robustness of our multipolar model will enable us to continue to exceed it and achieve another year of sales and profit growth."