L’Oréal sales for the first half of 2023 leapt 13.3% on a like-for-like basis to €20.57bn, buoyed by a very strong performance from the beauty giant’s newly named Dermatological Beauty business.
The division – which includes the Vichy, SkinCeuticals and La Roche-Posay brands, among others – and was rebranded from Active Cosmetics earlier this year, saw enormous H1 like-for-like sales growth of 29.0%.
According to L’Oréal, La Roche-Posay was the division’s number one growth contributor, while CeraVe remained ‘extremely dynamic’ in North America.
L’Oréal’s Consumer Products Division also enjoyed double-digit growth during the period, up 13.1%.
Here, make-up launches were said to be especially dynamic, with new launches including Falsies Surreal Mascara by Maybelline New York, Telescopic Lift Mascara by L’Oréal Paris and Fat Oil Gloss by NYX Professional Makeup.
The company also reported recovery in mainland China, driven by a strong rebound in both offline and online channels.
This, it said, was aided by the introduction of new brands like Valentino, Prada and Takami.
In addition to revealing growth drivers, L’Oréal announced that on 1 July, the group had established L’Oréal France as an autonomous entity, bringing together its commercial operations and shared services.
This move is said to be part of the company’s Ambition France project and was voted for during L’Oréal’s Annual General Meeting on 21 April 2023.
L’Oréal’s board of directors also voted at the AGM to set up a share buyback programme during the second half of 2023.
This will amount to a maximum of €500m, said the company, with a maximum number of 2 million shares to be acquired.
Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L'Oréal, said: “In a beauty market that is more dynamic than ever, L’Oréal delivered a remarkable performance and further strengthened its global leadership in the first half.
“Growth was broad-based across all divisions, regions, categories and channels, once again vindicating our balanced, multi-polar model.”
He added: “In line with our dual ambition of economic and corporate performance, we continued to invest in the transition towards a more sustainable operating model that will ensure long-term value creation.
“In an economic context that is still uncertain, we remain ambitious for the future, optimistic about the outlook for the beauty market, and confident in our ability to keep outperforming the market and achieve in 2023 another year of growth in sales and profits.”
