Ulta Beauty On Thursday, published low advice for the coming exercise while sailing in a series of internal missteps, growing competition and what it called “consumers’ uncertainty”.
The retailer, who appointed Kecia Steelman as a new CEO in January, said he expected comparable sales are stable or increased by 1% in 2025, while analysts had planned to increase 1.2%, according to Streetaccount.
It expects the annual profits to be between $ 22.50 and $ 22.90, lower than $ 23.47 expectations, according to LSEG.
Ulta is the last company to plan for a rocky year to come. Although he has taken into account uncertain consumption expenses in his advice, the retailer also browsing a series of challenges and views specific to the company 2025 as a year of transition. The resolution of these problems will cost money, which is part of the reason why it expects the profits to be lower than those of Wall Street planned in the coming year.
“I shared our plan to make important guest -oriented investments, which are necessary to improve our competitiveness and reactive the growth of long -term actions,” said Steelman during a call with analysts. “These investments will put pressure on profitability in 2025, but we believe that they are essential to stimulate long -term sustainable growth in a competitive and innovative category.”
Actions increased by 6% in prolonged exchanges.
Here is how the beauty retailer did in his fourth fiscal quarter compared to what Wall Street provided, based on a survey of LSEG analysts:
- Profit by action: $ 8.46 against $ 7.12 expected
- Income: $ 3.49 billion against $ 3.46 billion expected
The company’s declared net profit for the three -month period which ended on February 1 was $ 393 million, or $ 8.46 per share, compared to $ 394 million, or $ 8.08 per share, a year earlier.
Sales dropped $ 3.49 billion, down around $ 3.55 billion a year earlier. Like other retailers, Ulta benefited from an additional week of sales during the previous period, which negatively biased the results.
Beauty has been one of the most brilliant places in retail in the past two years, but Ulta has lagged behind due to a series of self-influence. The company of the company has become more complex as it grew up, and Ulta tripped when new choices of making, such as buying online, a store collection, delivery the same day and a ship in store.
“Consequently, our presentation in stores and our customer experience today are not as strong as we wish,” said Steelman. “These are opportunities well under our control.”
In January, Ulta announced that its longtime CEO, Dave Kimbell, would be replaced by its operations manager then in chief Steelman, who has been with the retailer for more than a decade. His experience as a guru of operations makes her well suited to tackle some of the execution problems that have tormented Ulta.
During his first call for results as CEO, Steelman was frank on what Ulta does well and what he hurts. She said that the company will spend next year resetting its business and working to resume market share it has lost.
“The competitive environment in beauty has never been so intense,” said Steelman. “For the first time, we lost market share in the beauty category in 2024.”
During the ulta vacation quarter, comparable sales increased by 1.5%, beating expectations of 0.8% growth, according to Streetaccount. Customers spent more during the quarter, which resulted in a 3% increase in the average ticket, but fewer buyers came to Ulta stores to buy beauty products. Transactions during the quarter decreased by 1.4%.
Part of this is probably because many more companies are developing in beauty. Not only does he compete with rival sephora, but also mass retailers like Macy,, Walmart And Amazon Make beauty a cornerstone of their strategies and have all widened their selections of make -up and care products.
Last year, Ulta warned against a refreshing beauty market, but companies like Elf beauty And Singularity I have not seen similar dynamics, and beauty sales remained strong in retailers like Macy’s and Target.
In the meantime, Ulta focused on strengthening profitability. He managed to increase benefits during the quarter, even with one week of sales less.