With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

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Industries included in the sector are automotive retail, general merchandisers, internet retail, and specialty retail.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Retailing

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-451-Ulta Beauty

Pandemic lockdowns and the resulting work-from-home movement made 2020 an extremely tough year for Ulta, with sales falling 17% compared to the year before. Founded by the former president of Osco Drug, the chain of beauty stores carries a wide variety of cosmetics, haircare, and skincare brands. Over the past decade, Ulta's stock produced an average annual return to shareholders of 24%. The company started 2021 strong, reporting that comparable sales were up 65% compared to the same three months last year.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-418-Ulta-Beauty

Bucking wider retail trends, Ulta added a net of 80 stores during the year, while revenue grew by 10%.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Everybody loves an up-and-comer: 2018's top three-year performers in revenues, profits, and stock returns.

100 Fastest-Growing Companies

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

Everybody loves an up-and-comer: 2017's top three-year performers in revenues, profits, and stock returns.

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Ulta has capitalized on the beauty craze, operating a chain of stores where shoppers can peruse the latest brow gels, lash extensions, and serums.The company’s branded and private label beauty products include cosmetics, fragrance, hair care, skin care, bath and body products, professional hair products, and salon styling tools. The company carries over 25,000 products across 600 brands in more than 1,400 stores. Ulta’s CFO told Fortune that Ulta’s loyalty program, with over 44 million members, has helped it develop a following to compete effectively against other mall-based stores and e-commerce competitors.

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Q3 2025

Ulta Beauty (ULTA): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

Ulta Beauty

ulta beauty

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Leila, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to Ulta Beauty's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. This conference is being recorded and all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Kylie Rollins, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Rollins, please proceed.

Thank you, Leila. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for a discussion of Ulta Beauty's results for the first quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five. Hosting our call today are Keisha Steelman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Paula Ojibow, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you of the company's safe harbor language. Many of our remarks today will contain forward looking statements, which speak only as of today, 05/29/2025.

We refer you to our earnings release and SEC filings, where you will find a number of factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements, which speak only as of today, 05/29/2025. We have no obligation to update or revise our forward looking statements except as required by law, and you should not expect us to do so. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. To allow us to accommodate as many questions as possible during the hours scheduled for this call, we respectfully ask that you limit your time to one question.

If you have additional questions, please re queue. As always, the IR team will be available for any follow-up questions after the call. And now I'll turn the call

Thank you, Kylie, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll highlight overall performance, update you on the progress we made across our strategic priorities, and talk to you about our outlook for the future. Fiscal twenty twenty five is off to an encouraging start with the Ulta Beauty team delivering better than planned financial performance.

For the first quarter, net sales increased 4.5% to 2,800,000,000.0. Operating profit was 14.1 percent of sales, and diluted earnings per share was $6.70. During the quarter, amidst considerable macro noise and uncertainty, guests responded positively to key actions that we took to drive our business, including improved execution, exciting new and exclusive brand launches, evolved promotional plans, and irrelevant marketing. As a result, we drove improvement across several key performance indicators, including member growth, brand engagement, and earned media value, as well as in store conversion and app engagement. Importantly, these efforts resulted in market share gains during the quarter.

Consumer engagement with beauty remains healthy, and our insights indicate beauty and wellness remain a top priority for beauty enthusiasts who tell us that they're more willing to make trade offs in other discretionary areas to maintain their beauty regimens. At the same time, they are cautious, and value is an increasingly important priority as they navigate ongoing wallet pressures. Many consumers indicate that they're leaning into beauty as a comfort and escape from the stress of macro uncertainty, and we expect this emotional connection will support the category's resilience going forward. Our teams are working through all these dynamics to ensure that we are well positioned to deliver on our guest evolving needs and are working in close partnership with our brands to mitigate potential impacts of higher tariffs. In March, I shared our Ulta Beauty unleashed plan, which is designed to accelerate our performance and enable us to achieve our long term goals and reassert our leadership position.

Today, I'll share progress we've made and highlight the key components of our strategy that drove our first quarter performance. Let me begin with all of our efforts to drive our core business growth, where we're focused on driving excellence in all areas of our operations and strengthening our go to market approach. Our teams have sharpened their focus on delighting our guests with every interaction and ensuring our stores are fully stocked, staffed, clean, and inviting. Our teams executed well, particularly for key events and holidays, delivering a very successful twenty one day beauty campaign along with strong Valentine's Day and Easter performance and drove comp growth across many of our major categories. I am incredibly proud of our store and field teams whose collective efforts drove improved in store conversion and guest satisfaction and positive comp sales growth in stores for the first time in more than a year.

From a category perspective, fragrance was our strongest performing category, delivering double digit growth primarily driven by newness in women's and gender neutral fragrance brands, spring and Valentine's Day sets, and continued strength in men's fragrance. New and exclusive brands, XO Chloe by Khloe Kardashian and Noise, as well as newness from Valentino and Billie Eilish contributed to strong category performance. Sales in the skincare and wellness category increased in the high single digit range driven by robust growth in body care, sun care, and wellness. Prestige skincare was flat for the quarter, while mass skincare decreased modestly. New brands including Tatcha, Naturium, and Inua, as well as trend relevant brands, Meily's, an exclusive k beauty brand Peach and Lily resonated with Guest, while expansions of Sol De Janeiro and Touchland also contributed to category growth.

The hair care category was roughly flat for the quarter with growth in hair color and accessories offset by decreases in hair care tools and mass hair care. Professional hair care was flat with growth from newness, offset by a timing shift of a key promotional event. Newness was fueled by the much anticipated debut of Beyonce's sacred hair care line in early April, which included a unique services activation. Comp sales in the makeup category decreased slightly driven by mass makeup as strong newness from exclusive brand Morphe and Ulta Beauty collection did not fully offset headwinds from certain brands, which lapped strong newness and social engagement in the period last year. Prestige makeup was flat for the quarter.

Guest engagement with newer brands, Ilia, Milk Makeup, and Dibs, as well as exclusive newness from MAC, Estee Lauder, and Lancome offset headwinds from brands which have experienced increased distribution. Additionally, our spring twenty one day of beauty event delivered strong growth for participating brands. Finally, services delivered low single digit comp driven by salon and specialty services, including ear piercing and makeup services. We also brought beauty to life in our stores through our always on eventing strategy, which was amplified in our online channels with new tools that aim to drive greater awareness and sales. We hosted more than 20,000 in store events during the quarter, many in partnership with our brands.

Moving to marketing. We're evolving and reimagining our go to market strategy to spark excitement and awareness, deepen engagement, and attack attract and retain loyalty members. This quarter, our integrated marketing delivered bold relevant campaigns that elevated brand visibility and drove traffic across all channels. We activated key moments with precision. Our Super Bowl campaign, which celebrated women in sports, delivered record level social impressions and engagement, amplifying reach and cultural relevance on the biggest stage in pop culture.

Twenty one days of beauty in spring haul generated strong traffic and conversion powered by creator led content that build anticipation and drove significant increases in member penetration. Following the successful launch of Beyonce's Sacred, we announced Ulta Beauty as the official beauty retail partner of our cowboy Carter tour, a powerful collaboration featuring curated beauty looks, exclusive product assortments, and immersive brand experiences across tour markets. And finally, in April, we hosted our inaugural Ulta Beauty World, an experiential beauty event giving about 1,400 Ulta Beauty fans and influencers the opportunity to explore the best of beauty through live demos with our brands, brand founder meet and greets, and interactive experiences across makeup, skincare, hair, fragrance, and wellness. We are bringing the Ulta Beauty brand to life in new and exciting ways, and our guests are responding. We expanded our active loyalty member base to a record 45,000,000, up 3% year over year, while also driving higher engagement, record social impressions, and meaningful earned media value.

Turning to brand building. During the quarter, we launched 19 new brands, many of which are exclusive to Ulta Beauty. Newly launched brands like Tatcha, Milk Makeup, Ilia, Solterre, all performed well and drove strong guest engagement. At the same time, exclusive brands are driving growth, including Dibs Beauty, an influencer led makeup brand, along with Anua, a viral k beauty brand, and Sniff, a clean, vegan, cruelty free fragrance brand with accessible price points. We're pleased to see that our brand building efforts are resonating with guests, and we're optimistic about new brand launches and activations planned for q two and the rest of the year.

Turning to digital and personalization. We're accelerating our capabilities to deepen guest connection and drive performance. We've expanded automation and real time content delivery across key digital channels, allowing us to respond faster, personalize at scale, and enhance the overall guest experience. We also rolled out new features including split cart capabilities, a new shop my store app functionality that provides guests real time visibility to store assortment and inventory. These efforts are translating into stronger engagement, increased relevance, and measurable business impact.

We look forward to building our on our momentum and adding new digital enhancements in the coming quarters. Moving to our second strategic priority to scale new and accretive businesses to capitalize on key growth opportunities and ensure that we remain resilient in a rapidly changing world. As we look to the near term actions we've taken to scale our new businesses, during the first quarter, we supported our wellness efforts with the launch of nine new wellness brands online, including several nutrition focused supplement and ingestible brands like Garden of Life, women's care brand Hatch Mama, and sleep related fan favorite, Nod Pod. We also continue to enhance and expand our retail media network, UV Media. We capitalized on key opportunities for co branded ads to support twenty one days of beauty, which drove engagement and incremental ad revenue.

In addition, we began piloting new ad products like connected television and streaming audio and brand support capabilities like our new self-service tool to provide faster, more transparent performance insights. At the same time, we're making investments to drive our long term expansion. Our international efforts are progressing through our partnerships. We are targeting our first store openings in Mexico City, Kuwait City, and Dubai later this year. And our online marketplace initiative announcement in March has driven meaningful brand interest, and we remain on track for launch in the second half of this year.

Finally, moving to our third strategic priority to realign our foundation for the future by streamlining our cost structure, optimizing our ways of working, and reenergizing our culture. Our teams are adapting well to our new ways of working, and we are steadily advancing our optimization efforts. During the quarter, we leveraged new AI and machine learning capabilities to drive supply chain efficiencies and launched scheduling and enhanced payroll management tools to optimize our efforts and support our cost saving goals. We also announced that Lauren Brindley will join Ulta Beauty next week on June 3 as chief merchandising and digital officer. Lauren will have responsibility for our merchandising, ecommerce, wellness, and marketplace strategies and will play an important role in our leading our brand building efforts.

With more than two decades of global beauty and retail expertise, having most recently served as CEO of Revolution Beauty, Lauren is a proven strategic leader with deep industry expertise, a global perspective, and a passion for beauty, and we are thrilled to have her join the team. My sincere thanks to Monica Arnato, who will retire next month for shaping Ulta Beauty's world class assortment and category innovation and her support during this transition. We wish Monica all the best in her retirement. On our last quarterly earnings call, I talked about our focus on reenergizing our culture. I truly believe that we have the best talent and culture in retail, and reigniting this critical competitive advantage has been a key priority.

In April, we brought together our field leaders, including more than 1,400 general managers, along with corporate and DC leaders and brand partners at our annual field leadership conference to celebrate our recent wins, educate on how we can better serve our guests, and align on our plans for the future. I walked away so inspired by the passion of the Ulta Beauty team, the shared excitement of our brand partners, and the renewed energy to drive our next phase of growth together. It was a great reminder of the power of culture, and I know that when we tap into this unique advantage that makes Ulta Beauty so special, we are unstoppable. To recap, we are encouraged by the progress we made in the quarter and the green shoots we're seeing as a result of the strategic actions we're taking. Together, they reinforce my confidence in the power of our team, our model, and our plans to drive our long term growth.

As we look to the future, we are executing our go to market investments to position stronger growth in 2026 and beyond. The operating environment is fluid, and we will stay prudent and agile to navigate the ever evolving landscape. While uncertainty presents risk, it also provides opportunities. And we are confident in our model and the diverse assortment uniquely position us to win. There is still work to be done, and it will take time to drive sustained improvement.

But I know that we have the right team and plans in place to build on our momentum and drive sustainable long term growth. And with that, I'll

turn it over to Paula to cover the financial results for the quarter and our financial outlook before we take your questions. Paula?

Thanks, Keisha, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin with a discussion of our first quarter results and then share more about how we are thinking about the rest of the year. Starting with the quarter, the Ulta Beauty team delivered strong performance, reflecting better than expected growth from comparable sales, favorable shrink results, and lower than planned investment spend.

Net sales increased 4.5% to $2,800,000,000 compared to $2,700,000,000 last year. During the quarter, we opened six new stores, relocated two stores and remodeled four stores. Comparable sales increased 2.9 driven by a 2.3% increase in average ticket and a 0.6% increase in transactions. Other revenue decreased $4,000,000 to $56,000,000 primarily due to lower loyalty point redemptions and lower income from our credit card program. Looking at the cadence of sales, growth accelerated as we move through the quarter, reflecting strong guest engagement with product newness in our marketing and promotional events.

Echoing Keisha's comments, we continue to strengthen our go to market strategies and optimize our promotions to drive profitable growth. In the first quarter, we eliminated less productive or overlapping offers, leveraged our member data to deploy new targeted offers, and optimized key promotional events like spring haul and our spring hair event. These efforts created distinct calls to action, ensured guest clarity, and supported stronger operational execution. As a result, sales growth was more balanced, and the impact to gross margin from promotional offers was lower than last year. From a channel perspective, our stores and digital channels contributed to growth with ecommerce sales increasing about 10% and comp stores delivering growth in the low single digit range.

For the quarter, gross margin decreased 10 basis points to 39.1% compared to 39.2% last year. The decrease was primarily due to deleverage of store and supply chain fixed costs and lower other revenue, which were partially offset by lower shrink. In addition to ongoing benefits from investments in secure fragrance fixtures, associate training and process improvement, we saw meaningful progress especially in select regions that were more challenged in the first quarter last year. Moving to expenses. SG and A increased 6.7% to 711,000,000.

As a percentage of sales, SG and A increased 50 basis points to 24.9% compared to 24.4% last year. SG and A deleverage due in large part to higher store payroll and benefits and increased store expenses, which were primarily offset by corporate overhead leverage. Store payroll and benefit expense increased primarily due to increased selling hours to support guest experience, higher average wage rates, and increased health care costs. The growth of store expenses was largely related to brand launches and in store initiatives. Corporate overhead leveraged for the quarter as we lapped implementation costs associated with key infrastructure investments last year.

Additionally, some investment spending initially planned for the first quarter is now expected to shift into later quarters. Operating profit was $4.00 $2,000,000 compared to $4.00 $1,000,000 last year. As a percentage of sales, operating margin decreased 60 basis points to 14.1% of sales. Diluted earnings per share increased 3.6% to $6.7 Moving to highlights from the balance sheet and cash flow statement. We ended the quarter with 455,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents.

Total inventory increased 11.3% to 2,100,000,000.0, primarily reflecting additional inventory to support new brand launches, investments to improve merchandise in stocks in key growth categories and the impact of 56 net new stores. Capital expenditures were $79,000,000 for the quarter, reflecting investments in new and existing stores, merchandise fixtures and supply chain investments. Depreciation increased 11% to $72,000,000 compared to $65,000,000 last year, primarily due to new store and supply chain investments. In the first quarter, we returned $359,000,000 of capital to our shareholders through the repurchase of 987,000 shares. At the end of the quarter, we had $2,300,000,000 remaining under our current $3,000,000,000 repurchase authorization.

Turning now to our updated outlook. We believe it is prudent to take a cautious approach to our guidance for fiscal twenty twenty five. While the beauty category has historically been resilient through economic downturns, it has not been immune to consumer pressure. The operating environment continues to be very dynamic, and the evolving global trade landscape has created more uncertainty related to consumer wallet pressures, especially for the second half of the year. For the year, we have updated our sales expectation to reflect our first quarter results as well as more uncertainty in the second half.

We now expect net sales will be between $11,500,000,000 and $11,700,000,000 with comp sales growth in the range of flat to up 1.5%. This outlook reflects the comp growth in the second half could be in the range of down low single digits to up modestly. We continue to expect operating profit will deleverage in the low double digit range with operating margin between 11.711.8% of sales. Reflecting our sales expectation and how we are now forecasting the flow of investment spend, we expect operating margin will be more pressured in the second half of the year than the first half. For modeling purposes, our assumptions for the drivers of gross margin deleverage and SG and A growth have not changed since we provided our initial outlook in March.

Reflecting these assumptions, we now anticipate diluted EPS for the year will be between 22.65 and $23.2 per share. Before closing, I want to provide some additional context on how we are thinking about the potential impact on our business from the evolving tariff and global trade landscape. For context, in fiscal twenty twenty four, only about 1% of our merchandise receipts were direct imports. The remaining receipts came from our portfolio of 600 brands and we intend to continue to work closely with our brand partners to navigate the evolving environment and limit the financial impact on our business. Beyond merchandise, we have some exposure in indirect spend areas like fixtures and store supplies.

However, we are confident we can mitigate any cost increases. In closing, we are encouraged by the improved results our team delivered in the first quarter, and we are being prudent about managing the business. As we look to the rest of fiscal twenty twenty five, we intend to invest to strengthen our competitive position and drive long term profitable growth while also continuing to be thoughtful about pacing and prioritization of our investments. And now I'll turn the call over to the operator to moderate the q and a.

We will now begin Q and A. For today's session, we will be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you'd like to ask a question, simply click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. If you have dialed in, please press 9 to raise your hand Our first question will come from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. So I just wanna, I guess, just go back to Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan. It appears to it appears to me that, you know, you've got good traction to date, and maybe it's ahead of plan. So just curious if there's anything surprising with the efforts under that plan versus your initial expectations.

Thanks, Rupesh, for the question. I would just say that we first of all, I couldn't be any prouder than the Ulta Beauty team for really being focused on what the Ulta Beauty unleash plan is. You know, what what I would say is q one reflects our collective effort of the team and our commitment to really improving our overall process. You know, we we've really sharpened our execution in this quarter. Couple areas I would call out.

The first one would be our in store execution, really being focused on our guest experience. As Paula mentioned, we've been supporting some incremental payroll hours in our stores, and it's it's showing as paying off. Our in stocks also improved through the quarter. Can't have what you don't sell. So so it's been, great to see the in stock levels continuing to come back up.

And then, you know, our this marketing efforts, which I was speaking of of in my prepared remarks is that we're doing some things differently. This earned media value, how we're communicating with the guests, how we're really reactivating the Ulta Beauty brand itself is is resonating. We had some learnings from last year's twenty one days of beauty event, and we had a little bit clearer message, more distinct calls to action, stronger execution. And then, you know, assortment, newness does play a role in beauty. And the sacred launch coming in April, we had some newness in Mac, some expansions in Live Tinted, Half Magic, Dibs, and our rollout of Soul De Janeiro.

It did really have a nice halo effect for our stores. So again, I would just say that I'm really proud of the team's efforts. I'm encouraged by the actions that everyone's taking as part of this ultra beauty unleashed plan, and it's it's resonating with the guest. We're really focusing on executing our plans and building on the success from this quarter and laying out the groundwork to drive long term sustainable growth for the future.

Our next question will come from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

My first question is around the full year outlook of flat to 1.5. Obviously, you suggest a pretty big deceleration after a very strong quarter. So can you talk about the key drivers of that and the cadence, you know, by quarter? And then on pricing promotion, given the tariff backdrop, several companies are planning to raise prices. How do you think about pricing and promotion for you?

You mentioned second half margins are more pressured. Is that strictly related to tariffs, or you expect the promo to start to move upwards after a good strong, q one? Thank you.

Thanks, Olivia. I I'll I'll take that from a a a guidance per perspective, and I'll I'll start with with sales. You know? We as I as I shared, you know, we expect our comp sales growth in a range of flat to up 1.5%, and we've raised the upper end to reflect our q one performance. But we've held the low end at flat to reflect the more uncertainty in the in the second half.

I mean, for context, we expect comps in the first half will be in the low single digit range and then in the range of down low single digits to up modestly in in the second half. We're encouraged by our Q1 performance, but recognizing that one quarter doesn't make a trend and that the environment is pretty dynamic that we're operating in. And so we believe it's prudent to continue to take a cautious approach to to our guidance. And then I think your second question was related to promo, pricing and and and promo. What I would say is that the, you know, from a a promotional perspective, we still we are expecting promotions to be rational.

You know, bearing any major economic event, we expect the promotional environment to stay rational. Obviously, things could could deteriorate if if, the consumer deteriorates. But what we're focusing in on are many of the things that we talked about, earlier, which is, really focused on promo optimization and clarity of our option our our offers and making sure that, we are driving optimal and profitable growth through our promotional strategies. From a pricing perspective, we we aren't we're working with our brand partners. And right now, with the environment, it's still it's still pretty pretty dynamic.

And our like I had said before, our our guidance assumes that we're not anticipating any any major changes that we won't be able to mitigate.

Our next question will come from Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity. Please unmute and ask your question.

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you can maybe just talk about the newness and innovation pipeline as we kind of head in through the summer into the back half of the year and holiday? I guess, you expecting a continued ramp up in newness and innovation as we go throughout the year?

And if there's anything else you could also share about just with new products coming out? Thanks.

Well, thank you, Susan, for your question. What I did share earlier is that we are pleased with what we see that's coming up in the second quarter and the back half of the year. We don't really wanna share specifics around what those newness items are, but what I can say is that it's a nice balance of cross category newness. So it's not all in just one category, and there's a nice blend of exclusivity in the newness pipeline also, which is really important, to us as we're continuing to to build on our momentum. You know, our brand building efforts and what our merchants are doing, the work that they're doing with our brand partners has been phenomenal, and I'm very, very pleased with what I see and the direction that we're heading in.

So I I do think that we've got a nice cadence of newness and exclusivity within the newness, and it's balanced across the portfolio.

Our next question will come from Corinne Wolfmeyer with Piper Sandler.

Hi. Thanks so much for taking the question. I'd like to touch a little bit on, you know, the improvements in demand that you saw throughout the quarter and how on your how you're kind of, like, attributing that that that growth from. As we think about, you know, improvement in the consumer environment, you've had a lot of, consumer engagement initiatives going on, several events that you had been investing in.

So how are you thinking about market improvement versus your own initiatives and then even competitive intensity throughout the quarter and how that impacted the growth? Thanks.

Yeah. I'll I'll start. So, you know, let's talk I'll start with the competitive intensity first. You know, beauty has always been a very competitive category because it's got attractive margins and it's, you know, attracted a variety of people in the category. But beauty and wellness is really what we do.

The Ulta Beauty unleashed plan is designed to really help us accelerate and amplify our differentiation. The pipeline of newness coming, I get I I feel gives us confidence in, us continuing to be able to drive share. Again, this was the first time on a while that we were able to really drive share across the category, so I'm I'm pleased with that. When you look at just our category performance, it was really blunt balanced across the portfolio. You know, the trends that we're seeing in makeup, haircare, skincare, wellness, and fragrance.

Skincare, wellness, and fragrance were our stronger driver categories, but we really feel that we're moving in the right direction there. Hair care and makeup is are two categories that we already own a lot of shares. So for us to continue to leverage and and grow those two categories is a little bit harder for us, but I still feel like there's some green shoots for us to continue to grow. If you look at the industry as a whole, the beauty category, well, we'll we see it kinda normalizing after several years of pretty extraordinary growth. The beauty category within the industry grew low single digits in q one.

Mass growth was fairly consistent and prestige slowed, but remained overall positive. But we expect overall that beauty will grow in line with the historical average over the next, you know, few years of that two to 5%, which is what we shared at our October Analyst Day.

So thank you though for the question, Karina. I appreciate it.

Our next question will come from Christopher Horvers with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Christopher, your line is open. Feel free to unmute.

Hi, Keisha. So I wanted to follow-up on that last question. I mean, obviously, share performance is there's puts and takes to that. You saw Sephora at Kohl's. I think they comped one, you know, three and a half years into launching all these stores.

So, you know, some of that is the fading of that headwind, which you've talked about for a while now. Some of that seems to be execution in stocks, digital mark marketing, digital. So maybe disaggregate. How much do you think it was just maybe just a fade of this headwind versus your better execution? And related to that, can you talk a little bit about, you know, how much the the the ERP disruption hurt the second second quarter and how you're thinking about, you know, the where the business is now and and how that proceeds forward?

Yes. Well, what I would say, it's really hard to quantify exactly, you know, what the drivers are, but I'm a big believer controlling what you can control. And while we're seeing improvements in the trend of those stores that were impacted by physical points and distribution, we kind of expected that, and we built that into our plan. We do believe that the lapping of the new opening and the impact of our operational efforts both are, you know, contributing to our overall performance. You know, in regards to the ERP disruption that we had, with Instax, you know, again, as I mentioned earlier in a response, you've gotta have product to be able to sell it to the guest.

And, we're just doubling down and making sure that we're giving the very best guest experience that we can in our stores, making sure that we have, great marketing campaigns to drive the traffic into the store and making sure that we have the products for the guest when they're coming in, and giving a great, great guest experience. And, again, it's kind of retail one zero one. It's about being focused on controlling what we can control in a pretty dynamic and ever changing environment out there. But, you know, I I do believe we this was the quarter. Second quarter was when we were starting to really hit the challenges a little bit with our in stocks, and we do think that there's some upside potential to to next year.

And then, you know, last year in second quarter, we did have a lot more promo activity that was happening. June and July were a little tougher for us, from a sales comp perspective, and we are also, seeing that, you know, we've got better marketing plans in place from some learnings that we had last year. And I would also say just even kind of the cadence of sales that we saw, from the first quarter this year, we came into the gates a little softer. And we started to see pickup in March and then April, and we are seeing stronger trends coming in May, but it's you know, summer is a tough, tough month for for beauty. Last year, q two is one of our tougher quarters, from a comp perspective, and there's a there's a lot of unknowns out there.

While we're executing better, we're having better marketing campaigns, and we are also gonna be in stock. There's a lot of uncertainty out there with the consumer and their wallet and how they're gonna spend. But all of the things that we can control and that we're leaning into to make sure that we're positioned to, you know, perform as best as we can, I feel like we're hitting on all of those cylinders?

Our next question comes from Simeon Siegel with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks. Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. Nice job.

Hope you can hear me. Yep. Keisha, how are you thinking about ticket versus transactions embedded within the the full year guide and just in general as you think about the top line opportunities going forward? And, Paula, I think you mentioned a corporate overhead expense timing shift. Could you just quantify that or give it any order of magnitude?

Akisha, I can take the I can take the the the ticket. You know? In in q one, we saw an increase in average ticket, and it was primarily driven by an increase in average selling price. That was offset by fewer units per per transactions. And as we think about that average ticket, the increase is really, with the selling price driven by kinda shifts in category and brand brand mix and, as well as reflective of of lower, promotionality that we saw in in the quarter.

What I would say is we don't necessarily forecast or provide, the specifics around what we're what we're expecting or planning from a ticket and transaction perspective because, obviously, you know, there's many things that contribute to, the ticket and the transaction transaction performance. And then from a corporate overhead perspective, really, what I would say is, you know you know, we we were we we were thoughtful about the pacing and the prioritization of what this is an investment year we shared. We talked about we talked about, that we're investing this year to really orientate ourselves for future future long term term growth. And, you know, our our spin was, it came out of the gates a a little as we thought about the, timing of some of the spins and shifts in project timelines and resource plans, it's typical. We that was a little slower coming out of the the gate in in q one.

It started to tick back up at the end of the quarter, and that is that's been it's it's kinda moving or shifting into the later part of of the year. So that was one of the major drivers for for the corporate overhead.

Great. Thanks a lot. Best of luck for the rest of the year. Nice job.

Our next question will come from Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs.

Hi. Hope you can hear me. One of your comments on the call was that there was still an offset from brands that had expanded their points of distribution and it impacting your business. Just given the initiatives that you were doing, are you seeing a more muted impact from that increased distribution?

And how do you think as increased distribution is kind of maybe part of doing business now, the industry could be maybe better segmented, or is that something that you would expect?

Well, thanks, Kate, for the question. I I would just say, you know, beauty and wellness is what we do. And when a lot of other players are trying to come into this space, this is where we are the experts. We have a leading loyalty program. Our omnichannel channel offering is anchored in that human connection, that in store, and that digital, you know, powerful connection, that combo really does set us apart.

And we do leverage our deep and proprietary understanding of the beauty guests to create absolutely the best and most personalized digital experience in beauty. Also, that in combo with our newness and the confidence that we've got in our pipeline, it just creates this halo effect. Again, the category has always been competitive. And as I shared earlier, while we are seeing some trends in some of these stores that were impacted by physical points and distribution, we're just gonna continue to lean in to where it is that we just do well. We do really well in our stores.

We're continuing to invest in our digital channels. We're elevating our personalization, leaning into wellness, and our brand building, and it's hitting on all of those cylinders that are part of the Ulta Beauty plan. I believe that's gonna help us continue to be really successful this year and beyond.

Our next question comes from Oliver Chen with Cowen and Company. Please go ahead.

Hi there. Thank you for taking our question.

This is Katie on for Oliver. We'd like to touch a little bit on the marketing strategy. What do you think has really worked better than expected, and where do you see more opportunity to leverage social media? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for the question. You know, again, it's really taking our deep knowledge and understanding of our loyalty member base and elevating that personalization, that connectivity and communicating with them in the ways that they best feel suited. I would say the one thing that's, changed a little bit, in this last year is more recently is that we're really activating under our master brand of Ulta Beauty and that we're talking a lot more about Ulta Beauty as the place to go and connecting the possibilities of beauty when you come in and you shop with us. It's not just a bunch of brands in our store.

It's about shopping Ulta Beauty and trusting us because we've done a lot of work and we've helped curate that brand assortment for you. Just, you know, activating an EMV and being very, very focused on our earned media value and how we can really activate in off what I call authentic ways versus overly produced ways that are genuine and have that connection with the guest makes all the difference in the world. We've gotta be where it's socially relevant and where it makes sense for us to be like Super Bowl. We really never had had an activation like we did before. Being part of the cowboy Carter tour, we that's something we've never done before.

The Ulta Beauty world where, I mean, I myself was almost tired of seeing so many points of presence on my TikTok and my Instagram because we'd pretty much taken over because of the excitement of our super fans that were out there along with influencers. And I think that the whole area in Florida about our convention next year is sold out. People are just really excited. And I think when you can create that kind of energy and excitement in a true authentic way that connects with the guest and they view Ulta Beauty not just as a place to go to buy just things, but a place to go to help you feel better about yourself, that's where the magic really happens. So I would say that's what the difference I feel is happening right now today.

Ulta Beauty (ULTA) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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