The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Good day everyone and welcome to the Estée Lauder Companies Fiscal 2026 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Conference Call. Today's webcast is being recorded. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Ms. Rainie Mancini.

Hello. On today's webcast are Stéphane Delafavrie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Srivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Since many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements, let me refer you to our press release and our reports filed with the SEC, where you'll find factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. To facilitate the discussion of our underlying business, the commentary on our financial results and expectations is before restructuring and other charges and adjustments disclosed in our press release. Unless otherwise stated, references to net sales refer to organic net sales which excludes the non-comparable impacts of acquisitions, divestitures, brand closures, and the impact of foreign currency translation. You can find reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our press release and on the investor section of our website. Retail sales performance discussed is based on information available as of August 14th, 2026. As a reminder, references to online sales include sales we make directly to our consumers through our brand.com sites and through third-party platforms. It also includes estimated sales of our products through our retailers' websites. Throughout our discussion, our profit recovery and growth plan will be referred to as our PRGP. During the Q&A session, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question so we can respond to as many participants as possible within the time scheduled for this webcast. And now we have a brand portfolio video before Stephan begins.

Thank you, Reni, and hello to everyone. I am incredibly proud of our Fiscal 26 results. We reignited growth, with organic sales rising 3%, driven by the breadth of growth across brands and expanded operating margins significantly. When we introduced Beauty Reimagined in February 2025, we committed to the biggest organizational, leadership and cultural transformation in our company's history to become faster and more agile with greater discipline. Our ambition was clear, become the best consumer-centric prestige beauty company with more diversified, balanced and sustainable growth drivers. Before getting into our Fiscal 26 results, which reflect the early success of this ambition, I want to share why I am more optimistic for the company's future today, 18 months into my tenure as CEO, and address some of the questions that have arisen in recent months. First, can we accelerate growth? Yes, we just did and we will again. The PRGP's approvals are done and now all our energy can be focused on accelerating growth. As we continue to deploy our one ELC operating model, we are enabling the entire organization to do what we do best. This means, depending investment in the desirability of our brands. Leveraging superior AI enables consumer-driven insights to drive breakthrough innovation and executing with excellence. Second, the elephant in the room, M&A. Our focus has been and will remain growing our core business. We will continue to pursue minority and single brand deals that enhance our portfolio and can benefit from our ability to create scale and deliver attractive ROIC. We have done this with Kilian Paris, Le Labo and The Ordinary, our three fastest growing brands in fiscal 26. We have no doubt we will do it again with 4S Essentials which we have announced we are adding to our portfolio. To be clear, for the foreseeable future, we are not entertaining transformational deals that will divert us from our winning strategy. Third, I have heard the question about whether the transformation has left us without the right talent in place. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can say definitely, we are now stronger having invested in the retail organization and brought in great new talent across the company, including in creative, marketing, research and innovation, and technology. Even more powerful is what is harder for outsiders to see, the ways that the team is working more efficiently. Significantly less layers, fewer silos, clarity of roles, and greater accountability. A truly empowered organization. This is why I am confident we will accelerate our growth and continue to rebuild profitability. Now, let's turn to our strong fiscal 2016 results. Reported sales rose 5% and organic sales grew 3%, with positive sales performance every quarter. Looking at profitability, we significantly exceeded our initial outlook from last August. Benefits from the PRGP were more robust and achieved more quickly than anticipated, which is a tribute to the extraordinary contribution of our employees around the world and our strengthening cultures around speed of execution. Gross margin expanded 150 basis points, operating margin expanded 320 basis points, and diluted EPS grew 66%. Impressively, Jo Malone London and Tom Ford joined our billion-dollar club. Our portfolio of billion-dollar brands is unparalleled in prestige beauty, with these two brands joining Clinique, Estée Lauder, La Mer and MAC. With their scale, premier brand desirability, breakthrough innovation and consumer reach, these brands are positioned to be powerful contributors to growth. In fiscal 26, five of the six delivered sequentially improved organic sales performance. And The Ordinary is quickly ascending towards this milestone, fueled by another year of double-digit organic sales growth in fiscal 26. Looking at categories, skincare delivered 4% organic sales growth. We drove growth across the price spectrum, with The Ordinary vibrant in the entry price tier, Estée Lauder thriving in the art of prestige, and La Mer exceptional in the luxury price tier. For Florence, our results are amongst the best in the industry, with organic sales growth of 10%. This reflects our continued investment to develop and capture growing demand. Hero Sainte and new nests from Le Labo, Tom Ford, Kylian Paris and Jo Malone London prospered. We also successfully launched Balmain Beauty into the prestige price tier and we have more to come as we enter fiscal 27. Looking at makeup, we stabilized performance and improved organic cell strength by 500 basis points, led by Mac and Tom Ford. Leap drove Mac renaissance, while Tom Ford's innovation in face and eye powered its growth. We have much more to do in makeup, but we are making encouraging progress as we better position our brand in high growth channels like social commerce and specialty multi and speed up launch cycles. For hair care, while not yet back to organic sales growth, we are seeing evidence of Aveda's turnaround in the US, its biggest market, given sheer expansion in tracked salon data. The Ordinaries serum for hair density remains a viral sensation, delivering strong growth in both organic and retail sales. Now for the regions, each improved in FY26 vs. FY25, from negative to positive organic sales growth across the board. Mainline China led with broad-based 9% organic sales growth as skincare rose high single digit, makeup rose mid single digit, and fragrance rose double digit. We outperform the market every quarter of fiscal 26 to gain prestige beauty share for the year led by La Mer, Le Labo and Tom Ford. Within Asia Pacific, global travel retail returned to growth fueled in part by our investment in experiential retail across mainland China and Korea. Travel retail represented approximately 15% of reported sales in fiscal 26, similar to the channel's global prestige share. Our priority emerging market excelled with organic sales growth accelerating from mid-single digit in fiscal 25 to high single digit in fiscal 26, despite the disruption in the Middle East. For the US, the UK and Ireland, and Korea, we improved organic sales trend throughout fiscal 26. In the US, we returned to organic sales growth in the fourth quarter, with retail sales again rising mid single digit amid continuous prestige beauty volume share gain. For fiscal 26, we gained volume share with every category contributing. In the UK and Ireland, we delivered three consecutive quarters of organic sales growth, including the fourth quarter when we also gained Prestige Beauty's share in the UK. This is especially meaningful given Prestige Beauty's strength in the UK and following many years of share loss. Our performance in Korea was similarly encouraging, with three consecutive quarters of organic sales growth through the fourth quarter. Retail sales growth accelerated from high single digits in the third quarter to double digits in the fourth quarter, driving a return to prestige beauty share gain to end the year. Looking at channels, online performance was outstanding, with organic sales rising double digits, driving strong Prestige Beauty share gain for the channel across many markets, including China and the US. Impressively, online reached 34% of reported sales for fiscal 26, up 3 percentage points from fiscal 25 to an all-time record. Finally, when we introduced Beauty Reimagined, we committed to creating transformative innovation as we restored sales growth. During fiscal 26, we accelerated speed to market, launching breakthrough on-trend and commercial innovation across every category with 23% of sales from innovation. With this Fiscal 26 result, we deliver on all aspects of beauty reimagined. As promised, accelerating best-in-class consumer coverage, bringing innovation to market faster, increasing consumer-facing investment, streamlining our fixed cost base, and revitalizing our entrepreneurial spirit. Looking ahead to fiscal 27, we are doubling down on our strengths to further diversify growth across product categories and geographies, including accelerating growth in North America. This means expanding more brands into high growth channels across more markets, launching a bigger and bolder innovation pipeline, continuing to increase consumer-facing investment including more into our priority emerging market and increasingly benefiting from one ELC, our new operating model. We kicked off fiscal 27 with a robust slate of newness. For the fiscal year, innovation as a percentage of sales is set to increase 200 to 250 basis points led by skincare. Already out in skincare, Clinique and The Ordinary tapped into emerging ingredient trends with PDRM innovation, while Estée Lauder introduced a breakthrough in longevity as well as newness for night. La Mer and Bobbi Brown created next-generation editions of beloved hero products, and Clinique introduced a new franchise for sensitive skin spanning skincare and makeup. Building on this in makeup, MAC launched exciting innovation in a signature lip franchise, including an all-new lip stain, which was a blockbuster success in its early launch in Korea during fiscal 26. For France, the category we expect to lead Prestige Beauty's growth again in fiscal 27. Our first-quarter innovations are extensive, from Balmain Beauty along with the new prestige line from Killian Paris and Estée Lauder to Jo Malone London and Tom Ford in the luxury price tier. We introduce distinctive scents to drive new consumer acquisitions across demographics and regional preferences. For one ELC operating ecosystem, we are advancing with speed across our three biggest initiatives. We launched macusbrand.com on Shopify last week, the first of many deployments online and in-store across brands around the world in fiscal 27, as we modernize capabilities in our direct-to-consumer business to drive growth. For enterprise business services, we are on track to have transitioned about 80% of the expected roles by September, while also standardizing select processes and standing up key AI-enabled technologies to facilitate service delivery and productivity. For our new unified global media model, most of our market have transitioned to WPP, already lighting up over 1500 campaigns and harnessing AI for real-time personalization for many of our performance campaigns. And we expanded our collaboration with Meta, leveraging their AI-powered tool built for advertising, conversational commerce, and adjunct messaging across our brand portfolio to reflect the new consumer behavior of where they are interacting with brands. Now, let me close where I began. I am proud of our Fiscal 26 result. In Beauty Reimagined, we have a winning playbook and I am confident we will deliver another strong year in fiscal 27. We have the right brands, the right team, a clear momentum, onward and upward. I will now turn the call over to Akhil.

Thank you, Stéphane. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. We are proud of the progress we made in fiscal 26 and how our teams executed with excellence against beauty reimagined with speed, focus, and discipline. We had promised a focus on growth margin cash to drive sustainable growth and long-term value creation. Our return to organic sales growth of 3%, operating margin improvement of 320 basis points, diluted EPS growth of 66%, and net cash flows from operations of $1.8 billion reflect our strong delivery against that commitment. This was driven by the strategic and disciplined actions we have taken to focus on restoring growth, transforming our operating model, improving our cost structure, and creating operating leverage. Before discussing our fiscal 27 outlook, I'll briefly highlight our fourth quarter and full year results and progress across key areas of the business. For more information on our full year and fourth quarter performance, please refer to a press release issued this morning. Starting with organic net sales, we saw broad-based growth in the fourth quarter across all product categories and geographic regions, with the exception of haircare. Our 5% organic sales growth was the strongest quarterly performance of the year, with sequential improvement from the third quarter across every region, except UKIM, where business disruptions from the conflict in the Middle East reduced growth by 2%. We are encouraged by North America's sequential improvement in retail sales growth along with its return to organic sales growth in the fourth quarter, even without the one-time benefit discussed in a press release. These results reflect the progress we are making through our consumer-facing investments to drive growth. Now looking at margins, fourth quarter and full year gross margin reached 75.5%, expanding 360 basis points and 150 basis points respectively compared to last year. This represents nearly 400 basis points of improvement in gross margin compared to fiscal 2024 when we first announced the PRGP. These results reflect the structural improvements we have made and our ability to execute with speed, enhancing operational efficiency, reducing excess and bringing gross margin back to near historical levels. Turning to operating margin, we delivered nearly 300 basis points or more of expansion in every quarter this year, including 330 basis points in the fourth quarter, contributing to a full year operating margin of 11.2%, up 320 basis points from last year. Through our PRGP initiatives, we delivered net benefits that funded additional consumer facing investments throughout the year. Our investments increased 7% for the full year or 4% excluding FX. We reduced non-consumer facing expenses in every quarter this year, except the fourth quarter, which included higher employee incentive costs tied to a better than expected full year performance. This reflects our continuous focus on streamlining our fixed cost base to create greater flexibility and our disciplined allocation of investments toward the highest return areas. In terms of our PRGP restructuring program, we concluded approvals as of June 30th and recorded $823 million of total cumulative charges in fiscal 26, primarily in employee-related costs. Although the approval phase is behind us, our unrelenting focus on everyday efficiency is not. It is embedded in how we operate, enabling ongoing investments in growth opportunities. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the full year improved to 35.7%, a decrease from 38.8% last year. Diluted EPS increased to 39 cents in the fourth quarter from 9 cents last year and increased 66% for the full year to $2.51. Moving to our next strategic priority, cash flow. Cash generation was very strong this year with cash flow from operating activities of $1.8 billion up from $1.3 billion last year, despite higher restructuring payments. This reflects higher earnings and disciplined working capital management, which improved cash productivity across the business. We spent $457 million in capex this year, compared to $602 million last year, reflecting disciplined capital allocation and prioritizing consumer-facing investments to support growth. These actions supported improved free cash flow, and we ended the year with $3.5 billion in cash on hand. The significant progress we made in Fiscal 26 through our disciplined execution of Beauty Reimagined, including our PRGP, has transformed our operating model, strengthening our company as we enter Fiscal 27. With our momentum, I'm excited about our outlook for Fiscal 27 and even more confident in our ability to deliver long-term sustainable value creation. For fiscal 27, we expect to accelerate organic sales growth and deliver stronger adjusted operating profitability. Turning to top line, for fiscal 27, we expect organic net sales growth in the range of 3% to 5%, reflecting more diversified growth across product categories and geographic regions. We expect organic net sales growth in the first half of the year to be stronger than in the second half, reflecting a slate of innovation earlier in the year and stronger travel retail shipments, giving improvement retail trends and a lower base of shipment in the prior year. Looking at UChamp, we expect stronger sales growth in the second half of the year as we lap the business disruptions related to the conflict in the Middle East that affected the second half of fiscal 26. While the situation remains dynamic based on what we know today, we do not expect the impacts from the conflict in the Middle East to be material to our fiscal 27 results. Turning now to profitability, we are raising our preliminary outlook and now expect operating margin to range between 12.7 and 13.5%. This reflects in part our strong fiscal 26 results, continued operating leverage in non-consumer facing expenses and a modest expansion in gross margin. We expect an effective tax rate in the range of approximately 33 to 34%, building upon the progress we made in fiscal 26. Diluted EPS is expected to range between $3.10 and $3.35, assuming a weighted average share count of approximately 368 million shares. Moving now to cash generation. In fiscal 27, we expect to generate net cash flows from operating activities between $1.3 and $1.4 billion. This decrease from last year reflects higher restructuring payments, as well as increased working capital needs to support growth, compared to strong working capital improvements in fiscal 26. After the restructuring payments expected in fiscal 27, the vast majority of the cash payments associated with the program will be behind us. We expect capital expenditures for the full year to be approximately 4% of sales as we continue to prioritize consumer-facing investments to fuel growth, including upgrades to our brick and mortar and online distribution channels, as well as targeted expanded consumer reach. Before we close, I would like to highlight another example of the more streamlined processes and stronger execution discipline we have built into the organization. Beginning with fiscal 27, we are accelerating our year-end reporting timeline and plan to report our fiscal 27 results on August 4th. In closing, we enter fiscal 27 as a different company, more focused, more agile, and better positioned to execute with speed and excellence. We remain confident in beauty reimagined and our ability to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value creation. I want to thank our employees around the world for leading our transformation and for your unwavering commitment to our company and our success. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn it over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk and then you will hear your name called. Please accept, unmute your audio and ask your question. If you're dialing in by phone, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts one question. Time permitting, we will return to you for additional questions. We will wait one moment to allow the queue to form. Our first question comes from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Great, very good. Thank you. Good morning. Can you hear me?

Good morning, Steve. We can hear you.

Okay, perfect. Great. I guess if we could start on profitability, just a little bit more detail, if you could, on what has improved since May that's allowed you to upgrade the fiscal 27 margin outlook. And within that, if I could, in the quarter, we're seeing growth. appear increasingly diversified, but profitability still seems very concentrated. So as we think about the year ahead, the timeline for makeup, fragrance, hair care, and maybe the Americas to contribute more meaningfully to that profitability improvement. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve. So essentially, we had a strong 26 beat. We had a strong 26-beat, so we wanted to flow that to the next year. In addition, as we have completed our PRGP work, we see further opportunities for SG&A optimization, which we are flowing through, and that has been a consistent message on non-consumer-facing investment optimization all through the year. And that is included in the improved outlook. What is also included in the improved outlook is continued investments to fuel growth, because that is ultimately the way to continue driving better leverage, better value creation. And then, of course, we are also looking at executing The savings we have on PRGP ramp up through the year. So frankly, this then goes to the full run rate will even be reflected in 28. So we'll exit with a stronger 27 with most of the savings coming through, but the full run rate will come through on 28 as well. Now related to your point on the diversity or the concentration of a profit, agree we have strong profitability on skincare, we have strong profitability in Asia, and we are improving profitability in all our segments. However, you are right that we have opportunity to further improve profitability on categories like makeup, haircare, and fragrance as well, and which is a clear part of our plan to improve profitability as we go towards further from the 13.5, which is the top end we have given. So over the next coming years, you should continue to see clear sequential improvement in all segments, both geographic and category.

Very good. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Lauren Lieberman at Barclays. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Great. Thanks so much. I thought there was very big news today in the earlier August reporting. So thank you for that. I wanted to acknowledge that. And also all of the great transparency throughout the presentation was really helpful. My question at the risk of being a bit nitpicky is organic sales guide, for 27% of 3% to 5% growth versus the comment that expectation to accelerate organic sales growth, because obviously at the low end, that would not be an acceleration. So just wanted to understand that low end. And then more specifically, it does feel like there's a degree of organic sales growth that is still very tied to timing and dynamics around travel retail shipments. So it feels that areas of the business, particularly high man retail, has really stabilized. And I guess that inventory levels there have as well, given the visibility you seem to have into first half shipments. But just some commentary on, I guess, overall sort of stability and inventory levels on particularly Asia TR and the degree to which that influences the organic sales outlook. Thanks.

Thanks, Laura. And thank you for your comment. Really, really appreciate it. Very, very, very proud of what the team as achieved throughout fiscal 26. Talk about the outlook. Obviously, as the beauty reimagined strategy lays it out very clearly, we want a much more diversified growth across geography, across categories, across channel going forward. So you're going to see us continuing to build on the strengths, obviously, of China and the Asia We are also clearly laying out an acceleration on the West, especially with North America, where we are laser-focused on pushing retail and USO, obviously, in the quarter four. Some very strong result in the mid single digit growth. So obviously this is really balanced in the way we do it. And to complement like what Akhil was saying, you know, we are obviously going to continue to accelerate like, you know, skincare in France. Like I said in my prepared remark, we expect France to continue to be a stunning performance in fiscal like, you know, 27. But obviously with a clear intent to accelerate the performance of makeup. And the performance of makeup will be broad based from a geography standpoint, but with a clear focus also on the West, especially North America again. So I think you have to see the outlook for us. We are always looking at the three to five. But as we in fiscal 26 deliver the top end of the guidance, our goal is to just like, you know, look an acceleration over fiscal 26. If you look at the midpoint, there will be 100 basis point improvement. If you look at the top end of the guidance, there will be 200 basis point improvements that mainly will obviously come from the West. So that's where I would look at our overall guidance from a sales standpoint for fiscal 27. Then your second part of your question, when you talk about TR shipment, I want to be very clear and I reiterate what I've said many, many times. We are shipping to demand. So our inventory is in a very good place in travel retail. Now, I'm very happy to report Another good news in travel retail. For the first time in three years, for the months of June and the months of July, we are back into positive territory for travel retail global, led by Hainan, that is in double-digit growth in the fourth quarter. It was also there in Q3. But we're seeing great momentum in Korea, in Hong Kong, in Southeast Asia in travel retail. And obviously, like, you know, travel retail Wests, The America is strong and it's helping to offset some of the headwind that we're getting from the Middle East. So the retail is strong in travel retail and we are managing inventory to the demand. And as I said, also many time travel retail represent about 15% of our business and we intend to just keep it in line with industry standard. Hope it answers your question, Lauren.

Great, thank you.

Thanks, Lauren. Our next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead and ask your question.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. Morning, Chris. Great. I wanted to follow up on this from a bit of a different angle, but just number one, you talked about faster organic sales growth in the front half of the year. Can you just dimensionalize that? Would you be above your guidance range in the front half or more at the higher end. And then secondly, just on this travel retail comment, I mean, I think the question is well taken in that travel retail shipment is, are these two words that we've come accustomed to representing volatility over recent years. And clearly you just said that you're shipping in line with consumption. But can you just give us a sense of how you've evolved the management of the broader Asia ecosystem when you go to market and how you're thinking about managing the mainland China business versus the travel retail business in Asia such that you can deliver more consistent growth in both areas over the course of the year. So thanks so much for those two.

Thanks, Chris. So let me just take on this question. When it looks at the outlook for fiscal 27, and we said it in our prepared remark, we have a stronger pipeline on innovation in the first half versus the second half. And it was by design, obviously, because when we laid out Beauty Reimagined, we said we were going to just accelerate our innovation and obviously like you know skincare alongside every other category was a key focus like you know for us for acceleration so you're seeing a lot more coming in the first half which led to believe that obviously we will be higher in term of growth in the first half than we would be in the second half okay and that will help We have a very clear system in place today. Like you said, on the management, first of all, we had a complete transformation of the leadership team in travel retail. We have a new leader in travel retail managing from different places around the world. And we have two key regions, one for the East and one for the West. The West being managed out of London for us and the East managed by from Singapore and we have new talent. Like I said in my prepared remark also, we've really accelerated experiential retail in travel retail. So you're going to see us doing a lot more activities in the East and in the West. We've accelerated the deployment of our brand in the West, especially led by the Forensics. You're seeing a lot more visibility on Jo Malone, on Tom Ford, on Kilian, on Le Labo, on many, many airports in the Americas and EMA. And when it comes to the management of the East, we have some system in place that allows a clear coordination of activities between mainland China and travel retail China. And that is done in conjunction between Joy Fan, who is the leader of China, and Matthew Gordon, who is the leader of APAC and travel retail. where they meet regularly to coordinate launches, activities, how do we go at 11-11 versus 6-18 between the travel retail and in local markets. So it's a very sophisticated model that allows us to really making sure that we are managing the total China ecosystem and we are looking at it from mainland to travel retail alongside also with the Chinese travelers around the world in a very coordinated model that allows us to delight the Chinese consumer wherever they are, and as you say, to continue to ship to the demand wherever it is.

Okay, thanks so much.

Thanks, Chris.

Our next question comes from Filippo Faloni with Citi. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Morning, Filippo. Morning. I wanted to ask about the mainland China business. Clearly, the category has improved and you call out the significant improvement in market share as well in terms of brand rankings around the 618, 111, and you mentioned even the number one share position in Prestige Beauty. So I just wanted to get your perspective on What has changed in the market both at the category level and at your execution that has really transformed this business and put in a consistent top line growth? And what allowed you to kind of like consistently gain market share in the market both in terms of like innovation changes, marketing, social media presence? What has been the big change that has allowed this very impressive turnaround in China? Thank you.

Thank you, Philippe. A fantastic question on China. And the first thing I would say is like I'm really proud of the work that the team in China is doing across all the brands. But the most important thing is understanding the fundamentals of the market. And the market is very, very strong. It's in high single digit growth. from a prestige beauty so we're seeing like you know china growing again and as thank you for pointing it out we've had some fantastic results we've been gaining market share in every single quarter in every single category um so now we are on to six consecutive quarter of market share gain in china and in the last quarter what is very impressive we have 11 brands in retail sales growth, of which six are in double-digit growth. And that's very important for you to just note because as we committed a diversified growth around the world, we also committed to a more diversified growth within the region and within the channel where we operate. So today, we have obviously continues to have very strong performance on like, you know, La Mer, but we have a very diversified growth across now six brands in double digit growth. And we have like, you know, brand Le Labo that are like, you know, growing, you know, in excess of 50%, like, you know, during the year. So which is like, you know, fantastic. The other thing to answer your question of why we are winning in the market is like, you know, remarkable, despite the remarkable execution from the team, we also accelerating innovation in China for China. Now, 30% of our innovation around the world is coming from China for the China market, thanks to the ramp up of all the activities we have from our R&D center in Shanghai. So this is also allowing us to be even more tailored to the needs of the Chinese consumer in skincare or in makeup. And then I would say we have, the last thing I would say is in China, we've always been first movers to new channels. So like, you know, today, obviously we started years ago with the department stores that continues to be strong. We accelerated our freestanding stores that allows us to like, you know, accelerate our experience. But obviously in online, which is now over 50% of the business in China, we are like, you know, having great success with doing We have now 11 brands in China on the Douyin platform and we are performing extremely well there. So overall the market is strong, our business is even stronger than the market and the last thing that I would say in China, we are now less promotional. We've really pushed the valorization in the market that have really allowed us to just like, you know, recruit new consumers and allowed us to, thanks to the valorization, to continue to sustain strong investment in the market to just like, you know, capture the Chinese demand.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Philippe.

Our next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, Peter.

Peter, your line is now open. You may ask your question.

You guys hear me now? Yes, we can hear you, Peter. All right, cool. Thank you.

So good morning, guys. I was hoping to get some perspective on, you know, 26 and just kind of taking a step back. And just looking at things, where things came in relative to your expectations and kind of just the drivers of the upside, right? Organic sales, came at the high end operating margin well ahead of the midpoint if we go back to where guidance was a year ago. And I'm curious if you've embedded similar levels of flexibility as it pertains to kind of 27 guidance, particularly as it would seem you're exiting the year with some really nice momentum on the top line and the majority of the benefits related to PRGP are still to be realized.

Thank you, Peter. Yeah, so I'll start and Stefan can add here. Essentially, look, it has been what Stefan just said. It has been outstanding execution against our priorities overall on all of the pillars. So of course, we started the year with a guide of 9,499 on margin, and we significantly beat that through the year. That is really the outstanding execution of PRGP, first of all. Secondly, the continued progress we made on reducing, therefore, the non-consumer facing. Thirdly, which allowed us to fuel the business, which is seen as the much more diversified growth in quarter four. So we are pleased with the fact that North America has come back to positive results this quarter on net sales as well as retail has been building. So those have been positive surprises from a cost and top line perspective. And at the same time, China business, consistent share growth, quarter of quarter in one of the most competitive market, and that too by a significant distance, as we just said, that has been a positive. And then travel retail returning to positive retails as we are exiting the year. So these are all positive surprises. And also on gross margin, we delivered 150 basis points. When we entered the year, the environment was quite uncertain with the tariffs, et cetera, being announced. But we really executed very well against that and mitigated a significant part. And so our beat on gross margin as well has been very strong. As we look to 27, of course, the outlook is 3% to 5% on sales growth. But it's a much more diversified growth, as Stefan just said. North America should accelerate. Makeup should accelerate. While East will lead growth, West will accelerate from its prior trends. We will keep building savings through the year, ramping as we execute, which should also give momentum into 28. And then, of course, when we give guidance, we consider various things which are controllable. So what we are demonstrating is execution against controllables is very, very strong. And we typically exceed that. Of course, what we are also keeping in mind is the macro environment, which we don't control. So we keep enough scenario planning to get to our goals into multiple different paths. So that's generally been our posture. And I'll pass it over to Stéphane to add.

Yeah, no, I think, you know, Peter, I just love to add to what he said. What you have to take into consideration is the way we enter fiscal 26 and the way we enter fiscal 27. We're a very different company. The business is really clearly transformed. We are really operating at a very different speed than we've ever done before. and we are back you know growing and that's the most important things because the streamlining of the cost has given us a lot greater flexibility to manage sales volatility so to your question are we building scenario planning for sales volatility absolutely as we did it in fiscal 26 and we are also realizing a lot more sales leverage And I think when we started the year from zero to three and we are finishing at the top end of the guidance, that is giving us a lot of leverage. And next year to three to five, let's say we just deliver the midpoint or the high point of the guidance, this is going to give us a lot more sales leverage. And that allows us to continue to accelerate. So the model and the discipline that we've built in fiscal 26 is now pulling in place clearly on a very different company on how we are operating for fiscal 27 and is going to allow us to replicate and accelerate frankly what we've done in 26 in 27. great thank you so much i'll pass it on thanks peter our next question comes from Christian Rios with Bernstein please go ahead with your question

Hi, good morning and congratulations on a fantastic quarter. I was hoping, can you break down the 5% organic sales growth in North America in the quarter into how much of that was sell-through or consumption? And I think there was mention of timing of shipments. Can you talk a bit more about what that was, the magnitude of the impact and How it connects to previous or next quarter growth or any other puts and takes that you think we should understand? And as we think about next year, what are you most excited about in terms of channels or retailers or maybe even brands in North America? Thank you.

Yeah, so thank you, Christian. I think, you know, North America for us is a key focus. It's been a key focus in 26. And you see there was one slide in our prepared remark that shows the sequential improvement quarter over quarter on our performance, finishing on a high note. The market has been growing faster in the last quarter, especially due to the June activity. But the good news is that us, we've been able to accelerate as the market is accelerating at the midpoint. And the one thing that I would say is the most important thing for us and the most important indicator in 26 was to make sure that we could resume with volume share gain. Because it is an acquisition game. We needed to just make sure that we reignite the recruitment wheel. It's exactly what we've done. And alongside, we're seeing brands like The Ordinary continuing to having outstanding performance. Mac, thanks to our deployment in new channel like Sephora, not only we've been able to regain the number one ranking in Q4, But we've been able to gain market share also in Q4, which is quite outstanding and a very quick turnaround that we will continue to accelerate in fiscal 2017. But I could go on. Bobbi Brown is also in market share gain in makeup. We've had exceptional performance on brands like Le Labo that are not in the track data because it's mostly a direct-to-consumer brand. but also like you know Tom Ford Prestige Francis that is doing very strong let alone online where we know and we have clear data showing that we are gaining market share so that is actually showing the outstanding execution that our team are doing in North America and I really believe that we are going to be able to just continue to do that. And actually, the early signal of the months of July that we are getting are extremely strong for the Estée Lauder Company, led by Clinique and Mac, thanks to great activities that we are doing on social commerce and also, like obviously, the continuous deployment of Mac into more I feel very confident and frankly there's nobody more impatient than me to just drive the growth in North America and the entire team is really focusing 27 to take on the great momentum that we have had in in Q4. So as far as what we are exciting in North America, in China, we're exciting about all the channels. We are exciting where the consumer is and our objective is to delight the consumer wherever we can create the experience that it is online, that is in specialty multi, that is in our own direct to consumer as well as in department store where we can create So I think there's great momentum. We have great innovation behind our brands. We are excited. I mentioned it. A new exciting launch behind the Lauder brand in France is called Glimmer that we are shipping as we speak. We have great exciting new launches on clinic skincare with the new smart cream serum tapping into like, you know, PDRM. So we have a slate of innovation that is really going to allow us to just like, you know, maintain if not to accelerate our growth in North America in fiscal 27. Great.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. So just going back to your commentary that, you know, expectations for a return back to growth in the makeup category, just curious the bigger opportunities you see and then just confidence in being able to get back to growth in makeup.

Yeah, we have some of the leading brands in makeup, starting with MAC. So we are clearly planning to accelerate that business. On makeup, of course, we play with Clinique, which is the number one brand in makeup in the US. We have MAC. We are also addressing the challenges we have had on some of the other brands in the past. So what we are exiting is a stronger performance on makeup. And makeup being our number two category, we continue to believe that it will not only improve on sales trends, it will also improve, as the question was asked earlier, on profitability with all of the work we are doing. And that would be a critical part of continuing to build a broader, more diversified sales growth and also profitability in this segment.

Yeah, and I think just one addition to what Akhil said, Rupesh, is obviously we are also making sure that we are deploying our makeup brand in the fast-growing channel where the makeup consumers are shopping mainly specialty, multi. as well as social commerce. One of the reasons of the strong acceleration that we're seeing in MAC is the entire ecosystem that we've created from social commerce to specialty, multi, department store and freestanding stores that are now all working in conjunction just to really activate the recruitment wheel and the retention wheel. You know, across the brand. So I think what was missing as part of our arsenal was to be everywhere where the consumer is from a recruitment and from the retention. Now that we have the right platform from a distribution standpoint and then we are adding an acceleration on innovation like this outstanding lip stain that Mac launched has been like a blockbuster in many markets around the world. We believe that now we have the right recipe Acceleration in the US Great, thank you. Thanks, Rupesh.

Today's final question comes from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Good morning. I want to talk about margins because it's an exciting time as margins continue to move in the right direction. So as you think about expanding from about 200 basis points this year, where do you see the biggest opportunity? It seems like there's more opportunity for efficiency gains as well as de-layering the organization. And if so, Which areas do you see the most opportunity? And then I also want to ask about cash uses now that you've taken transformational M&A off the table. PRGP is now closed. So how do you think about the deployment of cash from here? Thank you.

Thank you, Olivia. Look, we are pleased with the 320 basis points of margin we expanded this year, which was coming from two big drivers, gross margin and the progress on non-consumer facing, which includes, as you pointed out, employee cost reduction and all of the infrastructure rationalization we have done, including real estate and so on and so forth, and the work we have done on procurement. As we look forward on the guide that we have given of 150 to 230 basis points margin expansion as we mentioned that gross margin would be a modest driver but a large part of the driver here will come as you pointed out from all of the SG&A which includes employee cost and and the announcement we made of the total restructuring that continues through 27. So we do see a large opportunity even after this year's guide, which is what I said earlier, that as we complete our execution, we will be exiting the year with full benefits starting to hit in the later part of the year, which will then have the full annualized benefit in 28. So that flow through and margin should continue to come in 28. Of course, at 13.5 margin, we still believe we have runway to go further driven by that. Consumer facing, we have continued to invest. And as Stefan has talked about, all of the work we are doing on media, one, from a better placement and better procurement of media, there should be runway there as well. But of course, right now, our focus is to build our brands, drive growth, drive share, But that would be another leg to add down the road. So it started with gross margin, passes to SG&A, but will have the full 360 approach to continuing to build margin. So that's what we believe, and this should have at least a good flow through even in 28. Now on cash users, Our stated mission has been to deleverage the company beyond any other points on M&A. So we are continuing to use cash to drive down our debt. We have debt coming due later in the year, which we will, for all practical purposes, we would continue to pay down. Of course, we are making sure that our CapEx is fully funded to drive consumer CapEx. Secondly, of course, other one is dividend. And then thirdly is deleverage. And at the same time, we will look for any other opportunities to drive a better return on our cash. But first priority right now is to continue to build a stronger balance sheet. And we made solid progress this year with the cash performance.

Yeah, the only one thing, Olivia, that I would add to Akhil is obviously look at it as with the streamlining of our cost and the efficiency that we are building across the company, it allows us to realize a lot more sales leverage. So as we are accelerating growth, You will see the flow through in profitability and our ability to continue to accelerate and this is also why to reinforce the earlier question that was asked where we felt comfortable to raise our preliminary view from a margin standpoint and even go beyond on the top end at 13.5 which is 50 basis points higher than our preliminary view that we have in the last quarter. Sales leverage now is at our disposal to be able to continue to invest in the business to fuel growth, but at the same time to continue to just increase in a sustainable way our profitability over time.

Great, thank you.

Thanks, Olivier.

Thank you. This concludes our allotted time for Q&A today. If you were unable to join for the entire webcast, a playback will be available at 1pm Eastern Time today until October 30th. Please visit the investor section of the company's website to view a replay of the webcast. I would like to thank you all for joining and wish you a good day.