5/6/2026

speaker
COTI Investor Relations
Investor Relations

Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chelsea, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to COTI's third quarter fiscal 2026 question and answer conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, May 6th, 2026, at 8 o'clock a.m. Eastern Standard Time or 2 o'clock p.m. Central European Time. Please note that on May 5th at approximately 4.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time or 10.30 p.m. Central European Time, Cody issued a press release and prepared remarks webcast, which can be found on his Investor Relations website. On today's call are Marcus Strobel, Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Laurent Mercier, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Cody's earnings release and the reports filed with the SEC where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. In addition, except where noted, the discussion of Cody's financial results and Cody's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. With that, we will now open the line for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star 2. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question will come from Filippo Falroni with Citi. Please go ahead.

speaker
Filippo Falroni
Analyst, Citi

Hi. Good morning and good afternoon there. First question, Marcus. I was hoping you can elaborate on the selling versus sellout gap that you called out yesterday, both for prestige and consumer beauty, different drivers there. But how should we think about it going forward to Q4 and as you start thinking about fiscal 27? And then one question for Laurent. On the margin side, can you provide some color on the exposure to oil and higher oil prices, both from a raw material standpoint, but also from a distribution and logistical standpoint? Thank you.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Paul. Thanks, Philippe. On your first question, I mean, first of all, on the prestige side, it was good that we saw some sellout growth. Not much, but it was good, and we're happy about that. But the sell-in was trailing. There's basically three reasons behind it. Number one is the Middle East, because when this hit us end of February, we basically, you know, couldn't sell anything in March, and the Middle East for us is a mid-teens region, was growing very highly, so... A good part of that selling problem is attributable to the Middle East. Number two, we are still in a highly promotional environment, which can be visible in the gross to net. And finally, what we also saw is that a lot of our European retailers stocked up quite a bit for the holiday, for the Christmas period, and our sellout was not as high as they had intended it to be. So they were working down a little bit of inventory in Q3. So all these three factors combined led to that gap between sell-in and sell-out. When it comes to consumer, first of all, the good news on consumer is that we have closed a bit the gap to the category, especially on Sally Hansen and on Cabo Girl in the U.S. Actually, on both of these brands, we are now growing versus the market in unit volume, and we are catching up in value. Now, why have we not seen this in the sell-in? There is basically multiple reasons behind this. Number one, we have basically decided to get our whole organization focused on sell-out and market share. This is, for us, a big cultural shift. So in the Q3, we sold in much slimmer, much sharper bundles. In the past, we sold in very big bundles, a lot of volume. Problem with it, if it doesn't sell out, it comes back in return, some obsolescence. We avoided it this time, so we sold in less, but we sold through much, much more. That's how we got up against the category. So there's a short-term effect of selling in less because we changed our strategy in the way we drive retail productivity. And number two, we also exited some smaller markets on the consumer business, especially on color cosmetics in Southeast Asia and in Mexico. And obviously, when you exit, you don't sell in. So we believe that long-term, the focus on sellout and sharper bundles and much more retail productivity will make us a stronger company. And over time, sellout will equal sell-in.

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so, Philippe, I can take the second question. So, Middle East, indeed, there are two implications. So, of course, the top-line margin, so, indeed, Middle East is a mid-single-digit net revenue for the company. And, of course, the other impact is, indeed, on oil price. So what I can tell you, if you have to keep in mind some numbers, is that, roughly speaking, you know, $1 impact from oil price is impacting, you know, our profit by $2 million. This is roughly the gross number. So this is before any intervention on productivity, change of sourcing, or any other kind of activity, or ultimately even pricing. So just to have in mind. So now about the timing is... there is some delay. Number one, because we have inventories on components. Number two, also, that procurement team, they have also some hedging policy with our suppliers, which is also protecting suppliers and, as a result, is protecting us. So, all in all, it means that we are protected against Oil inflation roughly by, you know, the end of calendar year 26. Okay, so this is the rough cut. And maybe just to conclude on this, but, you know, what are the scope impacted? So number one is freight. This has an impact on freight. And it's also on glass, obviously, and this is where procurement teams are really finding, optimizing in terms of sourcing, okay, how we can avoid this impact. And number three, it's about components, when we have some plastic components. Okay, so again, we are managing this very tightly. I mean, the procurement teams have really demonstrated over the last years, you know, ability and agility to navigate this kind of volatility of inflation was a case, three, four years ago when there was a peak of inflation. So, again, the teams are really full on and managing all these elements while at the same time, of course, making sure that we keep always, you know, the top quality products.

speaker
Filippo Falroni
Analyst, Citi

Great. Thank you very much.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

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

speaker
Olivia Tong
Analyst, Raymond James

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Can you, you know, you mentioned retail restocking is mostly complete, but promotional levels are obviously still higher than you'd like, and at least in the near term, Middle East is likely a continued headwind. So perhaps can you give us a better sense of when you expect that sell in and sell out to converge? You know, is this a next 12 months endeavor, or do you think it could potentially take longer? I understand your comments to Filippo about some of the actions that you're taking, particularly in consumer beauty, but would love a little bit more detail on that. And then just longer term, can you talk about some more of the building blocks to get you closer to category growth and whether you may need to take even more drastic actions, particularly in consumer beauty, to get you there? Thanks. Thanks.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Okay. I mean, let me just start with how we get to category growth, both from prestige and consumer beauty. And they're pretty similar, okay, because both run under the fully curated framework. So number one is getting the right innovation out there and focusing on the right innovation. So what we have done already for fiscal 2017, we have identified what is our best innovation, what is innovation that complements the brand, that has a halo effect on the brand, and what are some small things that we have been doing in the past that we should not be doing at all. So we have cut our number of activities, but we're going to make the innovation that we bring to market bigger, better, and make sure it has a halo effect on the brand. So that's point number one, and we're doing this on prestige. And we're also doing this on consumer because we already see now that some of our reduced bundles with bigger, better innovation, some of our items are far ahead of objective, some of them 3X. So we're seeing we can appeal much, much more to the consumer, get more traction. Second point is getting consumer engagement, improved consumer engagement. As I mentioned in the last call, by doing so many activities, we have invested a lot of money in creating assets. but even have enough sufficient money to put these assets out there for consumers to see. So we're changing that, creating fewer assets, having more money in working media, and especially focusing more on what we call advocacy, which is a modern way of doing marketing influencers. We have been a bit slow on this one because we still had a very traditional marketing mix up until last year, but we're catching up very quickly. so that we believe that consumers will respond much, much more to offering. Number three, and this is very important when you mentioned the sell-out, and you're changing our whole company culture to sell-out oriented. It used to be fairly sell-in oriented, but now we are, for every innovation, for everything you've been doing, we're asking what is the sell-out plan? What is the joint business planning with the retailer? Does it fit into the cadence of the retailer? So have a really fully synchronized plan to drive sell-out, and then sell-in will follow. And number four is on everything that we do, we put the ROI lens. We have very good ROI measurements now of all our actions, of our media spending, marketing spending. And we're seeing everything what we do, does it move the needle, yes or no. So across these four elements, which is basically code curated on both prestige and consumer, we believe this is going to have a big impact over time. Now there will be – we had a framework. We put out this framework in the last call, as you remember. We're putting it into the market now, and hopefully it will improve quite a bit in 2027. It's probably going to go much faster on the innovation side because we decided it already. It's going to go much faster on the ROI side because we have the data. Moving asset creation to working media is going to take a little bit more time because you need some lead time to do that. And getting the whole organization that has been traditionally focused on sell-in, sell-out oriented will also take a little bit more time. When everything comes together, we believe we will finally be in a position that sell-out and sell-in kind of equate. And we have a very healthy business from which to grow and reduce the gap we have versus the market. We want to grow over time, at least with the market. And in the long term, obviously, we want to outgrow the market.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Sydney Wagner with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

speaker
Sydney Wagner
Analyst, Jefferies

Hey, thanks for taking our question. So just curious on, you know, we're encouraged to hear some of the progress early from CoverGirl. Which of those strategic steps do you think are most repeatable outside of the U.S.? And then we are seeing several mass retailers, you know, developing and broadening their beauty offerings. So can you talk about how you think about where the Cody brands fit into that evolving, you know, mass retail environment and kind of how your strategy fits around there?

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I find it quite interesting when we look at CoverGirl and Sally Ann's. We had a lot of, you know, failed efforts in the last couple of years to position the brands where the brands don't fit. You know, I think at one point in time, we tried to turn CoverGirl into the ultimate Gen Z brand. That didn't really work because this was not credible for the consumer. And, you know, each time when I go see a retailer in the United States, but also in Europe, they always say, please, please, please, can anybody do something for Gen X? Because Gen X women have money ready to spend it, but nobody talks to them and nobody has an offering for them. So basically what we're doing, what we've done with CoverGirl, we've made CoverGirl, again, in the process of making the penultimate Gen X brand. and retailers really support us in this what this means the way we we're going to market we need to have a good mix of advocacy as i just mentioned we've got to improve that but also some traditional media uh to focus on the core um on the core properties you know simply ageless uh lash blast all these kind of things that uh people know that people trust in so where we bring innovation on these interesting franchises versus news news news all the time And I think that it's highly appreciated. That helps us now to actually get much closer with CoverGirl to the category. And we're actually outgrowing the category at the moment in terms of units in the U.S. And I believe this model is also applicable outside of the U.S. We're going to apply this on Rimmel in the U.K. and on some of our other properties like Bourgeois and Max Factor in Europe.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Oliver Chen with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

speaker
Oliver Chen
Analyst, TD Cowen

Hi, Marcus and Lauren. Regarding the focus on the sellout culture, what does that mean in terms of your systems and or capabilities or working capital and what you're thinking that that requires? It sounds like it's quite prudent. And then as you mentioned earlier, Marcus, on the promotional environment that you're seeing as well as the European accounts being overstocked. How long might that persist, or what are you monitoring in terms of the relationship of what you're seeing there relative to guidance? And lastly, Laurent, on the A&P shift, was that planned, or was that in relation to what you were seeing in the marketplace? Thank you.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, in terms of sell-out culture, which is obviously probably the more difficult part because culture change is usually more difficult and takes a bit longer than strategy change. What we're doing is we're trying to... implemented in all parts of the organization. So when we do a business review, what are the selling plans? What is the retailer plan? How we can engage with the retailer? Has the retailer verified these plans? So they're asking the right questions, but also personally, on the top level, connecting with the right retailers, which we're doing. And number two is we will also, as we move forward, putting some of these metrics into our evaluation system. If you put market share into your way how you evaluate the organization, you see a shift to – on tell out uh... almost almost immediately so so i think it's a it's a mix of uh... putting it into a performance metrics kpi's measure it and uh... drive it home with the organization uh... every single day but also building the capability for a joint uh... joint business planning with uh... with retailers not just selling it in and hope it sells with top line media but having the right plan every time it's much easier to have the right plan uh... if you go back to the curation if you have fewer bigger initiatives because you can focus on that to make the right plan versus throwing out too many things where you just don't have the bandwidth and the capacity to do the right plan. So I think this is going to help quite a lot. When it comes to retailer inventory, Again, we said before that we don't think there's any much more structural destocking in the trade. Structural destocking means retailers are in general dramatically reducing their inventory or their days on hand. We don't see that at the moment. It was just for us that our Christmas sellout was not as great as we wanted. And we've worked through that in the first quarter. Now, as you go into the next holiday period, which is Mother's Day – Mother's Day and Father's Day, we're obviously much more attuned to that. And now that we get into the sellout culture, and sellout and inventory will be much closer correlated than what they were in the past. So I think it's going to get better over time.

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

So, Oliver, I would take just maybe to build on your first question about working capital. I would like to build on this also to make clear that as part of the cutting curated and, again, this focus on sellout, there are also some strong benefits there. on cash and working capital because of course by you know focusing on the biggest news you know reducing the tail it has some implication on on inventory and on working capital so that's one and it's partly of the discussion and number two when we say you know focus On sell-out culture, it's also behind this is also to have, you know, a very strong focus on forecast accuracy, really understand better the dynamic with the retailers. And, again, by doing this, it's really to be much more efficient on our inventory and also on excess and obsolescence. So it's really a big element, and that's also what you saw that, you know, what procurement – implementing an alliance of progress, a project which is really about streamlining our supplier ecosystem. So it's also another benefit as part of this category. So that's very important, and it has indeed concrete implications on top line, on the gross margin, and also on the working capital and the cash. So now I go to your last question on ANCP. First of all, I want to remind that our level of ANCP in Q3 is flat, which means that even in terms of percentage, it has increased. So it's really that there is no cut or drastic reduction, and it's part of our tight monitoring that we are implementing. When we say focus, it's, of course, focusing on the big bets, It's also focusing on where we are seeing stronger ROI. And this is also the analysis and the decision we made during the Q3 that We believe that we need to preserve and really to invest more for the KCP. And, indeed, Mother's Day and Father's Day are really KCP, especially for Prestige. And this is a conscious decision that we made during the quarter, say, okay, let's reserve some money from Q3 because we are in a good place. and then we allocate this money where we are seeing, in fact, a strong ROI. So that's really part of the new dynamic, okay, not to be absolutely stuck on some decisions made three months ago. We are seeing how things are evolving, and when we have to make the decision to reallocate some money, we do it. So it's absolutely conscious decision.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

speaker
Alec Legg
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hi, Alec Legg on for Susan. Thanks for taking our question. I guess how should we think about the exit of Orveda and then also some of the brands from smaller markets? And then when should we expect, I guess, Orveda exit to occur? And can you give any details on how large that business was?

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Well, let me put it that way. Oveda, we have started transitioning out of Oveda since February, basically. We have reserved for all these costs in our Q2 already. We're executing this at the moment, which means, you know, closing some of these big boutiques. Some of them might be taken over by the previous licensor. We're still working on that. We think we're going to be out more or less completely by the end of this fiscal year, so from June, July, August, we should be out of that business and can reallocate some of that spending that we're on this business on our core fine fragrance brands. The size of the business, you know, we don't break out individual brands, but you can imagine it was not huge, to say the least. So that is Alveda. And from the other brands you mentioned, mostly the consumer business where we exited some smaller markets because they're just not economical. We cannot create any scale or make any money or have any ROI. And with our new ROI culture, we will continue some of these, but it will not be dramatically pronounced because the volume per market there is fairly small. We will focus in consumer beauty on our most important franchises, CoverGirl, Rimmel, Sally Hansen, McFactor. We've got a win in North America. That's job number one. We've got a win on Rimmel in the U.K. That's job number two. And then we've got a win in Europe with the rest of our portfolio, job number three, in that priority.

speaker
Alec Legg
Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Thanks. That's really helpful. And then just a quick follow-up. Are you able to quantify the tariffs you've paid over the last year and any insight on if there's a chance for getting refunds on that? Thank you.

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Laurent. Yeah, indeed. So, you know, roughly it's about $40 million impacting the P&L this year. And, of course, I mean, we are looking carefully at any opportunity to refund and, okay, depending how situation is evolving, okay, if when and if we can do it, of course, this is something we will contemplate to help, indeed, our P&L.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Charles Scotti with Kepler. Please go ahead.

speaker
Charles Scotti
Analyst, Kepler

Yes, good morning and good afternoon. Two questions for me, please. The first one, you mentioned that the competitive environment remains very intense. Could you provide more details on this and who is putting pressure on pricing and in which regions? And more broadly, do you think that similarly to the luxury industry, consumers are starting to push back against that to decline at some point? Or could you push more on the smaller formats to add up to a lower purchasing power? And then, second question, there have been many media rumors suggesting that you called Diasposal of certain licenses to other industry players in order to accelerate your leveraging. I think these rumors have since been denied, but do you have any comments on this topic? And regarding Gucci more specifically, you previously seemed open to Diasposal ahead of the license maturity. Could you give us an update on this matter, please? Thank you.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Okay. I have to make three questions. I have to make sure I don't, I don't forgot them one by one in terms of the price. First of all, I mean, you gotta, you gotta know that the beauty market is extremely resilient. He's all again, 5% growth in the market in, in, in Q3. and both 5% on prestige and 5% on the mass. So basically the consumer is shopping across a very, very wide price spectrum. And so far we have seen an amazing resilience of the consumer out there. Yeah, there is a bit of, you know, everybody's fighting for market share, so there is a lot of promotion in the market. But that has more to do with, yeah, building sellout and market share than it has to do with absolute price levels. So we believe... We're still in good shape when it comes to the resilience of the consumer. At least we haven't seen anything negative yet. On the rumors that you may have heard that we will be, you know, divesting anything in our prestige portfolio, I can see here for everybody very clear that there is no truth to this. We categorically deny this. There's no plans whatsoever. We're very, very happy with our portfolio. We're very, very happy with our brands on the prestige side. And each of them has an important role to play for us in the future. And if you go to this specific article, you know, our Burberry and Hugo Boss are our biggest brands. They are our global brands, and we love them. And we continue to strongly build them in the future. Okay, very clear, no doubt about that. And when it comes to Gucci, yes, obviously we are open to everything, you know, to an early exit if it creates value for us. It needs to create value for us and for our shareholders. And if anything becomes clear and fixed, we will obviously notify the public as it's based on our requirements. Okay? Nothing to report here at the moment. We'll keep you posted.

speaker
Charles Scotti
Analyst, Kepler

Thank you very much.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrea Tesarov with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

speaker
Andrea Tesarov
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question. Marcus, you and Laurent, you both talked about going back to the SEU, but the skill rationalization, brand rationalization, consumer beauty, this has been obviously a very long journey, and I just wanted to see what inning you are in terms of that, how many more iterations of that you think you you need. And then related to that on the cost side, I think you talked about returns of obsolescences impacting your numbers. How, again, how we should be thinking where these margins will land and how long you think you're going to take as you focus, to your point, more in the sell-out vis-a-vis the sell-in. It seems to me that you're going to have to incurring some pain kind of restructuring those brands and making sure that you get the best returns on those. Thank you.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, well, I think in terms of getting the innovation to a place that really makes sense for shelf and retail productivity. I mean, in the past, you probably know that. You know, we put out such a big innovation bundle every spring and every fall that we almost, like, crowded out, you know, productive SKUs on the shelf. So it's a double whammy. You have stuff out there that doesn't sell, and you have lost some productive SKUs, and if you add it all up, it's all coming back to you in either returns or obsolescence, okay? And we're still suffering from the hangover of that. But this quarter, Q3, was the first time where we're breaking that cycle. And we're going to break the cycle even more in the fall bundle, which is going to be sharper. And the most important thing, it's not like just reducing the number of properties. It's actually important to bring properties out there that resonate with the consumer. So we're going to be much more consumer-based, much more trend-based, trying to lead the market in creating some of these trends. And the first results we have seen now are really, really good. I mean, we have some of the innovations are really far above our expectations, and they help actually to build – market share in volume, but also catching up very much in value now to the market with actually a much smaller number of bundles and a much smaller number of SKUs. Much more efficient model. It's probably going to take us, you know, one, two, three iterations with those bundles to work through that and see the full effects. As you will see, you know, less and less obsolescence over time. But give us a few quarters and you will see the effects of this. No, that was the second part, right?

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think when we were talking about ELO, and I think it's really true to build on this and what we were saying before. I think it's really important you look at all these initiatives really from an end-to-end element or cycle. It's not just one bucket about reducing the number of SKUs, but it's is how we can be very precise, and again, it will have some implication on forecast accuracy, on inventory, and E&O. Indeed, today, this is, as you saw in the Q3, it's really an element which is hurting our gross margin in prestige, but also in consumability. So by reducing this, and there was the example, you know, reducing the bundle, It's indeed a way that we are reducing inventory. We reduce E&O, but also we will reduce the returns that we get from retailers. So this will flow into the P&L. And also, there are also currently some the exceptional elements. Marcus was referring to some markets that we are closing in consumer duty because they are not profitable. It also triggers, I would say, as a short term, that sometimes it's impacting. We put up some inventory here and it's working, you know, or even in some cases we have some returns. So these are also some exceptional costs that you know, as time goes, will disappear, and then on the other hand, we get really the benefit from these decisions. So it takes time, but again, it's really part of a very consistent plan, and it will be visible in the gross margin improvement.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs.

speaker
Bonnie Herzog
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Please go ahead. All right, thank you. Hi, everyone. I had a couple questions on your FY27. First, you know, how should we think about the impact from the Middle East? Is the two- to three-point headwind that you expect in FQ4 a good proxy? And then could you provide a little more, you know, context of these pressures and, you know, maybe investments to support your launches in the year? You know, ultimately, is it reasonable to assume continued EBITDA declines or Or could EBITDA start to float, you know, positive? Thank you.

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

Yes, thank you, Bonnie, for the question. I think you agree in your question that there are a lot of moving pieces. So we always make clear that we operate in an environment where there is a a lot of volatility, and indeed currently the geopolitics is bringing, of course, some additional volatility. So on Middle East, and I think like all of us, and we read the news every day, As you understand, the big numbers, so mid-single-digit percentage of the size of Cote Inc. as a whole. Indeed, it's a very strong fragrance business and also very dynamic. So, indeed, it's creating a headwind. Now, you need really to understand that within Middle East, there are different dynamics. The channel which is the most impacted is the travel retail, which, of course, given the circumstances, is drastically reduced. Also, in Emirates, because you have a lot of tourists and currency, of course, this is very to the minimum. But on the other hand, you have markets like Saudi, which are pretty well protected. So we need to understand these dynamics. We are monitoring as we go, and also we are managing the P&L equation and the investment and the spending of the region according to how the situation is evolving, and we have a very good team on site and very close to all the actions and really the agility. So we'll keep you posted, but of course we are making sure that we are managing disease very closely within our equation. So now on your second question. Again and again, the big focus, and it brings all the discipline, and the organization is focused on sell-out. So this is really what will drive the performance and improvement. Of course, at some moment, it will be visible in the setting, but that's really a matter of discipline that Marcus shared loud and clear. So gradually improve our fill-out to reduce the gap versus a category which is resilient. And, of course, our goal is really indeed to improve our EBITDA year-on-year trends over the course of fiscal year 27. So that's for sure. At the same time, and we've been very clear, we need to manage potential inflation, which is, you know, was the first question, you know, from oil increase. And also we've been very clear in the presentation that there are also some short-term benefits That also will create some headwind next year. But, again, the trend, the organic trend is really to improve sell-out, and, of course, indeed to improve, you know, the trend of EBITDA trajectory.

speaker
Bonnie Herzog
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

All right. Thank you.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you. Our last question will come from Anna Lazoul with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

speaker
Anna Lazoul
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the question. I know you talked a bit about the promotional environment here being a bit elevated. I was wondering if you could comment more on both the prestige and consumer beauty lines of business and when you expect this to better normalize. Thank you so much.

speaker
Laurent Mercier
Chief Financial Officer

Good morning, Anna. We are seeing some promotion being more elevated, so coming from specific actors, specific retailers. I think this is something that I would not call as a major change versus what we observed in the previous quarters and what we flagged. But we are always making sure that we are protecting our brands, we are protecting our innovation. and really that we are not playing that game. I will insist also, and you saw in the consumer duty presentation, that we have been also very cautious in terms of price increase versus most of our competitors. And you see that if our sellout in units especially in the U.S., is growing. So this is very encouraging. And it really helps also to avoid playing this kind of promotionality game. So, again, and you see tangible results in the sellout improvement in CoverGirl, in Sally and Sam. So we are managing this very closely, managing really all the revenue management approach. So, again, this is the way we are looking at it. Then when it will normalize, I can tell you on our side, we stay very disciplined on this. And then on how our peers want to play that game, of course, this is a question that you can raise with them. But again, we stay very disciplined, managing the revenue management in a very targeted way.

speaker
Anna Lazoul
Analyst, Bank of America

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you.

speaker
Marcus Strobel
Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer

Good. So just let me do a final closing comment. Obviously, we're not, to be honest, we're not yet where we want to be, but we're improving, and I think Q3 demonstrated our ability to protect profitability and cash flow while taking first concrete steps to strengthen execution across the business. Coding Curated is the framework that's guiding the shift, sharpening up priorities, simplifying operating model, and scaling what works. With sustained focus and disciplined execution, we are confident Kodi is well positioned to deliver more consistent, profitable growth in the long-term value creation. And I want to use this opportunity again to thank all Kodi employees around the world. They're working very hard to make this happen, and especially our colleagues in the Middle East are doing a tremendous job under a high state of high uncertainty. So thank you very much.

speaker
Chelsea
Conference Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

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