Sales In Brief
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
L'Oréal Q1: Consolidated sales rise 1.3% on a reported basis, or 5.4% like-for-like, to $4.5 bil. (€1=$1.22), French company reports April 8. Total cosmetics sales were up 1.7% at current exchange rates to $4.4 bil. Professional division grew 3% to $616.4 mil., and active cosmetics gained 1.7% to $330 mil., but other divisions, impacted by negative currency effects, did not fare as well, according to L'Oréal. Consumer business sales rose a slight .5% to $2.5 bil., while luxury product sales increased .9% to $993.5 mil. North American sales were hit particularly hard due to currency, dropping 6.4% to $1.1 bil. However, "in the coming months a more favorable historical comparison should allow us to further improve our growth rate" and "the impact of currency fluctuations, once again strongly negative at the end of March, should be noticeably reduced over the rest of the year," according to CEO Lindsay Owen-Jones...