Aniket PujariAn exterior view of an Ulta Beauty store at the Monroe Marketplace Shopping Center.
Paul Weaver | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Even the beauty industry is expecting a weak 2025.
Ulta Beauty on Thursday gave worse full-year profit and revenue guidance than Wall Street expected, after reporting holiday-quarter results that beat analyst forecasts.
The retailer, which appointed Kecia Steelman as its new CEO in January, said it’s expecting comparable sales to be flat or grow 1% in 2025, while analysts had anticipated they would rise by 1.2%, according to StreetAccount.
It’s expecting full-year earnings to be between $22.50 and $22.90, lower than expectations of $23.47, according to LSEG.
Ulta is the latest company to forecast a rocky 2025, but it stands in contrast to other retailers because beauty has been a source of strength in the industry even as other discretionary categories slowed.
Still, shares rose 6% in extended trading.
Here’s how the beauty retailer did in its fiscal fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $8.46 vs. $7.12 expected
- Revenue: $3.49 billion vs. $3.46 billion expected
The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended Feb. 1 was $393 million, or $8.46 per share, compared with $394 million, or $8.08 per share, a year earlier.
Sales dropped to $3.49 billion, down about 2% from $3.55 billion a year earlier. Like other retailers, Ulta benefited from an extra selling week in the year-ago period, which has negatively skewed results.
