By Dominique Patton
(Reuters) -Shares in French cosmetics giant L’Oreal plunged as much as 7% on Wednesday, after the company reported weaker-than-expected third-quarter sales and provided little reassurance that it could outperform the market in coming quarters.
The company posted sales of 10.3 billion euros ($12.01 billion) for the three months from July to September, up 4.2% on the prior year, but below the 4.9% expected in a consensus compiled by Visible Alpha.
While L’Oreal said the key China market had posted the first growth in two years and the U.S. was recovering, sales in both North America and Latin America undershot growth forecasts.
The stock was down 5.7% at 0748 GMT, heading for its biggest one-day decline since February 2024 if losses hold.
Barclays analysts said ahead of the market open that L’Oreal appears to be underperforming.
“While L’Oreal say they are outperforming the overall beauty category, it was very unclear where their underlying outperformance is,” they said in a note, pointing to the company’s year-to-date growth of 3.4% like-for-like, in line with numbers provided by CEO Nicolas Hieronimus for the global market.
Hieronimus’ comments on full-year growth were also cautious, estimating it would be “close enough” to the 4% that he had guided for earlier in the year. He said he had “fingers crossed” for the end-of-year holiday season in America and Europe, as well as China’s double 11 shopping festival.
“Yesterday’s conference call leaves much to be desired with a murkier beauty outlook,” Barclays said in its note.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Mateusz Rabiega and Dominique Patton; Editing by Joe Bavier)
