e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

We picked up a ton of space. This fiscal year, we’re continuing that momentum with additional space, both at Superdrug and Boots. And in subsequent quarters, you’ll hear us talk about other retailers in terms of the space we pick up noting that the most important thing is the productivity we drive — be the most productive brand at Target, Walmart and other retailers, and our innovation pipeline has never been stronger. We continue to have these holy grails that consumers can’t seem to get enough of and our ability to shine the light on those holy grails through our marketing has been a winning formula that continues to propel the top line and our adjusted EBITDA margins.

Operator: Our next question comes from Anna Lizzul with Bank of America.

Anna Lizzul: I was wondering if you’re seeing any trade down benefits in your results and whether this is gaining market share growth in addition to shelf-space gains. And just regarding the strength in e.l.f. SKIN, how are you splitting that incremental shelf space gains to this brand versus all cosmetics?

Mandy Fields: Yes. So I would say hi, Anna, I would say, overall, we’re not seeing a wholesale trade down from Prestige into mass both sides of the pie continue to do well from a beauty standpoint. And so I think really what is driving our performance, 1 thing we pointed to for this quarter is the increase in awareness that we’re seeing behind e.l.f. brand. We’ve doubled our awareness over the past few years. And that has really allowed us to bring more Gen-X, millennial into the brand and continue to penetrate Gen Z as well. And so I do think more folks coming into the franchise has really served us well. You can also see that in our unit growth, as I quoted 56 points of our sales growth is really driven by unit volume, which is really encouraging to see.

And so we are feeling great on that side. From e.l.f. SKIN, it certainly continues to be a focus for us. We’ve called out skin care, 1 of our priorities and areas of white space that we’re going after. And how we think about skin care on the shelf sets depending on the retailer. It’s either housed with our color cosmetics or separately. And as we get shelf space gains, especially in those areas where we do have a house with color cosmetics, we’re making sure that we have the best of our skin care available on those sets as well. We have talked in the past about seeing skin care represent almost 20% of our sales on elfcosmetics.com. So we know that there is a big opportunity for us to continue to penetrate skincare within our retailers as well.

Tarang Amin: And the only other thing I would add is we’re tremendously excited now with the acquisition of Naturium. It doubles our presence in skin care to about 18% of our business. We have 2 incredible growth assets in skin care to continue to realize that potential.

Operator: Our next question comes from Linda Bolton-Weiser with D.A. Davidson.

Linda Bolton-Weiser: You’ve talked a couple of times on the call about your increase in brand awareness in recent years. And I was wondering, what do you need to do to kind of fuel the next stage of jump-up in awareness? Is it just more of the same actions? Or are there something different or new in the next stage? Do you need to add TV advertising maybe in the international markets. Can you just comment on that?

Tarang Amin: Linda, this is Tarang. First of all, I’d say part of the reason why we’ve taken our marketing levels up over time is because it’s working. We have exceptionally strong ROIs multiples above industry benchmarks. And so that’s led us to continue to invest more. And that has, in turn, brought greater awareness to the brand as we talk, doubling that awareness of 13% to 26%. We still see a massive opportunity from an awareness standpoint. As we said, the market leaders sitting at about 52% unaided awareness. And so the strategy we’re following going forward is a combination of what’s worked for us, our digital approach, which not only has led to leadership amongst Gen Z but bringing in more millennials and Gen X as well as new tactics.