The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Fabrizio Freda: Yes. So I mean the — in terms of the travel retail issue, you described it well. So we have increased the collaboration between the local team and the TR team just to have not only a better common decision-making on the key prioritization on the balancing act in order to create value and in order to continue to develop brand equities in a more coordinated way, but we also have more analytics to understand the channel dynamics, the pricing differentials and all the things. So we have created the base of much more information and timely information to take the right decisions in coordination. So this is a big improvement that should reduce the risk of non-coordinated actions in the future. Then the brand health that you also mentioned, I want to underline, the brand health is evident from the results in China.

The brand health in — with the Chinese consumers is really strong. And we have good market share results, which we already mentioned. The business has been growing 36% in the April, June quarter. The online market share has been extremely strong, 2 points extra of online market share. Our activation and consumer passion for our brands has been further confirmed by external research that our brands are at the top of the ranking of desirable brands in the market. So the brand equity, the brand health, also thanks the extraordinary work of our Mainland region, China Mainland region team is in good shape. And then you said correctly that we are very focused on the sell-through of the stocks, just to [indiscernible] the stocks. Obviously, as Tracey has explained, in May, June, Hainan was relatively weak, and that’s why there is an impact also on the first quarter trend.

But is — but we are very focused on creating the retail activities that will facilitate the sell-through, and that’s the key focus of the team. So in that area, we are very aligned, we have the organization resources squared, and we are focused on all these issues very squarely. On the second part of your question is, if I can give you light on the other markets. I mean the — I hope that the report is very clear. The rest of our business, ex the TR Asia, has been growing in the last quarter, 17%. This is one of our fastest growth rate ever despite North America flat. And so we have really undergone strengths in all the rest of our business, which is the result of all the brand strengths which I explained in the prepared remarks. So we have four very big brands, well above $1 billion brands, and we will have two more.

So to be clear, we will be a company by the end of 2024 with $6 billion brands, extraordinary scale in the global system and global reach. So this is behind our strengths. Then I wanted to underline the strengths of our innovation. Our innovation is strong. It’s also in tough challenging year like 2023, remains at 25%. And the innovation pipeline for 2024, 2025 is very, very strong. Particularly in 2025, we have some extra wide spaces innovation, which are very promising. So this also will support the continuous strength of these other parts of the business — other regions, as you mentioned. And then finally, the execution in this region has been stepping up because we explained that as the recovery from the pandemic progress, our ability to execute in the post-pandemic world has been developed and is getting better and better month after month.

So in the regions which have been faster in the post-pandemic development, we have been faster in recovering great execution and great results, so this will continue to progress in 2024. So we have good confidence on that. On the U.S. where, on the contrary, we said there is work to be done, the team is very focused on doing this work. We have a very clear plan. Again, I summarized them in the prepared remarks, but to go back to them, our strategy in rebuilding the North America growth is really various [indiscernible] four big building blocks. The first one is a very rich pipeline of newness, which is later in 2024 and further reinforced in 2025, focus on breakthrough innovation on new claims that will help also unlocking the consumers in online, and especially multi more aggressively.

We are driving higher E&D to our investment in various platforms, including TikTok, or especially TikTok. We are focused on strategic pricing to drive value per unit in correct way, and we will continue to recruit for mass with very strong activities. Also commercial activities, which are focused on this, in support in the — with the support of our retailers, which are very aligned on this front. And our high-touch services are continued to evolving, particularly online, with new technology and new activities. So the — I also want to underline that in North America, our business of M·A·C, our business of Clinique, our business of The Ordinary, so the entry price point brands is particularly important. The scale in North America in our business is the entry price point brands, and all these brands have very exciting brand-by-brand plan.

And then, the opportunity in luxury fragrances is extraordinary. And you have seen the strength of luxury fragrances around the world, and now we will further leverage also in North America as the next steps. Keep in mind that in the luxury fragrance part of our portfolio in the last 10 quarters in a row had double-digit growth or more, despite North America has not yet fully leveraged these potential engines. So this will be another big addition as of 2024.

Operator: Our next question comes from Bryan Spillane from Bank of America. Please go ahead.