Coty has revealed slight reported net revenue declines for the second quarter and first half of financial 2025.
For the quarter ended 31 December, net revenue was US$1.67bn, down 3% on a reported basis compared with Q2 2024.
On a like-for-like basis, Q2 revenue dropped 1%.
During the first six months of financial 2025, Coty’s reported net revenue was 1% down year-over-year to $3.34bn, representing a 2% increase in like-for-like revenue.
According to the Rimmel owner, revenues for the six months were supported by growth in both prestige and mass fragrances.
By category, the company’s prestige fragrance segment outperformed the overall beauty market in Q2, growing by a high-single-digit percentage with net revenues supported by its growing Burberry Goddess franchise.
There was also continued momentum for the Hugo Boss fragrance brand.
However, Coty’s mass beauty growth slowed at a low-single-digit pace, as its thriving mass fragrance category – spurred by the Adidas Vibes fragrance launch – failed to compensate for a meek performance from its mass colour cosmetics business.
The beauty giant attributed this, in part, to pressure on US mass beauty retailers due to ongoing channel shifts.
Commenting on the operating results, Sue Nabi, Coty's CEO, said: “As we are now midway through our fiscal year, it is clear that FY25 is shaping up to be a pivotal year.
“On the one hand, the global beauty market continues to grow at a healthy pace, even if growth has moderated off of the elevated levels of the last few years, which benefited from more material pricing increases.
“And in this backdrop, fragrances of all price points continue to outperform most other beauty categories, which strongly benefits Coty’s business as fragrances account for over 60% of our revenues and an even bigger portion of our profits.”
However, Nabi also acknowledged “pressure in pockets of our business”, namely in China, travel retail Asia, Australia and in the US consumer beauty category.
“As a result of these factors, our Q2 like-for-like sales trends were below our expectations,” she continued.
“While we are prudently assuming these patterns will continue into the second half as well, the strong sell-out growth of our fragrance brands gives us confidence that these headwinds are temporary and we should return to stronger sales growth as we enter FY26.”
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