Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is beginning to reap the rewards of its ongoing ‘Beauty Reimagined’ turnaround strategy, as newfound stability allows the US beauty giant to explore potential M&A opportunities this year.
This is according to ELC President and CEO Stéphane de La Faverie, who spoke during an online webcast of US multinational bank Morgan Stanley’s Luxury Conference 2026 in Paris, France, on 19 May.
Cosmetics Business dives deep into the details of de La Faverie’s M&A aspirations for the brand, and where the US beauty giant could be headed in 2026 and beyond.
Have you launched an innovative product, brand or campaign in the past 12 months? Then you could be in with a chance of winning at this year's new and improved Pure Beauty Awards 2026. Click here for more information.
How ‘Beauty Reimagined’ is paving the way for new M&A opportunities
With Beauty Reimagined working to improve operational discipline and brand focus, how exactly has this opened up opportunities to onboard new business?
“This is the biggest organisational, leadership and cultural change in our company's 80-year history,” said de la Faverie.
“All the work that we have done on enterprise business services with [professional services company] Accenture will be completed, [as well as] all the transfers from an IT, consumer care and CRM standpoint.
“By the end of the calendar year, we will be done.
“We are becoming a much more agile organisation… I believe that we are in a much better-equipped company than in the past to do many things and to be much more efficient, to scale fast.”
Despite rumours swirling around ELC being poised to offload Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart+, the business has already seen an uptick in acquisitions in 2026 so far, having acquired Indian beauty brand Forest Essentials in March.
The beauty conglomerate first invested in the luxury ayurvedic brand in 2008, later increasing its stake to 49% in 2020, and then bought up its remaining shares to take full ownership of the business.
De la Faverie added: “We want to win in India, but we want also to bring Forest Essential to the world.
“And I think today what we can bring to a brand like Forest Essential is the ability to scale fast without having the costs of the organisation behind it, but having more knowledge and the scale.”
Forest Essentials was acquired by ELC in March
ELC could follow a similar pattern with skin care brand 111Skin, potentially increasing its minority stake, which it acquired in April 2026, into a potential full acquisition.
“If 111Skin is successful, why not [have] it be part of the portfolio in the future?” said de la Faverie.
“And then, if there are opportunities for bigger deals, we will also go to do it the way we have done it with Tom Ford and Deciem in the past.
“[If you look at Deciem] today, it is one of the most successful skin care brands around the world, and frankly, in every region.”
ELC has “always been part of the M&A conversation”, added de la Faverie.
“We have had a moment of pause because of the re-engineering of the company, but we will go back to it.
“Because I believe we are going into a world where organic and inorganic are very important, and I think the share of inorganic is growing a little bit more now.
“Organic is still very important, do not get me wrong… but this ability to do it and scale matters.
“Scale matters for a lot of things – from a manufacturing standpoint, from a distribution standpoint, from an R&D standpoint – and I think the company is going to be much more poised to just be able to do bigger deals in the future.”
Estée Lauder Companies’ update on ‘Beauty Remimaged’
MAC Cosmetics recently launched in Sephora stores and online
Initiated by de La Faverie following his appointment in January 2025, the company’s ‘Beauty Reimagined’ strategy is formed around five core pillars and has been described as a “bold strategic vision to restore the company’s sustainable sales growth and achieve stronger profitability”.
Changes include fuelling sustainable growth through “bold efficiencies” and addressing the impact of further volume declines.
De La Faverie highlighted the recent success of the turnaround scheme’s Accelerate Best-in-Class Consumer Coverage pillar.
He said: “The realisation is that when I took this position with the leadership team, we needed to put our brands in the channel of growth, and we may not always have the right position, meaning in the US, in Europe or in Asia.”
Since then, however, ELC has launched products on Amazon across 12 brands and ten countries, and also expanded on TikTok Shop.
De La Faverie continued: “We have also revisited our freestanding store network by accelerating the deployment of stores in the France area, optimising also on the make-up and hair, where we may not have had the best productivity.”
MAC Cosmetics also launched in Sephora’s US stores and on its website on 2 March – the first time the make-up brand has featured on the retailer’s shelves in its 41-year history – as well as in the Middle East.
“In both cases, we have had some really good success that allows us to put this brand [in the hands of] younger consumers that we were targeting,” said de La Faverie.
In terms of product innovation, ELC is said to have tripled the amount of NPD coming to market in less than a year, and it has also been shoring up its distribution strategy.
De La Faverie said: “When you have the right distribution and the right innovation, it is also about how much you can invest behind it, and we have increased our consumer-facing investment, even in the last quarter we were up 5%.
“[This] really allows us to reignite the wheel of recruitment and retention behind our brands in various markets around the world.”
Related content:
- Olaplex to Salt & Stone: All the beauty M&A deals of 2026 so far
- Is Estée Lauder Companies nearing a sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart+?
- L’Oréal, Estée Lauder Companies, Puig and more reveal impact of Middle East war on business
- Zara and Jo Malone file defence against Estée Lauder Companies’ trademark legal action
- Beauty’s highest paid CEO salaries revealed: L’Oréal, Shiseido, Coty and more
- Estée Lauder Companies agrees $210 million settlement in China sales practices lawsuit
- Estée Lauder Companies to cut up to 3,000 more jobs in ‘pivotal’ year for turnaround