Estée Lauder Companies restructuring costs rise again to $1.75 billion

By Lynsey Barber | Published: 9-Jul-2026

Additional restructuring costs related to Estée Lauder Companies’ ‘Beauty Reimagined’ turnaround plan have been revealed in new financial filings

Estée Lauder Companies’ (ELC) restructuring costs have increased again, according to a new SEC filing.

The beauty giant, which owns Clinique and MAC Cosmetics, has said that restructuring costs up to 30 June this year are now US$1.748bn before tax.

In May, ELC said it expected its costs associated with restructuring to increase to between $1.5bn and $1.7bn before taxes, up from previous estimates of between $1.2bn and $1.6bn.

The additional costs came at the same time that ELC announced plans for a further 2,000-to-3,000 job losses, largely from retail roles in department stores and freestanding stores, as it focuses on high-growth channels, such as Amazon and TikTok.

This brings the total jobs cut since the start of its restructuring to up to 10,000, after announcing last year that it was reducing its headcount by up to 7,000 as part of its ‘Beauty Reimagined’ turnaround plan.

The increase in restructuring costs unveiled in May were down to “employee-related costs, asset-related costs, contract terminations and other costs associated with implementing these initiatives”, the company said in a statement at the time.

However, ELC also expected this to result in higher gross benefits of between $1bn and $1.2bn annually before taxes, up from the previously expected benefit of between $0.8bn and $1bn.

In ELC’s latest financial filing, the company said an additional $165m in restructuring costs between May and the end of June were expected, also as a result of employee-related costs, asset-related costs, contract terminations and other exit costs.

A further $32m was tied to sales returns, cost of sales and other charges.

New initiatives under ELC’s programme that were approved during the same period include efforts to “further reorganise and optimise its selling model within its geographic regions, and to right-size select brand organisations,” the financial statement said.

This resulted in “employee severance through a net reduction in workforce, sales returns and cost of sales, as well as asset-related costs”.

ELC also approved initiatives to modernise its direct-to-consumer digital technology infrastructure, resulting primarily in asset-related costs and “to a lesser extent” employee severance.

A further reorganisation and right-sizing of ELC’s corporate functions, and the exit of an office lease, were also approved, pushing up severance and asset-related costs.

All actions as part of ELC’s restructuring have now been approved, ELC said in the financial statement, and are expected to be “substantially completed” by the end of the 2027 fiscal year.