The world’s largest beauty company is putting their eggs in America’s basket—with an eye on the wallets of baby boomers.
“Today, we see the U.S. as a land of opportunity,” said L’Oréal CEO Nicolas Hieronimus on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Friday.
Myriam Cohen-Welgryn, president of L’Oréal Dermatological Beauty, pointed to the rising influence of the American boomer. “Our brands perfectly address boomers who are twice more prone to skin issues than the total population,” she said. By 2030, over 1 billion people will be 60 or older globally, growing the cohort of potential boomer customers for the beauty giant by 200 million, per the call.
This comes as a recent report from Bank of America predicts boomers are increasingly a target of the self-care economy, as their spending in the category is growing the most compared with other generations.
‘A big question mark is China’
Growth at the Fortune Global 500 company, ranked No. 348, was most notable in the U.S. and Europe. While North American growth was at 5.5% as of the fourth quarter of last year, the company saw a drop in Asia. Sales in North Asia were down by over 3% on a like-to-like basis, accounting now for less than a fifth of overall sales—largely owing to “continued weakness in both mainland China and travel retail,” according to the earnings call. Market growth in mainland China declined by about 4% in 2024, and travel retail in Asia declined by 10%.
Hieronimus called China “the big unknown” on the earnings call.
“We have accounted in our own calculation for a flattish market for China. We think that travel retail will remain difficult. And only good surprises can come from there,” he said. “Today, we are pretty bullish in the U.S., confident in emerging markets, steady on our stronghold in Europe, and a big question mark in China.”
Sentiments were echoed across leadership.
“The Chinese ecosystem, which we had hoped will at least stabilize, did not,” said Christophe Babule, L'Oréal’s CFO and EVP.
Overall, sales for the company increased by over 5%, totaling €43.5 billion. The company is hoping to capitalize on an increasingly age-conscious world and the need to find “beauty solutions that expand outside the traditional beauty market,” like supplements, per one executive on the call.
Hieronimus did address the evolving economic landscape in the U.S., but remained optimistic about the country as a foothold moving forward.
“We believe that based on the excitement that we see from the businesspeople, which we meet around the U.S. economy, that the consumption of particularly premium goods in the U.S. will be dynamic,” he said. “Of course, there are many unknowns on the situation of the U.S. markets, what tariff strategies may evolve and then whether it will have an impact on local inflation, it’s hard to predict.”
