S&P 500 component Ulta Beauty earned an upgrade to a buy early Tuesday with the analyst seeing around 12% upside for the beauty salon and supplies chain. Ulta Beauty last month announced it sees 2025 as a very important year for its business.
Goldman Sachs analysts on Tuesday upgraded Ulta Beauty to a buy rating, up from its previous neutral view, and hiked the firm's price target to 423, up from 384. That new price target represents about 12.5% upside compared to current trading levels.
The analysts wrote that tariff risk was low for Ulta Beauty and that the S&P 500 stock "has seen pressure but proved resilient during recessionary periods." The firm added that Ulta could report comparable sales momentum in Q1 and fiscal 2025.
Ulta Beauty stock has declined around 16% in 2025, putting it toward the bottom of the S&P 500. More broadly, the S&P 500 index suffered its worst quarterly loss in nearly three years, as Trump tariffs and related uncertainty rocked the U.S. stock market over the past several weeks.
Ulta Beauty Outlook
On March 13, Ulta Beauty topped Q4 expectations, with the company proclaiming fiscal 2025 would be a "pivotal year," with the outfit looking to optimize its business and invest in future growth.
Chief Executive Kecia Steelman told analysts at the time that "while it will take time to see the impact of (the company's 2025) efforts, we are confident these investments will help reignite our momentum and unlock sustained growth."
Ulta Beauty expects full-year 2025 earnings to range from $22.50 to $22.90 per share on $11.5 billion to $11.6 billion in sales. Ulta sees comparable sales growth to be flat or tick up 1%.
S&P 500: Ulta Beauty Stock
Ulta Beauty stock advanced 2% to 373.91 during Tuesday's stock market action. The S&P 500 component has swooned 35% since March 2024, spending most of that period well below its 40-week moving average.
ULTA stock has a 21-day average true range of 4.32%. The ATR metric is available on IBD's MarketSurge charting tool. It gauges the characteristic breadth of a stock's behavior. Stocks that tend to make large jumps or dives in daily action, the kind that can trigger sell rules and shake investors out of a stock, have a high ATR. Stocks that tend to make more incremental moves have lower ATRs.
In the current market, IBD suggests stocks with ATRs of 3% or below.
The S&P 500 stock has a 55 Composite Rating out of a best-possible 99. ULTA Shares also have a 24 Relative Strength Rating and an 80 EPS Rating.
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