Coty Inc. (COTY) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chelsea, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Cody's third quarter fiscal 2026 question and answer conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, May 6, 2026, at 8 o'clock a.m. Eastern Standard Time or 2 o'clock p.m. Central European Time. Please note that on May 5th, at approximately 4.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time or 10.30 p.m. Central European Time, Cody issued a press release and prepared remarks webcast, which can be found on his Investor Relations website. On today's call are Marcus Strobel, Executive Chairman of the Board and Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Laurent Mercier, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Cody's earnings release and reports filed with the SEC where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. In addition, except where noted, the discussion of Cody's financial results and Cody's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. With that, we will now open the line for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star 2. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question will come from Filippo Falroni with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning and good afternoon there. First question, Marcus, I was hoping you can elaborate on the selling versus sellout gap that you called out yesterday, both for prestige and consumer beauty, different drivers there. But how should we think about it going forward to Q4 and as you start thinking about fiscal 27? And then one question for Laurent on the margin side, can you provide some color on the exposure to oil and higher oil prices, both from a raw material standpoint, but also from a distributional logistical standpoint? Thank you.

Thanks, Philippe. On your first question, I mean, first of all, on the prestige side, it was good that we saw some sellout growth. Not much, but it was good, and we're happy about that. but the sell-in was trailing. There's basically three reasons behind it. Number one is the Middle East, because when this hit us end of February, we basically couldn't sell anything in March, and the Middle East for us is a mid-teens region, was growing very highly, so a good part of that sell-in problem is attributable to the Middle East. Number two, we're still in a highly promotional environment, which can be visible in the gross to net. And finally, what we also saw is that a lot of our European retailers stocked up quite a bit for the holiday, for the Christmas period. And our sellout was not as high as they had intended it to be. So they were working down a little bit of inventory in Q3. So all these three factors combined led to that gap between sell-in and sell-out. When it comes to consumer, first of all, the good news on consumer is that we have closed a bit the gap to the category, especially on Sally Hansen and on Cabo Girl in the U.S. Actually, on both of these brands, we are now growing versus the market in unit volume, and we are catching up in value. Now, why have you not seen this in the sell-in? There is basically multiple reasons behind this. Number one, we have basically decided to get our whole organization focused on sell-out and market share. This is for us a big cultural shift. So in the Q3, we sold in much slimmer, much sharper bundles. because, you know, in the past we sold in very big bundles, a lot of volume. Problem with it, if it doesn't sell out, it comes back in return, some obsolescence. We avoided it this time, so we sold in less, but we sold through much, much more. That's how we caught up against the category. So this is a short-term effect of selling in less because we changed our strategy in the way we drive retail productivity. And number two, we also exited some smaller markets on the consumer business, especially on color cosmetics in Southeast Asia and in Mexico, and obviously when you exit, you don't sell in. So we believe that long-term, the focus on sell-out and sharper bundles and much more retail productivity will make us a stronger company, and over time, sell-out will equal sell-in.

Yeah, so, Filippo, I can take the second question. So Middle East, indeed, there are two implications, of course. The top-line margin is a mid-single-digit net revenue for the company. And, of course, the other impact is on oil price. So what I can tell you, if you have to keep in mind some numbers, is that roughly speaking, you know, $1 impact from oil price is impacting, you know, our profit by $2 million. This is roughly the gross number. So this is before any intervention on productivity, change of sourcing, or any other kind of activity, or ultimately even pricing. So that's just to have in mind. So now about the timing, there is some delay. Number one, because we have inventories on components, Number two, also that the procurement team, they have also some hedging policy with our suppliers, which is also protecting suppliers and as a result is protecting us. So all in all, it means that we are protected against oil inflation roughly by, you know, the end of calendar year 26. Okay, so this is the rough cut. And maybe just to conclude on this, but, you know, indeed, what are the scope impacted? So number one is freight. This has an impact on freight. And it's also on glass, obviously. And this is where procurement teams are really finding, optimizing, you know, in terms of sourcing, okay, how we can avoid these impacts. And number three, it's about components. when we have some plastic components, okay? So, again, we are managing these very tightly. I mean, the procurement teams have really demonstrated over the last year's, you know, ability and agility to navigate this kind of volatility of inflation. It was the case three, four years ago when there was a peak of inflation. So, again, the teams are really full on and managing all these elements. while at the same time, of course, making sure that we keep always, you know, the top quality products.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Can you, you know, you mentioned retail destocking is mostly complete, but promotional levels are obviously still higher than you'd like, and at least in the near term, Middle East is likely a continued headwind. So perhaps can you give us a better sense of when you expect that sell-in and sell-out to converge? You know, is this a next 12-month endeavor, or do you think it could potentially take longer? I understand your comments to Filippo about some of the actions that you're taking, particularly in consumer beauty, but would love a little bit more detail on that. And then just longer term, can you talk about some more of the building blocks to get you closer to category growth and whether you may need to take even more drastic actions, particularly in consumer beauty, to get you there?

Okay. I mean, let me just start with how we get to category growth, both from prestige and consumer beauty. And they're pretty similar, okay, because they're both run under the co-curated frameworks. So number one is getting the right innovation out there and focusing on the right innovation. So what we have done already for fiscal 2017, we have identified what is our best innovation, what is innovation that complements the brand, that has a halo effect on the brand, and what are some small things that we have been doing in the past that we should not be doing at all. So we have cut our number of activities, but we're going to make the innovation that we bring to market bigger, better, and make sure it has a halo effect on the brand. So that's point number one. We're doing this on Precise, and we're also doing this on consumer because we already see now that some of our reduced bundles with bigger, better innovation, some of our items are far ahead of objectives, some of them 3x. So we're seeing we can appeal much, much more to the consumer, get more traction. Second point is getting consumer engagement, improved consumer engagement. As I mentioned in the last call, by doing so many activities, we have invested a lot of money in creating assets, but even have enough sufficient money to put these assets out there for consumers to see. So we're changing that, creating fewer assets, having more money in working media, and especially focusing more on what we call advocacy, which is a modern way of doing marketing. leading influencers. We have been a bit slow on this one because we still had a very traditional marketing mix up until last year, but we're catching up very quickly so that we believe that consumers will respond much, much more to offering. Number three, and this is very important, when you mentioned the sellout, and you're changing our whole company culture to sellout-oriented. It used to be fairly sell-in-oriented, but now we are, for every innovation, for everything you've been doing. They're asking, what is the sellout plan? What is the joint business planning with the retailer? Does it fit into the cadence of the retailer? So have a really fully synchronized plan to drive sellout, and then sell-in will follow. And number four is on everything that we do, we put the ROI lens. We have very good ROI measurements now of all our actions, of our media spending, marketing spending, everything. Everything what we do, does it move the needle, yes or no? So across these four elements, which is basically co-decurated on both prestige and consumer, we believe this is going to have a big impact over time. Now there will be – we had a framework. We put out this framework in the last call, as you remember. We're putting it into the market now, and hopefully it will improve quite a bit in 2027. It's probably going to go much faster on the innovation side because we decided this already. It's going to go much faster on the ROI side because we have the data. Moving asset creation to working media is going to take a little bit more time because you need some me-time to do that. And getting the whole organization that has been traditionally focused on sell-in, sell-out oriented will also take a little bit more time. When everything comes together, we believe we will finally be in a position that sell-out and sell-in kind of equate. and we have a very healthy business from which to grow and reduce the gap we have versus the market. We want to grow over time at least with the market and in the long term, obviously we want to outgrow the market.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Sydney Wagner with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking our question. So just curious on, you know, we're encouraged to hear some of the progress early from CoverGirl. which of those strategic steps do you think are most repeatable outside of the U.S.? And then we are seeing several mass retailers developing and broadening their beauty offerings. So can you talk about how you think about where the Kodi brands fit into that evolving mass retail environment and kind of how your strategy fits around there?

I find it quite interesting when we look at CoverGirl and Sally Hansen. We had a lot of, you know, failed efforts in the last couple of years to position the brands where the brands don't fit. You know, I think at 1.9, we tried to turn CoverGirl into the ultimate Gen Z brand. That didn't really work because this was not credible for the consumer. And, you know, each time when I go see a retailer in the United States, but also in Europe, they always say, please, please, please, can anybody do something for Gen X? Because Gen X, women have money, they're ready to spend it, but nobody talks to them. and nobody has an offering for them. So basically what we're doing, what we've done with CoverGirl, we've made CoverGirl, again, in the process of making the penultimate JNX brand, and retailers really support us in this. What this means, the way we're going to market, we need to have a good mix of advocacy. As I just mentioned, we've got to improve that, but also some traditional media to focus on the core properties, you know, simply ageless, lash glass, all these kind of things that people know, that people trust in. So where we bring innovation on these existing franchises versus news, news, news all the time. And I think that it's highly appreciated. That helps us now to actually get much closer with CoverGirl to the category. And we're actually outgrowing the category at the moment in terms of units in the U.S. And I believe this model is also applicable outside of the U.S. We're going to apply this on Rimmel in the U.K. and on some of our other properties like Moshua and Max Factor in Europe.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Oliver Chen with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Hi, Marcus and Lauren. Regarding the focus on the sellout culture, what does that mean in terms of your systems and or capabilities or working capital and what you're thinking that that requires. It sounds like it's quite prudent. And then as you mentioned earlier, Marcus, on the promotional environment that you're seeing as well as the European accounts being overstocked, how long might that persist, or what are you monitoring in terms of the relationship of what you're seeing there relative to guidance? And lastly, Laurent, on the A&P shift, was that planned, or was that in relation to what you were seeing in the marketplace?

Yeah, in terms of sell-out culture, which is obviously, you know, like probably the more difficult part because culture change is usually more difficult and takes a bit longer than strategy change. What we're doing is we're trying to implement this in all parts of the organization. So maybe we do a business review. What are the selling plans? What is the retailer plan? What is the retailer plan? and how we can engage with the retailer. Has the retailer verified these plans? So it's asking the right questions, but also personally on the top level, connecting with the right retailers, which we're doing. And number two is we will also, as we move forward, putting some on these metrics into our evaluation system. If you put market share into your way how you evaluate the organization, you see a shift on sellout almost immediately. So I think it's a mix of putting it into our performance metrics, KPIs, measure it, and drive it home with the organization every single day, but also building the capability for joint business planning with retailers, not just selling it in and hope it sells with top-line media, but having the right plan every time. It's much easier to have the right plan if you go back to the curation, if you have fewer, bigger initiatives, because you can focus on that to make the right plan. versus throwing out too many things where you just don't have the bandwidth and the capacity to do the right plan. So I think this is going to help quite a lot. When it comes to retailer inventory, again, we said before that we don't think there's any much more structural de-stocking in the trade. Structural de-stocking means retailers are in general dramatically reducing their inventory or their days on hand. We don't see that at the moment. it was just for us that our Christmas sellout was not as great as we wanted. And we've worked through that in the first quarter. Now as we go into the next holiday period, which is Mother's Day and Father's Day, we're obviously much more attuned to that. And now that we get into the sellout culture, I think we will be better in sellout. and sell-out and inventory will be much closer correlated than what they were in the past. So I think it's going to get better over time.

Laurent? So, Oliver, I would take just maybe to build on your first question about working capital. I would like to build on this also to make clear that as part of the coticurated and, again, this focus on sell-out, I mean, there are also some strong benefits on cash and working capital because, of course, by, you know, focusing on the biggest news, you know, reducing the tail, it has some implication on inventory and on working capital, so that's one, and it's part of the discussion. And number two, when we say, you know, focus on sellout culture, it's also behind this is also to have, you know, a very strong focus on forecast accuracy, really understand better the dynamic with the retailers. And, again, by doing this, it's really to be much more efficient on our inventory and also on excess and obsolescence. So it's really a big element, and that's also what you saw that, you know, what procurement implementing, you know, alliance of progress, the project which is really about streamlining our supplier ecosystem. So it's also another benefit as part of this cutie curating. So that's very important, and it has indeed concrete implication on top line, on the gross margin, and also on the working capital and the cash. So now I go to your last question on ANCP. First of all, I want to remind that our level of ANCP in Q3 is flat, which means that even in terms of percentage, it has increased. Okay, so it's really that there is no cut or drastic reduction, and it's part of our tight monitoring that we are implementing. When we say focus, it's, of course, focusing on the big bets, but it's also focusing on where we are seeing strong ROI, and this is also the analysis and the decision we made during the Q3 that we believe that we need to preserve and we need to invest more for the KCP. And indeed, Mother's Day and Father's Day are really KCP, especially for prestige. And this is a conscious decision that we made during the quarter, say, okay, let's reserve some money from Q3 because we are in a good place. And then we allocate this money where we are seeing, in fact, a strong ROI. So that's really part of sort of the new dynamic, Okay, not to be absolutely stuck on some decisions made three months ago. We are seeing how things are evolving, and when we have to make the decision to reallocate some money, we do it. So it's absolutely conscious decision.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Hi, Alec Legon for Susan. Thanks for taking our question. I guess, how should we think about the exit of Orveda and then also some of the brands from smaller markets? And then when should we expect, I guess, Orveda exit to occur? And can you give any details on how large that business was?

Well, let me put it that way. Orveda, we have started transitioning out of Orveda since February, basically. We have reserved for all these costs in our Q2 already. We're executing this at the moment, which means closing some of these big boutiques. Some of them might be taken over by the previous licensor. We're still working on that. We think we're going to be out more or less completely by the end of this fiscal year. So from June, July, August, we should be out of that business and can reallocate some of that spending that we're on this business on our co-authors and fragrance brands. The size of the business, you know, we don't break out individual brands, but you can imagine it was not huge, to say the least. So that is Auvita. And from the other brands, you mentioned mostly the consumer business where we exited some smaller markets because they're just not economical. We cannot create any scale or make any money or have any ROI. And with our new ROI culture, we will continue some of these. But it will not be dramatically pronounced because the volume per market there is fairly small. We will focus in consumer beauty on our most important franchises, CoverGirl, Rimmel, Sally Hansen, McFactor. We got a win in North America. That's job number one. We got a win on Rimmel in the U.K. That's job number two. And then we got a win in Europe with the rest of our portfolio, job number three, in that priority.

Thanks. That's really helpful. And then just a quick follow-up. Are you able to quantify the tariffs you've paid over the last year and any insight on if there's a chance for getting refunds on that?

Yes, Laurent. Yeah, indeed. So, you know, roughly it's about $30 million impacting P&L this year. And, of course, I mean, we are looking carefully at any opportunity to refund and, okay, depending on how the situation is evolving, okay, if, when and if we can do it, of course, this is something we will contemplate to help indeed our P&L.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Charles Scotty with Kepler. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning and good afternoon. Two questions for me, please. The first one, you mentioned that the competitive environment remains very intense. Could you provide more details on this and who is putting pressure on pricing and in which regions? And more broadly, do you think that similarly to the luxury industry, consumers are starting to push back against perfume price increases? and could prices eventually start to decline at some point or could you push more on the smaller formats to add up to a lower purchasing power? And then second question, there have been many media rumors suggesting that you could dispose of certain licenses to other industry players in order to accelerate your leveraging. I think these rumors have since been denied, But do you have any comments on this topic? And regarding Gucci more specifically, you previously seemed open to a disposal ahead of the license maturity. Could you give us an update on this matter, please? Thank you.

I have to make this three questions. I have to make sure I don't forgot them one by one in terms of the price. First of all, I mean, you've got to know that the beauty market is extremely resilient. We saw, again, 5% growth in the market in Q3, and both 5% on prestige and 5% on the mass. So basically the consumer is shopping across a very, very wide price spectrum, and so far we have seen an amazing resilience of the consumer out there. Yeah, there is a bit of, you know, everybody's fighting for market share, so there is a lot of promotion in the market, but that has more to do with, yeah, building sellout and market share than it has to do with absolute price levels. So we believe we're still in good shape when it comes to the resilience of the consumer. At least we haven't seen anything negative yet. On the rumors that you may have heard that we will be, you know, divesting anything in our prestige portfolio, I can see here for everybody, very clear that there is no truth to this. We are categorically denied it. There's no plans whatsoever. we're very very happy with our portfolio we're very very happy with our brands on the prestige side and each of them has an important role to play for us in the future and if you go to the specific article you know our Burberry and Hugo Boss our biggest brands they are our global brands and we love them and we continue to strongly build them in the future okay very very clear No doubt about that. And when it comes to Gucci, yes, obviously we are open to everything, you know, to an early exit if it creates value for us. It needs to create value for us and for our shareholders. And if anything becomes clear and fixed, we will obviously notify the public as it's based on our requirements. Nothing to report here at the moment. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrea Teserov with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question. Marcos, you and Laurent, you both talked about, like, going back to the SCU, but the skill rationalization, brand rationalization, consumer beauty. This has been obviously a very long journey, And I just wanted to see what inning you are in terms of that, how many more iterations of that you think you need. And then related to that on the cost side, I think you talked about returns of obsolescences impacting your numbers. How, again, how we should be thinking where these margins will land and how long you think you're going to take as you focus, to your point, more in the sellout vis-a-vis the sell-in. It seems to me that you're going to have to, you know, incurring some pain, kind of restructuring those brands and making sure that you get the best returns on those. Thank you.

Yeah, well, I think in terms of getting the innovation to a place that really makes sense for shelf and retail productivity. I mean, in the past, you probably know that, you know, we put out such a big innovation bundle every spring and every fall that we almost, like, crowded out, you know, productive SKUs on the shelf. So it's a double whammy. You have stuff out there that doesn't sell, and you have lost some productive SKUs, and if you add it all up, it's all coming back to you in either returns or obsolescence, okay, and just still suffering from the hangover of that. But this quarter, Q3, was the first time where we are breaking that cycle. And we're going to break the cycle even more in the fall bundle, which is going to be sharper. And the most important thing, it's not like just reducing the number of properties. It's actually important to bring properties out there that resonate with the consumer. So we're going to be much more consumer-based, much more trend-based, trying to lead the market in creating some of these trends. And the first results we have seen now are really, really good. I mean, we have some of the innovations are really far above our expectations, and they help actually to build market share in volume, but also catching up very much in value now to the market with actually a much smaller number of bundles and a much smaller number of SKUs. It's a much more efficient model. It's probably going to take us, you know, one, two, three iterations with those bundles to work through that and see the full effects, as you will see, you know, less and less obsolescence over time. But give us a few quarters, and you will see the effects of this. No wonder what's the second part, right?

Yeah, I think when you were talking about E&O, and I think it's really true to build on this and, you know, what we were hearing before. Well, I think it's really important you look at all these initiatives really from an end-to-end element or cycle. It's not just one bucket, but reducing the number of SKUs, but it's how we can be very precise. And again, it will have some implication on forecast accuracy, on inventory, and ENO, indeed, today. This is, as you saw in the Q3, it's really an element which is hurting our gross margin in prestige, but also in consumer duty. So by reducing this, and there was the example, you know, reducing the bundle, it's indeed a way that we are reducing inventory. We reduce E&O, but also we will reduce the returns that we get from retailers. So this will flow into the P&L. And also, there are also currently some exceptional elements. Marcus was referring to some markets that we are closing in consumer beauty because they are not profitable. It also triggers, I would say, as a short term, that sometimes it's impacting. we need to pick up some inventory here and it's working, you know, or even in some cases we have some returns. So these are also some exceptional costs that, you know, as time goes, will disappear. And then on the other hand, we get really the benefit from these decisions. So it takes time, but, again, it's really part of a very consistent plan, and it will be visible in the gross margin improvement.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. I had a couple questions on your FY27. First, you know, how should we think about the impact from the Middle East? Is the two- to three-point headwind that you expect in FQ for a good proxy? And then could you provide a little more, you know, contacts of these pressures and, you know, maybe investments to support your launches in the year? You know, ultimately, is it reasonable to assume continued EBITDA declines, or could EBITDA start to float, you know, positive?

Yes, thank you, Benny, for the question. I think you agree, you know, in your question that there are a lot of moving pieces. So we always make clear that we operate in an environment where there is a lot of volatility, and indeed currently the geopolitics is bringing, of course, some additional volatility. So on Middle East, and I think like all of us, and we read the news every day, as you understand the big numbers, so mid-single-digit percentage of the size of Cotinq as a whole, Indeed, it's a very strong fragrance business and also very dynamic. So, indeed, it's creating a headwind. Now, you need really to understand that within the Middle East, there are different dynamics. The channel which is the most impacted is the travel retail, which, of course, given the circumstances, is drastically reduced. Also in Emirates, because you have a lot of tourists and currency, of course, this is very to the minimum. But on the other hand, you have markets like Saudi, which are pretty well protected. So we need to understand these dynamics. We are monitoring as we go. And also we are managing the P&L equation and the investment and the spending of the region according to how the situation is evolving. and we have a very good team on site and very close to all the actions and really the agility. So we'll keep you posted, but, of course, we are making sure that we are managing this very closely within our equation. So now on your second question, again and again, the big focus, it brings all the discipline, and the organization is a focus on sellout. So this is really what will drive the performance and improvement. Of course, at some moment, it will be visible in the setting, but that's really a matter of discipline that Marcus shared loud and clear. So to gradually improve our sellout, to reduce the gap versus the category which is resilient, and, of course, our goal is really indeed to improve our EBITDA year-on-year trends over the course of fiscal year 27, so that's for sure. At the same time, and we've been very clear, we need to manage potential inflation, which is, you know, was the first question, you know, from oil increase. And also we've been very clear in the presentation that there are also some short-term benefits that also will create some headwind next year. But again, the trend, the organic trend is we need to improve sellout, And, of course, we need to improve, you know, the trend of our EBITDA trajectory.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Our last question will come from Anna Lazul with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the question. I know you talked a bit about the promotional environment here being a bit elevated. I was wondering if you could comment more on both the prestige and consumer beauty lines of business and when you expect this to better normalize. Thank you so much.

Good morning, Anna. We are seeing some promotion being more elevated, so coming from specific actors, specific retailers. I think this is something that I would not call as a major change versus what we observed in the previous quarter. and what we flagged, but we are always making sure that we are protecting our brands, we are protecting our innovation, and really that we are not playing that game. I will insist also, and you saw in the consumer beauty presentation, that we have been also very cautious in terms of price increase versus most of our competitors. and you see that our sellout in units, especially in the U.S., is growing. So this is very encouraging. And it really helps also to avoid playing this kind of promotionality game. So, again, and you see tangible results in the sellout improvement in CoverGirl in salient sense. So we are managing this very closely, managing really all the revenue management approach. so again this is the way we are looking at it then when it will normalize I can tell you on our side we stay very disciplined on this and then on how our peers want to to play that game of course this is a question that you can you can raise with them but again we stay very disciplined managing the revenue management in a very targeted way great thank you very much Thank you.

So we'll just let me do a final closing comment. Obviously, we're not, no, to be honest, we're not yet where we want to be, but we're improving, and I think Q3 demonstrated our ability to protect profitability and cash flow while taking first concrete steps to strengthen execution across the business. Coding Curator is the framework that's guiding the shift, sharpening our priorities, simplifying operating model, and scaling what works. With sustained focus and disciplined execution, I come to then Cody's well-positioned to deliver more consistent, profitable growth in the long-term value creation. And I want to use this opportunity again to thank all Cody employees around the world by working very hard to make this happen, and especially our colleagues in the Middle East are doing a tremendous job under a high state of high uncertainty. So thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.