Welcome to the conference call regarding L'Oréal nine months sales. The conference is about to begin. I now hand over to Eva Quiroga. Ms. Quiroga, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Judith, and good evening to all, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of our nine-month 2024 sales. I'm here with our CEO, Nicolas Hieronimus.
Good afternoon.
Our CFO, Christophe Babule.
Hello, good afternoon.
Our Global Head of Corporate Finance and Financial Communications, Laurent Schmitt.
Good afternoon.
Nicolas will make a few brief opening remarks before we will open up to Q&A, and with that, over to you, Nicolas.
Okay, let me grab the mic. So good evening, and thank you for joining us on this call regarding our nine-month sales. I'm pleased to report a solid like-for-like growth of plus 6% for L'Oréal, despite the multiple external turbulences that impacted the third quarter, some expected, some less. The expected headwinds were the continued normalization of the beauty market growth in Europe and North America, as inflation-related pricing continued to ease. The less expected, or should I say, worse than expected, turbulences were in North Asia. In the Chinese ecosystem, where markets turn even more negative, particularly in luxury, both in the domestic and in travel retail, where traffic did not convert into purchases. We were encouraged recently by the government's stimulus measures and hope that they will result in a gradual pickup in consumer confidence.
What was also unexpected was this summer's turbulent weather, which led to little replenishment and therefore negative sell-in in sun care for LDB. Despite all these external turbulences and a few others, we delivered a solid growth at plus 6% in the first nine months, once again outperforming the global beauty market, and that after multiple years of strong and broad-based outperformance in share gains. There are several highlights or bright spots that I would like to stress. First, underlying growth trends remain robust in Europe and North America, as well as in emerging markets. Globally, beauty units are growing, including in China, demonstrating the resilience and potential of the beauty category. The contribution from value and volume for L'Oréal was well balanced, illustrating our capacity to both valorize and recruit.
Our fragrance and haircare businesses continue to grow strongly, while makeup is pursuing its gradual recovery, fueled by new product launches that were unfortunately quite backloaded this year. We are gaining share in three divisions out of four, mass market being around market level. Our business remains pretty good in Europe, North America, and emerging markets despite the summer slowdown. In Mainland China, three of our four divisions outperformed the market. In mass, L'Oréal Paris resisted well, confirming its position as the number one beauty brand. Entering the fourth quarter, conflicting forces should make it quite consistent with Q3. On the one hand, we are entering the holiday season, where our strength in fragrances will play in our favor.
But on the other hand, we don't see any change in the macro landscape, and Q4 is when China weighs the most in our turnover, notably with the big Double Eleven. All in all, we remain confident to outperform the market this year again and deliver growth in sales and operating profits. Fast-forwarding into 2025, we expect the global beauty market to continue to grow at pre-COVID levels. We are in the process of preparing our own Beauty Stimulus Plan. Beauty is an offer-driven market, and innovation and creativity are crucial to stimulate demand. We have prepared a truly incredible roster of new launches across all categories and divisions for next year, and we'll continue to roll out this year's blockbusters.
Add to that, the agility and passion of our teams and our unique ability to reallocate resources towards new growth engines, and you can see why we are convinced that we will deliver in 2025, another year of growth and outperformance. With that, let us now open up for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Please use your handset before asking your question and set your microphone on mute once you ask your questions. The first question is from Guillaume Delmas, UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good evening, all.
Good evening.
Good evening. Two questions from me, please. The first one is on the Dermatological Beauty division, because even after adjusting for the EUR 57 million one-off, I still get to around 4% like-for-like sales growth in this third quarter, which is a marked slowdown compared to the first half, and I think your weakest performance since Q2 2020. So maybe could you shed some light on this deceleration, I mean, particularly the main drivers behind it? Is it all about sun care or some regions or brands that are worth highlighting? And I guess importantly, I mean, do you see this mid-single-digit like-for-like as just a one-off, or could Dermatological Beauty be a bit slower for longer?
Okay.
And then my second question is on the Beauty Stimulus Plan you are preparing for 2025. I mean, anything we should read into this? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but L'Oréal has always been trying to stimulate industry growth. Are you signaling something different for next year? I mean, maybe the magnitude of your investments or the number of new product launches that would be greater than usual. And if so, I mean, any margin implications from this that we should expect? So any color on that would be helpful. Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you. I will start with, of course, the question on L'Oréal Dermatological Beauty. I think there are several elements. Your first of all, your calculation on the reality of the growth, it's indeed, without the Vichy insurance correction, it's a mid-single digit growth. So it's lower than the previous quarters without a shadow of a doubt. Few explanations on that. First of all, there was a realignment between sell-in and sell-out, which was augmented by the sun care effect, but not just by the sun care effect. We were ahead of our sell-out, and particularly a sell-out slowdown over summer, notably in the U.S. market.
So the biggest culprit of the slowdown of dermacosmetics is the U.S. Everywhere, you have a little bit of this value effect reduction that affects all markets in mass and in derm, but that affects all markets. But it's really the U.S. market that has slowed down. We continue to gain share on that market. By the way, you know, CeraVe has got a 19% share on that market. So there's a value-driven reduction. There's a few consumers that in the U.S. that left the derma sector to, you know, mostly young Gen Z that went to try a few other brands, so it's up to us to recruit them.
We have to say that we didn't have on CeraVe, in particular, we haven't had innovations for a while, so which is changing now as we are launching a new intensive body care with urea and about to launch our anti-dandruff shampoo line. And that's. And then in the U.S., you also have the fact that the distribution channel of drugstores is more under pressure than other parts of the distribution. So all in all, you know, after years of extraordinary growth of the dermocosmetics market, particularly in the U.S. and particularly driven by CeraVe, it has slowed down a bit. But what is true is that the appetite for dermatological beauty has not really changed.
It's true that many brands have tried to tap into that trend, but we see, I'm looking at within China, CeraVe is at +29%, CeraVe is at +25% in SAPMENA, is growing in the 20s% in Europe. So it's really, I think, in the U.S., where we just need to bring new stuff to get consumers excited, to get that brand to accelerate again. La Roche-Posay is doing fantastic. Mela B3 is doing great too. So all in all, a reduction in the U.S., mainly, a little bit everywhere else with price.
A lack of innovation on CeraVe in recent months, but no inflection on the trend on Dermatological Beauty, which we see both in you know pathologies and visits to the derms as well as in appetite for everything related to aesthetics. On the sun care in particular, just to give you a you know a number, at the end of Q1, LDB was at +40%, because last year was a slow start, and we shipped a lot of products in Q1. Considering the weather, it was -6% in the months in the Q3.
We've unfortunately shipped a lot of sun care and had negative sell-in in Q3. But, you know, it's what sun care is all about, so you have years with and without. I'm not worried at all on Dermatological Beauty. I'm just encouraged to take more initiatives as the success of Mela B3 shows. That's a good segue to your second question on the Beauty Stimulus Plan. You're right to say that, you know, every year we try to stimulate the market, and we prepare launch plans.
I think what's new, and that's why I put it in my quote, is that, for the last three years, the market has been boosted first by the revenge buying post-COVID and everybody going back out, and for the last two years, boosted by inflation, so and everybody valorizing. So yes, we did have to innovate, but let's say we had a tailwind that, you know, allowed us probably to be a bit less aggressive.
Now that we see that the market has slowed down as predicted and as announced, I've asked all the teams of L'Oréal to increase their both the quality and the quantity of their launches for next year, because we see that the brands that win, and we are many brands that have, you know, spectacular results, including some very big ones, with L'Oréal Paris being double digits or YSL, and every time it's driven by great innovation, so it's about now having all fires, all cylinders on fire, and that's what I ask to the team, and as it relates to margin, no, we are not announcing a desire to reduce our trend of regular improvement of operating profits.
Here, I'm coming back to the LDB, you know. Yes, you can consider the Q3 as a one-off. As you know, we don't run the business on a quarterly basis. We look at the whole year growth, so we can be confident, and we are on the capacity, of course, to keep delivering a high growth on LDB.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Iain Simpson, Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just a couple of questions from me, if I could. Firstly, I wondered if we could dig a little bit into what's happening in emerging markets ex China. So when I look at SAPMENA- SSA and LATAM, there's a sequential slowdown there, which I'm guessing is also why your consumer business was a little bit weak, because I think those divisions are largely consumer-led. So it would be helpful if you could give us a little bit of a walk through what happened there. And then secondly, I just wanted to dig into one of your opening comments where you talked about, if I heard you correctly, 2025 market growth returning to pre-COVID levels. And I think you've previously talked about, you know, cosmetics market globally growing 4% or so long run.
I wondered if we could, if we should interpret that as you thinking about 4% market growth for next year? Thank you very much.
Okay, Iain. So, I'll start with the last question because the answer is, you know, with everything that is uncertain about the future, our estimation based on what we see today is indeed a market that would go back to the growth rhythms of the pre-COVID growth rhythms, so somewhere four to five. Considering that, of course, the speed of recovery of the Chinese market has to be taken into account. Today, what we see, for example, if we look at North America, it has slowed down to a level that's slightly above pre-COVID. Same for Europe. And China is, by definition, very much lower than pre-COVID. So it might be a different mix, but that's what we plan our year on.
But again, it's our role as well as the one of other players to stimulate that demand with exciting innovations, because we see that that works pretty well. As far as emerging markets, well, first of all, as Christophe said, again, we're trying not to comment a single quarter. Overall, the dynamic remains pretty good. We've had a few; there are a few specifics in Latin America, where you have really Argentina, who's taking the overall market down. Brazil remains very dynamic, and we are winning share, and Mexico has slowed down a little bit post-election, but again, there we're winning share, and we have a spectacular performance, by the way, from CPD.
In SAPMENA, well, SAPMENA is a zone that's a mixed bag of countries. Actually, you've got Australia in SAPMENA, which is a pretty big part of the country in that zone. And Australia and New Zealand behaved in terms of markets the same way as Europe and North America, i.e., less value in the market, implying the slowdown. And then we have the growth and the market share gains in most markets remain in line with the beginning of the year, with one exception that we already mentioned, but haven't gotten better during the summer: the impact of boycotts on Western brands, boycott calls in; it's actually two countries, mainly Indonesia and Malaysia. So this has impacted our growth in that region.
The good news, if I may say, is that we'll be entering in the months to come the anniversary of when all this started, so we'll be resuming from a better base. But overall, the performance in that region is great in luxury, excellent in LDB, and CeraVe is really accelerating. It's good in PPD and on CPD, we have a pretty good performance in skincare, and we are struggling in makeup because of our backloaded launch plan. So we are just launching, as we speak, a super gloss on a gloss and blush on Maybelline that is called Teddy Tint, and we have a few other things.
And it's true that, to be honest, I would have preferred to have these, launches, sooner in the year. And that's part of the things, we are correcting to next year, is that we can't afford in makeup to, to wait for a second half to, to have, launches, because it takes time for them to take out, to take off. So that's the, a tool. The... I don't know if I forgot anything, Christophe?
No, I think-
But that's more or less the situation in emerging markets, which remain today, you know, 30% of our growth and still a very big objective for CPD, but for all other divisions, because I think in terms of penetration and share, we can still do much better in this part of the world, and we have been doing it this year.
Thank you.
The next question is from Olivier Nicolaï at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, Nicolas, Christophe, and Eva. Just one question, first of all, on fragrances. Could you comment on the current growth rate that you're seeing in fragrances in Q3? And how should we think about Q4, which is obviously the key selling period there, and do you see any sign of slowdown there? And just to follow up on a previous comment you made, I think you initially said that you were expecting Q4 trends to be similar to Q3. Was it for the group, or was it for China? I'm not sure I got that part. Thank you.
No, it's, yeah, frank-, to be honest, I wish I could give you again the very accurate vision of Q4, but my comment was more for the group. Because, I mean, of course, if all coins fall on the right side, it's gonna be a great fragrance season. We have makeup kicking in. But it's also by a couple of hundred basis points a quarter, where China is overweighted in the business of the L'Oréal Group. So, you know, one thing could be balancing the other. Well, the good...
At the end of this year, and that, I think, part of the things that should make us ambitious for the future, is that the weight of the Chinese ecosystem in our business will have dropped 200 basis points this year. So, you know, the more we move, the less we'll be dependent about the climate and the Chinese turbulences, and have the possibility, if, you know, consumptions there reaccelerates, we will benefit from it. But we can plan even considering the current situation doesn't get better. As far as fragrances are concerned, I have only good news. I don't see any slowing down. I was the numbers in. It's just the market and our rankings.
We have right now multiple products that are positioning themselves in the top five, even top three. At some point we may have three feminine fragrances in the top three in Europe. We'll see how the year ends. Our brands are doing great in America. It's not always the same, by the way. So Valentino is doing fantastic in the U.S., whereas in Europe it's Lancôme, Prada, and YSL. YSL Man is doing great in America, so really no no worries and no slowdown. We see this market growing double digits. It's one of these things, again, people, you know, it's the affordable luxury, the access to couture. Even within our brands globally, the couture brands are doing great overall, even in makeup, so there is appetite for that.
And just to give you another insight, I two weeks ago I did a trip in China and Japan, two markets with right now different dynamics. But in both countries I was struck to see lines of people queuing outside fragrance stores and counters, ours and some competitors, of course. But it was quite spectacular, and I must say that I had not seen that, and we even Japan, which was very you know quite remote from fragrance for years, we see this trend really developing amongst the young generation. So I have to say I you know you can always be wrong, but I do not see any slowdown.
On the contrary, I see great potential in countries where fragrances were underdeveloped, and that's also our growth and our acceleration in emerging with L'Oréal Luxe is also coming from fragrances. So, that's something I'm pretty excited about. And by the way, we'll be starting with Miu Miu in Japan from January 2025. So it's another addition to our roster that should, considering how hot this brand is with young generations, I hope we can do the same, have the same track record that we just did with Prada and Valentino.
Thank you.
The next question is from Sarah Simon with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yes. Afternoon. I've got two questions as well. Sorry, Nicolas, can I, can we just go back on the sun care within Derma? Did you say that you had sell-in of 40% in Q2 for sun care? I'm not sure.
In Q1.
In Q1, and what was it in Q2, then?
It was flat-
Okay.
-and then -6% in Q3.
Do you think sort of sun care inventories are now normalized?
I think we have a little bit of inventory, not much, on Dermatological Beauty. We don't have any mass because it's a different commercial practice where we take returns. So, not but nothing material. But it's true that we wished we had, like, aside from business, I think we all wished we had better summer. I don't know where you were this summer, Sarah, but it was a bit of a nightmare. But that's what I can tell you about the sun care.
Okay, great. And then, sorry, the second question was, you know, the market's obviously returning to a more normalized rate of growth. When you think about your marketing spending, that obviously rocketed when, went up significantly faster as the market grew faster. So how do you feel about marketing as a percentage of revenue in the context of a kind of more normalized growth outlook?
Well, you know, it's, I think it's, first of all, it's a good question. I think we would. The straightforward answer is that we want to continue to increase our spending behind beauty with no doubt. And as we said, it may not be the case or always the case in terms of percentage of net sales, because we are seeing with our BETiq system that we are rolling out progressively. It's a bit slower than I wanted, but still it's already covering around 40% of our A&P, and we see every time real increase in ROI. So it means that we can get more efficacy for the same amount of money.
So overall, the vision is we want to stimulate the market and our growth with more fuel, which is gonna be shared differently, probably between, you know, different media, putting social networks, advocacy, et cetera. But we are, I think we reached very high percentages of our net sales last year in particular. So now I think we can control that a bit more. I don't know if you want to add something on that, Christophe?
Yes, we keep investing in our brands, and I think it's very important in the current context, where we need to stimulate the market. So definitely, our model is growth, and we are still increasing the amount, the dollar amount of our investment. And of course, being extremely agile, depending on the regions where we feel there is elasticity in terms of sales or in the categories like Nicolai was mentioning, we are doing extremely well in fragrances. So of course, we are preparing a very rich Christmas party when it comes to supporting our brands.
Okay, thanks.
The next question is from Jeff Stent at BNP. Please go ahead.
Hello, Jeff.
Hey, good evening. Two questions, if I may. The first one, just a housekeeping question for Christophe. But if you could comment on the proposed changes and to sort of the French tax regime and what that may imply for L'Oréal. And the second question is, could you maybe just put a little bit more light on sort of market growth in mainland China and also Hainan? So what you've been seeing there and how your-
Yeah.
... sellout compares versus the market? Thank you.
Okay. So I'll let you talk about the French tax, Christophe.
Yes, French tax. So as you know, there are still discussions ongoing, so we don't have yet the final, final picture. But, for the time being, based on the information that we have, there will be an exceptional tax that will come for 2024. And we estimate the amount to be in the range of EUR 250 million on additional tax.
Thank you.
Okay. So on China. On China, I'll start with, but it's broadly consistent, whether it's in Hainan or China. But let's say that overall, the market, our estimation of the market, which is quite robust, that the market was overall slightly positive in Q1. Then moved to mid-single digit negative in Q2, and a higher mid-single digit drop in Q3. And within that, the part of the market that dropped the most in Q3 was the luxury part, which was negative mid-teens. So that's really the... But that's really the overall trend of the Chinese market.
The only sector that was slightly positive in Q3 was mass market, where there was a number of consumers probably shifting from luxury to some of these brands. Overall, the market was quite negative. So the year to date, the market is cumulatively low single digit negative. And we are, if we take division by division, we are gaining share in three divisions out of four, which is selective. So we are doing better than a very negative market, but it's not good enough to have positive growth. Better in Dermo and better in professional. And we are below the market in mass with our makeup brand struggling and with L'Oréal Paris overall doing pretty good.
Actually, L'Oréal Paris gains market share in every single channel, but has a slightly different unfavorable mix effect, so overall, L'Oréal Paris is resisting well and confirming, strengthening its number one position on the market, and as far as Hainan is concerned, if I take Hainan duty-free, we have the confirmation of what we announced and discussed during the half year call, is the fact that the sell-out remain in the minus thirties in Hainan. So there's a lot of traffic, a lot of tourists. There were a lot of tourists during Golden Week, but they do not convert to our categories or any other, by the way, so it remains very negative on the year that was negative again.
So there is really this reset of the Travel Retail market in Asia is taking longer than we hoped, and that's why I was talking about unexpected turbulences, because this is one that I was hoping to improve over the summer.
That's great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Jeff.
The next question is from Celine Pannuti, JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you.
Hello, Celine.
Hello, good afternoon. So two questions for me and a follow-up. First on China, can you try to help me unpack a bit the point, I mean, why three at the group level was, I think, more than 5% reaccelerating, while it seems that China was probably down double digits. So if you could help me unpack where luxury did much better in the rest? And any comments that you may have on how the pre-sale Eleven Eleven has been in China. My second question is on the U.S. market. You said it has slowed, you mentioned Derma. Can you talk about the overall market growth in the U.S., where, I mean, some of your peers have been speaking about as well as slowdown, especially in makeup.
So if you could talk about that. A follow-up on the tax points that you made, is it as well for 2025 that you will have that extra EUR 250 million? Thank you.
I'll start answering to the last question, Celine. No, it's for 2024.
Thank you.
I will start in the U.S., and then I will, the communication was not really good in your first, on your first question, so I may ask you to repeat it, but I will answer to what I got. The first thing on the U.S. market, we see indeed the market normalizing. It started sooner than Europe with the effect of price, and, you know, what we see today, it's like it's normalizing around the 5%, so mid-single digit growth, which is slightly above pre-COVID. Within that, there are indeed some categories that are struggling more: makeup. There are some categories that are booming, like fragrances and haircare.
I mean, haircare is doing phenomenal, both for L'Oréal, for Kérastase, so Redken, and there's really a strong demand for haircare, and skincare is somewhere in the middle. So, all in all, again, you know, we are, we see the American economy being quite strong. It's true that the mass market was more impacted by the slowdown than the selective, probably because people with the lower incomes had, you know, harder capability to afford some of these products. But overall, the market, as I see it, is around 5%.
You know, the reason why maybe we do not have the same take on the U.S. than some of our competitors is precisely because we have this wide portfolio of brands, wide price piano, and we see Amazon being very dynamic. The luxury brands we put on Amazon, e.g. Lancôme, Kiehl's, are doing good and actually re-accelerated Kiehl's, which was struggling a bit. In mass, we have NYX is doing fantastic. Maybelline has been struggling for lack of innovation. Haircare is good. We have different price points, different stories. Our fragrances, our YSL has become the number one fragrance, masculine fragrance brand, so not SKU, but the brand overall has taken the leadership. We have Valentino doing great.
So overall, I think we can navigate the moving equation of the U.S. market. Yet, and in the end, we are very confident in the economy. We do not think that the result of the elections will affect the American consumption one way or another. So we continue to be ambitious on this market. So then your first question was-
Can I repeat?
Yes, please.
Yes. First question is on China. If you could help me understand, I believe that luxury was down double digits, and yet at the group level, luxury was up more than 5%. So could you explain where luxury was generating? And any comment that you have on eleven eleven at this stage?
Oh.
- and, you know, profitability in China?
Okay. So, on luxury globally. First of all, luxury is significantly beating the luxury market. The luxury market is around, we estimate it to be around 3% globally. We are at mid-single digits with L'Oréal Luxe, and we've been penalized for L'Oréal Luxe with our, you know, our destocking and overweight in China, but the division is accelerating. So, there is good performance in most, if not all countries, to be honest. We're doing great in Europe, we're doing great in Latin America, and emerging with double-digit growth. We're doing great in Japan, where L'Oréal Lux has become year to date the number one foreign group, well, L'Oréal has become the number one foreign group in Japan.
We have brands like Takami that are doing phenomenal. The new couture brands that we launched in China are doing good also, by the way. So it's really China and travel retail that are negative. And then we are doing good in the U.S. So in this, in the sell-in of the third quarter, there is a part of it that is a hype of the holiday season for our fragrances. So I think we are probably there slightly ahead of our sellout. But we have lots of new initiatives, new flankers on Libre, on YSL. So it's mostly fragrance driven and a good recuperation on makeup.
We are not happy with our skincare performance, which of course is very impacted by the weight of China. As far as Double Eleven is concerned, well, it's very early. What you probably know is that the length, the duration of Double Eleven has been extended. It's gonna be the longest Double Eleven ever. It's increased by ten days, and it's just starting now, so it's a bit too soon to say. What I can tell you is that we are broadly in line with our targets, but we see how things unfold. So it's really too soon. We are...
What is true is that we are determined to have our brands in the top rankings of this event, and if we take L'Oréal Luxe just to give you our growth, excluding China and travel retail, Asia, it's double digit, so it's really where it's like a babbleless, as we say in France, in French. Hello?
The next question is from Charles Scotti, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hello, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. Just a quick follow-up on North Asia. Is it possible for you to give us more precise numbers on your performance across all divisions in Mainland China and the Asian travel retail channel, so that we can, you know, break down the 7% like-for-like sales drop in Q3? Secondly, I suppose that a stronger innovation pipeline next year could, you know, potentially require, you know, higher A&P spending, especially considering that fragrance is quite A&P intensive. But in the meantime, you are still guiding for steady margin improvement. I guess raw materials are rising, which could help on the gross margin.
But are there some cost savings actions being implemented to defend the profitability in the second half? And then the third question is, again, on taxes in France. I think that the bulk of the exceptional tax increase will take place in 2025 and then also extend to 2026. So should we expect an even stronger, you know, negative impact for 2025 and 2026? Thank you.
Okay. So, I'm not going to give you more details on the performance per brand, per division, per country in North Asia. I think we have already given quite an extensive level of information. Overall, I mean, the main information is that we are gaining share in Luxe LDB, which is really accelerating, by the way, both in China and North Asia, and PPD. And that's we are below market in mass market, mainly because of China. The rest is, you know, we're gaining share in travel retail, but it doesn't mean anything because we're gaining share on a very negative market. So frankly, it's good, but it's not gonna be helping you a lot. So that's the first part.
On the margin protection, because you mentioned second half, so you're talking about this year, I guess. So overall, first of all, we are, you know, we continue to invest behind our brands and support our fragrances over the holiday season. Clearly, we, as we do all the time, and we had a meeting on that two days ago, we reallocate our fuel and our monies where the growth is and where there is a strong potential. So that's clearly both regionally and category-wise. And we are managing our P&L, whether it's SG&A, headcounts, always adapting to the reality of the market.
So we are not one of these companies that announces big revolutions, but we are in constant transformation, optimization of the organizations. We have several projects that have unfolded or are unfolding, whether it's clusters of countries, whether it's reorganization of the sales force for CPD in North America, whether it's the organization of our luxury brands. So there's lots of constant reengineering of the organization to make sure that indeed we have free resources to fuel our brands, be it in 2024 or even more so in 2025. And I hand over to Christophe on the, that was on the French.
Yes, on the French tax, there will be an impact accounting-wise in 2024 and 2025 . And of course, on the cash flow point of view, it will be 2025 and 2026 . And again, I'm still prudent because things are not yet been voted by the parliament.
We are following what's happening in the parliament on an hourly basis, and it's quite hard to really figure out what's going to happen, but we are planning for it anyway and are ready.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from James Edwardes Jones, RBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening. You said you expect to outperform the market in 2025 , but that's not included in your outlook statement for 2024 . Should we read anything into that? And, second follow-up, could you just give us a number for organic growth in haircare for Q3, if possible, please?
I will give you a growth number for haircare for the nine months, because I don't have it, first of all, under my eyes for Q3, and it remains good, but we are double digit in haircare year to date. So, I don't remember where I was at the end of the first half, so it's probably slowed down a bit in Q3, because for the very same reasons that we discussed in terms of alignment of sell-in and sell-out in CPD, but it continues to be very, very dynamic in sell-out. Again, in all countries I visit, we see haircare, and most importantly, premium haircare growing steadily.
So, that's one of the categories, like fragrance, where you have a strong underlying demand, which is both fueled by the growing length of hair and the growing mixity of hair types, racial mixity, which creates more demand, and people are using more treatments, more serums, and of course, they keep on using a lot of shampoos. So, that's the market remains positive in mid-single digits. That's including hair color, by the way, it's a bit higher in haircare. And we are doing good. And I'm sorry, I did not get your first question.
Just about your outlook statement didn't include the usual, "We'll outperform the market this year." You said you're going to outperform the market in 2025 . Oh, it did, did it? I missed it.
It did. It did. We are, we are, outperforming the market year to date, and, as we enter holiday season, we are, we are confident that we're outperforming, outperforming it again this year. And of course, we are aiming for it in, in 2025 . But yes, yes, it was in the statement. Maybe I, I, I said it too fast, but it's, it's part of the, of the motivation and, and it's part of the reality year to date.
I apologize. Thank you.
No, it's okay. It's my bad.
The next question is from Tom Sykes, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Good evening, everybody. First of all, just on China, you have a very high level of non-permanent staff in China. So given what you were saying about the seasonality and the strength of Q4, are your hiring plans the same as they usually are coming into Q4? Or are you already starting to look at reduced headcount at all in China or, or indeed any other longer term model changes at all, or channel changes in China? And then just referring to your comments before about the U.S. and, and the sell-in, some of the shipping data would suggest that the peak shipping dates were a month or two earlier this year. I just wondered whether that sort of fear of Red Sea retailers wanting to make sure they had the inventory, did that at all help Q3?
Is there any seasonality difference with the growth of Amazon as well in the market?
Okay. So on both questions, on the U.S., as I said, there was anticipation in selling of our luxury division, which is a mix of our own, you know, organization and probably desire from trade to have to make sure they have inventory. There's no major impact, to my knowledge, of Amazon, so it's something that benefited Q3 for Luxe. But again, as the market is very hot on fragrance, I think it's good to have it in the trade and be ready to sell out.
As far as China is concerned, the P&L and of China is super flexible, because indeed, you're right, we have lots of beauty advisors, but it's a highly flexible workforce. I can tell you, and that's probably one of the questions of Celine that I did miss answering, the profitability of our Chinese subsidiary is very, very well managed by the teams at all levels. Of course, in terms of adapting our level of NP to the reality of the market, but also adapting the reality of our workforce to the growth of the market. All the more as right now, the best performing channel in China is really online, whereas offline is struggling more.
So you have, of course, to adapt to that, considering on the other hand, with that we continue to open a new tier three and four cities, which is part of our China consumer conquest. So all in all, we have a strong financial control of the structure of our P&L in China, and there should be and there shouldn't be any worry about this slipping.
We are relocating also some tender resources. You know, we have a very strong growth on many of our brands in luxury in China.
Right.
I've counted seven of them with a growth of more than 30%. We are rolling out Valentino, doing very well, Prada, opening, boutiques for Aesop. So all in all, we have absolutely no problem with our workforce in China.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome.
The last question is from Robert Ottenstein, Evercore. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. Two follow-ups. First, can you give your assessment of roughly where retail inventories are in the U.S. now, and the mindset of retailers? You know, we're hearing from a lot of companies that they're really, you know, continuing in other areas to take inventories down into the end of the year. So just your sense of what that dynamic is and how the retailers are looking at their inventories in beauty, in the U.S. And then second, kind of stepping back and looking at the emerging channel structure in the U.S. You know, you've been in Amazon now, in Lancôme for a while. You've spread to other brands. Love to get your sense of the learnings of being in Amazon at this point.
What being in Amazon has added, you know, to the Lancôme brand. You know, is it getting younger consumers, for instance, or different demographics? And then, you know, tied to all that, given your learnings in Amazon, how do you think about more medium-term, you know, the mix of your route to market in the U.S.? Thank you.
Okay. On inventory levels, we clearly have, you know, American retailers who have been, you know, more conscious about their inventory, particularly in mass, I must say, and, you know, the drugstore channels to the CVS's, Walgreens, and the likes. So, that's part of the, you know, part of the realignment between the CPD sell-in and sell-out is linked, also to this. But then again, it depends on the categories. Clearly, on fragrance, there's a FOMO sentiment, a fear of missing out, and I guess they are happy to have the best-selling fragrances. So it really differs on the channels. Same in the professional division.
It's true that salons are more cautious, whereas as haircare is very dynamic in selective retail, we haven't felt specific pressure on this category. So once again, it's a tale of several cities, but it's clearly in the mass environment, there has been more pressure on inventory. To my knowledge, we do not have excess inventory that we should be worried about in North America. As far as Amazon, for luxury is for the brands that have started in the U.S., we are very happy.
First of all, we are very happy because it's really been a win-win partnership in terms of the quality of presentation of our brand, in terms of the way it's managed. It's a 3P model, so in terms of prices, it's much more controlled. In terms of quality of exposure, it's much more controlled, and it has allowed us to indeed recruit new consumers, some that were new to Amazon and to the brand, some that were buying the brands on the, I would say, secondary market that was existing on Amazon and no longer exists, so it's a healthier business.
And it allows us to push, you know, more some categories that were a bit underserved in some of our selective retail. I'm thinking about skincare for Kiehl's or even Lancôme some of the makeup bestselling item like mascara. So overall, it's very complementary. It hasn't been cannibalizing our long-term and good partners at Macy's or Ulta or Sephora, but it's positive for the brands.
And overall, when I look at the performance of L'Oréal Luxe in North America, we are, after years where we were, you know, below market, the last couple of periods where we were above market growth, and it's thanks to the combination of our, I would say, a more complete distribution strategy without ever, of course, taking any risk on the brand equity. So as far as the future is concerned, it's always a question of aligning on the way a brand can be expressed and whether it's a, there is an alignment, between Amazon and ourselves.
It's been the case recently with Kiehl's, and, you know, it's possible that there will be other brands, but nothing is set in stone, because, as everything with our retail partners, it's always a question of negotiation and alignment. But in the end, it's a very positive move. We took time before doing it because we wanted to make sure we had the right conditions, but now we have them, and it's working. Okay. So I guess this puts an end to our call for the nine months results of L'Oréal. I wish you all a good evening or afternoon, depending on where you are, and I guess we'll see you in February for the annual results. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you for- thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.