Welcome to the conference call regarding L'Oréal sales at 31st March 2026. The conference is about to begin. I now hand over to Eva Quiroga. Ms. Quiroga, please go ahead.
Thank you, Sabrina, and good evening to you all. Thank you for joining us on this call for our first quarter 2026 sales. As always, I'm here with Nicolas Hieronimus, our CEO.
Good afternoon.
Christophe Babule, our CFO.
Hello. Good afternoon.
Laurent Schmitt, our Head of Corporate Finance and Financial Communication.
Good afternoon.
Nicolas will make some brief opening remarks, and we will then go straight to Q&A. Over to you, Nicolas.
Okay. Thank you, Eva. Good evening to you all. As you could see in our numbers, we're off to a good start. Our like-for-like growth, adjusted of all IT transformation impact between last year and this year, was at +6.7%, well ahead of the global beauty market, which we estimate to be close to +4%. We have been gaining share in all regions and divisions. It was driven by the further acceleration in our innovation rate as we launched several new products with blockbuster potential. This allowed us to further expand our market share in fragrances, haircare, and makeup, while starting to see some green shoots in skincare. We continue to strongly outperform in e-commerce, particularly in emerging markets.
Even if we are wary of the potential impact of the Middle East conflict, we are optimistic about the outlook for the global beauty market, which has shown no sign of slowdown to date. We are confident in our ability to outperform it because most of our 2025 and 2026 innovations are off to a good start and we have more to come. Because we have the teams, the means, and of course, the fighting spirit. We are now ready for your questions.
The first question comes from Celine Pannuti with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Sorry. The next question is from Guillaume Delmas of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello. Are you having some technical glitches? Because we can't hear any questions.
Sorry. Ms. Celine Pannuti, JP Morgan is now on the podium. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Can you hear me?
Yes. Good afternoon, Celine.
All right. Great. Thank you for taking my question. Clearly a very strong start to the year. You said that the market has continued to show a good progress at 4%. Can you talk about what you see? You said you are potentially wary about the impact of the geopolitics, what you could see in terms of potential impact in travel retail, as well as maybe you mentioned, Middle East seems to have been a small weakness. Yeah, that would be my first question. My second question on emerging markets. Actually, it was a strong beat. SAPMENA accelerated, and we also see that China did very well. If you could give us a view on the durability of that growth. Maybe corollary to my first question that I should have asked is, what you see in terms of the momentum?
I think it started so well. You were talking about acceleration at the end of last year. How would you characterize the rest of the year for L'Oréal?
Okay. Thank you, Celine. First thing, because just to make sure my pronunciation was right, I didn't say I was worried. I said I was wary, which means that-
Wary, yes. That's what I said. That's maybe my pronunciation. Sorry.
I'm conscious about the uncertainties that lie around this conflict. It's true that today, as far as the impact it has on our sales, it was absolutely manageable. It impacted our sell-out in March in travel retail, and indeed in the Emirates. This region, the Middle East, is less than 3% of our sales. If we look at the situation over there, we see that, I would say consumption has gone back to normal in Saudi, which is an important growth market for us. As far as the Emirates are concerned, we see that e-commerce is back to more or less normal. I would say the local, the neighborhood malls are also back to consumption. Where you find still a real impact is on the big tourist malls of Dubai and travel retail.
Overall, this has had an impact in March, and of course, we will see how things evolve in April, May. We think it's overall manageable in the region. Of course, what we don't know is whether durable inflation on gas prices will impact consumer behaviors. I must say that so far, and we are monitoring this very closely, we have seen absolutely no reduction of beauty consumption in our markets, whether it's Europe, North America or SAPMENA, as you mentioned. So far so good, but of course, we have to see. Then, of course, should the conflict last longer, this will have an impact on the price of the brands, will have an impact on our sourcing, on our logistics, which is more P&L impact than the top-line growth.
I would say, like you, we're all waiting to see the resolution of this conflict. That leads us to a certain level of carefulness, which leads me to the momentum.
Sorry . Apparently, no one can hear the webcast. Only the people on the line can hear you. No one can hear the webcast.
Wow. That's a big issue. We will have someone fix this. I do apologize. If you're the only one listening to our responses, that's a problem. I will post the link to make sure we-
Yes. Yeah
Fix this. I will probably have to start again then if you are the only one who will hear the answer.
We seem to have had a few issues, which frankly, I'm not very happy about, but we'll deal with that later.
I don't know if it's from here or from the.
Apparently, there was an issue with the intermediary. Let's wait, and hope it doesn't take too long to fix.
They're trying to fix it.
How do we know whether it works?
I think they're putting a line that people can call on the website now. I think we've answered the questions. People will have access to the webcast.
All right. We continue with the questions. As far as the momentum, because I'll talk about the emerging at a later stage. As far as the momentum is concerned, I would say two things. The first thing is that Q1 was our most favorable, our easiest comp from last year. That has to be taken into account as well as the potential, even if it's manageable impact of Middle East consumption. On the good side is that all the news we have today from our sell-out are very positive. We remain confident on the year, which is, as I said in the financial analysis meeting for the yearly results. We expect both the market and more importantly, L'Oréal, to grow faster in the full year of 2026 than it did in 2025. Of course, the start of the year is an encouraging news for us.
For emerging, you mentioned China in the emerging. For me, it has emerged a while ago, but it's true that the market has confirmed this stabilization or slight rebound because it was at +1% at the end of last year, and it's now closer to between 1% and 2%, closer to +2%. That remains pretty solid. The good news within the Chinese market is really the fact that there's been a shift back to selective. What's been driving the growth of the market is more the selective market with, I would say, a bounce back of the confidence of the Chinese consumers, especially a more affluent one with the fact that the stock market in China is feeling better.
Of course, as we are overrepresented, over-weighted in our business of the selective market where we are gaining share, it is a very positive news. We see China, which is now for us, including Hong Kong, is continuing to do well. We've really very seriously outperformed the market in the first quarter as the market was, as I said, somewhere between +1% and 2%. We were in mid-single digits in China. Really gaining share, particularly on selective divisions. As far as SAPMENA is concerned, it's been a good start of the year with a market that remains the same level of dynamism at the end of last year. Our sell-out is in line with our selling, so there's no inventory building with some markets that are very dynamic, like Vietnam, particularly.
India is doing good, even though it's still very small for us. We are confident on SAPMENA. The only emerging market that has shown slowdown in terms of market versus last year is Latin America, which was also slow in Q4, and so it's more mid-single digits now in the beginning of the year. We continue to outperform it, particularly in Brazil, in CPD, in haircare, where we have strong results. Overall, as you said, a good start. A very good start in sellout, and a momentum that has to take into account the fact that Q1 was an easy comp.
Super. Thank you so much. It seems the webcast is on, so yes. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Warren Ackerman of Barclays Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, Nicolas, Christophe, Eva, it's Warren here, Barclays. Can you hear me?
Yes, we do apologize to all the people connected that couldn't hear the beginning of the call. There was apparently a technical glitch, which I sincerely apologize for.
Okay. Thank you. I've got one housekeeping question and then two main questions. The housekeeping for Christophe, can you just clarify the phasing issues? There's been a little bit of confusion just on the 6.7% and the 4.3%. Just what is the actual real underlying? That would be great. My main question's, Nicolas, can you talk about the skincare market? At CAGNY, you said it was one of your biggest priorities to improve performance around brands like Lancôme. It seems like there are some green shoots. What's happening to the skincare market and how happy are you with your innovations and attraction, and what can we maybe expect for skincare overall this year, given it's your single biggest category? The second one really is, could you maybe just outline the strength in Europe?
It was very strong at the end of Q4, and that strength seems to be confirmed in the first quarter. What are you seeing? Is it your market share, your innovations driving that continued outperformance, and do you feel good that that can be sustained for the balance of the year? Thank you.
Yeah. Warren, I will start with, of course, what's happening on the IT transformation. As you know, it's very important to create this common backbone. We are going forward with this big project. You will have noticed that in the press release, on page two, we have put a new column that gives you the adjusted growth. The adjusted growth takes into account all the transformation that we had last year and this year. That's why from the reported like-for-like growth of 7.6%, there is a negative adjustment of 90 basis points, and therefore the underlying or adjusted like-for-like growth is at 6.7%. This is linked to a -340 basis points from the IT transformation in Q1 because we started Australia, U.K., and we are starting with the U.S.
Last year, plus 260 basis points from the IT transformation of Q1 of last year. Net is -90, and you have it on the page two of the press release.
Is that clear for you, Warren?
Yes, that's clear. Thank you.
Okay. As far as categories are concerned, skincare market is doing overall pretty good. It's one of the markets that is mid-single digits. I think we have estimated, because at this time of the year it's still an estimation, but still we estimated around +4%. We have indeed put in place our, I would say our wake-up or counterattack plan, which has already delivered pretty strongly on LDB, as you can see. LDB is growing. Our Dermatological Beauty division is growing double digits. It's both the continued strength of La Roche-Posay, the return to growth of CeraVe, and the very good health of SkinCeuticals, which if you remember, has become our new billionaire brand in euros last year. Here it's doing very good.
On the other divisions, when I say we're seeing green shoots, it's the number of the launches that we've either put on the market at the end of last year, like Garnier Toque Seco, which was a Brazil success and now is being rolled out in Latin America and Mexico, but also in Southeast Asia, is showing promising starts. We have new launches on L'Oréal Paris Glass Skin Serum, which are starting well, too. Of course, if I take luxury, we have two positive effects. One is the fact that the Chinese market, selective Chinese market, is more positive, so that's good for us. The launches we've put on the market, the Rénergie cream, the new Kiehl's medicated are doing great.
We just had the first initial sell-out of our new Lancôme Longevity MD line, which is the one, the new launch that has been developed with a new integrated supplement that we drive for Lancôme to act on all signs of longevity. The first sell-outs are very good. If you add to that the fact that Mixa continues to thrive, that Thayers in the U.S., which one of our positions that has been a bit slow is also growing. Medik8, our acquisition, goes well. Of course, we will be starting the rollout of Dr. G, our Korean brand. I think today it's very strong on LVP, and you have promising signs on the other divisions, which have not materialized right now in strong overperformance on the category. I feel that it should be good for the rest of the year.
Now Greenstein is also thanks to China, because it is. It's getting better. I would say the proof of the success of the strategy is really on the comeback on SGD, which is really powerful. As far as Europe is concerned, we see the. I think both topics, both explanations were right. One, the market is pretty resilient. It's a market that's growing mid-single-digit around +4%, so consistent with the global beauty market. We are outperforming in all four divisions, and very significantly in luxury. Pretty good also on the mass market, on professional, thanks to Kérastase. SGD is gaining share in the majority of countries. CeraVe has become the number three dermo brand in Europe for the first time.
Europe is doing good, and I agree with you that some people are surprised, but we see. I think Europe for me is the absolute demonstration of what we call the lipstick effect or the dopamine effect of beauty, because we really see in our consumer studies that even though consumers are worried and they have some preoccupation, they may cut on high value items, but they use beauty as compensation for stressful climate and a psychological buffer, and we see it in several categories. Good performance in Europe is driven as previously by styling in Europe. Our DACH business, so Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is doing good. The U.K., which had an easier comparative, got off to a good start. U.K., pretty solid in Europe.
We expect the market to continue to be positive, I don't know, in the three to four bracket. Of course, we are determined to continue to outperform.
That's super. Thank you both.
The next question is from Jeremy Fialko of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi there, Jeremy, HSBC here. Thanks for taking the question. A couple from me. The first one is, maybe we could just go into professionals. That was just a massive pickup, from where you were, I guess over the last six quarters or so. Perhaps you could just talk about what was going particularly well within that division. Again, any elements that you think might not be sustainable or whether you just think you've got a template that's working really well at the moment and can be sustained. Second thing is on Kering. You've now got that in the portfolio. Perhaps you could talk a bit about your sort of first steps with that portfolio and whether there's any chance of getting your hands on the Gucci license a bit earlier than 2028. Thanks.
Okay. Well, on professional, indeed it's been a very strong performance of the division now for, I would say, more than 18 months. It's really a performance that's driven by really a structural transformation of the division that has happened profoundly over the last couple of years, where this division has really truly become omni-channel with, on the one hand, an always confirmed, reaffirmed dedication to supporting, growing the salon market with new technologies, new hair color products. We just launched a new Redken ALK. We just renovated. So we remain dedicated to supporting that channel. The big step change is that, after having built highly desirable brands for decades, like Kérastase or Redken, the fact that we have become omni-channel and that these premium haircare brands are available in some selective outlets or online, drives phenomenal growth and attraction.
This happens at a time when haircare itself becomes a much more valorized and sophisticated and demanded category. All over the world, the hair is longer. Whatever the age, hair grows longer. Women keep their hair longer. People are concerned about hair loss, and you have a more mixed population with lots of curly, textured hair that are much more demanding in terms of haircare. You have the combination of brands that have the science and the offer and the desirability that are now available to consumers, even though they are premium, and a strong consumer desire backbone. The combination of these three factors is the perfect equation for the growth of the professional division.
I think it is sustainable because the underlying demand is growing, and because we have more technology, and indeed, at the end, the weight of premium haircare over the total haircare remains relatively moderate. It's one product out of 10 in mature markets, so there is room to grow. I think it's a good combination, I would say. I'm pretty confident about that.
Boosted also, we have to say, by very strong e-commerce growth.
Yeah, that's what I mean when I say omni-channel. It is the fact it is available in a lot of platforms, and of course, consumers, and young consumers are really craving for it. We are just also expanding in emerging markets, this division, which is also getting some traction. Lots of innovation, lots of demand, coveted brand, and availability online, while still protecting the professional support and the professional equity with specific innovations for this channel. Which is also, by the way, served by our teams, in a more digital way than before. A more, I would say, efficient way. That's for professional. As far as Kering is concerned, I'm afraid there's not much I can tell you. It's true, the deal's been closed, so it's ours since the 1st of April. We are, of course, we have met the teams.
We will be hosting them in our offices. Of course, we'll be focusing on the brands that are. The number one would be Creed, which is already a significant business. Looking at the two beautiful brands that are Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta. As far as the Gucci license anticipation is concerned, we are not having the discussions. It's a discussion between Kering and Gucci. I assume they are happening, but I have no news to give you on that front. It's just the beginning, but we are really excited and, when I look again at the performance perhaps right now on Yves Saint Laurent, I'm pretty excited at the potential on Kering Beauté, which will have, because of the step-up inventory, which have a dilutive effect on the first half, which we'll comment probably our first half results. Really excited about this prospect.
Nothing really new to tell you on Gucci.
Okay, thanks. Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Guillaume Delmas of UBS. Please go ahead.
Good evening, all. I've got one quick housekeeping question. I mean, for the people that were not on the webcast, and also because I missed the number, could you maybe repeat what is your initial assessment of the beauty market growth, in the first quarter? Then my two questions, I mean, firstly on North America, because I think Q1 is your best quarterly performance in nearly two years. Could you maybe shed some light on this? I mean, particularly what kind of market growth are you seeing? Any particular discrepancy between sell-in and sell-out in the quarter? Then looking at the four divisions, I mean, where are you seeing the most significant outperformance? Then my second question, probably a question for Christophe. I mean, early days, but to what extent your commodity and logistics cost outlook has already changed?
appreciate you've got high gross margin, productivity savings. Historically you've been really good at rapidly mitigating these headwinds, but could you also consider some pricing actions in the back half of the year, should these higher prices persist? Thank you very much.
All right. Guillaume, beauty market growth, and again, apologies for the glitch in the beginning. We estimate the markets in the first quarter to be shy of 4% growth. It's likely to be 3.8% or something like that. As you know, we don't have all the sell-out data. More or less on the same pace than the second half of last year. It remains dynamic, and as I said earlier, we have been paying a lot of attention on the recent weeks to see whether there was any impact on consumer behaviors of increasing in gas prices or, for people that, what they have to fuel their car tanks with. We have seen absolutely no change in beauty consumption patterns. That's the answer to your first question.
As far as the U.S. markets of North America is concerned, first of all, what is important, as you know, our growth is once adjusted for the IT transformation, is at +7.6%. It's indeed one in a while. With a little bit of discrepancy between sell-in and sell-out, because our sell-out is actually higher than our sell-in. We clearly outperformed the market big time, I must say. CPD in sell-out is really doing great because it's low double digits in sell-out, which is great with haircare on fire.
The reason why we are a bit behind the sell-in, which is one of the explanation why our Consumer Products Division is a bit below some of the expectations, is the fact that we had kind of the perfect storm in the U.S., without play on words, because we had, on the one hand, sellout that's really going really strong, particularly in haircare, but overall across all categories. We are building the inventory to prepare for our IT switch, which is going to be early June in the U.S. At the same time, we had a snowstorm on our big distribution center in Arkansas. Overall, CPD is doing great. Professional is a bit like everywhere. I would say the good sign is that SalonCentric, which had been a bit lackluster last year, is back to positive growth.
It's helped by the launch of Color Wow. Overall, we see a little better situation in the salon world. Luxury is doing good, thanks to fragrance and the recent launches in fragrances. La Roche-Posay and LDB in general are also doing pretty well because you have both the recovery of CeraVe in skincare and good performance in haircare, and La Roche-Posay continues to thrive. Overall, I think we are in a very good sellout situation in the U.S., and we are managing this big, it's our biggest country, so this move to our new SAP in the U.S. is something that we worked very hard on, and that had minor but real logistical implications in the first quarter. Overall, it's one of the countries where our performance is really very good right now. Christophe on the impact of-
Yeah. On the impact of the first, let me give you also a flavor on the structure of the growth, because it's important. We have both growth in volume and value. Basically, volume accounts for around 40% of this growth. Therefore, the value is there also to protect, of course, our gross margin. As you can imagine, first part of the half, we have a negative impact linked to the tariff. This will have a negative impact on the gross margin for the first half. We are trying, of course, to mitigate the impact with different aspects. On the other side, we have been computing the potential costs linked to the oil. As you can imagine, we have, on one side, a negative additional cost on the logistics, and also indirect additional cost potentially on the sourcing of some materials, mainly on plastics.
When we add both of them, if the oil stays at around $90-$100 a barrel, then the additional impact could be in the range of EUR 90 million-EUR 100 million. Of course, all this is being calculated based on the evolution of the prices. We'll see, because the biggest risk at the end will be the inflation that may come from this oil increase. If inflation, of course, goes up on the long term, of course, we may have to take some action on the pricing later this year.
Yeah. We'll see this last, whether we need to do it. We also will have potentially some good guidance on the tariffs in the U.S., the second half of this year with the change in the percentage that we now have. We'll see. We're monitoring. As you know, we have this capacity to take prices up, and we have a lot of, I would say, opportunities in what we call revenue growth management, where the articulation of formats, product mixes, et cetera, and promotions is also another way to protect our gross margin without necessarily taking prices up too much for consumers. That's how we did it post-COVID, and that's one of the tools we use to keep on recruiting consumers while protecting our P&L.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Sarah Simon of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Oh, yes. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one is, just can you remind us, like for like, is that assuming that what you own now, you owned last year, or is it excluding the contribution of everything that's been acquired until you get to a year afterwards? I'm just thinking because obviously you've got some bigger M&A coming in. And then the second question-
It includes what we acquired during the year.
If Medik8 is growing at 100%, you would benefit from that in your like-for-like?
We would have, if they are growing at 100%, yeah. We still have the sales-
I mean.
In the base, we have the sales that Medik8 did.
Yeah
in others last year. They're doing great, by the way.
Well, I can see it. It's everywhere in the shops over here now. Second question was on Mixa and the rollout. Can you talk about where that's being rolled out from a geographic perspective and how much further there is to go? Thanks.
Well, Mixa is mostly, today, it's mostly a European rollout. It's launched in DACH, and we are, of course, studying a few other European countries. As always, at L'Oréal, when things start flying, you have a few countries that are beginning to raise their hand and are becoming interested. Right now it's mostly Europe. We may have other candidates later. This year it's mostly a European play.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Olivier Nicolai of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, Nicolas, Christophe, Eva. I might have missed this at the beginning, on your remarks at the beginning, but SAPMENA was up 15.4%. Have you made any comments on the impact from the issue of the Middle East and if, like some of your peers in luxury, expect any impact in Q2? Then just one question, going back to Derma and the growth of CeraVe, which continues a nice turnaround there. You mentioned the growth of haircare in North America for CeraVe. Have you reached the full distribution for your haircare range compared to your skincare offer? And how much of CeraVe in the U.S. is haircare today? Thank you.
I'm not sure I have all the details to the latter. It hasn't reached full distribution, but more importantly, it hasn't reached full potential because it's very recent. It's growing month after month. What's interesting is that in this line, you've got both anti-dandruff and I would say normal shampoo, and both are working very well. It's totally additional for both CeraVe and for us. It's still a minor part of the business in the U.S., but growing. What's really interesting is that CeraVe's turnaround is also mostly driven by the turnaround of skincare. We've launched an intensive lotion on the back end of last year, which is doing really great. It's really and it's true everywhere, and we are just launching on CeraVe, which is not a U.S. story today.
We're just launching sun care in Europe, which is a good complement in terms of price positioning and overall strategy to La Roche-Posay. It is promising, but the brand is back to growth, and that's, for us, a very good news because it had, at some point, started plateauing, and now it's growing again. I think there's a lot of potential. On the Middle East, first of all, a reminder for everyone, it's less than 3% of our sales. It had, I would say, a manageable impact on the month of March. It will have an impact on Q3, but I would say it's not as big as some of the other players you're mentioning, first of all, because it's smaller in our business. Second is that, what we see today is that Saudi Arabia is back to normal in terms of consumption.
That e-commerce, which is, as you know, one of the areas we bet on, is also pretty resilient. Even the neighborhood malls in the Emirates are doing okay. It's really more both the tourists visiting the big malls, Dubai Mall, and the travel retail. It's going to impact more our L'Oréal Luxe business than any other division. I would say it will have an impact, but it will really depend on how long the conflict lasts and whether, particularly tourists and travelers are confident to go back to this region. As far as local consumption, it is, I would say, globally okay. By the way, most importantly, all our teams are safe and working.
I think if you look midterm or long-term, it remains a very strong area of growth for us because the size of the population, the economy, the women that are more and more empowered. I would say I was last fall in Saudi, and it was pretty exciting. Today, the impact exists. It will impact more Q2 than Q1. It is, I think, overall manageable.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Charles-Louis Scotti of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one on the North Asia. The market is finally rebounding in China, and you are outperforming it. I'm just curious to hear your outlook for the year and to what extent you believe this rebound is sustainable? Does the fact that the luxury beauty segment is driving the recovery confirm that Chinese consumers are more inclined to engage in discretionary spending and trade up in your view? Second question on the fragrance category. There are some of your competitors in beauty in general, and fragrances that are facing difficulties, and it seems to be fueling a new wave of consolidation or at least rumors of potential mergers for some. Are you still on the lookout to acquire some additional fragrance licenses, or do you consider your portfolio sufficiently broad after the Kering group deal?
Thank you.
First, on the North Asian market, it's true that it has recovered. For North Asia, the biggest part, of course, is China. For us, it's 70% of the total. It's really what is the absolute for a barometer or thermometer of the market. Indeed, China has gone back to positive territory. It's not a massive rebound. As we said, it's somewhere between +1% and +2%, but it is positive. Indeed, it's more driven by selective premium products. It's true for our luxury brands, but it's also true for Kérastase or SkinCeuticals, who are both very positive. I would attribute it to probably two factors. One is that indeed, thanks to the rebound of the stock market in China, there is a bit more discretionary spending.
There's also, as travel retail remains negative, especially on domestic, there is also probably some transfer of consumption from what used to be travel retail to the domestic Chinese market. Overall, we are confident of the fact that China will grow. We are conquering new consumers. That's interesting because we've been for a while stuck to 100 million consumers in China, and we've increased it to 105, and growing 108 latest assumption thanks to the penetration in tier 3, 4, 5 cities, which are driving the growth. That's a combination of a couple of door openings, but a penetration allowed by e-commerce and Douyin in particular. Overall, we don't want to get carried away, and it remains a market which has not its old growth rhythm, but it's positive, and our brands are really doing good.
We are expanding our cultural brands like Prada, and there's good response. Aesop is doing good in China. It's a brand that Chinese consumers love. I would say that it is positive news for us. It's a very competitive market, of course, and that forces us to be ever more innovative, but confident on that. On fragrance, first of all, it's true that the market as some of the players said, has slowed down a bit. It remains positive. It's mid-single digits, but we are really growing much faster than the market. Very happy that Libre has become, at the end of last year, the best-selling number one feminine fragrance in the world. We have had a lot of initiatives earlier in the year, whether it's the extensions of YSL, Libre Berry Crush or the new female fragrance from Armani, Emporio Armani Power of You.
Female fragrances on Armani were always a bit of a challenge, and this one is off to a great start. We are really firing on all cylinders on fragrances. Frankly, to your question, we have just, if I may use that term, got the keys of Kering Beauté a couple of weeks ago, and we have to, of course, integrate the teams, the brands which have potential. We are not on the lookout for more brands in the fragrance world. We have a lot to do with, and we are very happy with the way we're doing it.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jeff Stent of BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone. Just one question. We, in the earlier question, referenced that potentially we're going to see meaningful consolidation in the industry. My questions are, A, what do you think that says about the industry, if anything? Secondly, would you expect this to be the sort of first move in potentially a chain of consolidation, or is it your expectation this is a sort of one-off event? Thank you.
Well, I obviously will not comment on or make predictions on the consolidation of the industry. What is true is that there has been a lot of either movements or announcements of movements recently. For me, when it says whether it's decisions from Unilever or the discussion between Puig and Estée Lauder, it says a few things. It says that, first of all, the confirmation that beauty is a very attractive category, because some groups want to be more involved in that category. It's a category, once again, grooming right now is one of the best growing categories around the world. The second is that scale and a good portfolio of brands is one of the winning factors. They are not the only ones.
You have to have the innovation firepower, you have to have the agility, because being big is not always compatible with being agile, and that's what really we are very focused on keeping at L'Oréal. Then there's the company culture, and that's where whatever happens with the moves that our people are talking about, having a company culture where people are aligned behind a mission, a way of doing things is also a quintessential success factor. I don't know whether there's going to be more. In the end, it's good for the beauty industry to have players that invest in it, and it's always good for us to be stimulated.
Thank you.
The last question is from Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Terrific. Thank you very much. I'd like to drill into the China market a little bit more and parts of your business there. I think you said that in the quarter, China was up 1%-2% and continues to show rebound, sequential rebound. Can you maybe just give us a little bit more detail in terms now of how that market splits between online and offline, and how each of those channels is doing? You also then mentioned that prestige or what you're, I think, now calling selective, was doing much better. Perhaps, maybe just tell us how much better or at least how the market is doing in terms of prestige growth versus mass, which we think is down. Then my last question, again, related to China. I'd like to understand better the development of the Helena Rubinstein brand there.
From the data that we've seen, I think there was an initial Helena Rubinstein brand that started off very high price and then came down. You've, I think, launched another very high price, very premium Helena Rubinstein brand, I think that's the PX50. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about the strategy around Helena Rubinstein in China and how that's doing. Thank you.
Okay. On the Chinese market, first of all, in China, the majority of the market, a little bit more than half is online. Of course, then the weight depends on the categories. There's probably more offline on hair care and more online on a number of prestige products. If we look at the market overall, most of the growth, if not all of the growth of the market is driven by online, which doesn't prevent us at L'Oréal from, at least in Q1, as it was in the last two previous quarters, to be going both online and offline. Because we are also overweight on luxury, and that's where the importance of offline to have consumers feel the experience of the brand, which, by the way, with Helena Rubinstein is very important.
Indeed, you're right to say that the mass market is slightly negative, and that the other, whether it's luxury or Dermatological Beauty, are growing more in mid-single digits. In both cases, we are winning share and doing better. It is a market that's indeed right now seeing a stronger growth of more premium products and more premium brands, including, by the way, a high weight in recent months of Western brands and ours in particular. That's what we see today on the market, and we've had really a strong momentum in luxury. When I was referring to selective or prestige brands, I was including in some of our other divisions, like Dermatological Beauty or Professional. We have brands that are more premium, like Kérastase or SkinCeuticals, and they are doing particularly well in China.
As far as Helena Rubinstein, there's absolutely no change in strategy. There was one a decade ago, when we decided to reposition that brand, which was a brand that was multi-category, doing makeup and even fragrance, into a brand focused on premium skincare. Of course, with a particular focus on China. Since then, we've never changed strategy. The previous Re-Plasty Night Cream, which had 30% Pro-Xylane, was the number one selling cream in China in value in 2024. What we did, and you're right, we launched a more premium one on top, which is called PX50, that has got 50% Pro-Xylane, which we launched in the fall of last year.
That cream is indeed driving the growth of the brand because this brand, which is really positioned on the most affluent, demanding consumers, is of course very successful when it launches very innovative, unique products that have no equivalent. I was talking about offline, Helena Rubinstein has got counters and stores. In all of them, you have things where these VVIPs can get treatments, and that's also contributing to the desirability of the brand, which is paying off now that the Chinese market is turning again positive on selective. No change in strategy, just a confirmation that on brands such as Helena Rubinstein, you have to go with superior quality, superior service, and demanding Chinese and affluent consumers are craving for it. Voilà. I think this ends the Q&A, Eva.
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Thank you. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.