Good morning everyone, thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results conference. I'm pleased to present an overview of our performance. Together with Astrid, we'll later provide a detailed financial review. Before we begin, I want to touch on the situation in the Middle East. In situations like this, the safety of our employees and their families is our highest priority. Teams are in place in the regions to offer assistance and support on the ground, we are in close communication with them. Given the volatility of the situation, it is too early to assess any potential impact on our business. We hope for a peaceful solution soon. Let me now turn to our full year 2025 results. 2025 was a year that demanded a lot from us.
Economic and geopolitical uncertainties, shifting consumer behavior, and continued trade disruptions negatively affected market dynamics. Skincare market growth slowed to levels not seen in recent history, with particularly strong effects in the emerging markets region. These conditions shaped and challenged our performance more than anticipated at the start of the year. Even so, we continued to make progress in several important areas and where we fell short, we took immediate action. At the same time, 2025 showed that the core elements of our strategy remain effective our focus on science-based innovation our global footprint and expansion into new markets our culture of care and responsibility. This provided important stability throughout the year. In the challenging market environment, we were able to maintain our position as the best performing skincare company globally for the third year in a row.
Once again, our Derma business was an undisputed success, driven by innovation, wide space expansion and strong scientific credibility. La Prairie showed initial signs of improvement toward the end of the year, but the recovery remains fragile in a volatile luxury market and disruptions in the retail landscape negatively impact Q1 2026. While our skincare focus strategy has delivered on many fronts, the most recent performance of NIVEA requires a strategic rebalancing. We have taken decisive actions, laying the foundation for restoring momentum and returning our business to a more attractive and profitable growth trajectory. In 2025, the global skincare market slowed significantly, decelerating from mid-single digit growth in 2024 to around 1.5%-2%. This slowdown intensified as the year progressed and was particularly visible in regions that had driven strong growth in previous years, including Eastern Europe and emerging markets.
Pricing normalized after inflation-driven increases. Geopolitical tensions influenced consumer sentiment, and consumers became more cautious and increasingly selective in their routines. While Beiersdorf was affected by this market slowdown in 2025 and continues to feel its impact in 2026, we're still able to deliver solid growth in a significantly more challenging environment. NIVEA ended the year with an organic sales growth of 0.9%, reflecting the impact of weaker market dynamics, a repositioning of our business in China, as well as a back-end loaded innovation pipeline. Our Derma business delivered double-digit growth for the fifth year in a row, supported by breakthrough innovations and successful expansion into wide spaces. Our skincare business continued to perform strongly with close to double-digit growth, providing further evidence for our innovation-driven strategy. At La Prairie, organic sales declined by 4.5% in 2025.
The performance improved quarter after quarter, but market conditions remain volatile. Tesa delivered moderate growth of almost 2%, driven by a strong performance in the electronic business. Altogether, our skincare business grew by 3.7%, clearly ahead of the market. Once again, we outperformed our key competitors in this segment and remained the best performing skincare company globally. This performance underscored the strength of our skincare expertise and its ability to deliver sustained outperformance. Let's dive a little deeper into our Derma business. The indisputable success story of our Derma brands, Eucerin and Aquaphor, continued in 2025. Net sales reached a record EUR 1.5 billion, approaching close to 20% of consumer net sales, supported by continuous market share gains in a market growing only at low single-digit rates.
In Q4, facing a tough comparison with the Epicelline launch in the prior year, Derma still grew by nearly 10%. Derma growth in 2025 was broad-based across all regions. In Europe, our home market, Derma delivered an impressive 8.3% organic sales growth as Epicelline continued to drive the performance. In North America, our largest Derma market, we grew by nearly 9%, an outstanding results driven by face care and Radiant Tone, our Thiamidol product in the U.S. In emerging markets, at 16.3% organic sales growth, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil were the key performance drivers. India, domestic China and Japan were important white spaces that we expanded into. We also continue to outperform competition. This is a testament to the success of our science-based growth strategy of launching breakthrough innovations and successfully expanding into white space opportunities.
Our innovation, our hero ingredients, Thiamidol and Epicelline, are continuing their success stories. Thiamidol, in its eighth year, continued to grow at double-digit rates. In early 2025, we launched it in the U.S., and later in the year, we brought this innovation to the domestic Chinese market. Epicelline, our anti-aging breakthrough ingredient, continued the successful rollout across Europe and in emerging markets. Our derma innovation pipeline remains strong and sets industry standards. The entry into white spaces has unlocked new growth opportunities for Eucerin. Let me share a few example. In India, Eucerin's launch generated strong momentum. It was one of the first global dermacosmetics brands to enter the market and quickly became a top dermatologist recommendation. In China, following regulatory approval, Eucerin Thiamidol Serum was launched on the domestic market and has become the number one derma anti-pigment serum.
In Japan, we introduced Eucerin, marking another important milestone. As the world's third-largest cosmetics market, expectations for quality and innovation are extremely high. For this effort, we developed a premium anti-aging line tailored to local consumer needs. Our healthcare brands, Hansaplast and Elastoplast, delivered one of their strongest years in history with organic sales growth of more than 9%. The launch of our Second Skin Protection plaster illustrate how we continue to drive innovation even in mature categories. This advanced technology offers superior healing and protection. It is setting a new benchmark in wound care and resonates strongly with consumers. We continue to invest in research and development to reinforce our leadership in this segment with new innovations coming soon. NIVEA faced a particularly challenging year, navigating difficult market conditions and delivering growth below our initial expectations.
There were three key factors behind this development. First, the market slowdown was more severe than we expected. Second, we completed a comprehensive repositioning of our business in China, which temporarily affected our performance negatively. Third, most of our major innovations were scheduled for the second half of the year, which limited momentum early on. In 2025, the mass market for skin and personal care products slowed significantly. The decline was most notable in emerging markets, where value growth rates more than half versus 2024 and further deteriorated throughout the year, with volume growth turning negative in Q4. Skin and personal care were most affected than other beauty categories. This had a direct impact on NIVEA's performance over the year. The speed and scale of the market downturn exceeded our initial assumptions, requiring adjustment to our guidance during the year.
In China, we successfully completed a fundamental repositioning of NIVEA to prepare the brand for long-term success in this key market. Our strategy in China is clear. We aim to win through innovation in skin care. Therefore, we shift our focus away from price-sensitive personal care categories and partners, prioritizing premium skin care and accelerating growth through digital-first channels. This involved streamlining our portfolio, optimizing distribution, and tailoring innovation to local consumer needs. These measures were completed by the end of the third quarter, and NIVEA is now better positioned to compete in China's dynamic market and capture future opportunities. Subsequently, we launched Thiamidol under NIVEA in the domestic Chinese market, leading to impressive double-digit growth rates of NIVEA in the fourth quarter. Our innovation pipeline in 2025 was strong, and the major launches were concentrated late in the year.
As a result, the contribution for innovation to our full-year performance was limited, particularly in the first half. The rollout of breakthrough innovations such as Epicelline began to contribute in the latter part of the year, especially in Q4. In 2025, we launched Epicelline on the mass market. Our NIVEA Cellular Epigenetic Serum represented the strongest NIVEA face care rollout in our history. The selling performance has been strong and in line with our expectations, reflecting robust retailer demand and effective distribution. We also saw very good sell-out momentum. The product quickly reached number one positions at leading retailers and continues to be the number one serum across Europe. Reliable data on consumer repurchase rates is not yet available given the recent launch.
This will be a key metric to monitor in the coming months to assess long-term consumer loyalty and the sustained performance of Epicelline in the mass market. Our luxury brand, La Prairie, represents a smaller share of our business. It remains a strategically important part of our portfolio. The full year remained below 2024 levels. As we had expected, the business showed a sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter, growing +3.8% in Q4. This was mainly driven by more favorable developments in China, particularly in e-commerce. At the same time, the luxury market remains highly volatile, with persistent weakness in the U.S. and in travel retail markets. Ongoing disruptions in the U.S. department store landscape, as well as travel retail in China, are expected to negatively impact our performance in the first year of 2026.
With that, let me hand over to Astrid to walk you through Tesa and our financials.
Thank you, Vincent. Good morning from my side as well. Let me start with the performance of our Tesa business. In 2025, Tesa delivered organic sales growth of 1.8% in a challenging global economic environment, characterized by tariff disruptions and ongoing challenges in the automotive industry. Within our industry segment, electronics was again the main growth driver, with particularly strong results in Greater China and Asia Pacific. The product ranges from mounting front and back modules, solutions for battery bonding, and conductive tapes were further developed and converted into customer-specific solutions. The automotive business closed the year broadly in line with the prior year. Ongoing volatility in Europe and North America continued to weigh on the performance, while China and Latin America delivered growth supported by successful customer projects. Printing and packaging solutions also recorded year-on-year growth.
The performance was driven by expanded activities in splicing tapes and flexographic printing, with notable contributions from North and Latin America and continued positive development in China. The consumer segment delivered growth despite a challenging market environment, especially in Europe. E-commerce showed strong year-on-year development and made a meaningful contribution to the overall result. Let me now walk you through our 2025 financial performance. We delivered a stable performance in a challenging market environment with organic sales growth of 2.4%. We also made further progress on our profitability. Our EBIT margin increased to 14.0%, up ten basis points versus last year, reflected continued cost discipline and ongoing operational improvements. Earnings per share increased to EUR 4.25, up 4.9% compared to 2024, driven by improvements in our profitability and our tax rate.
This outcome underlines the financial stability of our business in a year marked by significant external pressures. These results provide a strong foundation as we recalibrate our NIVEA strategy, continue to innovate, and drive sustainable long-term growth. Let's now turn to the segment-level performance. In 2025, Beiersdorf consumer business net sales grew to EUR 8.176 billion at an organic growth rate of 2.5%. Adverse foreign exchange effects, including a softer US dollar, resulted in a lower nominal growth of 0.02%. Profitability improved with EBIT excluding special factors growing to EUR 1.108 billion at 20 basis points margin increase driven by disciplined cost management despite cost pressures on our gross margin. Our Tesa business recorded organic growth of 1.8% during the same period, closing the year with net sales of EUR 1.676 billion.
Due to unfavorable foreign exchange effects, nominal sales slightly declined by -0.7%. The EBIT margin, excluding special factors, was 16.1% in line with our guidance. Let's take a closer look at our performance across the different regions. In Western Europe, we achieved robust organic sales growth of 1.8%, particularly in key markets like the U.K., Italy, and Spain. As always, it is important to highlight that our luxury travel retail business is also included in this region and had a negative impact of nearly 100 basis points. Our business in Eastern Europe declined by 2.3%, driven by softer markets and overexposure to personal care, retailer disruptions, as well as intensified competition with local brands, particularly in our key market, Poland. The Americas regions closed the year with sales growth of 3.1%.
This good performance was largely attributable to the outstanding results of our Derma brands in the United States and in Canada at high single-digit growth rates, as well as the continued strong growth of NIVEA in Canada. At the same time, Latin America experienced a notable slowdown, particularly in the personal care segment. As a result, our softer NIVEA sales in key markets such as Brazil and Argentina weighed on our overall regional performance. While Derma sales grew at double-digit rates. The Africa, Asia, Australia region recorded 4.5% organic sales growth. India was the most important positive contributor to this growth, next to Japan. Our NIVEA repositioning activities in China negatively impacted this region in the first nine months of 2025.
Following the successful completion of our repositioning activities, China contributed significantly to increasing the region's organic sales growth to 9.3% in the fourth quarter. Let's take a look at the development of our consumer gross margin. Our consumer gross margin decreased by 70 basis points year-on-year from 61.0% in 2024 to 60.3% in 2025. Pricing contributed positively, adding 30 basis points, underscoring the continued strength of our brands and our ability to partly offset cost inflation despite a more moderate pricing environment. Increased costs driven by higher raw material prices and limited volume growth weighed on our gross margin. Mix effects positively contributed 40 basis points, primarily driven by the continued outperformance of our Derma business. Lastly, unfavorable foreign exchange effects contributed -50 basis points.
Let me conclude our financial overview by highlighting the key elements of our group income statement for the year. Our group's net sales grew slightly to EUR 9.852 billion in 2025. Our group gross margin declined to 57.7% with Tesas experiencing similar cost and foreign exchange pressures as our consumer business. Our marketing and selling expenses remained roughly at the previous year's level, reflecting a slight increase in the consumer and a slight decrease in the Tesa business. We continue to drive strong support for our brands with consumer-facing activities, which we were able to increase in 2025, while also driving effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing expense. As in previous years, we have taken the decision to continue to increase our R&D spending, reflecting a strong commitment to fostering breakthrough innovations that will shape our future.
At the same time, we maintained a disciplined approach to our general and administrative costs, leading to a reduction of these expenses in 2025. Our EBIT excluding special factors grew to EUR 1.378 billion at 10 basis points EBIT margin increase in line with our guidance. Lower special factors as well as an improved effective tax rate were additional drivers to increase our profit after tax to EUR 955 million or EUR 4.25 per share, a EUR 0.20 increase compared to 2024. Back to you, Vincent.
Thank you, Astrid. After five years in our role, this is the right moment to take a closer look at what has driven our performance and how effective our strategy has been. Over the past five years, we increased net sales by almost 30%, reaching a level of EUR 9.9 billion in 2025. Despite the slowdown in 2025, we continue to be the best performing skincare company, outgrowing our key competitors in this important category. EBIT, excluding special factors, also improved significantly by almost 40%, a clear proof of our commitment to profitable growth. Our top line outperformance was fueled by three key pillars. First, breakthrough innovations. Science-based research and development are the heart of what we do. Second, successful expansion into wide spaces, both in terms of categories and markets. Third, a strong and growing e-commerce business.
We have been growing double digit in e-commerce for more than five years in a row and gaining market share. In 2025, we generated 17% of our net sales online. Let's start with innovation. One of the clearest examples is Thiamidol. This highly effective ingredient has been cascaded across our brands and markets, the latest additions being Chantecaille, as well as the U.S. and China. Since I started at Beiersdorf, we have turned the Thiamidol franchise into a EUR 500 million business. We are continuing to grow double digit and are gaining market share again, supported by high recognition of the ingredient in the scientific community. Thiamidol was validated by a scientific consensus of the 10 world-leading dermatologists as the only dermacosmetic solution for the management of hyperpigmentation. Another breakthrough innovation is Epigenetech, a game changer in anti-age.
While everybody speaks about longevity, our epigenetics technology already provides a solution. After its success in the Derma segment, we launched Epigenetech to the mass market through NIVEA. This reflects the same principle as Thiamidol, developing highly effective ingredients based on strong science and systematically making them accessible across brand and markets. Microbiome research at S-Biomedic is the next frontier of our innovation pipeline. What started as a venture capital investment, an R&D partnership several years ago, has turned into the development of a breakthrough microbiome innovation for acne-prone skin. We developed Probiome-8 to correct blemishes from acne-prone skin using the first-ever skin-native probiotics. With significant results proven in clinical studies, it is planned to be launched under Eucerin DermoPure Clinical in the second half of this year.
Evaluated by hundreds of dermatologists and tested on thousands of consumers, Probiome-8 significantly improves acne-prone skin with no side effects. More to come later this year. Stay tuned. Turning to the second pillar of our strategy, expansion into white spaces. We have focused on the defined set of key markets and made strong progress in the U.S., Brazil, India, China, and Japan. Let me briefly zoom in on the U.S., Brazil, and India. In all three markets, our white space strategy has translated into measurable progress. In the U.S., we launched Eucerin Sun, followed by Eucerin Face, and introduced Thiamidol in 2025. This strengthened our foothold in one of the world's most competitive dermatological skincare markets. Our consumer business in North America has reached EUR 1 billion.
In Brazil, Eucerin advanced from a niche positioning to one of the leading players in the market. Within just five years, we managed to move from number 15 in the market to a number four position. India remains a clear success story for us. Where we have been present in India with NIVEA and Body Care business for a long time, we managed to more than double our business within the last five years. This was driven by outstanding performance of NIVEA, as was of the launch of our full skincare portfolio, including Eucerin, La Prairie, and Chantecaille. Our Derma business has fully delivered on our strategy. Since 2021, we almost doubled our business, reaching sales of EUR 1.5 billion in 2025. Even in the slowing Derma markets last year, our Eucerin and Aquaphor brands demonstrated double-digit growth .
NIVEA, the largest skincare brand in the world, grew by an impressive 34% over the last five years. We succeeded in regaining credibility in face care through Thiamidol and Epicelline. However, the required investment has not allowed us to maintain the right advertising focus on other categories. Through our exclusively global innovation program, we lost some momentum on core local ranges in some key countries. As a result, we were not able to outperform the market to the same extent as in prior years, and NIVEA's growth slowed significantly in 2025. We have therefore taken decisive action to recalibrate our strategy for NIVEA to restore the brand's growth trajectory, which is a key priority for 2026 and 2027. What exactly does this recalibration mean? We are rebalancing our NIVEA strategy along three pillars.
First, we are broadening our focus by strengthening categories next to face care, such as deodorant and body care. Second, next to major global franchises, we will support important local product lines by giving key markets such as China, the U.S., India, Japan, and Brazil, greater flexibility in local execution. Third, we are putting more effort behind accessible face care products. Let me dive a little deeper into each of the pillars. NIVEA already has a strong foundation in categories such as deodorant and body care. Building on this base, we are shifting parts of our investment in R&D marketing and new launches in these categories. By broadening our range, we are strengthening NIVEA's position across a wider set of segments and creating additional growth opportunities. In recent years, NIVEA focused strongly on global launches and centralized campaigns.
Going forward, we'll continue to rely on global innovation platforms and hero ingredients as a foundation, but give local teams greater freedom to tailor launches, products, and marketing to local needs and push key local franchises. One example is Luminous Glow, a successful innovation for emerging market. Another one is NIVEA Facial, a key face care line in Brazil that we launch in other markets as well. Lastly, we rebalance the focus also to popular face care products at a more accessible price range next to the premium face care lines like LUMINOUS and Epicelline. NIVEA remains an iconic yet accessible brand. Our portfolio deliberately spans from everyday essentials to premium innovations. As you know, the vast majority of our portfolio is priced at very accessible levels. The rebalancing of NIVEA is underway.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, we initiated a shift in our advertising and promotional spending, reallocating resources to support a broader range of categories and local initiatives. This marked the first step in the rebalancing process. In 2026 and beyond, we are implementing a set of pipeline measures to strengthen our innovation roadmap. These include breakthrough ingredient line extension on the one hand and broader launches across categories on the other. We are fostering fast-track execution of innovation to meet current trends and allowing for certain regional innovations tailored to local consumer needs. These measures will take some time to show their full impact. We are confident in our ability to return NIVEA to sustained growth and will report on our progress in each of the coming quarters. Let me turn to the outlook for our business.
We own and manage some of the most iconic skincare brands in the world and operate in the highly attractive skincare market, the largest category in the beauty space. Over decades, this market has demonstrated strong resilience and a consistent ability to recover within one or two years after periods of slowdown or decline. Our well-established and trusted brands, together with our Win with Care strategy, provide a strong foundation to navigate the current market environment and to deliver sustained long-term growth. Let us now look at our midterm guidance. In an evolving market environment, our focus remains firmly on outperforming the market. We'll do so by continuing to expand into white spaces, launching breakthrough innovations, and responding dynamically to changing markets conditions.
A key priority will be to return NIVEA to an elevated growth trajectory through a clear action plan and targeted measures as part of our strategic rebalancing. On top of that, the use of our cash position to pursue inorganic growth opportunities remains an important element of our strategy and should provide additional upside. We also remain committed to profitable growth in the midterm, which translates into growing EBIT at least as fast as net sales. We are convinced of the continued EBIT margin expansion potential for our business. In light of the global market dynamics, we'll not quote a specific number. We'll have to be flexible to respond to market conditions and will not sacrifice long-term value creation opportunities for short-term margin gains.
While the use of cash for inorganic growth remains a core element of our capital allocation strategy, we have also strengthened our commitment to returning cash to shareholders. This is reflected in enhanced cash distribution through share buybacks and dividends. As a next step within this framework, we are continuing to strengthen shareholder returns. The executive and supervisory boards of Beiersdorf propose that the dividend for the 2025 financial year is confirmed at EUR 1 per share. The proposal will be submitted to the annual general meeting on 23 April . Following the successful share buyback programs in 2024 and 2025, Beiersdorf will initiate a further share buyback program valued at up to EUR 750 million over a period of two years.
While we remain very confident in our profitable growth prospects over the mid and long term, it is important to acknowledge that market dynamics has not improved at the start of this year. We saw a clear slowdown over the course of last year, and this softer environment has continued into early 2026 without clear signs of a near-term recovery. While we have initiated our NIVEA rebalancing strategy, the measures will take some time to become fully visible. In parallel, the luxury skincare markets remains volatile. While improvement were visible in China in 2025, severe disruptions in the U.S. department store landscape and travel retail in China negatively impact the current performance. We view these disruptions, especially in China travel retail, as temporary and not the full reflection of the underlying consumer demand.
Nevertheless, they will have a noticeable negative effect on our Q1 luxury performance. Let us turn to our guidance for 2026. Against a continued challenging and volatile market environment, we expect sales to be flat to slightly growing organically across our business segments. This applies to both the consumer and Tesa segments as well as at group level. We still expect to be able to outperform the market as demonstrated in previous years. The first quarter of 2026 is expected to land below this range at a low single-digit negative organic growth rate. While Derma is expecting to deliver another strong quarter, NIVEA's innovation momentum that positively affected Q4 2025 is less impactful this quarter. The disruptions in U.S. retail and China travel retail landscape will put significant pressure on our luxury brands in Q1.
On profitability, we expect the EBIT margin, excluding special factors in consumer, Tesa, and for the group to be coming slightly below the 2025 level. This is driven by raw material cost increases, unfavorable FX, and only limited fixed cost leverage on gross margin. We'll not decrease our marketing spend proportionally as we want to ensure sufficient investment behind our brands. This concludes our full presentation. We are looking forward to your questions. Over to you, Christopher, for the Q&A.
Thank you, Vincent and Astrid. You will now have the opportunity to ask questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. Please note, as always, that we have a maximum of two questions per caller. We will start with Callum Elliot of Bernstein this morning. Callum, good morning. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Hopefully you can hear me. My first question is on the strategic rebalance, specifically, the increased support and spending that you were talking about behind deodorants, body care, local product lines. Is that incremental spending, Vincent, or just a reallocation of resources away from face care? Can you talk a bit more about when you expect to see the benefits of some of that rebalance? My second question, please, is on cash conversion. You guys have the weakest cash conversion of all large cap global consumer staples companies, it gets worse this year in 2025. I understand that there's part of this driven by strategic decisions around CapEx, et cetera, but on the more executional pieces like working capital, again, we see you getting worse this year, working capital now over 10% of sales.
My question, probably more for Astrid, is this cash conversion a strategic focus for you at all? If yes, when should we expect to see improvement? If no, why not? Thank you.
Thank you, Callum. I will take the first question. Obviously, the focus that we had on premium face care was very expensive in media. This is by far the most expensive skincare category. What we are doing is simply to reallocate part of the spendings from premium face care into body and deo and affordable skincare. The good news is that on those categories, they are much less media intensive. We can really develop, you know, strongly those businesses with, you know, an amount of working media and amount of promotion, which is much below what we are currently spending on the NIVEA premium face care. Second question.
Yes. Callum, to your question related to cash conversion. Yes, it was not where we were hoping it to be this last year. There were some impacts that were related to some aging tax payment that we've made to stop the clock there, but are absolutely looking to recover. We also had, obviously, given the very backloaded Q4, some impact obviously on working capital. We also had some higher inventory than we would have liked to, but we are looking to improve that, and I can promise you that it is a focus for us as a company, and we're looking to make progress in 2026.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Callum. The next one on the line is Celine Pannuti of JP Morgan. Celine, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to first come back on the guidance for the year. Low single digit negative you said for Q one. You mentioned the impact from the department store and travel retail. Is it possible to give us a bit of an idea of how much double digit down will La Prairie be in Q one? Likewise, NIVEA, I would expect still it to be as well negative. Would that be the case in Q one? Does it mean that the rest of the year, you know, you expect it to be up low single digits or thereabout? How do we think about this when you have a tough comp in the second half?
My second question is on NIVEA because Vincent, you are recalibrating the strategy. I was nevertheless surprised that we don't get more innovation benefit. You said that the innovation benefit in 2025 was really hitting at Q4. Why don't we get that innovation benefit in H1? I appreciate you don't have the data from the repurchase rate, but like, it feels like the innovation doesn't have a lasting impact. What visibility do you have on this? If you could also explain, you know, you give more freedom to local markets to adapt. I understood when you came four, five years ago, that probably there was too much freedom. Can you come back and explain what's different, when in the recalibration you're making? Thank you. Sorry for long questions.
Thank you. Thank you, Celine. On your first question on the Q1 2026, I think we are obviously very optimistic regarding Derma, and this is clearly the driving force of Beiersdorf. It has been, it will be. On NIVEA and La Prairie, we have two different phenomena's. On NIVEA first, Q4 was clearly a quarter of sell-in because this is, as you remember, from September, this is where we had most of the innovation. We have done a good quarter with NIVEA, but now we have to sell-out the innovation. We don't have new sell-in innovation coming Q1. It's more Q2. It's about, you know, absorbing the volumes, being sure that we drive the sell-out. The good news that the first market share is positive, that's encouraging.
This is what will happen in the Q1. On La Prairie, it's a bit specific. You know, we are clearly seeing over the year a progress. You know, the retail sales, the sell-out is improving. We are even growing double-digit in China. We are improving our figures in the U.S., growing high single-digit in Europe. We are hit by two phenomena which are not hitting only La Prairie, and you've seen that in the course of our competitors. On the one hand, the U.S. department store environment is difficult with 1 key retailer being on Chapter 11.
In China, there was a change of travel retail operators of the two airports of Beijing and Shanghai, Sunrise, which obviously has an impact on the volumes because they didn't buy in December and the new travel retail operators will buy more at the end of the quarter or beginning of Q2. That has an impact on the selling figures of your Q1. To quantify that, it will be a double-digit loss, but hopefully after looking at the good health of the sell out, we'll do a better job. On your question on NIVEA, the recalibration, in fact, is clearly taking place in September. It started by the launch of the Derma Control deodorants together with Epicelline. Then it's coming with new launches, new initiatives, which will hit the shelves starting in Q2, but more surely in H2.
When you look at the launches we did in the last quarter, we are very happy with Epicelline. Epicelline is, we said already, but is by far the best ever launch of NIVEA in face care. We went immediately to a position of being the number one serum in Europe. Very, very important launch for us. We have seen the sell-in, we have seen the sell-out. We are just waiting for repurchase rate. As you know, we know pretty well the formula because it's very close to what we launched in the on Eucerin. Derma Control is starting well. You know, it's a good figures in Europe. We are gaining market share in deodorants, which is something we didn't have since a long time. We hope to see, you know, those two launches developing well in Q1 and Q2.
We have also a lot of other opportunities, other launches, other activities coming in the second quarter. Yes, we'll see clearly the digestion of the selling of Q4 into Q1 and this development of the sell out, then we should enter into a more positive dynamics. Having still in mind, this is also one of the main reason of the guidance that we are working on the skincare market, which is at 1% growth. That's also the big change versus what we had in the past years. We are clearly in the slowing market, and this is impacting obviously a brand like NIVEA, which is very large and which is in multiple categories. On your last question, freedom in a frame, this is the way we call it. You're absolutely right.
In fact, when I took over the CEO, I saw a NIVEA landscape which was purely local. It's not that it was working because we had a lot of small things in the countries, but none of them being really impactful. I move into a direction which was a bit extreme, which was to globalize NIVEA. It was successful on, as I said, on franchises like Luminous, Thiamidol and Epicelline, but it also was made at the expense of some strong local franchises. We mentioned Facial in Brazil, which used to be in fact the basis of NIVEA skincare in some key countries. We are not only reassessing those local franchises as key priorities and coming with new launches, but also we are ensuring that the countries can play with them.
You know, it's about influencers, for example. It's about specific in-store activities. It's about also advertising campaigns. We'll have some global campaigns, but we'll have also some local campaigns in China, in Japan, in India, in Brazil, in the U.S., that we believe will be better at recruiting new consumers. That's this rebalancing. We are not back to the history, but we are just rebalancing versus, you know, the globalization that took place since 2021.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next one is Warren Ackerman of Barclays. Warren, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, Vincent, Astrid. It's Warren Ackerman here at Barclays. One operational question and one strategic. The operational one is really can you maybe dive into Eastern Europe? I know it's been weak all year, but it really lurched down in Q4. I think it was down like 7% organically, well below consensus. I know you've talked about, you know, Poland and other places, but can you maybe kind of slightly deeper dive into what actually is going on in Eastern Europe? Is that 1 of the key reasons why the guide is so low for 2026? What is your expectation for Eastern Europe for this year? Are you seeing kind of de-listings? Is it just big share losses? You know, what's happening in Eastern Europe? The 2nd 1 is strategic.
I think on the wires, Vincent, you say that M&A is a top priority. I think the quote is, "We're looking at every skincare opportunity that comes to market." A bit surprised on that comment given, you know, you're in the middle of a big repositioning of NIVEA. You've got a soft skincare market to deal with. Is this the right time to be looking at deals where you've got so much going on on the base business and also when perhaps, you know, some of the results from Coppertone or Chantecaille haven't been the best? Interested in the timing of that comment and what's behind it. Thank you.
Thank you so much. On your first question, yes, we had a difficult year in Eastern Europe. It used to be a growth driver for the consumer division. First, you know, the big thing is that the market went down from something that used to be 15% growth to flat 2%, 3%, which was in fact the results also of some lack of consumer confidence. The fact also that over the years, we all had, you know, to increase prices due to increase of cost of goods. There was clearly an issue of consumer confidence. We had also a specific issue in the fact that we are over-indexed in personal care in these markets. We are pretty small in skincare. We are more in personal care and in deodorants.
You know, we were hit by a lack of new products but also a lack of investment. There is also a dynamic which is very interesting. There's a strong development of local brands, Korean brands, for example, which is obviously a challenge for us. We have to come back with new products, new initiatives. We had also some difficult discussion with some retailers, indeed. The good news is that, you know, we are back to very good discussions with retailers, and we have some good plans in place. We have also a lot of new launches, and I mentioned, you know, this affordable face care. This is one of the region where we'll be clearly investing in affordable face care.
Last but not least, we believe also that some of the activities we are putting in place, for example, influencers, will help us also regaining market share against Korean brands. It's not yet, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel, but we feel more positive about Eastern Europe than we were in 2025. On your second question, yes, we are looking at every acquisition. We are obviously looking at businesses that we could improve. You know, this is why we will clearly not buy, you know, companies in places where we have no muscles, no know-how. We have to look at that. We have, as you know, a pretty small portfolio. We have also learned. I think the M&A muscle has developed over time.
We did a much better job with Chantecaille than we did with Coppertone. Chantecaille is one of the big hopes of 2026. We fixed the basics. We have also a new team in place. I believe we have a kind of knowledge or learning curve that is making us more able to integrate and to make good businesses. When they will come, we'll look at them. We might make an offer. We might not make an offer because every time we look at really at the price. We need to be clearly looking at opportunities because today we have a portfolio which is much too small.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Joffré Bellicha Meller of Bank of America. Joffrey, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. Good morning, Vincent. The first question is on the Chinese growth component in the fourth quarter. I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit more the contribution from Thiamidol in the country and whether you had seen any cannibalization effects from your cross-border e-commerce sales previously. More importantly, I guess on China, thinking about 2026, you obviously have an easy base or an easy comp due to the rebalancing activity you've performed last year. I really wanted to understand whether you saw any legs to the growth that you saw in 4Q. Yeah, maybe I'll leave it at that on the Chinese piece.
The second element that I wanted to ask, maybe it's more for Astrid, but with this affordable, face care lines that you want to launch, what will be the impact on mix for the gross margin in 2026? In the press release in that regard, you mentioned that the NIVEA rebalancing was going to last into 2027 as well. Is there any way of guiding us or helping us understand where we could land in terms of margins on EBIT for 2027? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Joffrey. On China, I must say that we feel pretty positive. If you look at the different brands of the portfolio, I will start with La Prairie. La Prairie, we grew double digits, you know, not only on e-commerce but also on brick-and-mortar. We are gaining market share. So we are pretty positive about the development of China, and I think some of the new products we are launching in the coming months will make, you know, our business on La Prairie business even better. We have also the launch of Chantecaille, which started at the end of the year, which is pretty promising. It's more e-commerce than brick-and-mortar, but this is clearly an opportunity for us. There is the Thiamidol effect, you know, that we took us 12 years to get the registration of Thiamidol.
We started to launch Thiamidol on Eucerin, and we are extremely happy with the results. Immediately, the, the serum, the anti-pigment serum, became the number one anti-pigment serum online in the market. We are even the number two anti-pigment brand online. Clearly, outstanding results on Eucerin. We are coming also with new products, you know, that the beauty of the Thiamidol story is that it comes with a lot of new SKUs. I clearly believe that on Eucerin, we have found our way and, and China will become one of the top countries in the next future. On NIVEA, we started late, huh? We started only at the end of the year in November, December. The figures are good, but I want to be not over-promising.
We have still some work to do. As you remember, we are transforming a cheap offline personal brand into a premium online face care brand, it has obviously, it is a stretch. We have some good launches, we have some good activities, but overall, I think we will have a good quarter one, and we'll have a good year on all the brands of Beiersdorf in China.
Then your question on the affordable face care and the impact on mix, as well as your question on EBIT. Look, the affordable face care line still tends to be accretive to our overall margin, especially also because the AMP spend behind it is not quite as strong as in our premium range, it's still accretive. Additionally, we continue to believe that we will grow our derma business quite strongly, which will have a positive impact on our margin and our mix. Of course, there is then the investment behind other lines such as deo and body, which will partly offset that. We're looking to still have a slightly positive or a balanced impact on margin and on the mix. Let's see.
In terms of 2027 EBIT, what we are saying for the midterm is that we look to continue to drive profitable growth. We are not at this time committing to a specific EBIT increase.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Jeremy Fialko of HSBC. Jeremy, good morning. Please go ahead.
Morning. Look, when we take the 2026 guidance in aggregate, it obviously implies a worse performance for consumer relative to 2026. Perhaps you could kind of give us a little bit more color from a sort of brand standpoint, what you're expecting over the year. For example, do you think that NIVEA can grow in the year, or is the repositioning and the work you need to do going to mean that it will be negative? I guess maybe the second question is if we can just go a little bit deeper down into some of the drivers of the growth that you'd expect to see from NIVEA.
What I'd be interested to hear your comments on were things such as the drag you're likely to see on personal care, and whether there's going to be any sort of negative pricing effect, on NIVEA if there's certain things that you need to reposition, or whether you think that the brand, you know, volumes actually could be positive. Those are my two questions. Thanks.
Thank you so much, Jeremy. On the guidance, you know, we clearly have built the guidance on what we know and not what we hope. When I look at what we know, we know that the skincare market has slowed down. Used to be 7% last year. It's today more into the 1%, even negative in emerging market in volume. That's something we have to take into account, and which is particularly important when you deal with NIVEA. It is also confirmed by the performance of some competitors. You saw the number one skincare company delivering close to 0% growth. We know it's a difficult moment for skincare. That we know. The second thing we know, which is obvious, we know that derma will continue to overperform.
We are extremely optimistic with derma. We have some big launches, we mentioned, and we'll talk about that later at the launch of [Eucerin]. We have also some big things coming at the end of the year. Obviously, we'll have to make it up in the next nine months, which mean that the performance of La Prairie won't be in line with the good performance we see in the sell-out. Last but not least, something we don't know yet, you know. We don't know yet when, you know, the recalibration of NIVEA will show its effect. We are happy to see that the January market share is positive. That's something we didn't experience since a long time. That's a first very, very good sign.
We know also that, you know, the new products are coming in the second semester, that we are also having this activation of local franchises in the second quarter. Clearly, we are aiming at having a positive NIVEA in 2026, clearly, the market dynamics will play a role. The appeal of our new products and new advertising campaign will have a role. This is something we'll monitor and of course, we'll update you every quarter. On the second element, you know, NIVEA Personal Care, it's a complicated environment because, you know, we have clearly a good proposal in Europe, and this is why we were happy to see some market share gain in Europe with the launch of Derma Control. We are even in pretty good position and number one in many countries.
It's a bit more difficult in emerging markets. You know, we have clearly some markets which are collapsing, was the case of Brazil. We know also that we have to improve, you know, the value of our deodorants in the sense that we cannot increase prices, but we have to increase profitability in order to invest. There is some value management to engage in. We are working on that. We have not yet, you know, we have not yet found the perfect recipe for emerging markets, but this is clearly a priority. Also here, what is interesting, we have big local franchises, you know, in Latin America, in Thailand.
We will also leverage those franchises which have a pretty strong appeal locally and that will complement, you kn ow, the global launches like Derma Control and the relaunch of Black & White. We don't need to decrease prices. You have to remember that NIVEA is cheap. It's between 2 and 10 EUR, and only two products are more expensive. This is Luminous serum, and this is Epicelline. We have a good price, but clearly we have to find the good, you know, activities in the country to regain momentum.
Thank you, Jeremy. The next one is David Hayes of Jefferies. David, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, Christopher. Good morning, all. A couple for me. Just following up on the sort of volume mix pricing dynamics, can you give us a sense of what the contributions will be across those three elements in that sort of flattish guide for 2026 in consumer? I may have missed it, but can you give us that for retrospectively 2025? Secondly, on the margin reconciliation, is there kind of an accelerated cost save intention program within the margin guidance? I'm just trying to reconcile the moving parts again, given market spend seems to be at least equal. You've got this FX headwind dynamic. I'm just trying to understand, you know, what the offsets are to that the margin would still be relatively flat.
Maybe on the FX 50 basis point headwind last year, is it possible given where we are today on rates, et cetera, to give a sense of the quantum of the FX headwind in 2026 as it stands? Thank you.
I think Astrid will take both questions.
In terms of this year's growth, 2026, we do see primarily volume growth, from, you know, what we're expecting at the moment. Much less pricing growth as we've already seen. Again, from a mix perspective, we do see a balance where we continue to drive, you know, certain parts of our business, particularly Derma, but also face care and so on. That should be accretive to our margins. We will see obviously and hopefully acceleration of our DO business, which will be partly offsetting, but hopefully really contributing to that volume growth.
In terms of, I'll call it cost discipline, I think we have worked the last years and plan to continue to do that, to really ensure that in the end, when we're thinking about our overheads, we invest in the strategic areas of our business, but then look to continue to keep all other costs really under control and even reduce. You would have seen that we've made some progress there. Yes, FX headwinds has obviously been quite significant in the last year. We have had some help, obviously, from what we've hedged into the new year. That's a bit less, unfortunately, of an impact. We do see that negative on our results. Let's see where it ends up being. It's really very uncertain right now to really give you a precise number.
We will monitor that and make sure that obviously we find ways to offset the impact there.
Thank you.
Thanks, David. The next one is Guillaume Delmas of UBS. Guillaume, good morning. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Christopher. Good morning, Vincent and Astrid. Two questions for me, please. One on NIVEA and one on La Prairie. On NIVEA first and the innovation program for 2026. I think at the same time last year, you were showing us that 47% of the brand would be launched or relaunched in 2025. Wondering how does 2026 compare to that 47% level of 2025? Should we expect a similar magnitude or even a further step up? Still on the innovation topic for NIVEA, I mean, you know, this morning you will be launching accessible face care propositions. At the same time, you've also introduced very premium products such as Epicelline.
How do you ensure that you do not overstretch too much the NIVEA brand? my second question on La Prairie, I mean, Brenda, they encouraging end to 2025. yet, if I look at the annual turnover of La Prairie, it's now nearly 30% smaller than what it was in 2022. you indicated the Q1 softness, but where does the brand go from here? I mean, do you think it needs some adjustments to its strategy, or you're confident that it will be back to positive growth territory in 2026, and that you can go back to the 2022 sales level in a not too distant future? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Guillaume, for your question. On your first question, you're right. We had the plan to do 40% of our portfolio was supposed to be relaunched, was relaunched in 2025. It is true also that most of the relaunches were based on some sustainability changes. Was, you know, not really visible in some cases by consumers. We will and we have also, you know, made some changes that was, you know, what required a lot of investment and did not really deliver additional, you know, sell-out. 2026 will be the bit wiser in terms of relaunches. We have some launches, they will be hitting the shelves in Q2 and Q3 mostly. In terms of relaunches will come really when we come with the true added value.
For example, we are relaunching the Black & White deo with a great formula. We are also relaunching our third care line. Clearly choosing, you know, the areas where R&D can provide a visible benefit to consumers. We'll do that in the, as I say, mostly from April. On your question on accessible face care and premium face care is absolutely right, I would say there are three cases, there are the cases where we can do both. I think Europe is obvious. We have a brand which is so large and so wide that it is not a problem, and you just have to visit a store to have, you know, Luminous and Epicelline around EUR 20 and have, you know, an accessible Q10 at EUR 10 and Essential at EUR 2.
We have to find a way to support both. Most of them. Some of them are media driven, or they are more promotional driven, some of them influencer driven. We'll be able to do that. In emerging market, it's a bit different. There are countries, for example, I was mentioning Brazil, where we are not launching Epicelline because we believe that the consumer price of Epicelline is too high. Here in Brazil, the focus will be clearly Facial, will come with new innovation in the second semester and also a big launch in 2027. Facial will be the absolute priority for the skincare business, the face care business of Brazil. Another emerging market where we will privilege, on the contrary, the premium face care offer, but using some specific elements. For example, you might have seen the pictures.
We are launching Luminous in Thailand in a sachet. We have the most premium formula of NIVEA. This is Thiamidol, but we use also the right way to each consumer and to be sure that consumers are purchasing the Luminous in their stores. Your question about La Prairie, you're absolutely right in your assessment. I think the new strategy that we are putting in place is starting to pay off. Again, if I eliminate, you know, this one-off effect of your Q1, it's about coming with a more affordable proposal. When I talk affordable, this is obviously something which is more around EUR 300. We tried that already with some smaller sizes of existing franchises and Skin Caviar, for example.
We are coming soon with a new franchise, which will be priced between EUR 150-EUR 300, which will allow us, you know, to convince, to recruit younger consumers, which obviously could be a bit reluctant putting EUR 1,000 in a cream of La Prairie. The second element where we are clearly accelerating is e-commerce. We are already pretty good in China. I was mentioning the successive double-digit growth that we have since five years in e-commerce, Tmall, JD, TikTok. We are also becoming much more ambitious in the rest of the world. We are launching next month, for example, La Prairie on Amazon in the U.S. You know, that's something which is a premiere. W e are working, you know, with Amazon to be sure that the equity of the brand will be respected.
We have other plans also like that, which will allow us to be more accessible, especially in a world where, you know, you see clearly that department stores are losing ground and the e-commerce is taking over. The strategy is starting to work. Again, China is a good example. M uch more to do. Hopefully, again, after this ICAP of the Q1, we should see some good things happening on La Prairie.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Guillaume. Next one is Olivier Nicolai of Goldman Sachs. Olivier, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. First question is on Germany specifically. One of your competitors launched a Mixa brand. Do you see an impact for core NIVEA there, and how are you planning to protect your market share?
Yeah, Mixa. Mixa is a brand which has been launched in Europe and starting in Germany, so obviously, aiming at taking over market share from NIVEA. This is a party strong in body and not present in other categories. I mean, they are part of the competition, the way CeraVe was a competitor also in the past. We have a good formula. We have also good activities. You know, if you were in Germany, Olivier, you will see today this week a big campaign on the NIVEA cream vegan. We adding a new SKU to NIVEA cream, the historical, the iconic NIVEA cream. You know, they're also to gain some shelf and to gain also new users, and it's working very well.
We'll treat Mixa as a normal competitors and forcing us to be even better on body and on NIVEA cream, but, so far, so good. We are growing on body.
Thank you.
Very good. Thank you, Olivier. The next one is, Karel Zoete of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead, Karel. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. Thanks. Thanks all. Question with regards to the margin. You look back to the last five years, we see good progress from both top line and bottom line. If we go back to 10 years, you had a business with a 15% operating margin in consumer. Today you're almost 50% larger on the top line. I was just wondering, why is there not more operational leverage in your business given the scale you've added during that period of time and good growth margins? That's the first question. The second question is really quite straightforward. Given where FX sits today, your expectations on EBIT, would you expect EPS growth in 2026? Thank you.
Astrid?
Look, in terms of our progress, we have showed even some, in our presentation this time around. We have made really nice progress in the last few years. In terms of your answer, where we are versus the time when it was, similar or even higher, during that time, the margin was primarily achieved through really cutting advertising spending to drive profitability while a lot of investments in the business, e-commerce, digital, and so on, were not made. We have since, as you know, back, at, a few years back, really kind of done a margin reset to really invest in those businesses. With the investments in those businesses, drive the right kind of growth that will allow us to hopefully scale much, much faster in the future.
We've made that progress. As you see, we have really caught up on e-commerce. We're doing very well there. We're really digital in terms of our advertising. We're trying to be where the market is and really compete there. We've significantly invested in our innovation in our white spaces. We're really putting the money to good use to then drive longer term growth. Yes, this last year has been a bit of a hiccup, also driven by the markets, but we do think for the future we have that opportunity with these investments to continue to drive profitable growth. In terms of your question, look, we are at this moment, given also the uncertainty, giving this guidance of slightly below prior year in terms of EBIT.
We will stay with that right now to allow us that flexibility, but hope throughout the year we can provide more color on that figure.
Thank you.
Thanks, Karel. The next one is Fon Udomsilpa from RBC. Fon, good morning. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Two from me, please, on market share and pricing. First one, you already provide a lot of color around market share performance by region, but could you also comment on performance for the whole consumer business through 2025 following the launches in Q4? How has that trend compared to the beginning of the year? Any number you could give would be helpful. Another one on NIVEA pricing, sorry. In preparation for the strategy to broaden price range for the portfolio, could you help us think where do you see the current price positioning of NIVEA? Any part of the portfolio you think maybe the brand is not as price competitive yet, or any part of the portfolio that you see higher competition? Thank you.
Thank you. On the market share overall, you know, we gain market share in a very strong way in Derma. In the Derma, we are overperforming the market by a factor of 3. Gaining market share in absolutely every country on absolutely every category. It's not only the case of anti-pigment, this was the case of anti-age. We became, for example, number one anti-age brand in emerging market, and we were already number one in anti-pigment. Clearly sun care gaining market share every year in every country, clearly Derma, we are really in this dynamic since five years, and we believe that it will continue. On NIVEA, we are not gaining market share, and this is why I was happy to mention that 26 January is positive after a number of months without, you know, positive gain.
We're not really losing market share against the big guys. We are losing market share against, you know, local brands and indie brands, so which is forcing us to react, hence, you know, the localization in some real, hence the use of influencers. Overall, this is one of the priority. I clearly would like NIVEA to regain market share and to be back into this positive dynamics. On La Prairie, different profiles. Overall, we are gaining slightly market share, but clearly where we overperform is China. China, we are gaining market share in brick and mortar and e-commerce. In the U.S., we are getting better and better quarter after quarter. In the last quarter, we were at parity with the market.
Knowi ng that the U.S. is a bit specific, we are only sold in department store, and we are also a bit victims of the disaffection of department stores . Overall okay, and some good also news in some European countries. Last but not least, Eucerin, we are gaining market share every year since nine years, overperforming the market. This is, you know, an extremely strong brand, also very profitable, very happy to see that. In total, as I said, we are a skincare business which grew 3.7%. The skincare market grew 1.52%, so we gained market share in 2025 as a company in skincare. On your second question, I think as I mentioned, the price positioning of NIVEA, we are 85% of the range is between EUR 2 and EUR 10, we don't have an issue of price.
We did have some issue of pricing with our LUMINOUS630 range in emerging market. This is why we decided to change the packaging of LUMINOUS630 in order to be able to price down LUMINOUS630 but still being profitable. That's the change we have done. We don't have the same packaging, LUMINOUS630 versus Europe versus emerging market. We have also reworked, you know, the formula to be sure that we would be affordable in India. If you remember, I presented the case, we moved from dispenser to a tube, you know, that we have the same gross margin, but to have a product which is acceptable. We just did the same with the sachet in Thailand also to have the right offer while not, you know, deteriorating the gross margin.
We don't want to decrease prices. We are coming with a moderate price increase and even no price increase in some cases. Clearly, we believe today that we have the right setup for our brands and, and this is how we believe we're gonna be able to regain momentum.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Fon. We'll have two more. We'll start with Bernadette Baum of Reuters, and then we'll have Mishan afterwards. Bernadette, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my question. My first question was, are you thinking of joining some of your peers in asking for paid U.S. tariffs back now that the Supreme Court has judged them to be illegal? At the nine months results, you mentioned the skin minimalism trend. Is that something you see continuing through 2026? How do you think about positioning yourselves within trends like that? Thank you.
We didn't get the second question.
What sort of trend are you speaking about?
Skin minimalism. You had talked about that at nine months.
Yeah, yeah.
Minimalism.
Absolutely. Skin minimalism.
Yeah.
On the first question, no, we are not planning to be part of the company suing the U.S. government simply because we are not really hit by the tariffs. As you might remember, we have the 90% of our products are either produced in Mexico, where we have the USMCA agreement, so we are not there's no additional tax, and the rest is produced in the U.S. The part which is produced in Europe is a very small part of the Eucerin range, so we are not planning to be part of this movement. On the second element, yes, absolutely. The skin minimalism is something which is very important. You know, we see that in all categories. We see that in Derma, we see that in luxury, we see that in the mass market.
It's about, you know, having the right ingredients. It's having the right offer. We are one of the things also we are recalibrating, we used to be very obsessed by our own ingredients, Thiamidol, Epicelline. We are coming also with other ingredients which are well known, could be vitamin C, could be niacinamide, in order to be sure that we are able to offer in one product, you know, an even better or even stronger performance by mixing ingredients. We are also working on some specific products which are combining, you know, the skin effect of, for example, moisturizer and the cream. All of that is underway. We believe also that our brands are pretty well-positioned.
If you look at Eucerin, this is a problem solution brand, exactly spot on with the trend. If you look at NIVEA, you know, we are used also to convince women which are using a small routine, for example, Germany, but also a very large routine like in China, Korea, or Japan. We are equipped for that and we leverage this trend.
Thank you, Bernadette. Next one is Mishan Omanadze of BNP Paribas. Mishan, please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have one, please. Based on what you hear in the market, what actions are your major competitors taking to remedy the skin and personal care slowdown? Are any of your large retailer partners pushing for price reductions, which may suggest there may be more material pricing pressure in mass skin and personal care than is factored into your full year guidance? Thank you.
Great question. You know, the slowdown, it happened already. I was looking at the history in the 2013 skincare market, -2%, 2014 +2%, 2015 +14%. If you look again in 2018, +3%, the year after, +9%. It's something, it's cycle. At the end of the day, the skincare market remains the most strategic market. The way our traditional competitors are acting is, you know, coming with new innovations. We were lucky, you know, to be really the one bringing all the top innovation in skincare. You know, as I said in my introduction, you know, a lot of people are talking longevity. We have launched Epicelline already one year ago. This is a way you drive the market up.
We are in a business which is offer driven and which is not really demand driven. If we come with a nice proposal, if we come with a new formula, this is a way we attract new consumers. We convince them to buy our products. Are other players doing another game? Yes, of course, if you look at the local brands, if you look at the indie brands, it's about, you know, cheaper prices, about very well-known ingredients. It's about influencers only. The good news in a way is that it goes ups and down. At the end, you know, the big brands are back, and this is where, you know, consumers come back when they want to have a safe formula, when they want to have a safe ingredients.
This is also why we feel that the market dynamics will come back. I mean, one good example I could mention, you know, if you look at Derma, we are delivering a double-digit growth every year since five years, despite the fact that the market went down to a low single-digit growth in 2025. The market is what you bring to the market, and we are pretty well-equipped in skincare with the Biosphere and the Muscle.
Sorry, on the pricing potential.
No, pricing, honestly, when look at competition, we don't see any action which I think will damage the market. We are doing promotion in mass market. That's true for everybody. No big issue on this front.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. That was our last question. This concludes our full-year results conference. Beiersdorf's next investor relations event will be the release of our first quarter results on 21 April 2026. We appreciate your interest in Beiersdorf and look forward to seeing you here again in April. Thank you very much.